Saving for Renos

 It feels like the bulk of my money focus has been on saving for the necessary upgrades that are needed at our new house and the old one. 

At the old house it is desperately in need of shingles. We installed the old ones in the fall of 2004 so they have made it not quite 20 years. The south side are a mess on both the house and the garage. I have the money saved for it. Now, the trick is just to find a weekend we can get enough people together to work fast and efficiently and get it done.

At the new house we had an electrician come to do an estimate on work in the downstairs garage. We have had to gut the ceiling due to water damage and squirrel damage. Once we get the electrical done again, then we can install the lights and the ceiling gyprock and get moving on getting it organized. A LOT Of memories in that space. My cousin was here last week and was quite overwhelmed with them all.

 At the new house we also to replace windows. They are the originals from when dad built the house in 1972. They are ridiculously NON energy efficient. We had a quote on that as well. To do the whole house (main level) will cost just under $14 000. I definitely cannot afford all of that so we shall do the picture window and the windows of the front two bedrooms this year. I will have to save up to do the rest. The install won't happen until November according to their schedule.

Ah the joys of home ownership.

Happy Easter

Well DS is officially out of self isoation.

His gf came up last night. She has a month left of work at her temp job in a law office and then she will be here for good.

DS cleaned the house ahead of her arrival.

The spent the morning shopping and cooking and were coming over here for Easter Dinner

Definitely a quiet one due to Covid. DS2 will stay up with his gf. We aren't sharing space with any other parts of our family, so just the four of us.

DS and gf made springrolls and a dip along with a salad. We did up a ham and the fixings and I made a cheesecake.

It was so good to have people in the house. Laughter. Noises. Watching DS play with his cats. Food cooking.

It was our first Easter celebration in this house. I gave a bit of reflection to mom and dad and all the celebrations we have had in this house. I couldn't think of it too much or it is just too darn hard.

I have to say DS is quite a cook. The springrolls were delicious. He used to be such a picky eater but all his travels with hockey around the world have opened up his palate more.

We watched a movie after supper and had a fire downstairs and then went home.

Our district traditionally does not have school from Good Friday and all of the next week, and the government of SK has decided this will continue forward. So a week off online learning for us.

Woot $ news

So as of today, I am mortgage free!

I am flashing back to an episode of MASH where Colonel Potter learns his wife has scrimped to pay off the mortgage. She then sends him the mortgage paper and he has a little ceremony to burn it.

Well it wasn't quite that dramatic.

We were down to $2000 ish on the mortgage. There was enough in the buffer they build for our 2020 property tax to pay this off with a little extra left over. The trick - I would have to save between now and June 30 to have the money to pay our property tax.

Compared to many of you our taxes are lower which is due to living in a small house in a small town in the middle of the prairie.

DH and I had done the calculations and we figured we could do it. Redirect the mortgage payments and use the bit of left over and voila!

I signed the necessary papers and they would have the documents mailed to me. Much less exciting than Colonel Potter but still.

I am now the owner of two houses with no mortgage. Just tons of work to be done and the bills that go to maintain it.

Weekends

DS phoned close to midnight. They had safely crossed the border. There was actually minimal fuss there with border patrol just handing them pamphlets about Covid and saying they should be doing a 14 day self isolation.

At this point they were exhausted. They wanted to push on. "It's only 7 more hours to home".

I told him to stop. Get a hotel room in the city just across the border. Eat. Shower. Rest.

The boys were complaining about the snow and temps. Poor little beach bums had forgotten what Sask weather in like.  They agreed to stop for the night.

The old house is ready to go. Everything's clean for him and I have stocked it with things he might like. I hope he gets how serious the 14 day self isolation is. And the law. but he's a social butterfly and hasn't seen his gf since early December.

a Lull Day

If I didn't think too hard, it could almost be Easter Break . Friday off, long weekend. No work duties.

I wandered for a good hour this morning, in my own home. I needed to shake it off. Do something. Do anything.

I baked a few batches of cookies and muffins, definitely appreciating my kitchen aid. The smell of baking was calming in a weird way. And I didn't eat a ton of cookie dough. Score!

I looked at my school pile and had to put it in a room to try to forget it for awhile. We weren't sure exactly what we were supposed to do, so give it a few days. A response team was meeting provincially and then would trickle the information down.

DS would call every few hours and update us. He and his buddy took turns driving four hour shifts while the other slept. Their grandiose ideas of stopping and enjoying the drive were out the window. They only stopped for fuel, snacks and a pee break, but each stop things felt a little more like 'this shit is real' as signs started appearing with guidelines for safety.

They are slowly making their way through the 33 hour drive.

painting

We are slowly making inroads on what needs to be done at the new house. At least in making a list.

What needs to be done and what needs to be bought and what we can afford are very different things.

The living room needed to be painted. There were marks on the walls from where things once were. I could not find the shade of grey-beige ( apparently called greige on pinterest blogs) to match what mom had so I had to start from scratch.

I am behind on fashion and style and I hear that grey is on it's way out but after years of a nutmeg brown at my current house, I needed something different. All those years of HGTV have to pay off somehow.

I googled south facing living rooms with lots of light and came up with a few possible shades. I got testers of four shades of grey at just under $11 each. I painted a chunk of two different walls with each of them so I could see how they look as the light changed in the room throughout the day.

One read a light grey. One read blue. One read green. The last was a darker grey that DH was sure we wanted but after seeing how it came out, it definitely would make too dark of a room.

We ended up choosing the one I had originally thought called Grey Owl by Benjamin Moore. It read well in the room and didn't clash with the carpet that I can't afford to change. We worked our way through mudding and sanding and washing the walls and part of the living room is done.

Paint is NOT cheap. Lordy. But this kind I bought covered well and we did the whole living room with one gallon so that is not bad at all.

We plan to steam clean the carpets in there. They have this huge 5 piece china cabinet set that also holds the TV. It's not something I will keep in the long run but the $ for replacing it is not top on our list. The units will have to stay pulled out until the TV provider can come in and do the wiring for it all.

 Most of the furniture they had there will stay as ours is staying here at the house for DS2. Ours is now from 2008 and quite worn. Eventually I will replace mom and dads but for now it's fine.

I plan to paint mom and dad's room next.  It is actually smaller than the one we have in our little house. And no ensuite, but then we didnt' have that here either.

There is a lot of guilt in painting over what mom did and I know she would be choked at the chaos of the house right now :-)