Well, as I was writing in the response I made to RivkA's comment to my previous post, I have to decide whether or not we're going to replace Dear Child's floor once we get access back to her room (since right now it's taped shut with clear tarp over the door, closet and dresser). I think it will probably cost about $400 for both the DriCore and the flooring itself. Oh, and baseboards.
It's certainly the right time to do this while all the furniture (except the dresser) is already out of the room. And there's no question that the horrible carpeting that was here when we moved in should go. Even if it was nice carpeting I'd want to replace it with wood because of my asthma. And, believe me, it's not nice. I had a very large straw mat I got in Fiji probably 25 years ago down over most of the exposed floor surface before and a small sheepskin right by the bed. Wood would be so much nicer. Wood is good.
However, it's money I hadn't planned on spending and it would end up going on yet another no interest payment plan at Home Depot. Now, it's true that it looks like my Hubby's commissions are picking up somewhat and he has a big job or 2 in process right now but probably won't see money for them for a couple of months. It doesn't make sense to wait until the money is in hand though from the point of view of getting our daughter back into her room. And getting our living room, kitchen and dining table back to normal.
I also have to think about how long it's going to take to actually do the floor. I'm not the fastest person at these things but I do a good job. Probably a couple of evenings for the DriCore and about the same for the floor (although if I go with engineered I'll be gluing it, which takes longer and also needs an extra day to dry). I don't want to do the baseboards. I hate the mitred cuts. If my Son-in-Law will cut the baseboards that will be okay. He did a pretty good job of them in the girls' room upstairs.
So I think I've rationalized myself into an additional reno job over and above the ones I really need to do around here (like finishing the bathroom or redoing my kitchen cabinets, or putting in the tile floor). And this is after I laid the floor in the girls' room with my Eldest Daughter's able assistance (also not something that had been on my list). I'd ask her to help me with this one in exchange but I feel guilty about asking someone who's 8 months pregnant to help lay a floor. My Hubby is totally not handy with renos and my S-in-L has more than enough renos to do in his part of the house right now. Sigh.
And from a financial viewpoint I do worry to a certain extent about the effect of taking on additional debt just as I'm paying off some from last year. It's not that I'm worried we won't have the money to pay it off when it comes due. I'm actually pretty good at that. It's just that I hate to be moving in the "wrong direction" if you know what I mean. I guess I just have to be really vigilant about paying other stuff when I'm supposed to, setting aside money for things that will come due later, putting that little bit away every week into the Emeergency Fund, etc. etc. You know, all those good habits I said I was going to develop this year.
And I did pay off the first of the 2 Home Depot amounts. On time. The next one is due in February and will be more challenging but I'm sure we can do it.
Showing posts with label DIY. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DIY. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
How Can it be Wednesday Again?
I feel like everything around me is going faster than normal and I'm in slow motion. I can't believe how fast time is flying by. The good news is, Son-in-Law's dad is due to arrive on Sunday for a week to do our bathroom reno. The bad news is, I am so not ready.
I made a beautiful Pesach cleaning plan that even took the bathroom reno into consideration. The thing with the plan is that you actually have to do all the things you write down in order for it to work. Amazing but true.
Today should have been the first day of my 3rd week of cleaning, beginning to work on the part of the kitchen that is right by the bathroom door, clearing the foyer, etc. I have a number of things to do in order to be able to lay tile in these areas. Instead, I'm still somewhere in the middle of week one, going through boxes of clothes that were stacked in Dear Child's room. I keep washing, folding, putting away, bagging for donation, etc. but I'm not finished with all the clothes in her room yet. It's not that there are so many (5 or 6 boxes), it's that I'm only getting through maybe one load per day. And I'm not doing something every day.
Well, I'm doing plenty, but just not plenty of cleaning and organizing. Today I drove DC to school, worked for 4.5 hours, went to the bank, came home, washed a load, had maybe 20 minutes to myself, got the little girls, drove with them to pick up DC, went to gymnastics for an hour, drove with everybody to pick up Eldest Daughter and stopped at Safeway on the way home. I had dinner and some computer time (less than an hour), went back to work and came home after 10:30 pm. The clean load is sitting in a basket at the foot of my bed.
This past week was supposed to be the master bedroom. It. Didn't. Get. Touched. I'm not making things easy for myself by putting things off. It still all has to get done and I'm getting a little too old and a lot too tired to be pulling a series of all-nighters.
The problem is that I need at least 2 or 3 hours of cleaning and organizing time per day and I can't do it. I often don't have the time because I really can't get much done with the 2 little girls down here and I'm also very tired. I can't work for an hour or 2 or 3 straight just because I don't have other committments for that period of time. When my big kids were little I used to do an amazing amount, plus they were expected to pitch in. I remember scrubbing ceilings and the window tracks. I don't have the strength for that sort of thing now. Luckily, I don't have anybody currently at home who feels the need to put greasy hand prints on the ceiling in their bedroom!
So, what am I going to do? Well, I have to get ready for the bathroom reno. I have to start on my week 3 list tomorrow. The reno starts Monday. I have until then to clear out the bathroom, clear the area in the kitchen around the bathroom and clear the foyer. I just have no clue where most of the things that are currently in those areas are going to go. I'll have one day where I'll be laying floor tile and the next day where I have to grout it, maybe Wednesday and Thursday, depending on how the guys progress. Then I have a wardrobe to assemble and place in the foyer, the secretary desk to move in from the playroom and some other furniture to move. Once the bathroom is done there are 3 boxes of stuff to go into the medicine cabinet and the drawers of the vanity. Or not. Most of it isn't kosher for Passover and therefore has to be boxed up and sold for the duration of the holiday. If I put it all in the drawers I'd have to tape them shut and sell the contents. I'll have to think about that. I also need to go through those boxes and decide how much of the contents to keep when you consider that they've been boxed since we moved in last year at this time.
I made a beautiful Pesach cleaning plan that even took the bathroom reno into consideration. The thing with the plan is that you actually have to do all the things you write down in order for it to work. Amazing but true.
Today should have been the first day of my 3rd week of cleaning, beginning to work on the part of the kitchen that is right by the bathroom door, clearing the foyer, etc. I have a number of things to do in order to be able to lay tile in these areas. Instead, I'm still somewhere in the middle of week one, going through boxes of clothes that were stacked in Dear Child's room. I keep washing, folding, putting away, bagging for donation, etc. but I'm not finished with all the clothes in her room yet. It's not that there are so many (5 or 6 boxes), it's that I'm only getting through maybe one load per day. And I'm not doing something every day.
Well, I'm doing plenty, but just not plenty of cleaning and organizing. Today I drove DC to school, worked for 4.5 hours, went to the bank, came home, washed a load, had maybe 20 minutes to myself, got the little girls, drove with them to pick up DC, went to gymnastics for an hour, drove with everybody to pick up Eldest Daughter and stopped at Safeway on the way home. I had dinner and some computer time (less than an hour), went back to work and came home after 10:30 pm. The clean load is sitting in a basket at the foot of my bed.
This past week was supposed to be the master bedroom. It. Didn't. Get. Touched. I'm not making things easy for myself by putting things off. It still all has to get done and I'm getting a little too old and a lot too tired to be pulling a series of all-nighters.
The problem is that I need at least 2 or 3 hours of cleaning and organizing time per day and I can't do it. I often don't have the time because I really can't get much done with the 2 little girls down here and I'm also very tired. I can't work for an hour or 2 or 3 straight just because I don't have other committments for that period of time. When my big kids were little I used to do an amazing amount, plus they were expected to pitch in. I remember scrubbing ceilings and the window tracks. I don't have the strength for that sort of thing now. Luckily, I don't have anybody currently at home who feels the need to put greasy hand prints on the ceiling in their bedroom!
So, what am I going to do? Well, I have to get ready for the bathroom reno. I have to start on my week 3 list tomorrow. The reno starts Monday. I have until then to clear out the bathroom, clear the area in the kitchen around the bathroom and clear the foyer. I just have no clue where most of the things that are currently in those areas are going to go. I'll have one day where I'll be laying floor tile and the next day where I have to grout it, maybe Wednesday and Thursday, depending on how the guys progress. Then I have a wardrobe to assemble and place in the foyer, the secretary desk to move in from the playroom and some other furniture to move. Once the bathroom is done there are 3 boxes of stuff to go into the medicine cabinet and the drawers of the vanity. Or not. Most of it isn't kosher for Passover and therefore has to be boxed up and sold for the duration of the holiday. If I put it all in the drawers I'd have to tape them shut and sell the contents. I'll have to think about that. I also need to go through those boxes and decide how much of the contents to keep when you consider that they've been boxed since we moved in last year at this time.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Saving Money on Hair
I've done 2 things this weekend that save me money on hair care costs, both mine and Dog's.
First of all, let's talk about Dog. He's a miniature poodle, which means he has people type hair rather than fur and needs to have it cut every so often. Usually that means regular trips to a grooming place for a bath and a haircut. That sets me back $53, since I haven't yet convinced Dog to get a job. Ideally (from the groomer's perspective perhaps?) he should be groomed every couple of months. That means his hair care alone would cost $318 per year!
No human in this house spends that much annually on hair care so I get around it by a) letting him go longer than 2 months between haircuts, b) doing it myself for the most part and c) only getting him groomed professionally about once per year. Okay, sometimes twice. But I'm moving toward just doing it annually as I improve with my canine clipping skills. Perhaps, eventually, I might become enough of an expert that he won't have to go to the pro at all.
Then there's my hair, which I cover with either a snood or a sheitel (a wig). Underneath my head covering my hair grows until it gets to be down the middle of my back. I have quite fine hair and it's not terribly thick, so I just put it in a ponytail and wrap it under the nylon stocking cap that goes under my sheitel. It's really not noticeable. When it gets really long I go to a hairdresser who cuts my hair at her home and have it all cut off in a pixy cut. I've saved 2 lots of hair from this over the past 8 years or so and am growing it out again now.
When I get it cut again I think I'll finally have enough hair to have a wig custom-made with my own hair! In the meantime, I do wear a human hair wig but the hair in it didn't originate on this continent. The problem with that is that the hair is coarser than my own and has been rigorously straightened. For the most part it stays straight, even when I wash it or I'm caught in a downpour, but the occasional strand suddenly gets a mind of it's own and kinks up.
Let's face it. Hair that's been bleached, dyed, straightened and styled just doesn't feel and move quite like my own. A sheitel from my own hair will be a very special treasure but I'm planning to move one step closer in the meantime.
The sheitels I've bought over the past 25 years have ranged from synthetic to mixtures to pure human hair but they've generally been at the lower end of the price scale, say from $50 to $200. For my birthday my big kids got together and got me a credit at the best place to go for a quality human hair wig in Vancouver. They put $600 in but I'll still need to add some more to that, so I'm waiting for our financial situation to calm down a bit so I'll be able to come up with a couple of hundred dollars of my own.
Until then I need to take good care of the sheitel I'm wearing currently. That means wearing a stocking cap under it to keep oil from my own hair off the wig, and washing it on some kind of regular basis. Again, this is something people often leave to a professional but it's easy to do. Here's how.
Fill the bathroom sink with warm water and add about as much shampoo as you would use to wash your hair. Agitate the water so the shampoo froths up a bit on the surface. Lay the wig in the water and let it sit for at least a couple of minutes. Then squeeze the shampoo laden water through the wig gently for a couple of minutes. Don't rub it or you'll end up with a tangled mess. The water will get dirty and there may be a tiny amount of dye released as well.
Drain the sink, fill it again with clear water and rinse the wig until all the shampoo is out. If necessary, drain and fill the sink again or hold the wig under the tap. Don't rub or twist but gently squeeze out the water when you're done.
Take a bath towel, lay the sheitel on it at one end and roll it up. Press on the towel a bit, then undo and set the wig to dry. If you have a wig "head", that's the best place for it. Otherwise try to find something to drape it over. When it's about half dry comb it out gently, removing all the snarls. Then let it finish drying.
If you want to curl it, you can use heated rollers or a curling iron or blow dryer. You can also straighten it with a straightener. Note that all of these are for use only with 100% human hair wigs. Using heat on a synthetic wig may melt it!
My sheitel is currently draped over a vase. It's been blown dry and combed out and looks pretty good as is. It looks even better when I get Eldest Daughter to use her straightener on it but that takes quite a while. It didn't cost any more than to wash my own hair, took only a little longer to dry and comb out and will look great on me tomorrow.
First of all, let's talk about Dog. He's a miniature poodle, which means he has people type hair rather than fur and needs to have it cut every so often. Usually that means regular trips to a grooming place for a bath and a haircut. That sets me back $53, since I haven't yet convinced Dog to get a job. Ideally (from the groomer's perspective perhaps?) he should be groomed every couple of months. That means his hair care alone would cost $318 per year!
No human in this house spends that much annually on hair care so I get around it by a) letting him go longer than 2 months between haircuts, b) doing it myself for the most part and c) only getting him groomed professionally about once per year. Okay, sometimes twice. But I'm moving toward just doing it annually as I improve with my canine clipping skills. Perhaps, eventually, I might become enough of an expert that he won't have to go to the pro at all.
Then there's my hair, which I cover with either a snood or a sheitel (a wig). Underneath my head covering my hair grows until it gets to be down the middle of my back. I have quite fine hair and it's not terribly thick, so I just put it in a ponytail and wrap it under the nylon stocking cap that goes under my sheitel. It's really not noticeable. When it gets really long I go to a hairdresser who cuts my hair at her home and have it all cut off in a pixy cut. I've saved 2 lots of hair from this over the past 8 years or so and am growing it out again now.
When I get it cut again I think I'll finally have enough hair to have a wig custom-made with my own hair! In the meantime, I do wear a human hair wig but the hair in it didn't originate on this continent. The problem with that is that the hair is coarser than my own and has been rigorously straightened. For the most part it stays straight, even when I wash it or I'm caught in a downpour, but the occasional strand suddenly gets a mind of it's own and kinks up.
Let's face it. Hair that's been bleached, dyed, straightened and styled just doesn't feel and move quite like my own. A sheitel from my own hair will be a very special treasure but I'm planning to move one step closer in the meantime.
The sheitels I've bought over the past 25 years have ranged from synthetic to mixtures to pure human hair but they've generally been at the lower end of the price scale, say from $50 to $200. For my birthday my big kids got together and got me a credit at the best place to go for a quality human hair wig in Vancouver. They put $600 in but I'll still need to add some more to that, so I'm waiting for our financial situation to calm down a bit so I'll be able to come up with a couple of hundred dollars of my own.
Until then I need to take good care of the sheitel I'm wearing currently. That means wearing a stocking cap under it to keep oil from my own hair off the wig, and washing it on some kind of regular basis. Again, this is something people often leave to a professional but it's easy to do. Here's how.
Fill the bathroom sink with warm water and add about as much shampoo as you would use to wash your hair. Agitate the water so the shampoo froths up a bit on the surface. Lay the wig in the water and let it sit for at least a couple of minutes. Then squeeze the shampoo laden water through the wig gently for a couple of minutes. Don't rub it or you'll end up with a tangled mess. The water will get dirty and there may be a tiny amount of dye released as well.
Drain the sink, fill it again with clear water and rinse the wig until all the shampoo is out. If necessary, drain and fill the sink again or hold the wig under the tap. Don't rub or twist but gently squeeze out the water when you're done.
Take a bath towel, lay the sheitel on it at one end and roll it up. Press on the towel a bit, then undo and set the wig to dry. If you have a wig "head", that's the best place for it. Otherwise try to find something to drape it over. When it's about half dry comb it out gently, removing all the snarls. Then let it finish drying.
If you want to curl it, you can use heated rollers or a curling iron or blow dryer. You can also straighten it with a straightener. Note that all of these are for use only with 100% human hair wigs. Using heat on a synthetic wig may melt it!
My sheitel is currently draped over a vase. It's been blown dry and combed out and looks pretty good as is. It looks even better when I get Eldest Daughter to use her straightener on it but that takes quite a while. It didn't cost any more than to wash my own hair, took only a little longer to dry and comb out and will look great on me tomorrow.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Stay Warm, Save Money
Trent wrote a great post about minimizing your winter heating bills and it really got me going. Actually, all of this started the other day when he also linked to a post on how to install a programmable thermostat. I looked at programmable thermostats last year but chickened out of buying one because neither Hubby nor I is confident doing anything electrical.
I have an oil burning furnace at my rural home. In 2 rooms and the front hall I also have electric baseboards. The furnace is 40 years old and needs a servicing before winter. Last year I had 2 deliveries of oil for a total cost of about $700. My electric bill is about $30/month ($360/yr).
My next door neighbour on one side has what I believe is called a swamp cooler. It looks like an air conditioning unit, sits outside on the ground, heats in the winter and cools in the summer. I don't know how it is in terms of cost but the big downside for me is that it's noisy. I can hear it inside my living room when it comes on.
My other next door neighbour changed his oil burner for a pellet stove a couple of years ago. He buys all his pellets ahead of time and stores them in a little shed. He loves the pellet stove and says it's much more economical than their previous furnace.
I can't switch to the pellet stove myself because we're not there all the time and you have to feed the pellets into the stove every couple of days. I don't think any kind of new furnace (or a swamp cooler) is going to be good for me economically. The upfront cost is just too high. So, as long as the oil furnace works, my best bet is to keep it and do some of the other things like sealing the windows, weatherstripping doors, installing a programmable thermostat, changing the furnace filter and looking into an insulating blanket for the water heater.
Doing all the above I should be able to knock about $600 off my heating costs. Yeah, that much. The programmable thermostat alone should account for close to $500 of that. Since we only go for one day at a time during the winter I can set the thermostat to a very low level 6 days out of the week (in the low 50's, enough that the pipes don't freeze and that the place can be raised to a normal temperature in a relatively short time in the event that we arrive at an unexpected time or have to have workers in the house). Saturday evening the heat can rise to normal and stay up until dinnertime Sunday. That means I'm heating the house to my usual levels one day per week and to around 55 the other 6 days. If I was turning it right off 6 days per week I'd clearly be saving 6/7s of my oil costs, or $600. But I think I have to assume I'll spend at least $100 over the winter keeping the temperature above freezing.
A new furnace filter will also help, as will reducing the heat loss through the windows by sealing them with plastic this year. In fact, sealing the windows will also reduce the amount of heat lost from the rooms with electric heating, saving money there too. Weatherstripping the front door in particular would also reduce the heat loss in the front hall. Replacing the front door would be even better but costs too much.
If I'm going to keep my electric hot water heater I should buy an insulating blanket for it, but it's about 25 years old and I'm wondering if some of the nasty yellow colour of the water has to do with the hot water heater because the hot water is noticeably worse than the cold and it's worse when you start running the water than it is a couple of minutes later.
Replacing the tank with a new conventional tank would cost about $350 plus installation costs. But why do we heat the water 24/7 when we're only there 1 to 3 days per week at most? And, even when we're there, it's not like we're running hot water all the time. In many ways a point-of-use heater makes much more sense. It costs about $900, more than twice what a conventional heater does but its operating costs are obviously much lower. So, what to do?
I can defer payment for 6 months by putting the water heater on my Home Depot card, but I still don't have $150/month to put aside to pay for it. Maybe it would be better to just put away what I can for a while, hope that the existing water heater doesn't die on us, and wait until I'm in a better position to pay for it. In that case, I should probably spend $35 on the insulation.
If I really can save $600 in heating costs this winter, that's 2/3 of the cost of the point-of-use heater, or the difference between it and a conventional tank. Maybe that's how I pay for the tankless version.
I have an oil burning furnace at my rural home. In 2 rooms and the front hall I also have electric baseboards. The furnace is 40 years old and needs a servicing before winter. Last year I had 2 deliveries of oil for a total cost of about $700. My electric bill is about $30/month ($360/yr).
My next door neighbour on one side has what I believe is called a swamp cooler. It looks like an air conditioning unit, sits outside on the ground, heats in the winter and cools in the summer. I don't know how it is in terms of cost but the big downside for me is that it's noisy. I can hear it inside my living room when it comes on.
My other next door neighbour changed his oil burner for a pellet stove a couple of years ago. He buys all his pellets ahead of time and stores them in a little shed. He loves the pellet stove and says it's much more economical than their previous furnace.
I can't switch to the pellet stove myself because we're not there all the time and you have to feed the pellets into the stove every couple of days. I don't think any kind of new furnace (or a swamp cooler) is going to be good for me economically. The upfront cost is just too high. So, as long as the oil furnace works, my best bet is to keep it and do some of the other things like sealing the windows, weatherstripping doors, installing a programmable thermostat, changing the furnace filter and looking into an insulating blanket for the water heater.
Doing all the above I should be able to knock about $600 off my heating costs. Yeah, that much. The programmable thermostat alone should account for close to $500 of that. Since we only go for one day at a time during the winter I can set the thermostat to a very low level 6 days out of the week (in the low 50's, enough that the pipes don't freeze and that the place can be raised to a normal temperature in a relatively short time in the event that we arrive at an unexpected time or have to have workers in the house). Saturday evening the heat can rise to normal and stay up until dinnertime Sunday. That means I'm heating the house to my usual levels one day per week and to around 55 the other 6 days. If I was turning it right off 6 days per week I'd clearly be saving 6/7s of my oil costs, or $600. But I think I have to assume I'll spend at least $100 over the winter keeping the temperature above freezing.
A new furnace filter will also help, as will reducing the heat loss through the windows by sealing them with plastic this year. In fact, sealing the windows will also reduce the amount of heat lost from the rooms with electric heating, saving money there too. Weatherstripping the front door in particular would also reduce the heat loss in the front hall. Replacing the front door would be even better but costs too much.
If I'm going to keep my electric hot water heater I should buy an insulating blanket for it, but it's about 25 years old and I'm wondering if some of the nasty yellow colour of the water has to do with the hot water heater because the hot water is noticeably worse than the cold and it's worse when you start running the water than it is a couple of minutes later.
Replacing the tank with a new conventional tank would cost about $350 plus installation costs. But why do we heat the water 24/7 when we're only there 1 to 3 days per week at most? And, even when we're there, it's not like we're running hot water all the time. In many ways a point-of-use heater makes much more sense. It costs about $900, more than twice what a conventional heater does but its operating costs are obviously much lower. So, what to do?
I can defer payment for 6 months by putting the water heater on my Home Depot card, but I still don't have $150/month to put aside to pay for it. Maybe it would be better to just put away what I can for a while, hope that the existing water heater doesn't die on us, and wait until I'm in a better position to pay for it. In that case, I should probably spend $35 on the insulation.
If I really can save $600 in heating costs this winter, that's 2/3 of the cost of the point-of-use heater, or the difference between it and a conventional tank. Maybe that's how I pay for the tankless version.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Time and Money, Money and Time
Part of the struggle I go through, on my road to financial stability is the push and pull between the various aspects of our lives. I want to be out of debt and to stay out of it. But I also want to work on landscaping our yard at our rural home, getting rid of the weeds and planting nice grass, some more flowers and veggies.
I want to do more interior renovations, such as laying down laminate flooring in the living room and master bedroom, painting more walls, moving the furniture back into the bedroom and then doing just a little decorating in the living room. Honestly, the previous owner’s behemoth of a couch needs to go! But I also need to get someone in to reattach the gas line to the fireplace, to service the 40 year old furnace and to repair a small leak under the sink and an intermittent back up of water there.
Then there’s the house in the city. I need to tile the foyer and I’m desperate for the renovation of my bathroom (financially a joint venture between myself and my kids).
But everything costs money. I don’t have enough coming in right now and we’re already in debt. I’m still rebuilding my $1,000 emergency fund after replacing part of the roof. And our DC starts school in the fall. We’ve applied for a tuition reduction but haven’t heard back on it yet. I want to work towards my dream of both lavender and wine and to save for our retirement in about 15 years time.
This is why “miscellaneous” is such a good label for my life. I’m all over the place and I feel like I’m not getting anywhere as a result. But if I only pick one area and focus on it nothing else will get done. The two things that are holding everything up are lack of money and lack of time. I usually only have Thursday nights and Sundays to do any projects. Some projects only require time. Those are things like painting, using paint we’ve already bought, or unpacking boxes. Others require an outlay of some kind first.
An example of that would be the foyer. Originally, I planned to only tile a small area in front of the door and run the engineered wood across the rest of the area. When I installed the Dricore I realized that the concrete floor wasn’t level there so I decided to tile that whole area instead. I have to buy enough Ditra to cover the additional area to be tiled and rent a drill attachment that will mix up the thinset the day I actually do the tiling. I figure it will take an entire Sunday to do and then it will have to be grouted after the thinset has totally dried. In terms of my available time, that means I won’t be grouting until at least the following Thursday evening and possibly not until the Sunday. So the whole project takes about a week in terms of disruption of the area but can’t be started until I have both the money and a free Sunday.
Once the tiling is finished I can move the secretary desk back into place near the front door and I can build and place the small wardrobe I bought from IKEA at least 3 months ago. It will go beside the door to the storage room and hold our jackets. I would never have thought it would take this long to get the foyer tiled but that’s the reality of my life. The earliest I will have time to do it is not next Sunday, but the following one.
Anyway, what I want to take away from my time alone is the feeling of peace and the reduction of my stress level. All of the things that need to be done will happen in their own time, not necessarily when I plan and obsess for them to happen. I will have the life I want, debt free, stress free and with beauty. May it happen, as we say, bimheira v’yameinu, speedily in our day.
I’m off now to have a lovely Shavuot. I’ll be back to post again late Tuesday night or Wednesday.
I want to do more interior renovations, such as laying down laminate flooring in the living room and master bedroom, painting more walls, moving the furniture back into the bedroom and then doing just a little decorating in the living room. Honestly, the previous owner’s behemoth of a couch needs to go! But I also need to get someone in to reattach the gas line to the fireplace, to service the 40 year old furnace and to repair a small leak under the sink and an intermittent back up of water there.
Then there’s the house in the city. I need to tile the foyer and I’m desperate for the renovation of my bathroom (financially a joint venture between myself and my kids).
But everything costs money. I don’t have enough coming in right now and we’re already in debt. I’m still rebuilding my $1,000 emergency fund after replacing part of the roof. And our DC starts school in the fall. We’ve applied for a tuition reduction but haven’t heard back on it yet. I want to work towards my dream of both lavender and wine and to save for our retirement in about 15 years time.
This is why “miscellaneous” is such a good label for my life. I’m all over the place and I feel like I’m not getting anywhere as a result. But if I only pick one area and focus on it nothing else will get done. The two things that are holding everything up are lack of money and lack of time. I usually only have Thursday nights and Sundays to do any projects. Some projects only require time. Those are things like painting, using paint we’ve already bought, or unpacking boxes. Others require an outlay of some kind first.
An example of that would be the foyer. Originally, I planned to only tile a small area in front of the door and run the engineered wood across the rest of the area. When I installed the Dricore I realized that the concrete floor wasn’t level there so I decided to tile that whole area instead. I have to buy enough Ditra to cover the additional area to be tiled and rent a drill attachment that will mix up the thinset the day I actually do the tiling. I figure it will take an entire Sunday to do and then it will have to be grouted after the thinset has totally dried. In terms of my available time, that means I won’t be grouting until at least the following Thursday evening and possibly not until the Sunday. So the whole project takes about a week in terms of disruption of the area but can’t be started until I have both the money and a free Sunday.
Once the tiling is finished I can move the secretary desk back into place near the front door and I can build and place the small wardrobe I bought from IKEA at least 3 months ago. It will go beside the door to the storage room and hold our jackets. I would never have thought it would take this long to get the foyer tiled but that’s the reality of my life. The earliest I will have time to do it is not next Sunday, but the following one.
Anyway, what I want to take away from my time alone is the feeling of peace and the reduction of my stress level. All of the things that need to be done will happen in their own time, not necessarily when I plan and obsess for them to happen. I will have the life I want, debt free, stress free and with beauty. May it happen, as we say, bimheira v’yameinu, speedily in our day.
I’m off now to have a lovely Shavuot. I’ll be back to post again late Tuesday night or Wednesday.
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