By: Revanche

Our new home: a one year check in

November 26, 2018

I miss being warm. Our old home was always warm without heating because of amazing insulation which is great 99.8% of the time. Those five days a year that climb over a hundred degrees suck, but they always suck. I miss having easy access to dog poop bags without having to think about it at all, and trash cans that are emptied without needing to remember what day it is. Our new place is cold all the time and I don’t like that at all, nor do I love our maintenance list $50,000 long. Our old place was full of firsts: the first place I felt safe and secure physically and financially, the first place we felt like a family, the place I went through a tough pregnancy complete with all my worries and anxieties about an ugly terrifying world and then we became parents to a small human.

But I do love living here. There’s a sense of peace, and lack of tension, we didn’t have in the old place after things went wrong.

We had new neighbors move into the old place who were quite frankly bizarre and that was in addition to the evil one who we never have to see anymore wheee! The way the old place was set up, we were in uncomfortably close quarters with some of them, close enough that I had to smell their trails of overly perfumed and cologned selves whenever they went to work, and be on guard against being accosted by their strange parents who have no working familiarity with boundaries. Here, we can load up in the privacy of our own home and only socialize from afar with a quick hello and goodbye if we want. We had a few creepy stranger-intrusion instances but they stopped after we were totally moved in. I’m still creeped out by people who thought that was ok but, again, it’s stopped. I just keep a wary distance from those people.

We have some pretty cool neighbors close by and they’re both friendly and fun. JB is smitten with their crowd of kids, and mostly those kids are kind and welcoming. Sera is a jerk to their dog so that needs some work but generally speaking, I like (some of) our neighbors.

The neighborhood is quiet most of the time and peaceful to walk, with or without the dogs. Without fail, at the old place, I could count on being harassed any time I walked without the dogs. Here, that’s not a problem. We have a park nearby that’s really easy to walk to, even for me, so on solo parenting mornings, PiC or I can independently take the three hooligans to let them get fresh air and sunshine. Or fog, which is what we’re wreathed in most of the time.

Most of my time is spent indoors, where I’m cozy and comfortable in my office, wrapped in a blanket with my dogs around me. I work in here 40-50 hours a week but I also spend time playing with JB, crafting and creating, scribbling and gluing random bits of things to other things. Ze loves it in here, though I keep saying it’s not a playroom, because it’s my special place and I let zir come and play anyway. We don’t have much storage space so we’re embracing a more proactively minimalist strategy to most things, while also embracing adding the things we need to host friends and family more comfortably. Less STUFF, more linens, I suppose.

That we have a couple of clean towels and a clean bathroom to offer a friend when their kids get sick on a road trip, or can put them up in our guest room with a nice bed if needed, warms my heart unexpectedly. I don’t like having a ton of people around all the time but I do truly enjoy having beloved friends and family for visits, long or short. The quality time is cherished and our lonely-only child looks forward to every single visit.

Now, going back to that very first point when I first started thinking about this post a few weeks ago, well, we’ve chosen our Christmas present. It’s usually dividend stocks or index funds but this year, neither.

Clearly the heating was top of my mental list and we got ourselves new ductwork and a new furnace. It is amazing. It’s absolutely a splurge, I don’t anticipate seeing any savings in our monthly bill (but I would LOVE it so feel free to help us out, PG&E). Because the old furnace was weak and didn’t heat half the house anyway, we mostly stopped using it to get our bills down to a more tolerable average of $110 per month. The trade off was that we were always cold, all the time, inside. My body doesn’t do well with bone deep cold but I coped. We managed with a space heater and layers but the honest truth is that sitting in the cold for hours while working eventually means that cold will inevitably creep into the bones. For most of this year I’ve worked with frozen fingers.

We splurged on a full replacement and sacrificed a whole work week because we had to get asbestos removed, ductwork removed, and the whole shebang, and of course none of that could happen smoothly, our first abatement crew just lied to our faces claiming that the job was done and walked off without doing half of it. I had to waste a whole second work day dealing with having a second crew arranged to finish the job and you know I’ve already cornered them for a serious discount off the bill. They also left indelible marks on our walls that they need to make right so we’re still in talks on that front.

The installation company went above and beyond to make sure they got the job done in the two days remaining to them, sending a double crew (2 teams of 2) the first day and five people the second day so I’m pretty sure they heard the rumbling that was my explosive temper primed to include them in the explosion if things weren’t made right.

After a week of stress and disruption, the dogs hated the process, we have a lovely furnace that works to heat the whole house when we have a house full of people and keeps it to a sensibly low temp when everyone is asleep or away, and it’s really nice.

We could have waited ten years in discomfort for it but I hated the idea of holding off on something that is integral to our comfort, a thing that we would enjoy in some form every day and that would keep our guests comfortable, for all these years only to do it for some strangers buying the place if we ever did choose to move. Why wait until the time you have to remodel or renovate essentials just to sell?

If you’re interested in the nitty gritty details!

We went with Costco and I think we overpaid in absolute terms but that’s a moot point because PiC has been trying to get independent HVAC contractors out for a bid since summer with no luck. In the end, it was in our best interest to stop wasting time chasing down contractors who didn’t want the work and just go with a company that would get the job done.

There was some minor negotiation. Before I made any noises about the high cost, our sales guy offered to backdate the contract so we could take advantage of a recently expired 15% cash back promotion. Apparently Costco is fine with that. I stayed silent a little longer and we discovered they are also fine with the 3rd party contractor breaking up the cost of the ductwork (not eligible for cash back) and the non-ductwork halves of the job any way they want, so he reduced the line item of the ductwork to 25% of the quoted cost, moving 75% of it over to the “eligible for cash back” line item, increasing our cash back by that much more. That cash back is coming on a Costco cash card in 4-6 weeks and we plan to immediately take it to the store and get it cashed out. It’s getting deposited to our bank account to defray that initial cost.

Then I talked him into giving us free maintenance for two years if we’d consider them first for other work (no commitment on my part, just top consideration depending on how well they did with this). That makes it sound like it was really fancy verbal footwork. It wasn’t. I just asked him if he would give us free maintenance for a year, because why not, we’re already paying them five figures to get their stuff installed, and then asked for another year if we called them first for future work. He was very motivated to get us signed and committed and it’s no skin off his nose to agree to that. So we’ve saved $160 for the next two years of maintenance. Always ask, even if you feel awkward!

They weren’t able to do one portion of the work, so I contacted our sales guy to let him know that the labor and materials need to be taken off the bill and that will come back to us in the form of a check. All told, after refunds and rebates and goodwill courtesy discounts for that first team, replacing everything will cost us a whopping $13,000.

So our one major project for the year that we budgeted for is done! I’m obviously sad that we’ll be paying that cash out to someone else instead of buying ourselves more retirement security but we always planned to get something done around the house this year.

I’d joke that I was (over)compensating for the spending by saving our pennies even more by stretching out my once a year chai from Starbucks across the four day holiday weekend but I’d do that anyway even if we hadn’t just spent a huge amount of money. The true feeling of security, physically and financially, is knowing we are always practicing conscious spending and careful money habits year round so we can enjoy our home without guilt over whether we’re doing enough to justify the spending (a particular problem of mine). We’ll look after our pennies and dollars alike because we’re not so well off that the pennies won’t matter but also because we want to be sure that any extras we save can be shared with people who are less fortunate. It’s so important to give back, always.

Speaking of giving back, I spent the whole weekend shopping. I discovered the Pine Ridge Reservation has a wish / needs list for families. A handful of blogging, PF and feminist, buddies clubbed together to support two families with holiday gifts for seven kids and a third family for basic needs like winter clothing and heat and dental supplies. I’ve filled half their list but we’re down to $30 of funds. If you were moved to help out, I’d be more than happy to accept PayPal contributions to support this shopping cart at Target and Burlington Coat Factory (PayPal revanche.gs@gmail.com). I’m going to keep at this for a while yet and there are dozens of families who still need help if you needed a place to give and wanted to pledge directly to send support. Do email me and let me know if you’re sending money and would like a final tally at the end, I would love to let y’all know where our collective money went. Thanks to Penny for writing a much better post on why we should give, and calling out our little venture here!

:: Have you ever had to deal with replacing or repairing HVAC and ducting? What home projects would you want to get done?

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