No Turning Back

As you may know, my wife and I have been going through the process of getting some quotes for home improvements on our house. It's been a stressful few weeks for us, and though we finally have some movement on one of the projects, the others are still in limbo. We decided on a vendor for our new roof the other day and in a shocking turn of events, they are going to be starting the job within the week. The papers have been signed, the financing has been acquired, no turning back now!

Big purchases like this freak me out. I make decisions worth more money all the time at work, but when it's my own money, that is a different story. It has actually been a bit of an adjustment playing the game on a personal level versus a business level. You see, in the public education system for most services you aren't able to haggle. There are competitive bidding practices, and certain processes that have to be followed to get bids on large projects.

I didn't know that when I first started working in my job and I was soon given a lesson in it by my superior when he explained the concept of prostituting a bid. It's also part of the reason that vendors aren't allowed to give gifts or things like that to customers that are more than $50 in value. Apparently that is the magic number over which they think people could be swayed to make a decision one way or another.

As I indicated though, it was that mindset that put me at a disadvantage when I started negotiating with roofing contractors to get our roof replaced. The idea of taking a bid from one vendor to see if another vendor could beat it felt dirty and wrong to me. However, it appears that outside of the public sector, this is absolutely acceptable. In fact, thanks to the vendor we ended up going with, it is almost expected.

If it hadn't been for him indicating he could take the other bid we were getting to his superior, I never would have thought to counter his initial offer. I'm glad I figure it out. I suck at negotiating anyway, but I feel like my time in the public sector has really stifled and skill I did have at it.

We got the quote for new flooring in our upstairs area as well. It's not the most pressing upgrade, but we wanted to get an idea of cost anyway. The first bid came back at $13,000. Which honestly, seems a bit high to me. It was from the same bidder that had the highest roofing bid too, so I don't know if that is just a theme with them or if flooring just costs more than I had thought.

I think if we got with a nice Luxury Vinyl Plank, I might even be able to do the flooring myself. At least mostly myself, with a little help from my brother's in law. The biggest issue is the fact that I don't want it to take forever and leave our house half done for a long period of time. You see all too often people who start a renovation and then never get around to finishing it.

Finally, we are still waiting on quotes for our windows. At this point I am pretty nervous about where those are going to fall. We only have seven windows in our house to be replaced, but I have a feeling it is going to be more expensive than the $15,000 we spent for the new roof. I'm also really not too keen on pulling out another loan to cover it. The ten year loan was enough to make my heart beat a bit too fast. Of course we hope to pay it off long before the ten years is up, but I've never been a fan of borrowing money in the first place.

The hope is that at least the roof and windows will pay some dividends in resale value if not energy savings over the years.

Since I can't count on Crypto to cover the costs, I guess I have to handle things the old fashioned way. Either that or start selling my body on the street corner. Which actually is probably the most old fashioned way.