Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Home Improvements...stalled....

I've posted about this before, but there are so many things I want to get done in our home. Our home is nearing 10 years old, and there are some things that are showing signs of wear. I would like to get them fixed (changed, replaced) so that we are not replacing everything all at once. We need a fresh coat of paint in the family room and hallway. We do most of the painting ourselves, but in this particular case we would need to hire someone. I would not be able to paint on scaffolding... especially on the stairs. Then we would like to change the flooring in the family room to hardwoods. But then we may want to push out our fireplace, so the flooring will have to wait, and then so will the painting....

Then there is the issue with our cooktop in the kitchen. It's not working properly and we think it's going to die soon. So we think, okay we'll get a new cooktop. But wait. We'll have to get new countertops. Well if we are going to get new countertops, then we'll need a tile backsplash. If we are going to do that, then we will need a new kitchen sink. If we are going to get a new kitchen sink, then we need all matching appliances. But wait, if we are going to do that, let's push out a wall and make the kitchen bigger.....

Do you see where I'm going with this? We are stalled. We don't want to do some minor improvements, because we "may" want to do some major improvements. It's been a vicious cycle. How would we pay for all of these improvements???

Our first thought was refinance. Rates are good. We can do it all with a cash out refi. But do I really want to go further into debt? This is not our "forever" home. It will probably be our home for another 10 -15 years. We don't want to improve our home for someone else when we need to sell it. We want to enjoy it now. What would you do???

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hard decisions, for sure. In these situations, I usually make a pros and cons list, and think about it for a while, discuss it with my spouse. Usually something surfaces that make sense.

Let us know how you make out-
Lisa

Canadian Saver said...

Sharon, I had to laugh when you said your house is 10 years old and things are starting to wear... Ours is 100 years old... the big things and painting and stuff have been done, but there is always something else required.

What we've decided to do is tackle 1 thing/year. This year is the porch (costing a lot more than originally thought!) and next year will be the windows, 13 of them. Year after that, probably the kitchen... and so on and so on.

You have to ask yourselves if you can live with the refinancing or if you'd rather save up and do the work a bit at a time, as you can afford to. Unless of course it's something major that needs to be done or else...

Good luck!! It's not an easy decision!!

Sharon said...

CS,
After I wrote that (10 years) I kind of chuckled too. It sounded ridiculous. But, believe it or not, our appliances in the kitchen are going. (They were builder grade and very cheap). I think we may go the "save up for it" route. I've added our retirement dream in the corner of my blog to remind me of what I really want....

Lisa,
Not an easy decision indeed. I keep going back and forth...my husband doesn't seem to care either way, although he's not willing to refinance if the rate doesn't match the one we already have.

Maggie said...

My house is only 3 1/2 years old and I want to change things. We did not upgrade things because the prices were ridiculus. I would like to do alot but we are just going to work a little at a time.