When I put this house up for sale I was told to declutter everything for the showings. I rented a storage unit for six months and putt all the boxes of stuff I wanted to keep in it. Then I changed my mind about selling, and in the last month I've brought all of them back. I put them all in one of the rooms I'm not using anymore. What is freaking me out is that I haven't needed any of it, and I can't remember what all the stuff is now. I'm also am dealing with a handyman. I have a leak in one of the rooms. It is just starting to show on the ceiling, but the handyman is trying to get me to agree to a whole new roof. I know better. Our roof was totally replaced 15 years ago, and it is a 30 year roof. We had some high winds recently and I heard a limb strike the roof, so I do think there needs to be a patch applied. Now I just have to figure out how to make sure he does it properly.
Yeah, my bins included some that I hadn't unpacked since I moved from Southern California to Texas in 1983, others that were unpacked since we moved from Texas to Maine, and a couple that were things that we had during the couple of years we lived in North Carolina. Then, when we closed our cafe, there were those things as well, including about forty cups with our cafe name on them.
Oh but Ina, you know very well that as soon as you get rid of something, even if you've not touched it for decades, you'll need it within a week. I don't understand that phenomenon but it *will* happen! @Ina I. Wonder
I like hearing about the work and progress, @Ken Anderson. I watch a lot of DIY, renovation and building shows on television, but the vast majority of them involve people with huge budgets installing top of the line products in homes that usually end up looking brand new. I like the idea of fixing what needs to be fixed in order to make a place more livable, safer, and more cost effective.
It's being done by an organization that has received a grant relating to energy savings. Our only cost was in signing a paper allowing them to claim carbon credits for the difference between our energy uses before and after. The contractors were given a $14,000 contract to do the job, and I know the carbon credits aren't worth that, so I'm sure they receive other grants and funding from other places, but it isn't coming from us. They insulated our neighbor's house last year. As for the cats, they hate it. Because there is work being done in every room simultaneously, they don't even have a room to escape to, so they hide beneath furniture or wherever. Ella, the young one, is nervous about it but otherwise doing okay. Rather than hiding, she hangs out with me, looking to me often as if to ask whether I'm sure that everything is okay. It looks like they might be finishing up tomorrow. They were able to get to most of the second floor from the attic, I think.
DRATS, I wonder now if the call I got from someone saying they were contracted by PG&E to go through my house and see if there was anything that could be wasting gas or electricity and they would fix it for free. I thought that was too good to be true so blew them off.
We were referred to them by our electric company after talking to them about ways in which we might be able to reduce our electric usage, which was up in part because we were supplementing our oil heat with electric space heaters.
That is awesome ! I wish that they had a program like that here . The only calls I ever get are those salesmen that say I have won a "free Cruise". Since I know that there are always strings attached with that, assuming that it is even true, I always say no thank you and hang up. I would love to go on a cruise , so maybe I should actually take the time to listen to the call and see what they are trying to sell along with the cruise. Listening certainly worked out good for Ken !
The free cruise will cost you anyway, at least a few hundred dollars, Yvonne. Port fees, etc. Usually most of things are selling timeshares. I've gone on a few nice mini vacations with my ex, you just had to listen to the timeshare presentation. Think he did buy one cheap one and we were supposed to go to Tahoe for free but my back spasmed, then we just never went and things got put off and then we split.
Well if mine is legit, I'm a warm state. I wasn't even that excited about saving because my energy bill is usually low. I'm gone a lot and don't heat too much in the winter. Summer can be higher with AC but again, I'm usually gone half the month.
We're on our third day now, and they won't be finishing today. They were able to fill some of the walls on our second floor from the attic, but there were holes so they are going to have to cut into our second floor walls as well. Plus, there are a few spots on the first floor that will have to be redone, I guess. They have a device that they can point at the wall, which shows the density of the insulating pack. Right now, they are in the attic, where they will be spraying a couple of feet of insulation over the current floor, and then building a platform over a portion of that to allow for storage. I am going to have to complete the floor in order to use that space for anything else, which I'll do. After this crew is done, another crew will be coming in that will spray foam insulation over the foundation from within the crawlspace, as well as installing a more heavily insulated entrance door to it. The current crew has a contract for $14,000, and I know they have added something to that in giving us a bigger storage platform in the attic than was originally planned for. Adding whatever the contractors will get for doing the crawlspace work, I am thinking that this will be more than a $20,000 job.
Ouch! They won't be done until Monday, at the earliest. They won't be working over the weekend, but our house will still be in upheaval throughout the weekend because they will still have to put on the trim to cover the lines where they drilled the holes. Every room has been started, but none of the rooms are completed.
As uncomfortable as this has been, we are getting more than twenty thousand dollars worth of work done at no cost, so it will certainly be a good thing. They are absolutely insulating all of our exterior walls, attic, and ceiling. Even the crawl space will be insulated with a better vapor barrier than I already had, as well as spray foam all around the foundation, which will greatly reduce the amount of cold air coming through the floors. The crawl space is heated, since that's where the water pipes are, but this additional insulation will warm it considerably more than it has been. Given that we live in Maine where, except for this winter, it is usually pretty cold much of the year, and we heat with heating oil or kerosene, which usually costs a lot of money, although costs are down for that too right now, it will be very nice not to have to go through so much of it.
You did good, Ken! Can't think of a better deal than what you got, definitely worth the mess and bother. Just think...you could be having all this mess and paying the $20,000! If these people ever contact me again, I'll take a serious look at what they offer.