Lifestyle upgrades

[Alan]

My wife has an old retired guy do a deep clean of at least one room a week. He's not that good but he's cheap.

[Simplemind]

DH is better at the deep cleaning than I am. We both have areas of the home that are more important to us and tend to focus on those. He keeps the kitchen spotless because he is the one who cooks 99% of the time. I hate clutter so I am never going from one room to another without picking something up and putting it away. I do all the laundry. Still...….. I could keep him busy from dusk until dawn with the heavy power tools that I can't handle. Chain saws, gas trimmers, getting the tractor out of the shed for me and maintaining it so I just have to jump on and zen out as I mow.
I am blessed in that I really don't notice the house most of the time. It usually hits me about 5 minutes before company is showing up. Then I notice all the dog snot on the windows and the tufts of fur that have wafted to the corners. It is still more important to me that the walkway to the house is weeded than the inside is vacuumed. Priorities ya know...………….. At this time of year all the nurseries have my picture at the cash register and I shop with my VISA plastered to my forehead.

[Gardnr]

2 years ago we spent the money on a gas line into the kitchen and a gas stove/electric oven combo. i can SIMMER now! My flattop would not simmer.....the lowest heat would boil. I couldn't do anything long-cooking well at all and who wants to stand at the stove to make a fabulous pot of soup or sauce that is best made with 4-5h of simmering.

LOVE my gas stove

I think the benefit of buying our 4ever home when we were 30yo is that it's been little bites along the way. 1 thing at a time for cash so nothing was huge or traumatic. If I look around at all we've done it's actually a lot but 1 bite at a time....it was easy.

[rosarugosa]

My wife has an old retired guy do a deep clean of at least one room a week. He's not that good but he's cheap.

Too funny, Alan!

I guess ours would be that we are hiring someone to stain & paint the house this year instead of doing it ourselves. It would consume all our free time for a year or more, so at this stage of our lives it seems like a crazy use of our time.

[iris lilies]

(SFW)

Hahaha! Yep, thats me.

[iris lilies]

Your DH is not a pro but he moved a gas line? Where I am only licensed plumbers can do that and they must pull a city permit.

I dont know the code in Hermann but it is much less rigorous than in our city. When I say “moved” he added a channel to an existing line to be more precise. Still that might be “permit only” work in various places, I dont know.

[catherine]

Congrats on your upgrades! The fireplace sound fantastic.

We're looking for a shower system, and I'm willing to invest a little bit to get a really nice one for our soon-to-be-new outdoor shower on the lake. I'm like you--spent my whole life totally not into creature comforts like super-duper shower fixtures, but when my DIL gave me a shower head for Christmas I figured I must be ignorant of some wonderful secret everyone else is on to.

I'm looking for one like yours: a nice regular "rainfall" type but with a hand-held shower wand. I may even splurge for jets.

[Teacher Terry]

When we remodeled our house we didn’t bother to get any permits. My husband knew what he was doing. For big jobs like painting the outside of the house I hired him a helper and that way they worked all day and got it done. Now the last painting he was only 55 so next time the outside of the house needs to be done he may not be up to it.

[Yppej]

The dangers of not getting a permit are if there is a problem (say electrical fire) down the road your homeowners insurance may not pay the claim. Also when you go to sell if you added a room you cannot claim it to the buyer, and if they check with the city you can get hit with all the back taxes you tried to avoid at once. And someone could snitch on you and you get hit with a fine. That happened when my dad and grandfather redid their roof. Worst of all is if someone is helping you and they get injured. You are liable.

[catherine]

We never got permits for renovating the kitchen in BIL house (or ours either, for that matter). It slowed down the sale of the house because then we had to backtrack and get it all done. It took about 3-4 weeks of back-and-forth stuff with the Township. As IL undoubtedly knows, the wheels of the Gubmint run mighty slow at times.