oh piffle

[rmd]

i got the quote for my spiffy new porch. it's about 25% above what i thought it would be (and what i can currently afford).

choices: 1. pay it anyways and figure out where to pull that kind of money out of my ass. 2. put it off till i can afford it (some time next year). 3. start negotiating and see if there's a way to drop the price (for instance, moving from trex to mahogany or douglas fir for much of teh wood part).

*sigh*

Comments

[lara68.livejournal.com]

i dunno what construction is like in your neck of the woods, but up here it's crazy-busy and getting worse. it's hard to even get a quote!

i have a monstrous (but very spiffy-looking and relatively cheap) stack of fir porches on the back of the copeland block, and i'm pretty happy with them. but i'm a big fan of wood, even though it means more maintenance. and they're only five years old...

if it were my house, i'd try to either negotiate or find the money to do it sooner instead of later. but you should probably take my advice with, like, a pound of salt. because i am a crazy person living in a crazy place.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

yeah, it's mostly just sticker shock. as i said, i was expecting it to come in at least 25% cheaper.

i was planning on getting at least another quote anyways, but i was having my panic and thinking ahead to what to do if the quotes all come in around the same area.

construction is pretty crazy-busy down here, too.

finding the money to do it now cuts things a little closer to the bone than i'm comfortable with and eating into the "what if i get pissed off at my job and have quit in a huff" emergency fund. it's more than is available on my home equity line of credit right now, although about what will be available when i finish paying it down, probably next spring, so i'd have to use unsecured credit like a credit card or something. i haven't had a credit card balance persist across a billing cycle since the end of last century, and i'm loathe to start again now. (i didn't quite hit financial ruin with it before, but i had some bad habits that i finally broke and paid off, so there's a non-rational emotional side to that, too.)

[lara68.livejournal.com]

yeah, sticker shock is a bitch.

i'm right there with you on the credit card issue too.

on the way home i was thinking about it some more. while i like to think of myself as the kind of person who would just get it done (and sometimes i am that kind of person), in reality it's just as likely that i'd blow it off until next year if it were my house (kind of like i'm doing with the parking lot i had intended to pave this year).

better make that a 40 lb. bag of salt...

[rmd.livejournal.com]

yeah. the delaying option is to have someone fix the stairs so they'll be usable thru the whole winter and be frugal and get the money and plan on doing the work after the spring thaw.