The joys of home ownership (JOHO) means that there will
always be work to be done on the house. If you own a house, you know this very
well. Some things are small and are taken care of as time goes on, like the
recent replacement of all light bulbs in our house to LED ones. The bigger
things require planning for time and money and have to be worked into a
schedule. In the retirement planning process we met with an advisor and one of
the tasks was to come up with a retirement budget, which prompted the spinoff
of a list of home maintenance projects/renovations which we wanted to
accomplish, along with an estimate for the budget.
List:
replace cedar siding on the back wall of the house (the Southern
exposure has taken its toll, all the other sides are fine)
replace 3 wooden windows on back wall of house
remove old paneling from master bedroom, replace with
?sheetrock
replace all carpet on upper level of house
new metal roof for shop
move AC outside unit to other side of house (away from
screen porch for noise purposes)
These projects were slated to start after retirement
(12/2019). But Buddy can't wait until retirement. The fact that we are working
closer to home and can come home every weekend makes it harder to wait. First
on the list is replacing the cedar siding. We bought new windows a few weeks
ago to replace the old wooden ones, the new vinyl ones are sitting in the shop.
This weekend, the weather was nice, "I'll just start
pulling off the cedar siding, a little at a time, it won't hurt anything, as
the old 1976 siding is underneath."
I am working on a baby quilt with my sewing machine under the window, and the next thing I know, here come Buddy - "Uh you are going to have to move your sewing machine, I am taking going to replace this window… right now!" It seems the old siding did not extend all the way around the windows and by pulling off the cedar planks there was no protection from weather. So the schedule was suddenly escalated.
By Saturday evening, we had 2 new windows on the main level,
the cedar is removed from half the back wall, just one more window to go. A
very productive weekend. I wonder if all of the projects on the list will be done before
retirement?
