Pouring down the back of our house. That’s the punchline.
We bought this foreclosure with few stipulations…knowing full well that at some point there was water damage in the living room and the basement below from some faulty gutters. We had assumed that the issue had been taken care of in general because the bank had paid some folks to replace parts of the living room hardwoods. I mean, you don’t replace something that is only gonna get ruined again, right? Wrong.
The first big rain we had while being the new owners, there was water pouring down the back of the house. Buckets. It came in through our double doors and we ran around with towels and buckets and profanities. It was chaos. Apparently our gutters were pulling away from the house allowing the rain to spill over the edge and create a waterfall effect on the back wall of windows. I called it our free water feature. Jeremy called it something entirely different.
Of course, there were home remedies…this ramp system worked really well. Thank goodness I am a hoarder and have random old plywood around, eh Jer?!
We also sent my dad up the ladder to hammer the gutter back in place. Both Jeremy and I are afraid of heights…hence why we sent the dad. Yes, we get all squirmish and sweaty watching movies with heights. I practically got dehydrated watching Mission Impossible.
This went on for about a year and a half. Dad hammering gutter. Jer pulling out plywood.
So why put a bandaid on an amputated limb? Well, we figured that in order to fix our problem, we would probably need either new bigger gutters or we would have to pay big bucks to have our current ones resloped and reattached. We also figured the gutter folks would quote us thousand of dollars worth of fixes. So we were saving up.
Then Jeremy found a company that would come out and look at it for free. They shimmied up their ladders in two different places, knocked a few things around, attached a little bracket thing here and there, shimmied down and handed us a bill for $100. That was it.
Needless to say, we’ve had no leaks thus far (knock on dry wood) and we’ve tossed our rotten plywood.
So my question today is….what have you lived with (or lived without) because you thought it was gonna cost an arm and a leg to fix/replace and it ended up being totally affordable and you open-palm smacked your forehead when you finally did it?
We lived with a dodgy hot water system that meant showers did not last long because we
thought we had to replace it so we too were saving up. Turns out it was a piece of rubber
that needed replacing, $50 later it was fixed. Crazy.
Putting shutters on our front windows. I had it in my head it would cost hundreds, when in fact it was under $50. Gah!!!
1st time commenting!! Just had to share! When we bought our house almost 4 years ago, we knew the gas fireplace in the living room didn’t work. Being in Texas, it wasn’t a big deal. Finally this winter we decided we wanted to sit by a roaring fire and were ready to pay the big bucks to get it fixed. The guy came in, tightened a screw at the starter switch on the wall, and that was it! My husband had him replace another part that looked like it would wear out in the next year or two just to make the $100 bill worth it. Crazy!
Um… I have some spongy siding in just a couple small spots around my fireplace. But it’s only been there for 10 years. I’m pacing myself…
Our current home came with a 30,000 gallon above-ground pool and huge privacy deck/fence. We had never owned a pool before. The first 3 years of owning the pool we fought and paid for three replacement PAPER filters and my hubby would have to take them out to the car wash to clean them well like once a week. We finally bit the bullet and invested in a sand filter last year and it works so much better.
Well, this isn’t exactly what you ask of, but we were fortunate (?) with our roof. We had been thinking our 12 year old roof would need to be replaced at some point, but we were dragging our feet because of the cost. Well, mother nature handed us 60 mph winds late last summer which tore off some of our shingles. We had it inspected and since our shingles were no longer being manufactured, insurance would get us a new roof! (We live in MN which is a matching state, meaning, if your shingles need to be replaced in areas, but the shingles you currently have are no longer being made, insurance has to pay for new shingles everywhere!) So, in the end, we ended up paying the deductible, but that was far less than paying out of pocket fully for a new roof!!
My car was making a crazy sound, like metal scrapping, it ran fine though so I convinced myself to wait until I had money saved up to go get it fixed… I knew it would be big, ignorance was bliss for the time being. A few months later when I showed up they told me a piece of metal was hanging and rubbing against the wheel, it was free to fix. Total face palm.
We bought a movable dishwasher just before we went on a trip out of the country. We return and start to slowly use it (I just prefer handwashing…) but it never really actually cleaned our dishes that well so we just used it when we had guests. After 3 years (yes 3!) we finally add it to our HomeServicePlus plan that our utility company provides for appliance and furnace repair/support for $4 a month per appliance- and they fix it, no problem. Something was preventing the spinning sprayer from spinning….Goodness! $4!
Uh…that’s never happened to me before. Of course I’ve only been a home owner for two years, so I’ll just pray that all my projects end in small bills.
By the way…I’ve been super impressed with all the changes you’ve made to the blog lately. The quality of your posts has been super. I hope it’s because you’ve found a schedule and a groove that is working for you and the boys. Please consider this a big pat on the back!
My car sounded like a monster truck for months, and when I finally “bite the bullet” and brought it to the shop, it cost $60 to fix. facepalm.
We’ve been putting up with our front door since the day we moved into our house, almost seven years ago. It produces a horrible draft and the outside glass door completely freezes over whenever it’s cold here. Which is a lot. We live in Minnesota. Then a genius of a friend took a look at it and instead of replacing the whole thing like we feared, added some magnetic weather stripping, quickly adjusted the metal plate on the bottom of the outside glass door and voila … $20 later and no draft, no frozen glass. We were speechless because we had had the door looked at (briefly) before and just always assumed it would take a new (big-buck) door to fix the problem. It really spoke to the integrity of our friend that he fixed it simply, effectively and cheaply instead of just putting in a new one at a much higher expense.
Clogged bathroom drains. I probably spent as much on Drano as I did on having a plumber come out to rod the drains. It was only $60!
Wow – first to comment or kiddos are keeping you from approving comments 🙂
Saving up for something is always hard, expecially when it is just to repair something that was already broken but what a nice treat to learn that it cost a $100 versus $1,000. Now if I could find my lucky handyman that will only charge me a $100 to fix a leaky roof. 🙁
Well this one isn’t house related but my husband’s car started overheating several years ago. Of course, in the middle of summer. All he had to do was stop at a stop sign and the thermostat on the dash would skyrocket. I told him just bring it into the dealership I work at and have them look at it. I was afraid he would get stuck in traffic one day and he would burn up his engine. He kept arguing that we didn’t have the money and it was going to be expensive. I finally got him to bring it in. And guess what? All it was is the stupid hose from the radiator was loose. Once they tightened it up and topped off the fluid it was perfectly fine. And they did it for free because they said it might have been their fault since they may have bumped it the last time they changed the oil.
We lived with our original 1978 orange (used to be red I think) carpet for years before we replaced back in 2011 when we moved back into our house. I don’t know why we didn’t do it sooner. Now we have beautiful wood laminate flooring instead of that ugly, stinky carpet that I could NEVER get clean no matter how hard I tried.
I can relate – sometimes things just seem so much more complicated than they are.
Our SUV antenna wouldn’t go up for at least two years. It just made this whirring motor sound but would never go up, so we didn’t get good reception on our car radio. The local Toyota dealership quoted a crazy price of $1,500 to fix, so we decided just to deal with it. However, while out of town one day our battery died and we had to have the truck towed into a local mom and pop service station. They asked if we knew our antenna was making a funny sound and did we want them to fix it – for $16!!!! We said heck yeah, and they fixed it in about 5 minutes. Moral of the story – don’t assume car dealerships know what they are talking about and always get another quote, especially if the first quote sounds unreasonable.
um… that exact same problem! I guess it’s time for me to have someone come out. I’ve been afraid of bad news so turning a blind eye a bit.
This has absolutely nothing to do with this post, but I keep meaning to ask you and finally remembered….
my son is exactly 1 year younger than Will and he isn’t talking yet. I know each kid develops differently and yada yada yada, but I was just wondering when Will started talking?
p.s. just so this is has some relevance to your post…We also had a gutter issue when we first moved into our house. We now refer to it as “noah’s ark of 2006” 🙂 luckily, it was just a one time thing, but the floor still has a warped spot from it 🙁
You are basically talking about our house….except ours is in the basement. When we had new concrete poured for our back patio it must have shifted our foundation or maybe all the jackhammering cracked something.
We are the same way, we go on high alert when rain is coming and we have set up fish tanks to collect the water rolling in. We’ve tried sealing sprays (which are working pretty well) and the old throw a bunch of towels on the floors.
Unfortunately, we have had a couple estimates….it’s not pretty! Glad yours was such a cheap fix!!!!
Don’t get me started on gutter woes! We had the same issue, buckets of water pouring off our garage, onto the patio and down into our basement den. I was so upset the cuss words I knew weren’t enough adn started making things up.
But, much like yours once it was fixed (we had a couple bad companies try to “Appalachian Engineer” it) we’ve been high and dry!
I was shocked at how inexpensive gutters were. For the company that comes and out extrudes the gutter to the exact lengths (think retro play doh toy) it was $1.50 a foot.
omg, i’m dorkishly afraid of heights too. like, when i read “we also sent my dad up the ladder,” and saw the picture, my palms started getting sweaty. haha.
we had a similar issue when we bought our house. builders got cheap and didn’t even bother putting gutters on the back, and the back door was damaged because of it. so, we (ie my husband) learned how to install gutters (thanks, internet!). luckily our roof is much closer to the ground than yours! http://livelygreendoor.com/2012/06/installing-gutters/
Growing up my brother and I hated washing dishes. We had no choice though, the dishwasher was broken, we were on a fixed income, and it was not a necessity. Handwashing dishes was what we did. For years. It feels like for ALL the years. Probably only about five.
After I left home for college, mom got remarried. Which meant she moved. Which meant she finally had to fix the dishwasher before listing.
Final cost? About $7.82. $0.50 for the washer that had come loose, the rest was service and labor.
She is so lucky I didn’t live at home anymore, or I would have strangled her when I found out. I had dishpan hands for years! For nothing!!
I think there a billion projects like that in our house! That waterfall looks a little familiar actually, I may need to call someone to come take a look now.
We bought a truck for work purposes and the hi/lo thermostat knob was missing and it seemed like it wouldn’t even turn if there was a knob. It was stuck on low all of the time. We ended up buying an $8.00 knob so it would at least look better….and guess what? It worked! We had been sweating and freezing in that truck for YEARS and all it cost was $8.00 to fix it. Sheesh!
Our front door has not closed properly since we bought the house. You had to jiggle the lock, and shove the door with your shoulder, do a little jig and say a magic word. Needless to say it was a bit ridiculous, yet we failed to fix it…FOR TWO YEARS. We feared we needed to re-do the jam, or get a new door, or at least swap out the hardware. So we put it off…and off.
Last weekend we finally set to getting it done. A Dremel and five minutes of work and it was good as new. Yep, we waited two years for a 5 minute job that cost nothing. Facepalm.
Love this post. My family used only one bathroom for years (we trekked through my parents master bedroom to their master bath)because the shower didn’t work in the other. Once my brother and I were at college they finally looked into getting it fixed. It cost $50.
I always wanted a trio of 8′ long shelves over my sectional and couldn’t spend $100+ each on them and couldn’t believe I never checked Ana white’s page for shelves ( I check it for every other thing made of wood) so this weekend when I found it we hopped in the truck and a few hours later I had 3 shelves that cost $9.98 each!!
I lived without an oven for over a year because I thought we needed a whole new stove/oven unit and didn’t want to spend the money until we knew what we were doing with a potential kitchen remodel. Then one day my husband decided to actually look at the oven to see what was wrong. $26 and 5 minutes of work later, it is back in working order. I guess he just needed the incentive of cookies?
I totally am a martyr and try to live with things for wayyyy to long. Like last summer when I sweated it out thinking my car’s air conditioning was broken and it was just a cheapo fluid fix that I did once September rolled around…but, looking at the bright side, I probably sweated off a few pounds that summer just from driving around in a bajillion degree car, eh?
When it came to putting steel gutters on our shed, we dropped an absolute fortune. Who knew gutters could be such big money? Glad you were spared!
YES! We’ve been holding off on finishing up our kitchen, mainly our backsplash, because we thought it’d cost an arm and a leg (and also because we couldn’t decide on the type of tile). But we finally got it done (after months of waiting!) and I wish we did it earlier. 🙂 Glad you don’t have to bust out the buckets when it rains now!
Did they hand YOU $100? If they did, I’m going to start having gutter people come out all the time.
We too purchased a foreclosure and are now in the throes of save and fix, save and fix. We are steeling ourselves to rip off the massively damaged wood lap siding on the front of our house, plus replace the gutters that were ripped off earlier this week in a snow storm. I’m scared to see how expensive all this will be!
Well isn’t that a lovely surprise! Always nice when things cost less than ya got in mind. From past experience, I really believe there is no worse sound than water entering your house. Fo shizzle.
Yeah, I have an almost identical story…almost. I also purchased a foreclosed home. Since I made the purchase in January and the house was frozen up and buried in snow, I was required to get a construction loan until the “mortgage loan worthy” list was complete. Most of the fixes were done by spring, except the foundation bracing in my crawlspace. Panicked about the first quote I got (in the thousands), I kept the high interest contruction loan for nearly two years. Then one fateful afternoon I had a friend’s husband take a look at what needed to be done. A few FREE scrap pieces of wood later, plus the free friend labor, I was qualified for an interest rate 5% less than what I had been paying. Nothing like renting your own house for 2 years…
Wow! Congrats on this success story! I feel like things like this never happen. So happy for you!
not something we “needed,” but curtains! I always thought they were super expensive until I started reading home blogs. I just ordered our first curtains from Ikea!
The only thing we’ve really lived without is a water softener, and that’s not really something that can be halfway fixed. We know which one we want, now we’re just waiting for it to go on sale!
After redoing an entire bathroom, my husband and I lived without a bathtub for 9 months because of a leaky pipe and (like you guys) being afraid it would cost a fortune to fix, we didn’t call a plumber. We just used our nasty basement shower. When I finally I couldn’t take not using our beautiful new bathroom anymore, the plumber came out….spent 15 minutes in the bathroom and (again like you guys) handed me a bill for $100. Hindsight is a major beeatch. 🙂
In 2005, Hurricane Katrina blew our vinyl eaves from the front porch and carport, all over our and our neighbors yards. We gathered them up and put them back up, luckily finding all of the pieces. Then in 2008, Hurricane Gustav, repeated the process, then so did we. My husband finally resecured the channel the pieces sit in on each end, so in 2012 when Hurricane Isaac came along, our eaves stayed in place. We got a quote for $2,000 to redo the eaves on the whole house and since we are having trouble with one gable end, we hope to have this done this summer. It will be well worth the price to have this fixed properly instead of my husbands make-shift patches, because they were not done correctly when the house was built.
haha! I bet that brought you all together 🙂
xo – kb
Cookies are always the best motivator 🙂
xo – kb
Here’s to the weight loss method of champions!
xo – kb
haha! That’s hilarious.
xo – kb
It’s my fault…laid in bed sick today. Thank goodness for my lovely boyfriend 🙂
xo – kb
I took my car to a trusted auto shop and was quoted $900 for parts and labor because they were going to have to take the engine out entirely just to reach the part that needed replaced. AND they needed to keep my car for two weeks to do so. I got a call two days later saying they were able to reach the part without taking out the engine and it only cost $85. Major happy dance ensued!!
No, a bill for $100. What did I write? Something crazy? Probably 🙂
xo – kb
He was talking pretty early I think (always more than the doctor said was the minimum)…I remember them asking me if he knew 50 words and I had counted 70+ so that is my only point of reference. I know some folks that have kids that don’t talk at all though…and some that have to go to speech therapy because they weren’t talking. It’s not something to stress over…just do your best 🙂 If it eases your mind at all, I didn’t talk until I was older…it was one of the reasons the doctors thought I had water on the brain.
xo – kb
We had the worst water pressure of all time coming from the single shower in our house. It took forever to rinse shampoo from our hair and we hated it… but lived with it for over a year. On a whim we decided to get a different shower head, because the one we had was yellowing with age… and BOOM! Real water pressure. Duh. We can’t believe we didn’t consider replacing the shower head and lived with that pathetic water pressure for so long.
We waited to put hardware on our kitchen cabinets in our townhouse until a few weeks before we moved out. I have no idea what took us so long, but we had the builder put hardware on the cabinets in our new house before we even moved in! I can’t imagine not having them.
I also recall waiting far too long to install window coverings (blinds and curtains) when we bought our first place. I am absolutely positive that our neighbors got a few peep shows as we’d dash through the house trying to remain in the shadows for the first week or two. Oops! :]
If it makes you feel any better, our son barely said two words before he was three and then, all of a sudden, just started talking after his third birthday and hasn’t stopped since! He is 7 now. We taught him some basic sign language from when he was just shy of two to ease his and our frustration in trying to communicate and that helped enormously until he was able to verbalise. But, you know, the range of normal is huge so just follow your instincts as to whether you think it is really a problem or not. I had other people telling me I should be worried but I wasn’t for some reason. I just thought he was taking his own sweet time.
That’s a very bad news to any who bought a new foreclosure, anyways hope you guys solved the gutter issue.
Resurfacing our driveway. First estimate was for several thousand. Second was for just over one. Not cheap per say but less expensive than we were expecting. Two years later & it’s holding up great! No more tiny pits of asphalt all over the garage!!
Refinishing our hard wood floors. We moved a few walls around in our house, and the floors from different rooms didn’t match (main rooms had oak, other rooms had maple), and there were holes where walls used to be. I thought it would cost a fortune to replace and seamlessly integrate new oak floors where the maple used to be, and refinish it all the same color. Turns out it was only $1,600. Not exactly pocket change, but far from the thousands and thousands I thought it would cost.
I assumed it was going to cost big money to have a landscaping company come trim the embarrassingly-overgrown bushes in front of our house, so I always planned on doing it myself. But we didn’t have a high enough ladder for the tall ornamental trees, and I would always give up after about 3 hours and one bush. After 3 years, I finally decided I owed it to my neighbors to get them cut. It only cost $70, AND they cleaned up my weedy flowerbed and hauled off the debris for free. I work full time, so I can’t believe I was beating myself up and spending so much of my precious free time on something I could easily afford to pay for once a year!
Water problems have cost me a ton of money over the last 8 years in our home. Most problems were SUPER expensive! However, there was one that wasn’t expensive at all. My bathroom sink that only leaked a few drops every day or so. This went on for a few YEARS. However, if I didn’t catch the drops, it landed on our metal baseboard heater covers and rusted it a bit. One day when I had a plumber out fixing the kitchen sink clog (which wasn’t a cheap fix), I asked him to check out the bathroom sink leak. All he had to do was tighten 2 bolts. Since I was already paying him to walk in the door, he didn’t charge me for *that* repair at all.
I didn’t try to fix it because plumbing issues scare me. D’oh!
Water issues are the worst, aren’t they?? We bought a “new” house last year. After some heavy rains we’ve discovered that the drainage around the house needs to be fixed… as in some places need to be regraded. Talk about a big job. I think we are finally going to bite the bullet this spring. Same as you the gutters are also a problem. We’ve been told that the gutters are undersized for the roof size, which causes them to overflow during heavy rains. So eventually we’ll have to get that fixed too!
I just love these comments! I know I hold out as long as I can for anything…nice to know I’m not the only one!
The A/C in our first house was pretty wonky. The ductwork made it so the master bedroom got almost no air. So I suffered, super pregnant, through a Houston summer with no AC to speak of. It. Was. Awful.
9 months later we decided to move and had the A/C looked at. $50 and 2 hours later it was all better. I may have had some choice words. Hell hath no fury like an overheated pregnant lady, even 9 months after the fact.
For five years after we bought our first home the toilet would constantly clog and raw sewage would back up into our (only) bathtub. We figured our ancient plumbing needed to be replaced but it ran underneath our gorgeous patio and we didn’t want to bust it up and then pay to have it re-poured on top of the new plumbing cost. So we paid a plumber to come snake our drain every other month and went through gallons of bleach. Eventually, we found out that we could just run new plumbing through our crawl space and abandon the lines under the patio. We felt like total morons.
I drove around without heat in my car for 2 winters (in New England) thinking it would be $$$ to fix the heat in my car. Finally, I got it checked before selling. The total bill? $80.
Yes indeedy we have ~ installing a french drain. Water water water everywhere. “French drain” just sounded expensive. We did just install new gutters & they weren’t cheap, but much less then the copper ones I wanted. I asked the gutter guy, for lack of a better title, how long would it take these uber expensive copper gutters to turn that lovely dark oil rubbed bronze color. Well he said no time if you put in the “oil rubbed bronze colored” aluminum ones I have in stock. So we did ~ saved thousands & achieved the look immediately! Yippee! I love gutter talk!
We also bought a foreclosure, but the bank didn’t cover anything. The gutters had been stolen off the house and we also had water damage/flooding problems. I figured that would cost thousands, but to my surprise the seamless gutters were only $590! Still a chunk of change, but not terrible considering it was new gutters + installation for an entire house.
I have this exact same problem with my gutters at my house. I’m trying to get my brother out with his big ladder to crawl up there and bend things back into place and put a bracket or two on to hold it…. but maybe I’ll just find some nice company to come over and do it for $100. Then at least I know its done and I wont be paranoid about the spring storms!
Gutters…ugh. When we purchased our home it only had a small section of vinyl gutters in the front of the house. For the price of installing new gutters around the perimeter and replacing the vinyl gutters that are already beginning to warp…we’ve decided to put up with soppy grass for a little while longer 🙂 Way to send the young buck up top!
Ok..this has nothing to do with gutters but I had just had to share this with you and I apologize if it’s a bit long.. I have been reading your blog (and Sherry’s too..of course) for about a year now and I just love you guys. You two are the only blogs I make sure to read everyday. Not only for the tips and ideas but mainly because you make me smile/laugh with the things you guys come up with and if that isn’t enough of a reason to check in on a daily basis then I don’t know what is. I was a tad bit surprised though when I woke up this morning and realized that it had been a long time since I vividly remembered a dream and I was even more surprised when I realized you were in it!! Yep..you made it into my dreams. I promise this isn’t creepy but I just had to share my dream with you. I went to Walgreens to pick up some pictures (which is weird enough…since no one prints pictures anymore) and there you were behind the counter. You were offering advice to customers on how to take better pictures! I was so surprised to see you at a Walgreens in Miami that I didn’t listen to a word you said.,,,just kind of stared in astonishment. Then you offered to make me a photo album. At which point I thought in my head “Wow, Katie Bower wants to make me a photo album! But I love making my own photo albums. How do I tell nice, sweet Katie Bower that I don’t want her to make me a photo album? At which point I awkwardly started to back away from you as I said “No thank you, I’m good” and left. The whole way to the car I was thinking, what in the world was she doing at walgreens and why was I so weird with her. Then I got home and checked your blog and you had just announced a US tour. You were going to visit different Walgreens in the US and offer photo taking advice!. Then….I woke up! All I have to say is… I think your photoshop tutorials mixed with John & Sherry’s book tour got all jumbled up in my brain! LOL! I swear I am not weird or creepy but I just had to share. I hope I made you laugh/smile the way you have for the last year!
Have you seen the most recent Mission Impossible? My palms were so sweaty that I left the theater with wet hand prints on my shirt and jeans! Terrifying!
I always hope to have that happen… but it’s almost always the other way around 🙁
Although I will say I put off buying rugs for a long time until I learned about rugsusa.com from you!
And the heights thing? Yea, I basically had a panic attack for a majority of the movie “Up”…(you know, when I wasn’t bawling my eyes out!) and that’s a cartoon…
Only on Wednesday this week did we have a problem involving this thought! My hubby was fitting a new shower and for this we needed to turn of the water at the mains. He attempted to do this but he could not turn the tap off with his hand or other appliance and water was puring out of it! I returned from work with him emptying buckets at an hourly rate – waiting for our plumber neighbour to return home from work. We dreaded the cost – but we were stuck – plumber came over and for £25 UK pounds he sorted it straight away. Phew – we dreaded a £100 UK pound bill at least, so we were HAPPY!
hi! Just wanted to pop in since I had been so worried anout my daughters speach. She is two as of last week but in November I took her to speech therapy even though her ped thought she was fine. She just didnt have a lot of words and I wanted to be sure we were on top of any problem. They gave US some tips on how to help her develop her language, and she has really taken off! Once she started…shes like a little parrot now jut three months later. (we took most of December off from our once weekly visits). Talk to you r ped if youre really concerned or want to be sure youre being proactive 🙂 Good luck!
I had a broken pane of glass in this super cute little built-in hutch in my dining room. It was broken for a year and a half and I finally took the door down to a local glass repair shop. They fixed it in less than 15 minutes and it cost $15. For reals? I stared at that broken door during dinner for a year and a half for 15 minutes and $15?? Seriously? 🙂
Haha! Jeremy and I looked at each other during it and started laughing because both of us had our feet sticking out of the blanket because they had starting sweating!
xo – kb
Vanessa….do you want me to make you a photo album? 🙂
xo – kb
Lol! I’m in the middle of one right now! Right at the point where you debate forgetting it all cause it’s so darn time-consuming! So…don’t ask me twice as I’m sure it would be fabulous!
Our sliding storm door wasn’t opening and closing properly – it got stuck every few centimetres (inches?:) My husband and I tried cleaning the floor tracks/jiggling it/other stupid things and gave up. We thought we would have to replace the whole thing ($2-300). We lived with it for 6 months, used to annoy the heck outa my guy that it wouldn’t open smoothly!
Father-In-Law came around and fixed it by reattaching the runner to the track at the top (there is a track on the top of the door?!)
Free and took 5 minutes. We felt schooooled!
Now when it’s come time to do other little jobs, we just bite the bullet and assume it will easier than we initially think. Hasn’t backfired yet!
Wow can I relate. We had some issues with all THREE of our toilets. One made a lot of noise. The other two didn’t flush very well [hold the tab down and wait sorta thing] we even stopped using one due to the prolonged flushing and a leak I knew was an easy fix. We only did something when we got a letter from the water company saying we had a leak and we needed to fix it pronto. Talk about scary! I was picturing myself taking out a loan or our whole backyard being flooded with sewage. Seriously.
$175 later and I have two lovely working toilets and a new expander on our hot water heater. We just left the third toilet alone until I replace it along with some new flooring. But yea it’s amazing what you can get so used to living with.
Having trees cut down though, that will always cost an arm and a leg.
haha! that’s fantastic. slow and steady wins the race!
I like this. I like you. I shall try mustering a wind storm tonight.
Oh I totally forgot! We had a dishwasher when we first moved in and it didn’t work. Paid our warranty folks to come and look at it [$100]. Turns out when the previous homeowners had replaced the garbage disposal, there’s a very small piece of plastic between it and the dishwasher which prevented draining.
The guy literally looked, pulled it out, and called it a day. I’m still bitter that we got charged for it. Guess that’s a big company for ya. We didn’t renew with them either.
2 weeks ago our pipe leaked inside the wall of our 2 year old house. We were in shock, picturing opened walls and hundreds of dollars in bills from plumber for finding a leak and fixing it.
Turned out he was able to “go in” the wall from inside the closet (all the imperfections are hidden now) and it only cost us $80!!!
I cut out a piece of carpet myself, dried it outside on the sun and placed it back at no cost.
Okay first I thought you said they handed you a hundred dollar bill. Like, free money??? Yes please!
Yeah I have been in a few of these situations before too. I too just feared what it might cost. In my experience, some types of projects like that can roll out of control. So glad you got your problem fixed so easily, though!
One story I have from my college days was when we thought our heater had completely broke down on us and we were heading into winter term with no money to fix it. We had our handyman friend come over – he just laughed at us – someone had just flipped what they thought was a lightswitch in the basement – that switch just happened to control the heater 🙂 problem solved, money-free luckily
When I first went to grad school, our washing machine was messed up. It wouldn’t agitate. My roommates, who had lived in the house for about a year before I moved in, were stirring their laundry with a stick. For real. They would put the clothes and soap in, let it fill up with water, then stir it by hand.
I couldn’t handle it and after a few months of taking my clothes to the laundromat, I finally called a Handyman out of the phone book to come take a look. I don’t remember the exact solution, but it took him 5 minutes and a piece of duct tape. Done. I think he charged us $20 for coming out, but felt bad about even that.
A whole year of stirring the laundry. WHY? WHY?
Hahahaha– my hubby and I waited for almost a year to replace a blind on our back door because I assumed it would cost $40. We were saving up for a whole bunch of car maintenance and needed every penny for that.
We finally looked at Lowe’s this weekend … and it ended up being $3 for a new one. Bought it that second.
Erin