Last week we had a guy come out and inspect the property so we could get our house insured. Unfortunately, he ended up being a bearer of some not-so-good news. The roof, which we were hoping to hold off until next summer to replace, is in such bad shape he wouldn’t even insure it. Awesome. We knew it wasn’t pretty, but “the plan” was to use the money we made from the sale of our house in town to build a much needed garage and home office area for Matt. I now put “the plan” in quotation marks, because the further we get into this new house adventure, I’m finding it’s not the original plan we had. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
So once we accepted the reality that the roof needed to be replaced this summer, we decided to get some quotes to finish the other exterior projects on our list. Being the house was only used as a summer cabin for Matt’s family, we knew we needed to put some time and money into making sure we’ll actually survive the winter. All you California people can laugh. But I’m serious. The house needs to be house wrapped which should help insulate for winter, and while we’re at it, we’re going to replace the siding. The skirting also needs replacing, so Matt went ahead and ripped that off. Now we’re really looking ghetto. And the windows are in pretty rough shape too, so those need replacing as well.
The quotes we’re getting are anywhere between $10-$15k just for materials. We were thinking we’d just have to rip off the band-aid and get a loan to cover what needs to be done.
The more I thought about it to myself, I began to wonder if we could get by without building the garage in order to save ourselves from signing into another loan. We have the cash from the home sale for all the repairs we need to make. Yes, giving up the garage project would come with a price, but is it really that much to pay? Matt can continue working out of our bedroom, which really hasn’t been as bad as I thought. And he agrees. We’ll have to scrape car windows all winter long, but that alone doesn’t really justify needing to take out a loan either. We won’t have room to store all of our “stuff”. But maybe that will help us get rid of what we don’t need. This was the internal dialogue I was having with myself. It really was a conversation of “needs versus wants.” Do I want a garage? Yes. Do I want a nice office space for Matt to work from? Yes. But is it worth using the money that needs to be used on the house itself? Probably not.
I didn’t voice my thoughts about this to Matt because I didn’t want to take away his office space. And being he carries most of the financial weight in our family, I trust that if he thinks we need to build a shed this summer, we need to do it.
But strangely enough, a couple days after I started changing my thinking about “the plan”, so did he. I was walking out the door to work one day and he blindsided me by saying “What if…” and basically shared my thoughts exactly about not building the shed and using that money to fix the house so we didn’t have to take out a loan. I was amazed that he had been having the exact same thoughts and we had never talked about it. When stuff like this happens, I like to think it’s God’s way of directing us into making the right decisions.
So as far as I know for now, we have made a 180 degree turn in our thinking. I used to think a shed was our priority. We “need” one, no matter the cost. But that’s not the case. It’s a want. And possibly a financial burden that we don’t need to bring on right now.
I’m excited that Matt and I are finding ourselves on the same page. And excited that this move is making us question what really is important.
In the meantime, I’m having fun thinking about siding! Right now the house is just a drab beige color. There’s nothing wrong with it, but being it’s a double-wide, the house is plain looking in the first place. The beige isn’t helping.
So let me know if I’m off my rocker, but I’m thinking blue! A nice, dark, navy blue. I think that would give the house a little more character and a nice “lake house” look. Here’s my inspiration:
Obviously, our house doesn’t look anything like these, but the colors work. Add a little pop of color at the front door like this and I think I’ll be good.
I’m feeling good about this.
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