Reno Surprise

    So my letter wasn't printed in today's paper. In fact, there was nothing in the letters today about the STM employees. I'm relieved.

I know my baby is super cute, but notice the stains around the tub??

    Yesterday we had people come in to work in our bathroom. The plastic above and around the bathtub was coming off the wall, it had cracks in it and there was mold and nastiness on the caulking that I couldn't get off no matter how hard I scrubbed and no matter what product I sprayed. So we decided to have tile put in and to replace the plumbing, including the spout and knobs (which needed to be done anyway because there was leaking). 

    Renovations are always tricky business. It may go smoothly but that's rare. In most cases, you discover something not good and it takes that much more time to get the job done. For example: yesterday when the contractor arrived in the morning, he ripped off a bit of the plastic to see what was underneath. Imagine our surprise when we saw tile. It was ugly and very dated. But what was worse, was that where tile was missing, someone had simply nailed pieces of wood and bits of plastic. I imagine they did this so they could glue the large piece of plastic to cover it all up. Talk about a terrible quick fix! To make matters worse, the contractor found mold and said that if it was in the wood, we would need a specialist to come in. Thankfully, it was confined to the gyp rock so they simply replaced it.

Gail Vax-Oxlade

   Buying a house is expensive, no two ways about it. But maintaining a home is just as costly! Gail Vaz-Oxlade, my financial guru and host of Til Debt Do Us Part, says that you should put away 3% of the value of your home each year toward home maintenance. 3% seems like a small number but really, it's not. On top of that, you need to have an emergency fund for, well, emergencies! Leaky roof! Broken washing machine! Flooding! And the thing about a house is that it always needs something. Many times it doesn't need something but if you want to maintain the value of your home, if you ever want to sell your home, you need to keep it in good condition. Every time we tick off a project from our list we simply add another one. It's a never-ending process.

    Don't get me wrong, we love owning our own home and take great pleasure in seeing these projects come together. It's just the money part that blows! But we've been really blessed and have had a lot of help from friends and family, especially from my in-laws.

    So the tiling is almost done. What's next? I'd like to replace the counter top and re-do the floor and then in the kitchen I like to replace or paint the cabinets, replace the counter top, re-tile the floor and put in new light fixtures and then... well, you get the picture!