The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
Homeowner/House Thread: It's going to cost how much, now?
That_Guy
I don't wanna be that guyRegistered User regular
I don't wanna be that guyRegistered User regular
Have you found yourself $250,000 in debt to a bank you've never visited? Do you have just one more project before it's livable? Doing remodels or renovations? Did you find the perfect place in the perfect location and just wanna gush about it? This thread is for you. Here we can discuss the trials and tribulation, the ups and downs, the adventure that is home ownership in a post recession economy.
Home Hunting Resources
zillow.com
trulia.com
realtor.com
www.redfin.com
Credit Resources
creditkarma.com
annualcreditreport.com
mint.com
Mortgage resources
mortgagecalculator.org
www.bankrate.com/calculators/mortgages/mortgage-calculator.aspx
Loan advice
Find a small local broker. They are going to work the hardest to make sure you find just the right loan for you. The big banks just don't have as much of an incentive.
Home Hunting Resources
zillow.com
trulia.com
realtor.com
www.redfin.com
Credit Resources
creditkarma.com
annualcreditreport.com
mint.com
Mortgage resources
mortgagecalculator.org
www.bankrate.com/calculators/mortgages/mortgage-calculator.aspx
Loan advice
Find a small local broker. They are going to work the hardest to make sure you find just the right loan for you. The big banks just don't have as much of an incentive.
https://www.youtube.com/hesthatguy | https://www.patreon.com/hesthatguy | https://steamcommunity.com/id/ThatGuy3141/
That_Guy on
+4
This discussion has been closed.
Posts
Thanks, I added it.
Anyway, we're looking at redoing the floors on our first floor and my wife wants real hardwood. This is a home we're going to be in for awhile, so we're willing to spend a little bit extra on this project. I was on board with wood, but when I went to a local flooring company, they suggested luxury vinyl planks. They're cheaper, look like real wood, waterproof and generally more durable. They said they do more vinyl than hardwood nowadays. I did my research and it turns out they were telling the truth and not trying to con me into something that benefits them.
I took my wife back to the store so she could see it and she's still not on board. I think she's got blinders on and laser focused on real wood because her main complaint was that it didn't *look* like real wood, which is totally inaccurate. Of all the things to have an issue with vinyl, appearance is the least different.
Do any of you have any experience with luxury vinyl planks? I'm hoping to get a real-world experience from some random person on a website I frequent rather than feedback from a random person on a website I don't frequent.
Edit: Also duh, our current house does too. To me it doesn’t quite mimic wood in appearance but it’s easy to clean and maintain.
In fact, the ReStore should be your first stop when remodeling. My ReStore has a pretty steady supply of gently used fixtures and furnishings that have saved me a fair bit of money on projects here and there.
Yes, but we have two kids (7 and 9) and all their grubby little friends coming into our house. Plus I'd like to extend the flooring into our back hall/mudroom and back bathroom. Both of those would be better suited to waterproof flooring that I don't have to resurface every few years.
We have cement imitating "luxury" vinyl in foyer/kitchen/closet and also another small section on a kitchen wall. It looks nice and is fast/easy to lay. I can't speak to durability as it's relatively recent. That said, we didn't even consider it for other rooms as we have a very strong association between hardwood and comfort.
Re: The comments of the flooring company:
- Vinyl is ridiculously easy to lay down. It's faster to complete, if you ask construction workers which one they prefer to work with, the answer will prob heavily favor it.
- The argument "we are doing more of X than of Y" really doesn't say much. Vinyl is in heavy use in office/public spaces and the cheap versions of it go *really* cheap.(I would ask them where you can see a lay they have done, so you can go and see it "in the wild")
- Hardwood is (without any doubt in my mind) aesthetically superior as texture and feeling. Unless you have a design opportunity to use vinyl or a strong practical or financial reason to fallback to it, I would be hesitant to recommend over wood.
Here's a photo I found from someone after us that was selling it:
(edit: it was Kahrs Merbau of some sort, with the woodloc joints, now I hunt around some more. We went with that because one of the flooring places we looked in had a bunch of boxes of it on sale to clear it out, I'm not sure how much it would cost nowadays. It definitely was super easy to install, though)
I'd bought the old place for next-to-nothing (well, for the Seattle market anyway) and put a substantial amount of work into it. For two years it was my second full time job. I'd work on it for about six hours a night, plus weekends. New electrical, new plumbing, new roof, new kitchen, new bathroom, finished the basement, tore out all the wood paneling in the garage and drywalled it, retrofitted it to be to code in terms of earthquake tolerance, built a deck, tore out and replaced the yard (twice), built an awesome shed out back, added a sprinkler system, added wired-in outdoor lighting, insulated the exterior walls, redid all the siding, the list goes on and on and on. It's hard to not take any criticism of the house personally, no matter how valid it is; it's still a 2br/1b, I can't dodge that fact.
The new place is better in every single way, besides the payments, where *just my end* of it is twice what my old payments were. My career situation has changed enough that I can easily handle it, but it's still a bit of a beast.
I'm still keeping the old place, though. I'll just rent it out. My financial exposure to the Seattle real estate market is a bit extreme, but I don't need to sell it.
I get raving applause every time people see the LVP I put in the basement. It’s also great because I’ve had to scrape caulk off it, have dropped and dragged heavy shit on it, and get the occasional water seepage down there.
I think LVP is far more practical and will look better with less maintenance, but there are lots of folks like your wife who live that HGTV life and want their old hardwood floors.
My brother, who worked in the trades for a while, used LVP in his basement "den" room. My dad is in the process of installing it in a guest 1/2 bath on the main level of his (otherwise hardwood/tile) house. They both also redid other living areas of their homes recently that were less subject to potential water damage, and chose to put real hardwood down in those places instead.
Guess who bought a new AC. Ow, my bank account.
Is their regular maintenance to be done on AC units? I looked into this last year and everything I read basically said no. Maybe clean off the fins to make sure the heat transfer was working well. But it seems like the compressor should have a motor that could need maintenance. Or just general pipe/tube replacement after 10-20 years sitting in the elements. I just couldn't find a good resource on what kind of preemptive things were worth while.
It's usually a good idea to have your HVAC system checked every year. And 15 years is starting to hit the lifespan of your average AC unit.
Checked for what though? If it's just pressure/sealant testing I would like to do it myself if possible. I guess I've never gotten a quote to see what the checkup would cost, but I dislike paying a lot for things that don't require a lot of work, just because the knowledge barrier is higher.
I put in both LVP and solid bamboo floors for our 2nd level about 2 years ago. Bedrooms and hallway in bamboo, master and hall bathrooms in LVP. The LVP stands up to water and an 80lb golden retriever just fine, and it's a click-lock installation so if you're putting it in yourself, it's loads easier. As far as "feel" it feels just fine, has a decent wood texture to it (though that will vary on what you get) and doesn't feel cheap or hollow or anything. Ours also had an attached cork board underlayment so it's quiet and pretty sound dampening.
If you want DURABLE hardwood floor, look at strand bamboo. It's about the same (or cheaper) than most hardwoods, and just about indestructible (Regular bamboo is not as tough as strand). If installing yourself, get (or rent) a specialized nailer for exotic hardwoods and bamboo. Otherwise, your nails will crumple without piercing. Or glue it, but I was not about to deal with that mess. For reference, we have red oak on the main level, and the dog's nails have destroyed it. He Scooby-doo's on the bamboo, but not even the faintest of marks and a quick Swiffer cleans it spotless.
Checked for the overall health of the system. A full HVAC service will go over all the mechanicals, make sure they are correctly operating efficiently, clean out the system, etc. Also, you may not be able to check the pressure legally, due to laws regarding refrigerant.
Last year, for example, the they replaced the capacitor in my external unit for free, which (admittedly) is like a $10 part, but retail that would have been a $150 repair without the system and not everyone is going to be comfortable doing it on their own.
My understanding is that such programs are common most places that have year-round AC usage.
The company we go through have a tune-up service where, after receiving the tune up, if your AC breaks down at any point in the remainder of the calendar year, they pay you $500.
I believe there's some qualifiers, like if it's on its last legs due to massive impending mechanical failure or whatever.
The guy I met with this morning wouldn't give a quote now, he's writing something up and wants to have another in-person meet to give the quote which seems...an annoying hard sell.
They were an afterthought (literally a "going door to door seeing if people want tune-ups" on Friday which I scheduled a quote because why not) and not one of my original three, so I may just cancel depending on how the others go.
Got a pretty damn nice quote from the guy who was recommended by a friend.
Do any non-scam businesses go door to door anymore?
E: they were doing a "donate canned goods to this food drive and get a free tune up" thing.
...Whoever finds me when I'm craving Samoa's is going on their trip.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
100% do not go with this company and perhaps ask for someone else to come do maintenance on your units to ensure they didn't sabotage them.
Like with door-to-door roofers after a hurricane, door-to-door HVAC people at the start of summer have a reason they are canvasing. There is a very viable "break it and put a lean on you if you don't pay" scam system which remains distressingly legal in most states of the US.
I absolutely know the door-to-door guy didn't sabotage anything - we had people working on the fence the whole time, and they absolutely would have raised a stink/let us know if anyone had come into the back yard. So I'm not concerned about that.
We get a slightly higher than typical amount of canvassers, I think, because we're across the street from a park with a parking lot. Easy place for someone to start/finish their route.
Anyway, yeah - almost certainly going to end up going with someone else, I was more annoyed that they couldn't just...you know....email me the offer, or have something pulled up today. I looked up the company before when I was researching, and it's basically in the "reputable, but not one of the ones I bothered to contact" range. I just figured I'd get another data point. Ah well.
Really it's about getting over the anxiety and uncomfortable feeling of interrupting them before they get going. You have to be okay with cutting someone off mid sentence.
Usually my go-to is "Hey, I'll just be straight up with you and save us both a lot of time. No thank you. /close door."
Yeah it's technically rude, but we can both go on about our day.
On the positive side, our AC came with free duct cleaning, so that's like $1500 "saved".
"Yay".
The thing with house services, too, is if you don't have like $2000 just laying around you can say "sorry we don't have that kind of money right now" and it's technically true.
Even if you do, that's none of their goddamn business.