FrankenSink

Posted on January 9, 2016 by Elizabeth Vega

This is a post for the true DIY folks… nothing Pinterest-worthy here today! But life in a fixer-upper demands an embrace of the process, and that’s exactly what we’re doing.

This was an unexpected project, so I don’t have a photo of the hideous bathroom cabinet sink that came with our little hippie house, but it was an ancient wood laminate beast with a yellowed fake marble sink (and a burn mark where someone had once laid a cigarette on the edge of its basin).When it developed a drip, Mr. Vega decided that he would rather replace the whole thing than repair the faucet. We had gotten a white pedestal sink that had a crack in it from a neighbor who remodeled, and the $40 porcelain repair kit that we ordered was a total failure. With our House Fund running on fumes, we were starting to get discouraged.

Mr. Vega, being the never-say-die type that he is, stopped in to our local Habitat Re-Store to have a look, where he found a very passable basin for $20. He brought it home, and using the pedestal and faucet handles from the giveaway sink, and the stopper-pull from our previous ugly one, created the one you see above. He kept the actual faucet from the Re-Store basin, as it was the tallest of the three: Hand washing is much more convenient when you can actually fit your hands under the faucet! In the outline left on the wall by paint around the cabinet, you can see we’ve gained a good three inches of the room back, and the pedestal makes the small room feel much less confined than the cabinet did.

Unfortunately, the previous owners had not removed the cabinet sink to install the too-porous-for-a-bathrooom Saltillo tile they had chosen, but rather had gone to the trouble of cutting the tile to lay around the cabinet. Fortunately, they also had not bothered to remove the linoleum that graced the bathroom before the tile, making it much easier to remove than if the job had been done correctly!

So what you see on the floor in the space left by the removal of the cabinet is $9 worth of tile meant to look like rustic hardwood. It’s really kind of cool up close, but it was chosen strictly for its price, as this is a temporary stopover on our way to a full bathroom remodel (some day it will be glorious, with a walk-in steam shower and a skylight). One of the tiles needed to be cut down to fit right, and a kind employee at the Big Box store tool rental department looked the other way for twenty seconds while my resourceful husband made the single cut he needed. He also managed to find, in a scrap pile, just the right amount of baseboard to fill in the gap that was left when the cabinet came out.

Our next project will be to sand down some of the half-century’s worth of paint layers (nearly 1/8″!) made evident by the cabinet’s removal and to paint the whole room with white semi-gloss. I also have a feeling I’m not going to be able to prevent him from replacing the current flooring with ceramic tile, which would be fine by me!

Because of our futile attempt to repair the secondhand sink we had been given, the total cost of our new-to-us sink, including a few bits of hardware, caulk, and the three tile plates, came out to about $80, about half the cost of a brand-new pedestal sink. Mr. Vega got to pick up some new repair skills that will come in handy during the rest of our remodel, and we feel good about salvaging some things that were destined for the landfill (all the usable remaining sink parts will be donated back to the Habitat Re-Store). We’re really happy with the look of the new sink, as it’s much more retro-fabulous than what was in there before, and we think it fits nicely with the updated Atomic Ranch style we’re ultimately going for.

What projects have you undertaken lately in your home? Are you glad you did it, or do you wish you had called in a professional?

Frugal Tuesday: Check Your City’s Webpage

Posted on December 15, 2015 by Elizabeth Vega

Many cities and utility companies have money-saving programs that residents are unaware of. In Los Angeles, we were able to find free mulch and compost, free large-item pickup tags, discounted worm composting bins (in exchange for attending a 2-hour class). Here in Austin, discounts on composters are also offered, as well as free paint, mixed from people’s hazardous-waste drop-offs! We have taken advantage of numerous opportunities for rebates offered through our local electric company, and just this past weekend, we got a couple of free shade trees for our Little Hippie House through an energy-company partnering with TreeFolks.

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Take a few minutes to browse around and see what your city or utility company might be offering that you can use… you may be surprised by what you find!

The Contingency Fund

Posted on June 27, 2015 by Elizabeth Vega

One of the things we’ve learned from watching home improvement shows on television is that in any project, things will go wrong. Things will break. A simple appliance installation will balloon into the need to open a wall and re-wire part of the house. Your intention to do everything yourself will transform into needing a professional on-site ASAP.

When we found the house we wanted, we were annoyed by the clause in our apartment’s lease that required a 60-day notice to vacate. As it turns out, we will be moving into our new home on Day 59 of that period, because we’ve encountered a few unexpected problems.

Mr. Vega decided he wanted to scrape off the ugly acoustic ceiling before we moved in. Our internet search for “how to scrape a popcorn ceiling” yielded the suggestion to test for asbestos before doing that kind of work on houses built before 1980. We found a local lab that could rush the results for $75. We found out we were indeed the proud owners of a toxic ceiling that would cost $2500 to have professionally and safely removed. Ouch.

Fortunately, we had prepared in advance to expect the unexpected: in addition to our down payment and closing costs, we made sure we had about 5% of the purchase price set aside to make the place feel more like home. We also maintain an Emergency Fund, but as the asbestos only poses a health risk during removal, we agreed that Ugly Ceilings are not an actual emergency. Still, we’d feel better having the job done before we move our furniture, our pets, and our own lungs into the place, so we went ahead and had the work done.

Then when the gas company came out to connect the gas and inspect the appliances, they discovered that the stove that came with the house was leaking gas, which meant they weren’t allowed to connect it. The appliance repair men said it would be an expensive fix, and as it wasn’t a good stove to begin with, we had it hauled away, along with the old, moldy fridge that was in the house. We were lucky enough to find an inexpensive, well-reviewed fridge with a freezer on the bottom and in the smaller “apartment size” that we prefer, but we decided to splurge on a professional-quality gas range, to the tune of about $1800 (which is a great deal for the kind of stove we’re getting, but it’s not pocket change!).

We’ve got some other issues, like non-existent insulation in our central Texas attic, a colony of ants that have chosen that attic as the place to build their home, and a central air condenser unit inexplicably– and quite dangerously– perched on the roof that is not designed to hold that kind of weight. While some of these issues could become emergencies, they aren’t yet, and we’re grateful for our Contingency Fund. It will be completely drained before we even move in, so we’ll have to postpone our plans of replacing the old drafty windows with double-paned ones or installing a rainwater collection system, but we’ll still have our Emergency Fund, and we won’t have gone into debt to fix the problems.

We Did it…

Posted on June 26, 2015 by Elizabeth Vega

… We bought a house! Our first house. And we’re pretty excited.

Four years of hard work, paying off debt, saving money and one cross-country move later, and we have a house! Right now, I’m going to say that it has all been worth it. We made a 20% down payment and bought the house for exactly market value, which is kind of a bargain in the real estate frenzy that is Austin. So we’ve already got a good amount of equity, and our net worth hasn’t changed. Which is strange and wonderful, considering we just handed over almost all of our savings except for our Emergency Fund.

It’s small. As in 800 square feet, 2-bedroom/1-bath, single-car garage small. Buying a smaller, older house allowed us to stay within our budget, which was several thousand dollars less than the current median home price in Austin, but still stay close to downtown and some of our favorite South Austin neighborhoods. Having a smaller house also means, of course, that it will be less expensive to cool and heat as well as being easier to clean. We want to replace both the roof and the flooring at some point, and those things will also be cheaper because of the house’s smaller footprint.

The lot is a relatively large 1/4 acre, which gives us plenty of room for gardening and entertaining. And there is plenty of room for the house to grow, if we ever decide that a third bedroom or a second bathroom is a necessity. We’re planning to build a compost bin ASAP, planting a mini-orchard of fruit trees, and even considering getting a few chickens.

Built in 1968 and used as a rental property for the past decade, it’s going to need a fair amount of work. We see that as a benefit, though because it was another thing that kept the asking price low, and also because we can do most of the improvements ourselves, to get things exactly how we want them. Some of the first things on our list are high-efficiency appliances, double-paned windows, and a rainwater collection system.

There are train tracks just behind our back fence, but it’s in a “quiet zone,” which means the trains are not allowed to blow their horns except in emergencies. Houses that abut train tracks are generally considered less desirable, which helped with the affordability factor, and honestly, I find the sight and sound of freight trains nostalgic!

The neighborhood is funky and eclectic… No cookie-cutter houses, and most importantly to us, no HOA. Homes in our new neighborhood have interesting creative decor and landscaping: some of them even have their vegetable gardens in the front. We were also pleased to spot a few harbingers of creativity and a laid-back vibe in the area: free-range children!

This is the thing we’ve worked so hard to do, and we’ve been able to do it on our own terms, so we’re very happy. We’re looking forward to what lies ahead, as we continue our journey toward self-sufficiency and financial independence.