One Sixty: Coupfusion

Coupfusion

We received in the mail on Monday a Home Depot coupon. 10% off when you put something on your Home Depot card. Yay - since we're always needing stuff - it's great to be able to save something, ya know?

So last night - due to my exhaustion from a long walk with my mummy bread and the fact that our neighbor Rich was over doing drywall with Mike - I just could not bring myself to sponge. But we had the coupon.... and Mike really wanted to get the sonotubes and concrete for our porch footings. Great! Perfect timing.

Before heading out we called our carpenter, who knew how many 80lb bags of concrete were needed to fill at 4' by 10" sonotube - turns out it's 3-4 bags, times the 6 sonotubes we need - equals 18-24 bags. We decided to get 20 bags.

With this info in hand, we grab the coupon and jet over to the DeepHo. As we're pulling into a parking space, I get a weird feeling, and pull out the coupon.

"Coupon good 4/17/08-4/20/08"

It's the 15th. THE 15th.

I nearly died as I read the dates to Mike. He just gave me that look of "Why didn't you look at that before we left the house." and "I don't care what that coupon says, we're getting this stuff NOW."

The real kicker is that we have plans from Thursday - Monday and there's no time between the 17th and the 20th to hit the DeepHo.

We went back and forth for a couple minutes on what to do - and finally decided to purchase just the sonotubes today and Mike would go on Friday right after work and use the coupon to get all the concrete.

What a pain! Coupfusion to the n'th degree. But I hate not using a coupon because we need to buy stuff anyway!!!

Blog Story

My now husband Mike and I purchased this quaint home back in spring of 2004 - our first home - and, being the handy folks we are, expected to have the entire thing renovated in about a year or so.

And here we still are... renovating away.

This house needed a complete overhaul. Its plaster walls were uninsulated, its attic floor covered in 2" of bat guano, its basement - dirt and snakes, its exterior - asbestos siding, and lead paint windows in every room. The electric had not been updated and light sockets hung bare from the ceiling. Plumbing featured cast iron radiators - and only one for the entire upstairs.

We began by gutting almost the entire house from top to bottom. (sans bathroom - we needed to pee) We rebuilt the entire upstairs, with a new floor (not new carpet or wood - the once unstable framing underneath) and turned 3 small rooms into two. We reinvented the downstairs by turning a closet into a hallway and eliminating interior exterior windows and doors from old half-assed additions.

New insulation, windows, electrical wiring (including phone and CAT-5 internet), plumbing and baseboards, and drywall were all added.

We purchased kitchen cabinets from a yard sale. (None existed previously.) Our families helped us replace and purchase new appliances including the once also missing washer & dryer.

Then we had the entire house lifted - straight into the air - dug out the dirt, and had a real basement foundation poured. We updated our oil tank and burner and created heating zones.

Outside, we took down trees and planted grass. We dug out an awkward hill to create a 2nd part to the driveway and used the rocks our house once sat on as a retaining wall. We electrified and repainted the garage.

And of course, we spent many an hour on finish work like paint, trim, closet doors, lighting fixtures, hardwood floors, curtain rods, dimmer switches, and many other things everyone else takes for granted. We are still working to complete all this final finishing, but happy to report that we are FINALLY nearing completion of all little things in all rooms!

In 2008 we began overhauling the exterior by creating a new french door entryway and building a farmer's porch and garage addition. We replaced our roof and then stripped off our siding and replaced with new clapboards. We then planted two new flowering trees and a maple in the front yard - our first major landscape purchases. I'm happy to report that here in 2011, the porch is nearing completion and the back yard is on the road to recovery with some new loam and grass. More plantings soon to come!

In 2012 we plan to attack the last MAJOR (emphasis on major) job in the house - the dreaded BATHROOM! We plan to first add a second bathroom in the basement. Then, demolish our current bathroom and rebuild it, adding a second bathroom on top for the upstairs.

And that pretty much brings you up to date. The battle continues day to day as we try and complete everything.

3 comments:

Rebe said...: With all those bags (and knowing deepho never carries big bags) of concrete, would it be cheaper to get one of those swirly trucks to bring in a batch? I'm sure there are other little projects you could find for any excess concrete.; 1:10 PM
kitrainia said...: We thought about that - but ruled it out... I can't remember why. I remember that Mike had talked to our carpenter about it. Hmmm, I'll have to ask him.; 3:39 PM
Anonymous said...: Typically concrete companies, i.e. the "swirly truck" won't deliver unless you order at least 1 yard of concrete. This is much more (volume and money) than 20 x 60 lbs bags of concrete. There may be a company that mixes concrete on site (Dial-A-Mix?) and thus can provide much smaller quantities of concrete, but this is typically quite a bit more expensive than bags.; 4:46 PM

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Coupfusion

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