Squeeeeze!

Budget time, folks. Call me a dweeb, but I actually love busting out my laptop and firing up Excel. There’s something about a nicely organized, highly functional spreadsheet that helps me sleep at night…. aaahhhh…. Ryan and I took a good long look at Haywood and calculated how much it would cost to do our must-happen renovation items before or directly following our move.

This mostly DIY list includes:
paint, and lots of it
replacing the “frat house” carpet on the stairs and second floor with hardwoods that matched the current first floor
knocking out the wall that sealed up the original access to the third story, put in place when the one-bedroom apartment was created
did I mention paint?
installing a gate so The Animal can happily guard her territory without causing total neighborhood mayhem

After consulting a contractor and a doing a whole lot of blog searching and Googling, we settled on a solid chunk of change. This chunk was permanently subtracted from the down payment money because we knew if we dipped into it and knocked items off our must-happen list, we would not be as happy with our purchase. Thanks to Ryan’s mean negotiating skills (me=possum, Ryan=Herb the English bulldog), we didn’t have to dip into our chunk at all. Which means everything we wanted to accomplish pre-move in can be paid for! That is, of course, assuming everything goes as planned… I hear you chuckling under your breath, Dad.

Some may scoff at my overly detailed budget, but I think it truly helps to break each cost down to the nuts and bolts (literally). Nobody likes doing the walk of shame from the Home Depot exit doors back to your car, wondering what the crud that doo-dad you just paid $37.98 for even does. Accordingly, my budget provides for roller covers, caulk, a ladder, primer and each different kind of paint among many other things. This helps me make quick decisions right there in the aisle: masking paper and a big roll of tape win out over more expensive drop cloths that perform the same task. There are columns for what each should cost, a column for me to enter actual cost post-purchase and a column to show the difference (this column is the most gratifying: I’m $19.88 under budget for a ladder! Sa-weet!).

Is your renovation budget as detailed as mine? I’m already feeling the crunch in my paint budget. Did you find you under-budgeted on something important?

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