Lessons learned from remodeling

Week 1: On Hoarders and Kidney Sales Dec. 8, 2016

You begin any project, be it planning a trip or gutting a kitchen, wide eyed and hopeful. After a week I’m beginning to realize how frighteningly naive our assumptions going in were. Let’s discuss, shall we?

You don’t realize you (and your spouse, and your kids) are hoarders until you have to box up your crap.

  • Deal Kid found two bags of rocks in our basement. Not stones, not gems, rocks. No idea why.
  • Guidebooks from the 90s? Not terribly helpful. Ditto for the over 200 paperback novels when we have Kindle Unlimited. And the bookshelves they are held upon- which we got for free from someone else trying to clear out their junk.
  • The kids are 13 and almost 10.  Are they gonna pull out the Play Doh anytime, well, ever? Do we need a collection of coloring and activity books? (OK, this one is partly me- I kept the grownup coloring books.)
  • What about the collection of plastic containers that come free with lunchmeat- 1/2 of which have lost their lids? Or the Elmo sippy cups? I confess I found an Elmo sippy cup lurking in my kitchen- which hasn’t fed a toddler in 8 years.

Last Saturday the charity truck picked up over 200 pounds of stuff from our lawn and I felt physically lighter and so proud- and our house didn’t look at all different. We could put out 10 more loads and it wouldn’t make a dent.

On the upside- I cleaned out the gift closet of all the 90% off toys I bought over 13 years (kids over 10 give gift cards). Turns out some of the toys I held on to by accident became collectors items. There’s the farting space suit Phineas and Ferb toy I paid maybe $2 for that went for over $20. I’ve collected over $500 from eBay- and made a huge Toys for Tots donation to boot. 

We (meaning I) will be spending much more time and money on this project than we budgeted.

Piggybacking on the hoarding topic- the mere task of packing up the house to remodel is taking a whole lot more time than I budgeted. Although to be fair I budgeted no time to packing up at all!  In the same vein we didn’t budget the $250/month for the Pod we’ll need to put our stuff in while the bulk of the work is going on in the house. We completely missed that line item. It’s one of many line items we’ll miss in the coming months, I’m sure.

In the near term I’m feeling the time sucks even more keenly than the financial ones. Even though we’re one week into having the money and “officially” remodeling, we’ve been preparing and I’ve been interviewing contractors for about three weeks. I expected at the end of week one we’d have someone actually working inside the house. 

Yeah, not so much. Of the long list of projects we have a contractor hired for exactly one, that spends about 10% of our money. That project, assuming I get the permits, takes place the first week of January. Read that again. Assuming I get the permits. I have to teach myself how to write a permit application for a new bedroom and get it approved in the next three weeks. 

Long story short: the contractor is putting in a basement window and would charge me $500 to get a $90 permit that would only cover the window. I’d still need an additional permit for the bedroom, which a 2nd contractor would charge me an additional $500 to get. $1000 vs. $90 and my time? Worth it, at least on paper. Watch my journals to come to find out how that decision turns out. 

I’ll probably also be doing some of this work myself- I taught myself how to paint and putting in laminate flooring looks fairly straightforward. It just didn’t occur to me that it would be cost effective to DIY with my lack of skills- but I’m gonna have to get up to speed and save where we can.

The contractors and the kidney

I’ve now had eight contractors in the house, with three more coming this weekend. I’ve spoken to another five, and reached out to at least another 15 who never returned my call. The only people who have merited a call are referrals from friends or companies that scored an A on Angie’s List (from which I bought the Gold subscription). So I thought I was being smart. 

Well, of all the people I’ve met so far I’ve had two (from large, well regarded companies) come to the house, take measurements, and two weeks later I’ve yet to even get an estimate. One sent me an estimate that told me what I wanted was simply impossible (without going downstairs to look at the plumbing).

One contractor, who was referred to me by two separate friends, came to the house, spent two hours and I would have hired him in a heartbeat…until he encouraged me not to file for permits. Once I insisted that we needed permits he ran out leaving a Looney Tunes shaped hole in my front door. 

…which leads me to the kidney. The firm, recommended to me by a friend, gave me the warm fuzzies the moment I walked in. The sales rep spent an hour with me in the showroom, then two hours in my house yesterday. As he left he ran into my next door neighbor who was a college friend. To be fair I don’t have the firm quote yet, but I just know. 

What’s the going rate for kidneys these days?

Week 2: Downside Roulette and 29 pounds of Hotel Soap, Dec 20, 2016

What felt like a lot of work over the past week and change has signified nothing. There’s still no progress on the permit and we still don’t have a main contractor hired after 12 interviews. 

Lessons learned from remodeling: Downside Roulette

The main problem is that every contractor has one glaring downside and we have to decide which downside is the easiest to accept. 

  • Kidney guy is supposed to get me a quote today. Absent selling a body part his firm has no downsides. (Update: the quote came in and it’s more like a kidney plus a spleen.)
  • Firm B (we’ll call him Busy guy) we liked quite a bit. He has an A on Angie’s list and even offered us a fifteen percent discount. The quote he gave us was within the realm of reality even before the discount. He owns his own crews who have worked with him for years- one is even father and son. His downside? He can’t start till February and told us our project would take 13 weeks when everyone else is quoting 6-8. 
  • Contender C (we’ll call him Loosey Goosey) was recommend by a friend. We knew he was more of a handyman than a general contractor.  However, we didn’t realize exactly how casual an arrangement that would entail until he showed up to our house with a friend. The friend, who was a carpenter (I think?) then would subcontract out a plumber and electrician. Of course this is a lot less money, but also sends the potential for screwups skyward. 

If you had to pick: would you go with either, keep looking or look into dialysis? 

Lessons learned from remodeling: 29 Pounds of Hotel Soap is an upside?

Well, no and yes. No, because I’m embarrassed to admit that I found 29 pounds of excess hotel soap lying around the house. Yes, because it is outta here, along with three carloads of other various junk. With the Pod arriving on Thursday I’m trying to empty out shelving so I can get it into the unit. I have a rule- nothing goes into the Pod unless we know where it’s going post remodel. 

The kids are home for the next two weeks which makes getting anything done that much more challenging. 

Santa Baby, stick a permit under the tree for me…

Week 3: Progress, Pods and Pregnancy, Dec. 31, 2016

Get some help from your friends.

Progress! I can’t thank you guys enough for your sage advice about the hiring process.  After (per your advice) more vetting and three more home visits to clarify the scope, we just hired Busy Guy. His candor about the timeline carried over into other aspects of the project and won the day.  I still cry a little about not hiring sell-my-kidney-to-afford guy (75% above budget), but his bid came back at kidney + spleen (150% above budget) before we even began work. I just don’t have that many organs left over to sell. Even with busy guy we are going about 50% over our starting budget before we even begin.

Pods are worth every penny.

Pods aren’t cheap: this behemoth in my driveway is $250/month +$200 delivery to and fro. However, having the Pod here announces to the world “remodeling!” and helps keep us me focused. I’ve sent out 16 give back boxes in the last week and have another truck doing a pickup in a week. The Deal Kids are also on board the purge train- Deal Dad not so much…see below. 

Remodeling can feel like pregnancy. 

Like pregnancy, one partner could end up being “remodeled” 24 hours a day and the other might focus on the more fun parts like choosing drawer pulls. If both work outside the house I’d guess it’s whoever has a better sense of organization. When one works from home it’s going to default to that person, and I’m guessing that person is most likely the wife/mom to be.

I’m not meaning to throw Deal Dad (completely) under the bus but I’m seriously in the trenches every minute packing, planning and navigating vendors. Because of his job Deal Dad just isn’t in the weeds- division of labor, I get it. However, it causes a real disconnect. Case in point: a few days ago he asked me a random question about the bedroom closets.  At that moment I felt as if I were six weeks pregnant, rife with morning sickness, while Deal Dad stood over me in the bathroom asking about which colleges our kid might visit. Not even CLOSE to thinking about your @#$#@! closet, dude. 

All in all I talked to over fifteen contractors and had six in the house. I’m feeling good about choosing a contractor but also am in need of a drink after writing a five digit check. I’m grateful remodeling does not share abstinence with pregnancy.  

Lessons Learned from Remodeling: Stock up on scotch.

Week 4: My Faith Tested and ReStored, Jan 12., 2017

Permits are no joke.

Yesterday I failed my first attempt to secure a building permit. Fortunately I only have to get one permit. Busy guy will get the rest. This is because the basement bedroom requires an additional vendor who wants $500 just for their part of the permit (plus Busy Guy still needing to permit the bedroom), while my cost for the entire room permit is $90. So taking this one on seemed like a no brainer. Yeah, not so much. 

I went into the meeting fully prepared- or so I thought.  I hired an architect from Pakistan on Fiverr who drew a complete to scale drawing of the project for $70. (Yes, I know that’s much more than $5, but he got it done in 24 hours and was worth every penny.) I took tons of photos and was nervous, but not too worried. 

The funny thing is that my parts of the application sailed through- the weak link was the materials the sub-contractor sent. The reason for this is (pick one):

The subcontractor sent information so general that it was impossible for the contractor to approve the permit.
Over 100 permits in 2016 sailed through approval with exactly this information and only one failed- in my specific jurisdiction. 

My guess is that the truth lies in the middle like it usually does. Bottom line: my faith in our project was tested and I lost two hours of my life I’m not getting back. In addition, the lack of a permit delays construction at least 10 days until the next available appointment. 

The last thing you want to see after failing your permit application.

Be Nice

To add insult to injury, I arrived home to a nastygram from the zoning commission regarding the pod in our driveway. Turns out you can only have a pod for 30 days unless there is active construction. Of course the zoning inspector sees no active construction nor can find any permits because my permit was just denied.

At this point I poured a very large glass of wine and broke into the Valentine’s chocolate. Properly fortified, I called the zoning inspector and pleaded for mercy. Fortunately, he sympathized with my situation and told me not to worry as long as I kept him informed. My faith was hanging on by a thread, but still hanging on. 


Lessons learned from remodeling: ReStore to the rescue

This morning I just couldn’t face the packing and needed to do something fun. I’m a thrift store junkie when I travel but definitely don’t want to collect any more “stuff”. However, I found a way to get my fix: Habitat for Humanity’s Restore. 

ReStore accepts donations from hotel remodels- most times I visit I see a LOT of stuff I recognize. If you want to furnish your home like a Courtyard Inn, complete with the gold framed abstract poster art, ReStore is your place. 

However once you get to the back room you find a treasure trove of leftovers from home builds and remodels. Since we live in a pricey area I’m always hopeful about what I’ll find. Today I hit the jackpot.

If you watch HGTV you might know Flip or Flop, the show where (formerly) married couple Tarek and Christina remodel homes for resale. (I’m hoping these two crazy kids work it out.) Every episode Christina shows up with a piece of mosaic like the two pictured above and Tarek rolls his eyes at how much her extravagant backsplash will add to the budget. Spoiler alert: he always gives in. 

My eyes lit up when I saw a box of six of the top tile and eleven of the one just above. Six and Eleven Square feet are the perfect amount for a primo shower box or backsplash. I priced them out quickly and found these exact tiles for $27-$30 for a single one foot square of tile. 

I grabbed the tiles and put them in my cart then asked an employee how much they cost. He replied, “ten dollars”. 70% off? Sweet! Even if we only use one print I can definitely get $10/tile on Craigslist for the rest.

But wait, there’s more. I got to the register and saw the total bill: “$18.04”. If a different employee from the one who told me “$10 dollars” rang me up I would have double-checked the price.  However, it was the same guy and we chatted all the way up to the register. Instead of $10/tile the price was $10/Box! I paid and went on my way…realizing I just bought $510 of tile for 96.5 percent off. 

Faith ReStored. 

Week 5: The Pit of Despair, Jan. 20, 2017

I can’t imagine anyone who has done a remodeling hasn’t fallen into the pit of despair at least once during the process. I’m in free fall as I type with no bottom in sight. 

Objectively there’s no reason this should be the week as it’s no better or worse than any of the ones before. I found some amazing deals on high end tile at ReStore for our bathroom on Monday. Today I go back in armed with every document the permit inspector could ever ask for so we should be good to go on the basement next week. And tomorrow we’re holding a yard sale to monetize a bit of this crap lying around.

So what’s the problem?  

Well, it’s a perfect storm of minutae colliding with my usual winter meltdown.  Anyone who lives in the Mid-Atlantic knows that we go for stretches in winter without seeing the sun that can last weeks. We are in one now. We haven’t seen a lick of snow, just this drizzly gray junk. 

Deal Dad knows my mood is setting in when he sees the Vinylation snuggie emerge from the bottom of the closet:

Harbinger of things to come.

He then judges how bad things are by the “snuggie radius”: how far from the house will I travel in this fashion travesty? So far I haven’t ventured out but it’s a matter of days before the Vinylmation snuggie makes it to 7-Eleven.

You really need the escape hatch

In a normal year this is the time Deal Dad opens the escape hatch in the form of a weekend of childcare and a budget of whatever miles I have lying around. The rule is “just don’t spend any cash”.  In years past I escaped to Florida, Mexico City, and London (accidentally, I was aiming for Paris) at the very time I needed it. 

This year the escape hatch is closed. The reason is not so much financial- as I mentioned the trip doesn’t cost cash- as that I just need to be here every minute of every day. Because I’m pregnant with remodeling. In a house that is completely torn apart and packed but where not a nail has been hammered.

If anything in any room were in progress I would at least be able to lean into the forward motion. However all I see around me is chaos for chaos’ sake. I have a pretty low bar when it comes to organization- heck I used to store Amazon pallets in my living room- but this is beyond the pale. 

My living room is stacked eight deep with laminate to go into the basement. Deal Girl’s clothes and dresser are in our room- because it will be her room. But we are still in our room because what will be our room is still currently Deal Kid’s room. Deal Kid is still in his room because his room will be in the basement which is not yet a bedroom because the permit inspector declined our egress window permit. Which doesn’t matter because the basement isn’t completely packed up anyway even though I trip over a box every time I try to get to the washing machine.

And deeper and deeper and deeper I fall…

Please tell me this gets better. Even if it isn’t true. 

Week 6: Mid-Century Modern Travel Hacking, Jan. 27, 2017

This week I want to take a slightly different direction and apply lessons I’ve learned from remodeling to travel hacking. Many travel hacking skills are actually life skills and it’s fun to see how they work in other settings. 

 In 1995 pine and birch furniture was all the rage and everything darker than flaxseed ended up at the dump. Because Deal Dad and I were poor newlyweds we couldn’t afford new “fancy” bleached out wood furniture. Our choices were limited to either new plywood furniture or hitting up the garage sales. We didn’t know much about life but did know this:

Quality fixer-upper is better than shiny and new mediocre. 

Fortunately we just happened to like the look of teak at the exact time no one else did. We furnished almost our entire house in 50s and 60s castoffs from estate sales and flea markets. Sure the pieces needed work- drawer handles replaced, a good polish- but the bones were all solid.  I’m sure we didn’t pay more than $150 for any of it, including our adorable Danish nesting chair dining room set. Our two large fruitwood bedroom dressers, one with a matching mirror? $40 each. 

What was thrift store in 1995 is now Mid-Century Modern

Over twenty years later we love our furniture but now the entire world does too. Mid-Century Modern replica furniture features heavily at Pottery Barn and many other mid to high end furniture retailers. Entire pages of the West Elm catalog look like the living room from Bewitched.   Authentic pieces? I recently saw our $150 dining room for $1500 at One King’s Lane. 

Twenty years from now our furniture will still be solid. Will it be in vogue? Who knows? Maybe pine will come back. Bottom line is that we won’t care because we’ve certainly gotten good value. Good value and a personalized home that won’t be a carbon copy of everyone else’s. 

The plywood furniture bought in 1995? It’s probably been ground into sawdust by now. 

What does this have to do with travel hacking?

Quite a bit, actually. Let’s review: 

Quality fixer-upper is better than shiny and new mediocre. 

I see so many travel hackers focusing their travels around shiny and new mediocre: places where only chain hotels are located. I’m putting my citizenship in the miles and points blogger nation at risk but here’s the deal: some of my most memorable hotel stays have been in independent properties or apartment rentals.  

Of course I’m not saying every chain hotel is plywood, but even Park Hyatt diamond breakfasts lose their patina when you realize what you’re giving up to use their benefits: the ability to travel to 2/3 of the planet. If your budget will only get you a mediocre chain property, maybe it’s time to look at a fixer-upper. 

Non chain hotels take more time to locate. Convertible points to redeem for non-chain hotels may be harder to collect. However, the time you spend up front will pay off with a more memorable trip in the end. 

What was thrift store in 1995 is now Mid-Century Modern

Cuba may be the Mid-Century Modern of 2017 travel. However, Cuba may also be the pine furniture of 2017 travel. Of course your trip won’t go out of style the way stenciling ivy on your kitchen walls did, but Cuba may be trendy for the mere reason that it’s trendy. We won’t know until the boil goes down to a simmer. 

I know what I’m talking about.  I visited in 2000 when Havana was firmly in the thrift store column. Many of the trip reports I see carry a whiff of the poverty is a gift to tourism vibe.  I’m not telling you this as a brag, I’m sharing more as a warning that you’re firmly in the middle of the trend. Your trip will be affected accordingly. More importantly I ask you to examine if you’re suffering from FOMO. 

Other destinations are always in the trendy column: LondonParisRomeNewYorkHawaiiDisney. I lump them together because I tend to hear them together. I’ve been to all six and enjoyed five of them.  However, only two- New York and Disney- are in my opinion so unique in their category that no other place I’ve visited ranks above it. And in the Disney category Tokyo ranks above Orlando so maybe only New York is IMHO truly unique. 

I’m not saying I don’t like London, Paris or Hawaii (you know how I feel about Rome). It’s just that if I were to choose a British Isles city, I’d probably pick Belfast. France? Marseille. Beautiful Island chain? The Canaries.  Italy? Pretty much any second city. 

In other words- I look for good bones that may be a bit rough around the edges. Rough around the edges doesn’t necessarily mean challenging or dangerous- for instance the Canaries are basically Europe’s Florida. I mean just a bit more challenging to book and visit than the average American is willing to do. 

Will the destination ever be in vogue? Who knows? Bottom line is that we won’t care because we will have certainly gotten good value. Good value and a personalized trip that won’t be a carbon copy of everyone else’s. 

Week 7: A Project is Your Ladder out of the Pit, Feb. 8, 2017

A couple of weeks ago I shared my descent into the pit of despair. I laugh today at that girl’s lack of awareness of the vermin creeping around the bend. 

Have you ever played the game where you write your life as a TV sitcom?

Scene: 8AM Monday morning, The Deal House, which is in complete disarray. Every single room of the house is either packed to the rafters with moving boxes or completely under construction. Eight construction workers go about the business of completing a full gut remodel. Tejano music mingles with buzzsaw in the background.

In the family room both Deal Kids huddle around the only TV watching Gravity Falls. (They are home due to a school holiday). Both kids’ heads are wrapped in plastic and covered in olive oil, as they both have lice they are waiting to have removed by the…

lice removal professional, who is currently (also in the family room since it is the least un-inhabitable room in the house) removing lice eggs from Deal Mommy’s hair. 

Deal Mommy: (talking to lead contractor in tortured Spanish): “For the downstairs shower the tile pattern is white, then blue, then white, then the backsplash, then white, then blue, then white. The backsplash piece should line up with the middle of the shampoo box…”

AND SCENE.

Anyone who has dealt with lice (and that’s pretty much any parent with a kid older than preschool) knows that it’s not a one day problem. Even with the lice lady getting rid of the worst you’ve still got to wash EVERYTHING.  Then you’ve got to deal with two weeks of hair smelling like salad dressing and primate grooming routines.  

A couple of days ago I just hit the wall and needed to lie down and cry. Unfortunately, my need for a crying spot coincided with every sheet in the house being in the dryer. I had to make my bed so I could cry in it, then remake it when I was done because I had lice. That may be the most pathetic sentence I have ever typed. 

A project is your ladder out of the pit

However today I’m much better. It could be thanks to the uncharacteristically sunny day but I’m more inclined to give credit to the project I threw myself into: rescuing a mid-century modern table I found at Restore for $30. 

“Mid-century modern” makes me sound way more Nate Berkus than I deserve. I mentioned last week how as newlyweds we accidentally bought mid-century modern furniture. Over the last twenty years I’ve learned to spot diamonds in the rough and found a drop leaf side table that, under 100 layers of lacquer, had real potential. I saw that it definitely contained “real” wood, not plywood, and that the inlay was inset, not painted on. The drop-leafs also were in good shape and looked original- all good signs. I couldn’t figure out what kind of wood it was because of all the staining, but for $30 figured I didn’t have anything to lose. 

Another $20 in stain remover later and I ended up with a lovely but neglected side table. The stain was so thick I needed two applications of remover, sanding, and oiling to get to the wood.  I’m still not sure what kind of wood it is- leaning towards red oak, cherry, or walnut as opposed to teak or maple. Either way it will  totally fit in to our aesthetic. And I couldn’t buy a coffee table at Walmart for $50. 

But it wasn’t about the money we saved

It was about getting the heck out of my head and using my hands. I needed to focus on something tangible, something with a concrete goal I could attain with a reasonable amount of time. Something I could point to as an accomplishment. 

It was about finding a ladder out of the pit. 

Week 8: Nobody Plays Their B-Side on Facebook, Mar. 3, 2017

Nobody plays their B-Side on Facebook.” I heard this recently on NCIS (which has gotten its groove back- thanks Trevor for the reminder).  The sentiment is both simple and profound.

For you Millennials, I’ll explain. Back in ancient times records had two sides: an A side and a B-side. The A side was the hit. The B side was usually a throw-away song nobody played. Notable exceptions to the B-Side rule include Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive”. Do you even know of another song by Gloria Gaynor?

Today at the National Gallery of Art I saw a beautifully haunting example of how celebrities fall prey to this syndrome. This instant Marilyn Monroe let slip her B side speaks volumes. Richard Avedon caught it on film (and Vik Muniz shattered it into puzzle pieces).  I find it more mesmerizing than any of her straddling a Subway grate.

I wonder if Marilyn Monroe were alive today if her Twitter feed would look like Kim Kardashian’s. I’d like to think not, but I fear it might.

I blame the selfie.

This will sound like (insert crotchety voice here) “Back in my day…” but the invention of the selfie has taken A-Siding to an entirely new level. I took advantage of a recent Jetsmarter promotion where they handed out free private jet flights from DC to New York to anyone who signed up.

Sure, I made sure a good shot (or three) of me made it onto social media enjoying the experience. But I also enjoyed the experience. The twenty-somethings on the flight took it to an entirely different level. They treated the entire flight like a photo shoot! iPhones and duck faces seemed to be their entire range of focus. It was as if it wasn’t documented from every angle, it didn’t happen. 

I’ve talked a good game recently about avoiding FOMO but I fear that I’m guilty of perpetuating it in others. Over here I think we’re better than most at the “real life” part of family travel and real life. But it’s still heavy on A-Side. It’s not all sunsets and private jets even if that’s what is all over my Instagram feed. 

There’s real life and then there’s real life.

The remodel has certainly stripped off the veneer of my polished A-side. If anything will expose your B-side it’s having your house uninhabitable for months on end coupled with illness and vermin. I’d share that on Instagram, but the lice just wouldn’t sit still for a selfie.

We all have that friend or family member who would rather die then let slip her (it’s usually a her) B-side. The one who seems to curate and merchandise every aspect of her life. The one who seems to have the perfect family and the perfect house and the perfect life presented in that perfect holiday card.

I have enough experience to peel back the onion when I see a perfect family photo. I imagine 5 seconds earlier the kids were screaming at each other and Mom and or dad were screaming at them to stop screaming. Flip the record over if what someone shows you appears a bit too produced. 

We all have a B-side.

Every once in a while, it turns out to be a surprise hit.

Week 9: Sunk cost fallacy and the Sleep Number bed, March 10, 2017

Joe has been on fire lately– check him out if you haven’t yet. I’ve wanted to respond to a bunch of what he’s written and today want to address the sunk cost fallacy. If you’re not familiar with the term a sunk cost fallacy happens when you attach too much value to an item/experience simply by the virtue of the fact that it’s already paid for. It’s an epidemic in the miles/points game, but not exclusive to it. I just realized Deal Dad have been operating under a sunk cost fallacy for 12 years. Exhibit A? The Sleep Number Bed.  I have to give a proper sleep number bed review to demonstrate my point. 

Sleep number bed review: sunk cost fallacy in action.
The bane of our existence.

Sleep Number Bed Review

We ordered a queen size Sleep Number bed twelve years ago when we moved into this house. Our excitement for the $900 purchase waned the moment it arrived and we realized what it actually is: two air mattresses surrounded by a cover. It arrives sadly deflated so your first job is to pump it up and figure out your number. After twelve years of ownership neither Deal Dad nor I could tell you our number. 

However the lack of digit specificity is the least of the Sleep Number bed’s problems. The main selling point of the Sleep Number bed is that two partners can have two different sleeping styles and two different settings. That is indeed true.

What they don’t tell you is that when two partners have two different sleeping styles and two different settings the bed is at two entirely different heights! The experience is akin to being in a European hotel room with two different twin mattresses smushed together and being called a king. There was at least an inch drop between Deal Dad’s and my side of the bed. Not to get too TMI, but this is not an ideal situation for a married couple. 

The marital disharmony was even not the worst feature of the Sleep Number bed.  That prize goes to the massive jolt the sleeping partner gets when the other one gets up because the air mattress is trying to re-establish equilibrium. Add a kid or 60 pound dog to the mix and it’s a recipe for spending the night in a bounce house. 

And the sleep quality wasn’t great, either.

The Sunk Cost Fallacy

Thinking rationally the thing we should have done is cut our losses and bought a new bed. But we didn’t. Why? Because we spent $900 on the sucker. Only with the remodel did we give ourselves permission to chuck the sleep number. And even then it was only an American Express $100 off offer combined with a coupon code combined with a need to hit min spend for a signup bonus that made me pull the trigger on a Cocoon by Sealy

Within seconds of sinking into the new mattress I berated myself for holding on to that #@$@# Sleep Number bed for so long. Why the self-flagellation? The sunk cost fallacy in action.

Are you punishing yourself with an ill fitting item or experience because you’ve already paid (too much) for it?

Let. It. Go. 

Thank me later. (And feel free to share your story..this is a safe space.) 

Week 10: The Expense I Hadn’t Considered, March 20, 2017

I mentioned at the beginning that we WAY underestimated the budget. As it is we’ll probably spend double what we initially thought. Some expenses are self-inflicted: we keep adding things to the to-do list. Some I should have thought of: like the pod rental. And some have come along not so much for the house, but for us.

Enter The Sanity Saving Mattress Run

The workers began demolishing our house just after Martin Luther King Day. We’re now entering month three of our house being completely torn asunder. The living room currently acts as a storage shed for twenty five boxes of hardwood. Deal Girl hasn’t had a proper bedroom in six weeks. And the rest of the house is in various stages of disarray. Deal Dad and the kids notice, but not the way I do living in the house 24 hours a day. 

The sanity saving mattress runs (SSMR) began as favors from friends who ran for Hyatt status in Jan and Feb. I have a Category 1 Hyatt not ten minutes from the house so I logged over twenty nights in two months.  We slept in the room about half the time, but I utilized the quiet during the day every chance I could. 

One day it was a real lifesaver as Deal Kid had the flu. The last thing he needed on top of a 102 degree fever was active construction!  The SSMR came to the rescue so he could sleep out the fever in a quiet and clean bedroom- even if it was bedroom #702. 

Now I’m going for my own status challenge with Marriott. It’s going great: for $82 I can get a room Friday nights at a full service property. Since their lounge closes at Noon on Fridays they give a full breakfast for Saturday, but if I can get there before 10AM I also get breakfast on Friday. Then I can work all day Friday, pick up the kids for a swim and slumber party, and have a great breakfast before we head home.  That $82 also gains us over 4,000 Marriott points thanks to a property specific points bonus. 

So now I have a line item in the budget now for weekly SSMRs. You might want to set aside some points or money for the same if your remodel goes on for more than a few weeks.  Veterans: have you done an SSMR?  Please share in the comments. 

Week 11: Analysis Paralysis, April 1, 2017

Elaine gave me some great advice on Week 5: There are some things you can lean into now: decisions. Later, decision fatigue may be so severe that you can’t decide what you like on your pizza, let alone what hardware you need on cabinets, which garbage disposal you want, or how far above the cooktop your exhaust hood should sit. Later has arrived.

At first shopping was fun: stalking Restore locations around the DC Beltway morphed into a treasure hunt. In Frederick, Maryland I found our $25/sq ft retail backsplash for $4/sq ft. In Manassas, VA I found a $200 lighting fixture for the living room for $20. Two weeks later I discovered the exact match-brand, model, everything- dining room chandelier 20 miles away in Leesburg for $60. 

As weeks pass shopping is decidedly less fun. Each decision becomes both more mundane and more difficult. Try to select a shade of beige paint. Seriously. You’ll quickly descend into a rabbit hole of “greige” (yes, grey-beige is actually a thing), mayonnaise, song of summer, spirit whisper, bagel, likable sand… How on earth am I supposed to pick between moongaze and dainty lace?

Paint color naming must be where marketing hacks go to die.

What I didn’t expect (but Elaine did warn me about) is the analysis paralysis spillover into the rest of my life. Decisions big and small give me a headache. The kids ask me what’s for dinner and I just shrug- I can’t even begin to think about it! 

Even planning travel- which is usually about as fun as it gets- has become a chore. Camp Mom 2017 is 90 days away and I haven’t booked a thing besides the main plane tickets. I’ve researched myself blue in the face but can’t pull the trigger-deciding just takes too much energy!

Some of the travel decisions are as hair-splitting as one billion shades of beige.

For instance: I cashed in Marriott points for a seven night certificate and points towards the Southwest Companion pass. In Santiago there’s a Marriott and a Renaissance- both category five- that are right next to each other. On paper Renaissance usually beats Marriott but the Santiago Marriott has more suites-meaning more potential for an upgrade.  Or maybe we don’t want seven nights in Santiago. We have five weeks but I have so many other places in mind, too. 

Then there’s Iguazu. How many nights? Do we suck up the SPG points for the Sheraton or save a ton by staying further out? It is worth paying the Brazil visa fee x4 to see the other side? And what about the risk of park closure? 

If anyone has insight here- please help me out. My brain hurts!

Week 12: Beware Pierre, April 25, 2017

As a child of the 70s Maurice Sendak and Carole King’s Really Rosie is burned into my brain. Lately I’ve been thinking about Pierre. If you’re not familiar, Pierre is a little boy who “doesn’t care”.

Pierre doesn’t care about what he eats or what he wears or where he goes. However, his apathy goes much further:

Now as the night began to fall
A hungry lion paid a call
He looked Pierre right in the eye
And asked him if he’d like to die
Pierre said I don’t care!
I can eat you, don’t you see?
I don’t care!
And you will be inside of me
I don’t care!
Then you will never have to bother
I don’t care!
With a mother and a father
I don’t care!
Is that all you have to say?
I don’t care!
Then I’ll eat you, if I may
I don’t care!
So the lion ate Pierre

Pierre’s ennui turned him into lion chow.

Beware Pierre

Three months of constant chaos has turned me into Pierre. What was analysis paralysis has morphed into full blown “I don’t care”. 

Yesterday Deal Girl asked me when the house would be complete. I laughed and told her that I honestly expected that we would live this way for the rest of our lives- and I wasn’t joking. I’ve gotten to the point where I’m so accustomed to not having a kitchen (three weeks now), to living out of boxes (12 weeks and counting) to items being ordered and backordered, to us adding new projects or new urgent items arising that I don’t see a finish line. Ever.

And I just don’t care.

The problem really arises when Pierre rears his ugly head in other areas of my life. “I don’t care” is pervasive, fatiguing, and not at all fun to live with- as I’m sure Deal Dad can attest.

Thankfully- as always- travel comes to the rescue. Today I’m off on an extended road trip to Orlando. Two weeks out of here fixes any ailment- and I keep hearing promises that the kitchen might finally be done when I get back.

Not that I believe it.

Have you had to face Pierre? How did you send him away?

Week 13: Peking Duck, May 13, 2017

Our Accidental New Skillset

Today I wanted to share what I’ve learned about taste and style. We’ve become accidental designers in the process of remodeling our house. Going in we had NO IDEA how much would be involved in this process. From creating wall tile patterns in powerpoint to sourcing materials at Restore we’ve basically had to define an aesthetic that fits our “style”.  

Not to mention explaining the concept of a European wet room in a 1950s Wonder Years ranch house to our bewildered contractor. To our contractor’s credit- and with much handholding- he pulled it off! Two city inspectors said they had never seen anything like it. 

Most of my Restore runs have secured great success- my contractor estimates we saved $5000 on the bathroom supplies alone. The kitchen backsplash goes for $22/sq ft at Wayfair. I paid $5.

However, I’ve had a couple of fails. I found some amazing pendant lights but upon closer inspection vital pieces were missing and couldn’t be replaced. I’ll probably be able to sell the shades for the $125 I paid but I needed to find another set. 


Turns out a really high-end retailer had just dropped off about 100 lights to Restore and included in that lot were 3 pendants in perfect shape: exactly what we need.
Our tastes run towards mid-century modern so I was surprised to fall in love with these Tiffany-esque pendant lights. At $65/each they were a steal.

But then I thought about the rest of the room. The dining room chandelier is chrome. The sink is chrome. Would these lights look out of place, even if they are beautiful? 

Peking Duck

That’s when I remembered our Peking Duck family room. I inherited a collection of antique Chinese pottery that is currently proudly displayed…next to a Donald Duck piñata.

I think the lights will do nicely.

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