SheFly, your story had me laughing with coffee in my mouth. It's really not funny, though. You were lucky! Where in Vermont is the camp?
Emily, my DH is very handy and has done a lot of the electrical/plumbing work in th house, and other smaller jobs. He can fix anything. He remodeled 2 out of the 3.5 baths himself. But, we don't have the tolerance to live in half finished rooms for long periods of time, so the big remodel was contracted out. The kitchen/powder room was 6 wks. and the master bath was 4-5 weeks, with about 2 weeks in between the 2. Up until we lived here, our 2 houses in AZ were brand new, so no real work there, except yard work and painting. Our first house here was about 10 years old and we did a few minor things, like flooring and carpeting, changing cabinet hardware. We couldn't afford anything else. This house was also shoddily built, but it looked OK. The house we bought after that (where we lived before this one) was about a year old when we bought it, and was owned by a single guy who was never home. The neighbors threw a bag of fertilizer on the lawn, to give him a hint (Stepford neighborhood). DH spent tons of time on the landscaping/lawn, and then when we started cycling, we got a lawn service and he only did what he wanted to. We painted, got window shades, finished the basement (not ourselves), and had a rather elaborate screened porch (2 rooms) built, only 2 years before we moved. In retrospect, we've thought about what we would have to be doing if we had stayed there. We definitely would have done a kitchen remodel, though it would not have been as elaborate as this one. The windows were starting to rot, too. The house probably would have been paid off, but it's lost about 150K worth of value, maybe more, since we sold it at the peak in 2005. The house we have now, is estimated to be worth more than we bought it for; not that this matters... but generally people will pay more to live in this town, so I think it will be more helpful in the end, when we are ready to downsize. We've been talking about this more, as there's a lot of buzz in the press about 1) how people my age can't find townhomes in the suburbs, and 2) there's a housing boom in the greater Boston area. People are bidding hundreds of thousands of dollars over the asking prices of homes. My son, who has been in his house 1.5 years, has had 2 real estate agents stop by and ask if he would put his house up for sale! This is in an inner suburb, on a busy street, with no garage, up a steep hill!
