I Have To Buy What??

Why? WHY have you infested my yard??

Ah, things you didn’t know you needed when moving into a house.

Michelle over at Making Sense of Cents did a post yesterday on how she plans on upping the curb appeal of her home. Now there’s a topic I can get behind! I purchased my home in foreclose in November of 2009. It never really occurred to me that if the house was trashed on the inside, it was probably also trashed on the outside as well. Autumn evenings hide all sorts of gardening sins…

Spring finally rolled around and it finally occurred to me what I had purchased. I bought THAT house. You know the one; you drive down a street of perfectly manicured homes, just to see the blight of the neighbourhood. The source of all dandelions. The yellow lawn that causes an ombre effect on the green lawns beside it. I had my work cut out for me.

My neighbours thanked me when they saw me doing yard work that first spring.

Not only that, but with leaves on the trees I could see that despite having been planted at the same time, my tree was over a foot shorter than every other tree on the block. The suckers shooting up around the trunk were up into the branches in terms of height. The poor thing was literally dying for some nutrients. It didn’t flower the first year I lived here. The second year it flowered on one side only (the uphill side, nearest the fertilizer spike), which was kinda funny to look at.

Having moved from my parents acreage to an apartment for university, it didn’t really occur to me until that spring that there were all sorts of things you needed in a house that you don’t use when you live in an apartment or condo. As such, I had none of them. These aren’t necessarily 100% needs, but most people will probably find they need them at some point in time or another if they try to do anything with their yard. The ones in green I’ve already had to purchase:

• lawn mower
• weed wacker
• leaf rake
• gardening rake
• thatching rake
• trim edger
• shovel
• ladder
• snow shovel
• ice scraper
• pruning shears
• weed killer – anything from vinegar to Killex.
• buckets or a wheel barrel
• lawn fertilizer
• tree/bush fertilizer
• grass seed
• hose
• sprinkler
• spray attachments
• watering can
• assorted small gardening tools, seeds, topsoil, etc…

The list goes on and on. I hobbled by the first year partly on the generosity of others. My parents gave me a gift card to Canadian Tire which I used for gardening supplies. One neighbour gave me his old lawn mower when he purchased a new one, and I borrowed his weed wacker on occasion as well. The lawn mower got me through the first year and a half, but it died a smoky electrical death last summer. That lead to me purchasing a reel mower – no gas or electricity needed (and therefore no more smoke). There were two kinda crappy snow shovels in the house when I moved in, which I still haven’t replaced yet. Kinda dragging that out…

When Michelle wrote that she was thinking of possibly setting a $500 budget for yard work, my first reaction was “are you nuts??” *insert scrooge reaction here* Then I actually thought about it. I’ve easily spent that much on my yard so far, I’m not done yet, and I’ve been doing the best I can to keep my costs down. $20 for grass seed here and $30 for tools there adds up very quickly. You put painting, fixing a lawn and planting a garden all into one bucket, and it’ll easily be $500. Easily.

She’s got me thinking now about the things I want to do for my curb appeal this year. I have to keep the cost down, especially in the spring while I’m still paying off debt, but there’s quite a list of things I need/want to do.

• I need to keep working on my weed eradication *free*
• I need to start trying to revitalize the grass in my back yard *~$50*
• I’d like to mirror the herb bed I built on one side of my sidewalk onto the other side as well *~ $50*
• I’d like to plant a bush in front of the house *free if my friend still wants to split hers*
• I’d like to put capstones on the trim around my tree *~$100*
• I’d like to repaint my porches *~$150*
• I need to paint my fence *~$100*

And what do you know, I’m already almost at $500.

If you live in a house, what did you have to purchase when you first moved in? What would you encourage a first time home owner to buy to get them started? Am I missing anything on the list?

Recommended Reading: Half vs. Amazon vs. Ebay: Which Is Best For Selling Your Books?

Procrastination Thursday – February 16, 2012

I’m cold right now.

When I moved into my house, it was drafty as a sieve. The house was built during a boom, so the quality of the construction leaves something to be desired. No one should have left this job site feeling proud.

My kitchen was ridiculously cold my first winter here. I have some suspicion that my wall closest to my sink isn’t properly insulated, but that was minor compared to the big issue: the back door.

Now I didn’t actually notice the problem until the following summer, when I realized I could see daylight even though my door was closed and locked. The door didn’t even touch the weather stripping. After spending a few minutes assessing the situation, I came to an unfortunate conclusion: the door wasn’t framed properly. When it’s closed, the door sits at a somewhat cockeyed angle to the frame. The door touched the weather stripping at the top, but at the bottom it was a good inch and a half away. As a result, the weather stripping was effectively useless.

I didn’t have either the money or knowledge of how to fix the door at the time, so I did what I could. I tore out the existing weather stripping and rigged up a new one. Normally when you close a door, the weather stripping sits between the door and the stop like a weather stripping sandwich. Since my bread slices didn’t meet on this sandwich, I had to come up with something else. I ended up buying a strip of sticky backed foam weather stripping, and stuck it on a diagonal down the jamb so the door touched it when it closed.

As a temporary solution, it works. However, it does have it’s issues. When you’re using the sticky backed stripping in its normal configuration, the closed door helps push the strip into the stop, which reinforces the sticky connection. When it’s on the side of the jamb however, the door is pushing on the side of the strip, which makes the sticky part want to peel off.

As a result I now have a ~4″ piece of stripping at the bottom of the door that has peeled off and decided it doesn’t want to stick anymore. Hello again draft. Today’s task is going to be to glue the little strip back in place so it blocks the cold air again.

What are you working on today?

If you do participate in Procrastination Thursday please credit Digging Out And Up and link back here. Thanks a lot!

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Double Challenge Month – Weekly Update #3

This week I was decidedly less energetic than last week. I just felt like I was dragging. Combine that with a frustrating bout of insomnia, and you have kind of a slack decluttering. I tried.

The disastrous before shots:

My living room had turned into the equivalent of a multipurpose catch all zone. I opened mail there, ate dinner there, read there, blogged there, sewed there, you name it. On occasion I’ve even fallen asleep there when I just didn’t have the energy to walk up stairs to my (still tidy!) bedroom.

This is after:

Clutter, misc papers, and sewing stuff gone. Well, except for one Lululemon shopping bag which holds some small crafts by the couch. The short book case is actually empty now, and it’s going to be moved into the kitchen to hold cookbooks and small appliances. The only reason it hasn’t been moved yet is because my roommate is sick.

The large bookcase is the one I really wanted to work on:

It’s been a catch all for miscellaneous crap since I moved into my house, and despite my attempts to organize it before it always fell short. I’m satisfied with it for now. There are some shoe boxes at the bottom that I’d like to replace with decorative boxes, but that will have to wait until I have money.

Speaking of money, this is how it went this week:

February 8 – *No Spend*
February 9 -$0.00 – coffee on SBux card, already paid from prior pay check.
February 10 – *No Spend*
February 11 – *No Spend*
February 12 – *No Spend*
February 13 – *No Spend*
February 14 – *Pending*

Discretionary money balance: -$0.00

I’d say it was a fairly successful week money wise. My car was full of fuel, so I haven’t had to fill up again yet. I do need eggs, milk, dried beans and salt, I just haven’t made it to the grocery store for them yet. I have to pay for my veggie box still, which might show up on today’s spending, otherwise I’ll pay for it tomorrow. I posted a bunch of stuff on kijiji and I got 3 bites worth a total of about $60. Unfortunately 2 of them just sort of vanished, and when I tried to meet up with the 3rd today we spent 1/2 an hour both not seeing each other, both going home frustrated, only to find out yes we were both at the same location *facepalm* Fingers crossed that one will go through on Thursday.

Going through the living room I managed to throw out 11 items, put aside 6 items for donation, and put 49 items in the recycling (mostly magazines). I also gave 5 Engineering study guides to The Boy’s younger brother, because he’s currently at the university doing his first year there. So, that’s 71 items this week, bringing my total this month to 167.

I made the mistake of adding up the purchase price of the magazines I put in the recycling this week. $167.68 plus taxes. That sucked; though to be honest I was expecting it to be much worse.

How did your challenges go this week? Next week’s productivity challenge for me is going to be tackling my office/filing cabinet. What’s yours?

Recommended Reading: Your Money Is Yours.

Double Challenge Month – Update #2

And now for the money side of week 1:

February 1  -$3.35 – coffee w/ friend
-$20.00 – fuel
+$19.50 – returned pop cans
February 2 – *No Spend*
February 3 – *No Spend*
February 4 – *No Spend*
February 5 – *No Spend*
February 6  -$8.96 – food bank donation
-$41.20 – veggie delivery
February 7 – *Pending No Spend* -$33.16 – fuel

Discretionary money balance: -$54.01 -$87.17

I wonder if I’ll be able to make that a positive by the end of the month?

I have today down as a “pending no spend” because I’m spending the beginning of it at home cleaning before I head to work. I can’t spend money if I don’t leave the house.

I think I did fairly well this week. I had plans to meet a friend for coffee, which we typically do at Starbucks. Unfortunately this time she wanted to go elsewhere, so I had to use money out of my account rather than off my pre-loaded Starbucks card. There was a $3 minimum to use the debit, and I didn’t have cash on me, so I ended up getting a latte rather than tea to make their minimum. The $8.96 went towards a couple multipack boxes of flavoured oatmeal, and some Campbells chunky soup that was on sale for less than the smaller generic brand cans of soup. I dropped it off in the donation bin on my way out of the store.

I beat most of the battle this week by spending time doing things at home. The rest of the battle, grabbing food on the run, I gave the heave ho by stocking myself up on snacks to keep the sweet beast at bay, and keeping my water bottle on me. The first half of the week I had rice crispie squares, and the second half I’ve been munching on homemade peanut butter cookies. I figure I’ll be out of cookies by Wednesday, so I’ll probably make some homemade Lara bars then. I have to grab some fuel tomorrow, more about that later, but otherwise I’m gunning for no spend days until next pay day. This last pay period was cut closer than I’d like, but that’s what happens when you set yourself a challenge. Next pay period looks to be about the same, because I won’t have any night shift premium on it. Boo that.

How are your financial challenges coming?

Recommended Reading: What Plants vs. Zombies Taught Me About Paying Off Debt.