New Year, New Budget

As this year drew to a close, my husband and I sat down to evaluate our finances and see what needs adjusting.  We’ve come to see that our budgets have been like a pendulum, swinging back and forth with equal energy between spending and extra debt payments. 

We always seemed to manage one or maybe two really strict low spending months, but then a catch up month would follow.  We can eat out of the cupboards and freezer for a month, keeping the groceries under $400, but inevitably the next month we’d be out of paper towels, toilet paper, flour, sugar, rice , potatoes, diapers and just about every other imaginable household item.  Other budget categories had the same problem.  We had no regular line for clothes, which is ok until Shawn needs new winter work boots, which come in over $200, or someone needs snow-pants or socks or whatever.  We can wear out or entire wardrobe but the stock up at the end of it is a big bill!

Shawn received a raise late this fall, so our income has changed slightly.  We sat down to work out a new basic budget, the one that we start out with each month then plan any new items we know are coming up.  We start with the same basic amounts, and then adjust for each month’s unique needs.  We wanted to make a budget that was a bit more balanced, creating a more even pace.

Our first major goal this year is to increase our donation to the church and reach a full tithe by the end of the year.  Since I blogged all about it already (Read about that here)  I won’t do more than mention it today, except to say that I will be tracking more closely the portion of Shawn’s income that is variable and working on a system to make sure I am tithing on things like overtime and bonuses.

We added planned amounts for home maintenance, vehicle maintenance and clothes.  Instead of these things being added as an “ other expense we know of” in a month when a need popped up, we will now have a planned amount.  Unused portions will be transferred into savings, still ear marked for that category and used when bigger-than-this-month’s-allotment expenses come up.

We’ve decided to save a small amount each month, instead of using all extra funds as debt payment.  We will still be paying about 10% of our income onto debt payments each month.  We have decided that the “Dave Ramsey” method of an insane pace sprinting until the finish line isn’t working for us.  We are opting instead for a marginally smaller speed, which will leave us with different options.  The small savings number will help when we want to take a summer camping trip, or pay for something like soccer or ballet.  We can spread these items out over the year instead of the month or two before they are due.

We’ll continue our renovations at a slow pace.  Saving ahead and paying for each stage will set the speed.

It is still our main debt related goal to pay off our Master Card by October when our mortgage will be up for renewal.  After that, we attack our credit line.  Recently, when regular interest rates where changed at the bank, the fees on our credit line doubled.  This will make it harder to pay off extra principal, and we are even more determined to pay off this giant mistake from our past!!

We will start paying our children allowances again.  We have tried different ideas off and on without much success this year and are still looking for a system that is the right fit for our family.  We’ve decided that it’s purpose will be to let our children practice making decisions about how to save and spend money.  They won’t be “earning” it per se with chores, but there will, in the future, be a list of extras they could do if they would like to earn more money for a goal they have.

I have gotten really slack about planning and tracking each month, and I want to make a new excel sheet to get us back on track in this area.

That about sums up my financial resolutions for the up coming year.  What are your goals this year?

Let It Begin, Let It Begin!!

You know that little hamster from “Bolt”, anxious to begin the adventure?  Well that is how I have been feeling about our kitchen reno.  Now that I have accepted the fact that I will be living, cooking, and schooling amidst drywall dust and paint samples, I want to just get started already!!!  It’s killing me that my much loved new lino is still sitting in a roll in my garage.  We have a few things that have to get done before it can go in, but every time I wash this ( much despised) white floor, I get irked!

So, this week as I sat staring at hideous green wallpaper, I thought “ This is it, I have had ENOUGH! I am tearing that down TODAY!”.  But then it occurred to me that Shawn might resent that.  He might feel as if I was forcing him to move the kitchen things up in priority on the to-do list.  We’ve been feeling so overwhelmed, over scheduled and over committed lately.  So I emailed him at work, wanting to gage his reaction before doing anything.

“Hypothetically speaking… If you came home and I had ripped the “chair rail” off the wall, your reaction would be: A) HAZAAA!!  An item crossed off my to-do list  OR  B) What the happening?!?”" ( Which by the way is Lily’s way of exclaiming and it makes us all laugh).

Ahh, but my hubby knows me well, so he replied: “ Based on the fact that you are asking me, I am assuming you’ve already done it, soooo… A”

After swearing to him that I had not yet started anything and that I genuinely wanted his permission, he assured me he would still choose “HAZAA!!”.

I wasted no time, boy!  I hate this ugly faux chair rail that was really just baseboards haphazardly nailed half way up the wall and the green wallpaper.  The kids thought this was the funniest job on earth! “ You mean we can rip it all off?”  They gleefully helped pull off all the paper.  Then Baden manned the steamer and we got the glue and backing off without much effort at all.  It was awesome to see it come down!!

Then, we painted a couple of color samples and are test driving them for a few days before I commit to painting my whole wall a very dark rust.




Also coming together are the plans for the built in bench!!

And, I did remember to take some “before” pictures a couple weeks ago.  This is as clean as it ever gets around here, I was going to REALLY clean it, but then I figured that most of you have seen my house in it’s real state  (much much worse than this!) anyway… Haha!  Plus, I figured, why lie?  This is what it looked like!

Exciting Purchases!!

Guess what this is???  It’s my colour scheme coming together!!
FabricLand is having a huge sale this week, so we decided to head over and grab the upholstery vinyl we want for the bench Shawn is building in our kitchen. He roughed out a plan last night so we would know how much we need, and I am very excited that he is at the design phase!!  I decided to wander around and see if I could find anything that caught my eye since everything in the store is 50 – 70 % off right now.  The orange cushions we had purchased a few weeks ago to be the back of the bench. I’m planning a buttery yellow wall colour. 

I’m planning to use this one for valences over the two windows and a few matching pillows on the bench.








This one is a heavier fabric that I’ll use for pillows on the bench too.



The cushions are shiny and silky so it was hard to get the colour to show well in the picture.  In real life, though, it matches almost exactly the orange in the two materials.  I plan on having one wall painted this orange.




Mwahahahaha, I love it when a plan comes together even though I’m winging it!!

If You Were At My House Today…

You’d have seen me dancing around, giddy happy and laughing like a crazy frenchman, mwahahahahahah! Hee hee hee!! All because of this:

 

That’s right, it’s my new lino arriving at my house in the back of my brother in law’s truck!!!

                                    

 

                                    Right now, the floor looks like this:

                             But very very soon, it’s all going to look like this!!!!!

Warning…Renos Ahead!

  This is the first in a new series of posts that I plan on using to chronicle our attempts to renovate on a budget.  I am at the same time excited and dreading starting this process.

I’m no stranger to renovating, we’ve done this before.  In our last house, we spent the entire six years we owned it slowly renovating.  Now, I don’t regret doing it, we made a lot of money off our house when we sold, since we had done all the labour ourselves.  Buuuut this means I am not ignorant of how annoying and challenging it can be to live in an on-going construction zone.  I had no fronts on my kitchen cupboards for over a year ( yep, a whole year, really) last time.  And, I had a nine month old when we started, so you can imagine the mess!  Baden loved to pull everything out of the cupboards, and there was really no way to stop him.  So, to save my own sanity, I stopped trying.  I left all the dishes and pans where he last played with them, walked around them, and just washed them again as I needed to use them. 

When we moved, this house we moved to was finished.  I wanted it that way, it was our deal, see.  I made Shawn promise me that we would have a finished house, even if I hated every colour in the house, for five years.  After we moved in, we painted only the bedrooms and decided to ignore the green everywhere else.  And I mean literally EVERYWHERE else.  This house was painted the same shade of hideous green in every single room, except the guest room.  Every piece of trim, every window frame, even the doors are painted the same green.  I think they bought one giant can, then mixed it with white in some places so they could have three different shades of the same green.  They painted everything that would hold paint.  The door bell cover, the thermostat, the towel rails in the bathroom… all GREEN!  You know that shade of green that went with peach in the ‘80s… kind of a “dusty” green… well that’s the one!  I used to like green, and maybe it’s not the worst shade ever ( could be lime green afterall) but the overwhelming reality of the same green everywhere is what makes me hate this colour. 

And the lino! What was she thinking??  I know for a fact they had three kids when they chose to install it.  Every lino in the house is the same… WHITE!  No pattern, no squares, just all white, in the kitchen, in the PORCH and even both bathrooms.  I seriously hate this floor, I have cursed it since we moved in.  Not only does it show every single speck of anything, the finish is all worn off so it always looks gross.  Their grandson, over for a visit one day, decided to attack the floor by pounding a butter knife into it… so there are tiny stab marks all over which collect dirt.  Where Shawn had to peel back a bit to install the dishwasher, it cracked… another spot collecting dirt!  Recently, Shawn set down an oven rack he believed to be cool on it… but it was hot and melted into it.

Despite our agreement, the reality is that after three years of living in this house with (now) four kids and the dog ( up until this month, she’s gone now), the house is showing signs of wear.  We took out two built in bookshelves to wall mount a tv and never finished the drywall.  A piece of baseboard was under a leaky window and needed to be removed.  The wiring for said tv is draped across the curtain rods ( yes Shawn does work for the cable company but the last thing he wants to do when he gets home is more wiring!).  I cracked the moulding when I took it off to paint our room.  We ripped out the carpet because of the dog ( a whole other post about that here ).  We scabbed together the railing after Lily fell through it.  Water leaked into the downstairs bathroom ceiling and made a paint bubble.  The upstairs bathroom needs a total overhaul. The porch addition wasn’t done properly and doesn’t have heat, so it freezes in the winter. This is only a partial list, but you get the idea.  It’s just time to stop ignoring the list.

So, as much as there are difficulties to living in a reno, we’ve decided it’s time to start.  It means that we may not be making as much progress on paying down the debt, because some funds will have to be allocated to the renos.  We’ll have to do it slowly, piece by piece to avoid going into any more debt.  The good thing about having done this before is that I know the end result will be worth it.

We’re starting in our kitchen.  It’s the room that annoys us the most, and now that we are homeschooling we are in it even more.  It’s not large, so we have to make the best use of space that we can.  So far, here is our plan:

#1: REPLACE LINO!!!! : Because it will make me so much happier, I placed this at the top priority.  Funds are going to this first.

#2: Build banquette seating around table.  We only own five chairs.  We bought the kids some really cool adjustable chairs from Stokke, but they are expensive and we don’t want to invest in another one.  However, we now have 6 people in our family… and Bremen needs to start eating soon.  The Stokke chairs can be made into a high chair, but that would leave someone without one.  For the same cost as one chair, Shawn can build the entire bench.  We decided on the bench, and it will include storage for things like our hot tub towels ( door to hot tub is beside table area) and homeschool supplies.  I am already gathering materials for this project and plan a post on it by itself when we reach that stage.

#3: Install pocket door at the end of the hallway where it meets the kitchen.  This will cut down on noise when kids are sleeping, and let us visit with company in the kitchen more often.  The downside is, we need to remove all the drywall off one wall to install it.  We’ll have to repaint almost the whole house to finish the work.  We were originally going to attempt this project on it’s own but realized we couldn’t until we were ready to start a full out reno.

#4: Repaint.

#5: Refinish kitchen hutch and cupboards.  This project scares me the most, since I remember all too well living without cupboard fronts last time.  I can’t afford to replace them though, so we are just going to have to fix them up.  At least they are oak and so a great starting point!

#6: New Countertops ( new sink and taps at this stage).  The counter was peeling and separating when we moved in.  The previous owners apparently did not know what a cutting board was for, and the entire counter top is marked with years of knife cuts.  It’s lifting at both corners ( it’s a U-shaped counter) where they seamed the top.  Very gross.  Then, I added my own mark to it when I accidentally set a mini torch on top of it.  I thought it had an automatic off , but it didn’t and it burned a hole through the back.   That is a whole other story though…

That about sums up my plan for the kitchen.  Right now, I have money set aside for the floor and the bench.  We already have the supplies for the door, bought when we first started thinking about that project.  Hopefully I will be able to squeeze enough out of my money for paint too.  That way the kitchen will feel mostly finished as we save for the counter tops!

I’m scared and excited all at the same time!!