Ohhhhhhhhh moan! The handyman charged $615 to repaint the eaves, install two new motion-sensitive lights, and plane down the solid-core door on the office so it will close properly. That doesn’t count the cost of the paint, which was more than any reasonable person could expect.
I can’t complain too much. He repaired some dry-rot that the roofers should have fixed and that was in their contract to fix but that they ignored (too busy chopping back my prize trees, I guess). The paint job he did is far superior to the one committed by Bila the Bosnian Lightning Bolt.
Bila, who does nothing but paint (well, he also will hire out for a few handyman jobs, but by trade he’s a painter), painted the entire house from stem to stern in a day. He accomplished this with a sprayer, which he used to apply a light coat over everything. As you can imagine, this hasn’t held up very well. Jack, on the other hand, actually painted the woodwork—you remember, with a paintbrush and a roller? He also filled cracks and generally repaired the tired wood trim. It looks very nice, and it appears likely to last for quite a while. It took him a day and a half to do this, and for Jack a “day” extends until well after dark.
This hail damage thing is turning into quite the financial fiasco. Fortunately, so far the insurance company has covered all the repairs. I’m going to scan Jack’s invoice and the receipts for the paint and exterior lights, mail them off to the adjuster, and we’ll see if they’ll spring for a little more cash.
And…even if they don’t, I still can’t complain. They’ve covered almost $12,000 in repairs so far. If I have to pay $600 or $700, that’s still a darn sight better than 12 or 13 grand.
Thanks to the hailstorm, the entire neighborhood has had a facelift. Almost every house got a new roof. Given the exorbitant cost of roofing, as you can imagine many peoples’ roofs were already pretty weary before the depression started, and what with the hard times, our houses were beginning to take on a kind of Appalachian look. Quite a few homeowners also managed to change out the 20-year-old Goettl air-conditioning units. These new units not only look a great deal less ugly, they run whisper-quiet. My neighbors’ AC/heaters used to growl like jet planes. Now when Terry’s and Sally’s units come on, I can hardly hear them. That adds a lot to the livability factor.
{sigh} By dint of assiduous penny-pinching my savings account had finally, within the past week, recovered its former glory. Just transferred the cash over to checking to cover the draft I wrote to Jack. That puts savings right back where it was a few months ago.
Hope a decent tax refund materializes. Hope the insurance company will cover some of this bill.
We still have the security door to install in back. Urk!
Image: A Modern Trade Painter. Lukeroberts. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.
The costs suck but having improvements visible gives you a good feeling that somehow makes it worth it.
I like the part where you mentioned that the neighborhood in general is getting a face-lift. In the end that should definitely help with property values as those things should make the entire area more desirable. May not account for much but it could make a small difference!
@ Money Beagle: Well, it definitely helps this homeowner’s morale. At least we look a little less down-at-the-heels, even if most of us are barely hanging onto the middle-class by our raggedy fingernails.
“…our houses were beginning to take on a kind of Appalachian look.”
Ouch. That’s not much better than saying “ghetto.” 😉
– Beth J, posting from an Appalachian region
@ Beth J… Yeah, not very sensitive. Sorry about that!
Actually, the place was beginning to look like an aged, impoverished, dusty, sunbaked Arizona small town. Everyone who hadn’t already replaced their lawns with gravel has let the grass die, because no one can afford the bloated water bills. One woman pulled up the gravel the previous owner, a landlord, had laid down and used to cover the stumps of two magnificent pine trees he chopped down (hence the sobriquet, “The Boob House”) and then deliberately left the front yard in unvarnished dirt. Another owner’s house has a dirt front yard because not even the weeds will grow there. Manny’s house is fanny-high in milkweed and dandelions right now…makes the Filipina landlady’s rental, perennially our first-place winner in the Blight Sweepstakes, actually look good. Hmmm. Garden spot, this!
And they say boats are money pits. Look at it as protecting your investment. And, to be sickeningly Pollyanna-ish, maybe the hail storm was a blessing in disguise? Ah, no – if I were in your position, a blessing is not what I’d be calling it!
Sounds like the handyman was quite the craftsman, not only doing a job but taking the time to do it *well*.
Hailstorms are a blessing in disguise. We got a new roof out of it, but living as we do in cookie-cutter suburbia, it’s indistinguishable from the previous one.