Welcome to my Lessons learned from remodeling journal. I thought it would be fun and instructive to share our remodeling journey week by week. I hope you can learn from what we do right- and more importantly from what we mess up.
Lessons Learned From Remodeling: The Expense I Hadn’t Considered
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.
The Deal Mommy is a proud member of the Saverocity network.
Hers one for you that has happened to us. Still not completed after “finishing” everything in December. Put in the wrong window. It will be corrected when we return next month.
This is the sick to the stomach part.
Paidvif my mortgage to coincide with the completion. Since it’s always been my mortgage, Debbi’s Christmas gift was to be adding her on to the ownership of record. Couldnt do it because apparently we have a Builders Lien against us. Alm had been paid to the contractor except the final payment at completion of $2k. It appears the unsatisfactory work done by the original plumber was not paid for in its entirety. To my mind this was rightly so.
Bottom line is that my credit score has dropped from a solid 830/850, that has hardly moved in years, down to 735!
Not sure if it was the reason but had my first ever declination of an application!
Ugh. That sucks! We are so far so good on that front but friends have had similar problems.
So the local Hyatt has no issue with you being seven different people for checking into rooms? Don’t they remember you and say anything?
Hi Tom,
My name is always on the reservation as well- everything above board. The staff at the hotel knows my house is under construction and that I have some very generous friends who are helping me out while maintaining their own Hyatt status. No problems at all!