Kitchen Update

Posted on February 17th, 2012

DIY has more than one benefit.

1) The obvious – It’s most likely cheaper than hiring the contract (if you do it correctly)

2) You care about your work so you pay attention to the details

3) You do not have to put up with contractors!

I swear this project would have gone more smoothly without everyone’s hands in this ordeal.  We had more contractors tell us “In all my years I have never done that.”  You know what WE are paying YOU so why don’t you move along and quit complaining.  As you can tell I am not bitter.

Anywho, I digress.  I got ahead of myself with the rant so after the granite countertops we searched for cabinets.  I thought this would be pretty simple, but after taking several measurements of our kitchen and going to 3 or 4 places we finally found the cabinets we liked.  We knew that we wanted the island to be a darker color then the rest of the wall cabinets.  We received a lot of help from the designer at Home Depot of all places.  When I think of nice cabinets I don’t put HD on the top of my list but we were way wrong.  They had some of the nicer cabinets and everyone we spoke to could not believe that our cabinets here from Home Depot.  I was hoping for a really nice crown molding, but our ceiling was too short so we had to rig up some plane but still very nice looking crown to finish off the cabinets.

Cabinets Just installed

 

Tia helping me clean the cabinets

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anyways!  The kitchen is complete.  All we have to do is put in 5 more Can lights in the living room and stair well.  Below are some pictures.  Let us know what you think!

Tile

Prepping for Flooring

Finished Product!

Finished and loving it!

New Sectional
Posted in Family, Finances | Leave a comment

Back to School and Planning for the Future

Posted on January 19th, 2012

So yesterday was my first day of class.  It was good to be back in the classroom and for some reason I think I will actually enjoy learning this time around since it is something that I WANT to do and not something that I am forced/must do.

The class I am taking is Anatomy and Physiology I plus lab.  I took this class during my Biology degree, but I never took the lab and that kicked me in the buttocks pretty hard when I applied for Nursing school and they shunned me because I didn’t take the lab…a lab a single lab kept me out of school :(

The large question is how am I going to pay for this class, luckily at the moment I am only needing this one class.  I was able to cash flow this one even though it was $757 without the books.  The problem that exists at this point is after I take this class and get into a nursing school how am I going to pay for it?  I have currently stopped adding any funds to mine and Kristi’s Roth IRA’s.  It really stinks to do this, but it just isn’t possible I am now stashing that money towards a school fund.  Also, I have quit paying extra on the mortgage principal and that will soon go towards the school fund as well.

I posted this question up on the forums for MyTotalMoneyMakeover.com and here is what they are saying.    They have talked some sense into me for not getting student loans so here is a rough plan of what I am going to do.

The next steps are figuring out how to cut down our lifestyle so that Kristi’s income can cover us while I am a full time student for 12-18 months at the accelerated nursing school.  I have managed to cut our cable bill down to 30 bucks a month from $72.  I may still cut it out completely but not sure yet.  All of my drill pay about $350 per month will also go towards the school fund.

My Checklist to minimize our monthly costs is below:

  1. Cable – may nix entirely
  2. Internet – Currently $62 /month
  3. Cutting blow money in half from 60 dollars each to 30
  4. Cutting down gifts/presents to everyone to either hand made or just cards for a while from $25 per birthday and Christmas per person
  5. Recreation fund from $75 to either $25 or $ 50 per month
  6. Cell phone from $140 (Verizon) to something lower!  I use mine all the time for work and class, so hopefully a different carrier will help.
  7. Dining out from $ 100 to $50 / month
  8. Vacation fund stops getting funded which is $200 / month

Let’s see if I can knock out everything above then I will be saving about an extra $1,135 / month!  This didn’t even include lowering cell phone bill or lowering internet plan.

So our relatives may be a bit upset and our vacation fund will be slim, but if we are very very aggressive I could save up over $23,000 in a year for school IF everything stays the same and we don’t have to tap into our emergency fund.  That is stinking bonkers!  It would most definitely be worth it if it keeps me from getting a student loan. This will not be easy and it will take a ginormous amount of discipline to keep from using the money or going over in any of the above categories.  Wish us luck ;P

Posted in Family, Finances | Tagged as: , , , , | Leave a comment

The fun begins…DEMOLITION!

Posted on January 13th, 2012

You know how the saying goes…”A picture is worth a thousand words” so here you are:

Before

Before 2

Doors Off

Right side destroyed

Everything gone but the sink

Kristi ripping up some flooring

Me removing the plumbing

Dry Wall removed and demolition complete

 

At this point we were exhausted and really eager to get everything completed.  This was not so though, our cabinets were put on hold for about 2 more weeks at this point.  I stomachs really felt the pain as we had to keep eating out.  The picture above where the vent is was a surprise because we didn’t even know it was there until we removed the sink cabinet.  The repair to the sub-floor was a bit more difficult than I expected but we eventually got it taken care of.

Next week you’ll see the kitchen begin to come together and go from total chaos to somewhat habitable and user friendly.

Total Savings = $1800 (based upon estimates given from contractors)

Posted in Family, Finances | Tagged as: , , | Leave a comment