Spending Money...

is soooooo painful. But it's so fun! At some point there was a transition -- a dramatic, house-altering transition -- from a simple plumbing repair into a major redesign. And I know exactly what the catalyst was....

When that damn plumber cut up through that beam in our ceiling, it sealed the fate of our house, and instantly dictated an irreversible cascade of money fluttering from my wallet.

Now, I must start out by saying our insurance company is fabulous. As is our builder. Because of some choices that he made on this spec home, we had a few very valuable elements of our house that this insurance claim has covered -- including the carpet from the living room and dining room.

So, where's it all go? In the last 6 weeks, we've been very busy -- and mind you this all happened right after returning from vacation...

• Of course, I'll start with the fact that we repainted the living and dining rooms. That technically happened before the incident, but it's worth mentioning as a starting point. During that exercise (and pretty much any exercise of that nature), Meredith and I were brainstorming ideas for how to improve the house. Such ideas included installing laminate flooring and a long-termdiscussion about our furniture needs had also resurfaced.
  
• Immediately after we discovered the leak, the insurance company sent out crews to localize the leak, remove about a 15 square foot section of soggy carpet, and drop off some fans and dehumidifiers to dry us out. While all that was taking place, we shifted the furniture away from the half-height wall between our living room and kitchen, creating a smaller gathering area inside the living room and creating some new traffic paths through the room. I think it was at this point that I said, "Gee, wouldn't it be cool to put a bar here between the kitchen and living room?" That invariably led to more discussions about the size and quantity of our current furtiture arrangement AND now we're talking about actual carpentry and additional furniture (barstools).
  
• Then the plumbers came to perform the repair. It wasn't really so much of a repair as it was a replacement -- they ran a new hot water supply line up from the hot water heater manifold into the attic and over to a wet wall in the kitchen. Except that they were having trouble bringing the line down the wet wall between two 2x12 header beams. And they didn't really feel like going to Home Depot to pick up a long-shanked boring bit. And they were in a hurry. Plumbers should be forbidden from owning a Sawz-all! The plumbers ended up cutting through about 2/3 of one of the 2x12 beams. And not just a little notch -- they cut a 1-2 inch gap out of the board so they could reach up in there and pull down the new line. I was not impressed. Nor was I there (damn). The plumbers finished up their job and promptly told Meredith, "The general contractor will take care of all that." And then split.
  
• Drama ensues
  
• GC comes out and says "We'll need an engineer to look at that."
  
• Insurance company upgrades this from a simple plumbing repair claim to an all-out home repair claim (and thusly we were upgraded from a CSR to a full-on adjuster).
  
• Engineer comes out and says "Yeah, that looks bad -- I'll need to run some numbers."
  
• [Engineer runs numbers]
  
• Per the engineer, the beam will need to be supported or replaced. According to the adjuster we have a policy that would allow us to claim FULL REPLACEMENT and have the beam completely replaced.
  
• We elect for a simpler, less costly and more timely repair. Did I mention school was just starting at this point?
  
• Apparently the insurance company chewed on the plumbing contractor's ass for a while because the owner of the plumbing company (or was it a foreman, I wasn't there) decided to come from the home office (San Antonio) to see the damage.
  
• It was about this time that we got word back from the carpet valuation lab that our carpet was worth more than we expected. We had been mulling over the idea of electing to refloor with laminate wood flooring instead of carpet, but that would have cost about 50% more than we expected to get for the carpet replacement. That budgetary constraint was now lifted and we pulled the trigger onthe laminate.
  
• Because of all the drama, we talked to the insurance company and they agreed to a minor enhancement in place of electing FULL REPLACEMENT. We requested that instead of a simple
  6" sill between the kitchen and LR, that they construct a bar that'd be 14" wide. That means we would now absolutely have to buy bar stools. Oh, and replace the large sofa with something smaller and more cozy.
  
• Somewhere in there, the crappy dishwasher that came with the house died. It wasn't related to any of this, but it seems fitting to include it as yet another expense during all this mess. We got a great deal on a fabulous dishwasher and we have officially stopped pre-washing dishes before they go in the DW. I never thoughtit possible.
  
• Anyway, about two weeks ago, we started mulling over a road trip to IKEA in Houston. Their website has some nice furniture that's not too Modern, but still contemporary. We figured we couldn't really swing the trip at the time, so we wandered the furniture stores of Austin looking at love seats and comfy chairs... We toured the furniture mile down Lamar. Lotsof stuff was seen. Much of it was attrocious.
  
• I'm not really sure how we ended up at CostPlus / World Market, but we did. And they had this really nice chair and love seat that were pretty much exactly what we were looking for. Done. It was inexpensive and it looks great. No, really -- we'redone.
  
• Late last week, the GC came and ripped up all the carpet in the LR and the DR (Meredith's office). We're on bare concrete at this point (and may I just say, ick). We got the laminate moved from the garage into the LR so that it could aclimate and my gosh, was it loud in there without any soft surfaces to muffle the noise!
  
• Turns out... we ended up on a road trip to IKEA this past weekend. I'm not really sure how. It started out as a "let's get out of the house this weekend - the LR is a noisy mess with all the carpet up and boxes and boxes of laminate everywhere." So we decided to go visit my folks in Bryan. And then we decided that since we were so close, we could make the IKEA trip. So I checked to make sure mom wouldn't mind and we threw the kids out at the side of the road when we drove by there on Saturday morning and were at IKEA by12:15pm. I think we left somewhere around 4 that afternoon.
  
• While we were at IKEA we looked at lots of cool stuff. I bought a hanging lamp that's kinda cool (pics to come). And we got some neat things for the kids... but somehow we managed to buy a new dining room table and set of 6 chairs. Guh. Solid Beechwood.Butcher-block style tabletop.
  
• On Sunday, we started installation of the laminate and it's looking pretty good. Still got a long way to go.
  
• Yesterday, Meredith bought some barstools. They're contemporary and they'll fit in nicely with the new chairs. However, they're oak, so they fit in with the flooring, too. A bit ofan unplanned but welcome transition.
  
• I have to figure out how I'm going to cover the bar. The carpenters are only roughing in a double-thickness of plywood. It'll be my job to cover it and add some edge trim. Stillnot sure if we're going to do tile or wood veneer or formica...
  

Anyway, I think (hope) we're done. We've still got a long way to go to be done with the work, but I think we've managed to get all the purchasing out of the way. And just in time, too.

My wallet has disintegrated.