Archive for "Home Ownership"
Home Appraisal
Posted on March 6, 2026 by Ching under Home Ownership.
I don’t know how the county appraisal of our home managed to go up even with a dilapidated deck most of the year. We generally pay about $5,000 in taxes every year for our house; but with the recent $466K appraisal, I guess we are going to have to pay even more in taxes now? WTH? Our house appraised at double the amount it was worth when we moved in back in 2012. I suppose this is both good and bad. It’s good that the house supposedly worth more but bad in that we have to pay more taxes on it annually. Truly, though, are we even able to sell our house for what the county says it is worth?
I joked to Brian that maybe we shouldn’t have fixed our deck (or at least waited until after our appeal) and perhaps we could have used that as a justification to drop the appraisal value. But now that it’s fixed, perhaps when they see our new orange deck they’ll change their mind when they appraise our house for 2027. LOL.
I was looking at the appeals process and it seems like a lot of work. Neither Brian nor I have the time or appetite for it. I guess we won’t fight it and just keeping paying? How about you all? Did your home appraisal increase significantly this year? Have you ever appealed an increase? How did that go?
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Deck Rails Repaired, Finally
Posted on January 26, 2026 by Ching under Home Ownership.
So our deck railing that’s been barely hanging on for most 2025 finally fell off and we did also get it repaired, finally.
As you all know, it gets super windy here in Kansas. One morning the rails were there and then they were gone when I got home. I found them on the ground next to the stair. Yes, it was super windy that day.
We got rid of all our deck furniture. They were over ten years old and Brian and I were tired of them anyway. Also, he said they could use them on their patio at work so that’s where the furniture went.
Besides replacing the deck railings, we also replaced the steps which had been falling apart as well. We kept the main deck floors to save money, though. They still felt sturdy and secure.
I took a few pics when the contractors first started working.
Here’s are a few more progress pictures.
Apparently I didn’t get pictures of the finished product. The railings and steps are done but they do still need to be stained and treated. I guess the $12K that we paid didn’t cover that part. Ugh. We have to pay another contractor another $900 some to get that done. I’ll get pictures of the fully finished work then. Stay tuned!
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The Joys of Home Ownership
Posted on January 19, 2024 by Ching under Home Ownership, Relationship.
We were having problems with our Nest thermostat over the weekend. The furnace kept shutting on and off and the thermostat display showed this error message. It would cut out and then turn back on but our biggest problem was that we didn’t know how to make it come back on when it would turn off and it just did it randomly so we really didn’t know when it would be working and not. It was both temperamental and unpredictable.
Anyway, we decided to call one of our friends who referred us to one of his BNI acquaintances who specialized in this sort of thing. But it was Monday – Martin Luther King Jr. Day – night so Chad (tech/service guy) said he could come out but it would be overtime. Well, I am way too cheap for that so Brian and I decided to tough it out and have him come out the next day.
Well, on Tuesday morning we woke up to a 55 degree house and the Nest thermostat display was all black – no error message or anything, it was just completely blank. Brian thought the thermostat had finally gone kaput. I’m like, “No way! That thermostat is only six years old and they’re supposed last ten.”
We didn’t really know what was wrong so we called Chad but Chad couldn’t come out until the afternoon because he already had appointments scheduled for that day. In the meantime, we were in the midst of the coldest days in January so we turned on the electric fireplace downstairs, the gas fireplace upstairs, and I moved our little space heater to the living room to help bring the temperature up in the house. I figured that should get me by until we can get the furnace/heating issue resolved. Brian went in to his office and they have heat there so it was mostly just me freezing to death. I decided to work from home on Tuesday so I could let Chad in the house when he did arrive.
Around lunch time, the Nest thermostat kicks back on again. The furnace comes on and everything seems to be working as normal. Of course, we still want to Chad to come because we can just have the furnace randomly turn on and off, specially when we don’t know how to get it back on. That’s just not going to work.
A little bit later, Brian tells me he is on his way home because Chad is on his way to our house. Brian is completely convinced the thermostat is broken (either that or he just really wanted a new one) so he stops by Lowe’s and buys a $250 Ecobee. Chad fixes the furnace and replaces the Nest with the new Ecobee. When I get the low down from Brian (it turns out there’s some kind of sensor on the furnace that has rusted out due to condensation) and realize the reason the thermostat was going off and on was because the furnace was going off and on, I am livid. I’m like, “Why did we buy a new thermostat when there was nothing wrong with our thermostat?”
I felt like we could have saved ourselves the expense. Plus, I’m thinking we’re probably going to pay the labor for having Chad install the new thermostat when we didn’t have to replace our existing thermostat to begin with because there was nothing wrong with it. I just couldn’t get over how wasteful it all seemed.
Looking back, it was interesting to me how I was overwhelmed with feelings of anger, irritation, and frustration every time I looked at the new Ecobee thermostat whereas every time I looked at our new faucet, which we spent about $300 on, I was filled with so much joy and appreciation. The amount we spent was about the same – the thermostat actually cost less. I believe the two things elicited different feelings in me because I felt the faucet was necessary and Brian painstakingly installed it himself; while the new thermostat was a completely unnecessary expense. We could have used the $250 to pay Chad who we still needed to pay.
I felt like we could have avoided having to buy a new thermostat by asking two simple things, “Is our thermostat broken? And, do we need to replace it?” The answers would have been no and no, and we could have saved ourselves $250. But we don’t ask questions. We just spend money because that’s what we do.
I was so annoyed that I actually picked a fight with Brian about this, which I immediately regretted. Well, maybe not immediately. I was still kind of pissed off when I went to bed but then came to my senses when I woke up in the morning. In the grand scheme of things, this is a really stupid thing to be pissed off about. Yes, we spent $500 that we did not expect to spend when we probably could have gotten by with spending half that but it’s a stupid thing to fight about.
I realize now that Brian’s intention was not to “waste” money. He was unhappy with our old thermostat (even though it still worked) much like I was unhappy with the old faucet (that was also working perfectly fine) and so he wanted to replace it. I think the main difference between the two scenarios is that we were aligned on replacing the faucet but we were not aligned on the thermostat expense.
My key takeaways from this:
- We won’t always agree on everything but I think we at least need to make an effort to get alignment before making decisions.
- Brian gives me grace when I screw up – not saying he screwed up but rather he made a different choice than I would have – so I need to allow him the same.
- Brian tries so hard to make our lives better and doesn’t deserve me questioning his judgement every step of the way.
- I was wrong to pick a fight over this. Brian and I have always prided ourselves with being very rational and approaching everything sensibly and I was completely irrational in this situation. If I had to psychoanalyze myself, I think I would have concluded that I was pissed of and frustrated about other things and this just happened to be thing that I could blow up about.
- I just need to be better.
I don’t always apologize because I feel like I’m usually right (LOL) but I did apologize for how I reacted. I hope he knows that the apology was sincere and I do regret my actions. Seriously, though. We haven’t had a fight in over ten years. I wouldn’t have thought it would be over this. What a stupid thing to fight over!
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Labor Day Weekend Achievement
Posted on September 21, 2021 by Ching under Home Ownership.
Brian and I did some labor on Labor Day weekend. We’d been talking about reorganizing our basement storage room for a while (and when I say a while, I really mean a few years) but hadn’t gotten around to it until now. Things finally came to a head recently when we were running out of room to hide our crap. Here are a few pictures of the end result of our efforts.
It’s amazing how much space we really have in there once everything has gotten organized. We were able to move some of my fitness equipment from one of the basement guest bedrooms and we event have space for a legitimate crafting/gift wrapping table for me and also a gun cleaning table for Brian.
I am super pleased with the end result because now we can easily get to our luggage and also our Christmas tree for when it’s time to put up our Christmas decorations. I just love seeing how tidy our basement storage is now. Until next time, GNG.
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Changes at Home
Posted on January 8, 2021 by Ching under Home Ownership, Life.
We rearranged some furniture over Christmas break. Brian has been trying to talk me into doing this forever but I’ve always refused because it leaves the rest of our main floor living room quite barren. We used to have just the one chair here with the ottoman. We always either fight over who gets to sit in the chair (it’s a coveted spot in the winter because it’s right in front of the fireplace and literally the warmest spot in our entire house) or both uncomfortably squeeze in it.
I’d thought about buying a chair and a half specifically for this spot so we wouldn’t have to use our loveseat but our furniture is so old that they don’t make it anymore. And, I didn’t want to buy something that didn’t match because we all know how that goes — you end up replacing everything to match that one thing that you just got and it ends up costing you a fortune.
Brian and I are getting too fat to squeeze in the chair together so I finally caved and agreed to relocate the loveseat to the hearth and the chair to the living room. That’s all we swapped. We did have to reorient the furniture, though. Instead of placing the loveseat at an angle like the chair was before, we placed it parallel to the fireplace. We’ve spent so much time in this part of the house since we rearranged and it’s been so much nice that we both wondered why we waited so long to do this.
Brian, the girls, and I are totally loving it. I think we will keep the house this way until the day we move, remodel, or replace all of our furniture — whichever comes first. Until next time. GNG.
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