We’ve been in our home for more than a year and a half now, and have finally decided to tackle the basement. We kept going back and forth on whether we wanted to put money into the basement now, or wait until we have the mortgage paid off. Eventually we decided that it would be nice to have the finished space downstairs, even if it means our extra mortgage payments will be reduced for a while. We’re still making extra mortgage payments, and at our current pace should have the house paid off in 2016. Once we finish the basement, we should be able to bump up those payments again and hopefully pay off the mortgage in 2015 instead.
Three years ago, when we remodeled the kitchen in our old house, we opened a Home Depot credit card. We used it to buy supplies for that project, and paid everything off within the no-interest time frame. Since then, we haven’t used the card, and although we had kept the account open, we had long ago cut up the card. But we noticed last week when we went to start looking at basement supplies that Home Depot was running another 12 month no interest program on their credit card. Although we could have taken money out of savings to pay for everything up front, we decided we’d rather take 12 months to pay it off instead, and let our money continue to earn interest during that time instead. We feel comfortable with no-interest financing deals as long as we do technically have the money on hand to pay off the entire balance from the get-go.
In addition to all the supplies we were able to fit in our vehicle and trailer, we also ordered flooring for the entire basement, which we’ll be able to go back and pick up on the weekend. We’re going with click-together laminate flooring again, as we really liked what we installed in our old house, and we’ve been very happy with the Pergo floor in our current dining/kitchen area. We found a cherry laminate that we both really liked, and we’re really excited to transform our basement floors from concrete to something pretty. Of course we’ve got a bit of work to do before we get to the floors…
Not only are we starting to work on the basement, we’re also installing a 10 x 12 outbuilding in the corner of our backyard, to give my husband another place to work, outside the house (away from the noise of our soon-to-be pair of children!). We toyed with the idea of starting from scratch with it, but between running our business, me being seven months pregnant, taking care of a toddler, and beginning work on the basement, we decided to order a pre-fab shed and then just do the finish work ourselves. We looked at a few places in town that would build us a shed, and found that our best deal was with Home Depot – a bonus, since we were able to put the cost on the HD credit card and can now spread that expense out over the whole year too. The shed should be in place next Tuesday, and then we can paint it, put in insulation, drywall, interior paint, and the same flooring that we’re using for the basement.
So lots of projects going on around here right now! When we renovated the kitchen in our old house, I was also seven months pregnant. Maybe I’m just an extreme nester? Stay tuned for updates… we’re planning a trip to the Habitat for Humanity Restore soon to look for doors, and we’ll see what other supplies we stumble upon while we’re there.




