Oh the joys of home ownership … yes indeedy.

Today I acomplished two major household tasks … one required a lot of work … the other required just a phone call.

The first was fairly involved … at least for me. The toilet in the master bath (such as it is, the bath that is) was leaking underneath the bowl. I figured it was the wax ring, so I replaced it … but that didn’t fix the leak. I’m pretty sure I put the new wax ring on wrong, which caused the new leak.

I got a new item to replace the wax ring … it’s basically a funnel that goes down the drain pipe and sticks to the bottom of the toilet. Seems to be working … although the only way to really tell is wait to see if more water shows up.

This little project only required 4 trips to the home improvement stores (Lowes, Home Depot, and twice to Menards) and took 3 months to complete (yes, we were without a toilet in the master bath for 3 months).

The second major task was calling the sales person from Anderson Windows to tell her that we wanted to go with her proposal.

We’re getting new windows throughout the house … the windows we currently have are all aluminum, which lets a lot of cold through, most of the glass panes have blown seals … so there’s a lot of moisture between the glass, and at least one window’s mechanism is totally shot (we need to use a 2×4 to hold it open).

We got a quote from Pella also … which was significantly higher than Anderson’s … and, although the comments I saw indicated that both Pella and Anderson had quality products, the consensus I saw was that Anderson’s were somewhat better.

We tried to get a quote from Lowes … but it took them almost a month to send someone out to do the measuring … and after waiting a week for them to call me back with estimates, they didn’t even have the measurements available. I was told by someone in their custom installation department that I would be called on Saturday … but didn’t hear from them.

We actually paid $35 for the measurements from Lowes … which I’m going to try and get back, as it took such a long time for them to come back.

Final cost for the Anderson windows is going to be $14K. I think I can get $400 off on taxes ($200 off for the windows, another $200 for the patio door {assuming it counts as an exterior door}). It will probably take 10 years or so to recoup the cost in energy savings, but it will be a good selling point when we go to sell the house (nothing planned in that arena yet).

Luckily we have a fairly sizable amount in the home repair / improvement savings bucket … so the cost won’t kill us.

[tags]Home Improvement, windows, heat, savings, toilet, repairs, taxes[/tags]