The Super Official Homeowners Thread

[Tyler.M]

Boof fail, at least you have some options.  Side note on garages:  How often are you all cleaning out your garages?  Ours is turning into a once-every-6 months-ish project to keep spider webs / dead bugs / mouse poop / mice killin' under control.  We also live next to a forested area and (former) wetland so we probably get more wildlife than most.  But man I had to clean out my garage in the old townhouse like maybe once every 2 years.  The plus side is it has helped prevent us from accumulating crap we don't need.

Another side note on homeownership:  I feel like we've had this conversation before but it staggers me how much some people spend on furniture and think that it's perfectly normal.  I really don't wonder anymore why so many people are house poor / complain about their finances.  We went out this weekend to look for ONE tiny little side table to put a lamp on for our guest room and the best / cheapest thing we could find was about $100.  Excluding the Walmart fiber board junk, probably the average price for a little side table was $200-$250.  Really?  For a few pieces of wood you had a laborer in Thailand slap together for $10?  That's just a side table though, it's apparently a completely normal thing for people to go to a furniture store and spend $600 on a coffee table.  My father is an antique furniture dealer by trade, I get more than most people that some folks will invest in high quality, period antique furniture but this junk is not that.

We aren't rich by any stretch of the imagination but boy am I glad I married someone who is as cost + quality conscious as my wife.  There are a few local furniture builders / wholesalers that make really nice stuff for super reasonable prices, we'll probably go that route but I think this really hit me when we walked into a furniture "auction" recently (these are getting really popular down here) and saw the prices that some of that junk was going for that were considered "good deals".

My garage is tiny but I use it as my additional "personal space" when my renter has people over or something... so I'm in there a lot. I've got my weight set in there, and my shop so it's pretty full. I say I keep my "chaotically clean" meaning it feels more like an old engine builder's shop than a pristine clean area. I got parts and old mechanic's cabinets laying around, various pieces of furniture I've "repurposed" for spare part organization and a couch. I clean after I get a project done on something and spot clean the rest. I had a big issue with bugs and such but I spray all entrances and everything once a month with a perimeter defense and check the mousetraps frequently.  Other than that, I do a deep clean once a year, mainly because of dust accumulation from woodworking and metal shavings that I don't get up with a regular workshop vac.

In regards to furniture, yeah it's insane. Watch craigslist some time and see how many "WE PAID 3K FOR THIS AND WANT IT GONE FOR 500" ads go up for sale. I could never imagine financing a freaking bedroom suite or a sofa, but enough people must do it that it's impossible to find something new that's also comfortable for a decent price. I bought my sofa and a love seat in my living room for $400 bucks that was 1 year old,  cost the couple 3k and had regular cleanings. They probably would've taken less because they had the replacement being delivered the next day. I had it professionally cleaned for a further $100 bucks and boom, basically new.  Mattresses and beds are kind of the same thing; I shopped around last year at some local stores and couldn't believe that it was 1k minimum for a so-so mattress. Picked up a great memory foam plus bed frame on Amazon for sub $700 that easily beats out anything else I tried in store, even the 3k-5k mattresses and bedframes.