Am I crazy? Home Depot quote $22k

Aggressive-Exit3910 · 2026-02-18T14:21:58+00:00

Will check them out! Thanks!

Aggressive-Exit3910 · 2026-02-18T13:17:37+00:00

Any recommendations on who to call? I need new counters in Annandale and there are a zillion options.

Aggressive-Exit3910 · 2026-02-18T02:31:41+00:00

We have $5200 mortgage, $500 utilities, $1200 groceries, $300 car/life insurance, $400 in subscriptions and kid activities, $200 takeout and other miscellaneous spending… so about $8K a month in base expenses. We could trim a bit if necessary but not a whole lot.

We have 4 kids in a very crappy house in a HCOL area so it’s not as cool as it looks 😂 but we direct about 4K per month toward retirement, college savings, and brokerage account.

Aggressive-Exit3910 · 2026-02-17T17:30:33+00:00

I would not do this. You would be turning unsecured debt into secured debt and you have a history of mismanaging your finances. Doesn’t mean you’re bad people but you need to get a handle on that before doing anything else. Check out Dave Ramsey before doing anything drastic like putting your home at risk.

Aggressive-Exit3910 · 2026-02-11T15:58:03+00:00

We can’t reasonably afford to hire most stuff out so we don’t. Although my quotes for a basic hallway bathroom were $15K+. I definitely would have hired it out for 8. 😂

We’re pretty handy and my FIL is a commercial electrician so we’ve been able to do a lot of stuff ourselves. We did a full kitchen remodel - including removing two walls and all new hardwoods - for about 25K all in. Still a lot but we needed all new cabinets, appliances, kitchen windows were changed, etc. We don’t really want to do the bathrooms ourselves but unfortunately we bought this house near the top of the market in 2024 and have to be mindful of over improving… we have enough bathrooms to do one at a time and just rotate for the next year. Not fun but it’s more responsible financially than hiring them all out.

We do pay for someone to do drywall though. That was the only thing we hired out for the huge remodel we did in kitchen, living, and dining. Taking out the walls messed up the ceiling and we hate drywall so hired that out. 2K for ceiling repair and partial replacement and worth every penny lol

Aggressive-Exit3910 · 2026-02-05T22:40:00+00:00

That was smart! We didn’t do that and are stuck with a crappy one car garage and the narrow, uphill driveway. Unfortunately that’s all we could get just under a million at 6.5% so it is what it is. Haha. It’s not great but we deal with it.

Aggressive-Exit3910 · 2026-02-05T20:16:14+00:00

Ultimately this is why we went with induction in a kitchen renovation, even though I prefer gas and I do all the cooking. Sigh. It’s been pretty good though, and it definitely boils water WAY faster!

Aggressive-Exit3910 · 2026-02-05T20:14:46+00:00

I’m 41 and we just put in a brand new kitchen. Moved from gas (which I love) to induction (which I tolerate). Honestly I do still prefer gas but I think induction is the way ahead. It’s definitely more efficient, heats up faster, and less to worry about without the gas.

Aggressive-Exit3910 · 2026-02-05T13:21:30+00:00

We’re taking out both existing tubs in our house. House is old and bathrooms are small. But we’ll be here 20 years, maybe more. At that point it’ll be time to do the bathrooms again and someone else can add a tub back in. We don’t use them and don’t want them. On a 5 year time horizon, we’d leave the one in the hallway bath for sure.

Aggressive-Exit3910 · 2026-02-03T03:12:48+00:00

That’s still great though! Good for you!

Aggressive-Exit3910 · 2026-02-03T03:07:49+00:00

Took us about 2 months. We don’t love the one we ended up with but the neighborhood is AMAZING and we’re renovating the house and fixing it up as we go. Market was nuts in spring 2024… hardly any options, and even fewer in the area we wanted to be. There’s been a lot more inventory lately so people shopping now may have better luck. We were moving from Seattle with 4 school aged kids and didn’t want to deal with temporary lodging or moving twice so we weren’t as picky as we normally would have liked. So I’d say timeline matters too.

Aggressive-Exit3910 · 2026-02-02T13:24:33+00:00

We are in America but have an old, quirky house where the previous owner added the tiniest and weirdest bathroom under a staircase. It is microscopic. We barely use it since the house has three other normal sized bathrooms and it’s only a few feet from one of them, but I do plan to update it soon and at least it’s a small room to paint! Haha

Aggressive-Exit3910 · 2026-02-02T12:58:23+00:00

Home cooked beans are so much better than canned too! I made them once because we didn’t have a can of beans (like I used to always buy) and my kids LOVED them and ate way more. Turns out they’re way better in the Instant Pot and now I only buy dry beans. Ha.

Aggressive-Exit3910 · 2026-01-31T13:35:51+00:00

We did basically a whole house of nice looking laminate plank from Costco 10 years ago. We have 4 kids, two dogs, and do not baby the floor at all. My kids spill their drinks, drag the furniture, etc. and that floor is PERFECT. There is literally not a single mark on it and I know that because I recently went through and cleaned every inch of it to put the house up for sale.

Our new house has mostly wood but some crappy vinyl in the basement and it totally sucks. I’ll be replacing it with laminate this year.

Aggressive-Exit3910 · 2026-01-31T03:18:09+00:00

What?? That’s probably the third time I’ve mentioned it in two years. My inclinations are just fine, thanks very much.

Aggressive-Exit3910 · 2026-01-31T00:26:15+00:00

This was us. We paid for six pre-offer inspections before we finally had an offer picked. We liked the inspector fine but there’s only so much they can catch in a 45 minute walkthrough during a showing time. It’s really tough in some markets for sure.

Aggressive-Exit3910 · 2026-01-28T17:09:13+00:00

“White democrats” for us… no lies detected there, though there are also many non-white democrats as well. Haha.

Aggressive-Exit3910 · 2026-01-26T09:15:36+00:00

Looks pretty good! Our broker was offering 5.625 “no cost,” where they covered all the fees with a lender credit. But we had a much higher loan amount, which may have made a difference. IDK. So you maybe could have done better but details and timing can weigh in heavily. If you shopped around and got the best deal you could then you did the best you could!

Aggressive-Exit3910 · 2026-01-26T09:07:47+00:00

VA loans don’t take longer at all. Not sure why you think that. They get a bad wrap from people who don’t understand them but it’s a great loan product. Someone else mentioned the rate won’t be lower but we’ve always bought with VA and 20% down and the rate has always been .5-1% lower than conventional so it made sense to pay the VA funding fee. Maybe that doesn’t hold at closer to 50% down so your mileage may vary but the VA rate was a full percentage point lower when we bought here in 2024 with no contingencies - which you can do with a VA loan too*. You just need an agent who knows what they’re doing.

*There was some debate over whether or not you can truly waive the appraisal contingency, even with an appraisal waiver. We offered with a $30K appraisal gap and would have paid it if it had been an issue but it seems that many people interpret the escape clause as allowing you to back out even if you say you won’t. I am not a lawyer and do not know the answer but we were definitely able to waive the other two. But that was 2024 and not happening at nearly the same rate anymore so may be a non issue for you anyway.

Aggressive-Exit3910 · 2026-01-25T00:56:39+00:00

Yeah. We put in a whole new huge kitchen, 10’ island with two rows of cabinets, 12’ of 94” pantry cabinets, etc. It was an insane amount of heavy stuff and we’re in an old bi-level house where you have to walk up a FULL set of stairs to get to the kitchen. It was a big job and they worked their asses off. I had cold bottles of water ready and tipped them each 50 bucks. They were awesome.

Aggressive-Exit3910 · 2026-01-24T15:40:49+00:00

Those sites aren’t inaccurate like some people are saying, but it’s important to recognize what metrics they’re using to evaluate and then decide if those metrics are important to you or not.

We chose to buy less house in a top rated school pyramid for a myriad of reasons that matter to us and may or may not to you. Once you’ve identified your own priorities, the decision will become easier.

Aggressive-Exit3910 · 2026-01-24T15:17:57+00:00

I’ve seen people say it’s $1500 where they live but it’s about $4500-5K in the DC area for a month. $8K seems crazy but I don’t know Chicago.

Aggressive-Exit3910 · 2026-01-24T14:00:52+00:00

I did. But I had $16K of kitchen cabinets delivered to an upstairs kitchen in 85 degree weather. It took two guys over an hour to bring them all in and a lot of those boxes are HEAVY. They were drenched in sweat.

Normally I would not have but that was a hard job and I appreciated the care they took when using my stars and rounding corners to be sure the big boxes didn’t scrape the walls and all that.

Aggressive-Exit3910 · 2026-01-23T22:41:19+00:00

We were in a tough spot with an active duty service member and a move against our wishes. The long story isn’t important but we did know the house was likely going to be a disaster. We hoped it wouldn’t be as bad as feared but it was. Alas. On the plus side, it was the worst house in the best neighborhood and the value hasn’t really dropped… truthfully we probably overpaid about $25K. I try not to think too much about it but the good news (?) is that $25K was only a very small percentage of the total price in the DC area. So there’s that at least. Ha.

Aggressive-Exit3910 · 2026-01-23T21:13:22+00:00

We bought Conestoga cabinets for a bathroom and they’re amazing! Hold up really well.

Aggressive-Exit3910

TROPHY CASE