Money stuff: creating a budget

I highly recommend forming (at least) a rough budget as part of the planning for any project. I'm not sure whether it's my project manager self or my tightwad self which dictates this (perhaps both!) but it's a key step in the planning and can inform decisions further down the track. 

Depending on the project this can be pretty easy, but when we were looking at buying a house that needs an overhaul on pretty much every front, the budget creation got a bit daunting. We went through a few iterations, the first of which was very, very rough. I don't seem to have it any more, but it was something like this: 

• Repiling - $50,000
• Kitchen - $40,000
• Bathroom - $20,000
• Reconfiguration and decor - $20,000
• Total - $130,000

I can't remember if all of the numbers are what we put down initially but they were along those lines - very high level (though I do know that's what I put for repiling because my dad laughed me out of town when I told him, and then it turned out to be only one corner, not actually a pile and only cost about $1000 to fix). 

That was enough for us to know that it would be worth putting in an offer - and it gave us a rough guide as to what the offer should be. This equation is: 

Potential Value - Renovation Cost = Offer Price

Note that we're not looking to make money (though we won't complain if we do!) - we just wanted a) a project; b) a nice family home at the end; and c) not to be throwing money away. If you were trying to do up a house for profit you'd want a significant margin in there as well - though you'd also likely not change some of the things we're changing and therefore you'd spend less. 

Once we'd negotiated and agreed on a price with the vendor, we got a building inspection (actually, we talked one of the companies that had provided the building inspection to an earlier bidder into providing the same report to us for a discounted price, since they didn't have to revisit the property). 

When we had the building report in our hot little hands, we added every defect needing to be addressed to a gigantic list, and assigned costs to each one. 

Most of the numbers are very approximate - generally we put $1000 per day of work (which usually covers some materials as well as labour) unless we had a better idea. 

We also checked the scariest looking problem - cracks in the retaining wall at the back of the house - with an engineer. If that had required work it probably would have been $50k, which would have been a deal-breaker. 

The total (after we'd added renovations, with a bit more detail and verification - i.e. I asked my dad, which is the standard sanity check process around here) came out at $130,120 (that over-estimated pile repair ended up covering a bunch of other remedial jobs). 

This list is now our master to-do list and budget. 

A snippet of our budget / to-do list

Because I like to see how we did on our forecasts (I always liked tests at school, too; weird, I know) our initial estimates (the "Approx cost" column) is now locked down. The grey lines are things we've completed, and as you can see we're not too accurate on the line-by-line - but overall we're still about even. 

(installing the dishwasher actually cost about $40 but it was the same receipt as paint for the kitchen and I'm not that dedicated to separating the costs)

I have also categorised and prioritised each task. This helps us see, for example, all the costs associated with the new kitchen, and how much money we need to have within the next few months for the high priority items, vs in a year or two for the things further down the list. 

It might be a bit over the top but hopefully it means we won't get any nasty surprises - and it is a bit sobering seeing those numbers adding up so it probably makes us a bit more careful too. 

So tell me - how do you plan your budget for projects? Or do you prefer to just do it and hope for the best? ;-) 

Keeping warm - the curtain edition

There's been a fair bit in the NZ media recently about the warmth (or lack thereof) of our houses. The attention has mainly been focused on houses that are at the lower end of the scale, but we have a terrible track record in general, and plenty of us live in houses that aren't as warm as they should be.

In Wellington, The Sustainability Trust offer free in-home assessments which will help you target the areas you can best improve in your home. I highly recommend these if you're in the Wellington region (I'm not sure if other regions have equivalent programs, please comment if you know of any) but regardless of where you are, one of the easiest, cheapest and most effective things you can change are your curtains.

Windows by their nature are thermally substandard when compared to the other bits of your house. Fortunately, well-fitted, lined curtains can go a long way to solving this. Consumer have a great article that has lots of pointers, but the basic idea is to trap the air around the window in as much as possible, ideally with floor-length curtains fitted as close to the window as possible and with big overlaps at the sides.

Our new house had curtains on most of the windows when we moved in, but none were any good. Most were very thin - the kind you can see in through at night when the lights are on - none were thermal, and all carried many years of dirt and grime in them.

Though cheaper than, say, double glazing, good quality curtains can still be pretty pricey. If, that is, you buy them new. My strategy (because I'm too cheap to pay custom curtain prices and too lazy to make my own) is to scour TradeMe for curtains that will work in our house.

This has two downsides; firstly, the time involved in checking the new listings to see if there is something that might work, and secondly, accepting the offerings available. I don't mind the time because it doesn't take long and has the potential to save us heaps. And because the whole house needs redecorating there aren't really any existing colour schemes to take into consideration, which makes it easier to find something that will work design-wise.

Our new bow window curtains - shown in their old bay window home. 

We got pretty lucky on curtains for our bow window (aside: did you know there's a difference between a bay window and a bow window? We have the latter, though I often refer to it as a bay window to save confusion). Someone had bought a house which had recently been redecorated, and the bold, funky, custom-made curtains for their new bay window weren't to their taste so they sold them - we paid $290, but have been told that curtains of that size and quality could be $1000+ so I think we're winning. And I love them. So definitely winning.

I've bought three other pairs of secondhand curtains so far, all floor length (actually two sets are longer and will need hemming, but that's better than too short!) and fully lined, all less than five years old, and all in great condition. These sets have ranged in price from $40 to $125 - amazing value for what they are!

The only room I still need curtains for is the lounge, which will have three windows when we're finished with it so is a bit tricker. I may end up making those because getting matching secondhand curtains for three windows in the right sizes might be stretching my luck... But I have a while to watch TradeMe before we need those ones so we'll see.

Have you nabbed any secondhand bargains lately?

Designing a kitchen

We're in the midst of overhauling our kitchen at the moment (there will be many more posts relating to this, I'm sure!), and to me designing a new kitchen is one of the most fun parts of a renovation. Partly this is because of how transformational it is – a dowdy kitchen somehow seems to pull a whole house down – but also because there are so many parts to fit together, and activities to sequence. It’s proper project management and I love it!

This is the second time we’ve designed a kitchen, and I thought I’d share how I go about the planning – though two kitchens obviously doesn’t make me a pro, I’ve done a ton of research so hopefully have something helpful to share.

1.       Think about the goals
Everyone has different priorities, and while it’s usually sensible to keep your house reasonably normal for resale value (even if you’re planning to be there for a long time circumstances can change!) it’s most important to make it work for your family. For us, the main goals were:

• The kitchen being central to family life. This means it’s moving to an entirely different location within the house – a consent-requiring change – but that expense will pay off massively for us in liveability.
• Having plenty of working space – enough room for at least 2-3 people to be chopping side by side.
• Keeping it social. This kind of fits in with the first part but has also given us a wee breakfast bar area so that friends can chill out in the kitchen if we’re hosting.

Your priorities will probably be different to ours, so have a think and write them down at the start to make sure your planning continues to line up with them. 

2.       Look at the space you have available

Depending on your house there might be major work required, like removing a wall or shifting location within your house – or you might be able to make improvements within the existing space. Note that moving your kitchen to a different location within your house requires a building consent in New Zealand, whereas upgrading an existing kitchen (assuming you're not moving any structural or bracing walls) does not. 

3.       Work out what components are required

List out the appliances and services (oven and cooktop, sink, dishwasher, fridge, microwave), and how much storage you think you need. If you have an existing kitchen which provides enough storage make a list of the storage units and sizes – you can then use this to compare with your new plan to ensure you’ll still have enough room for everything.

4.       Draw a plan

You can use software (I use Microsoft Visio which isn’t perfect but works – and there are lots of free programs online) or go old school with pencil and paper. If you go the paper route I recommend making scale cut outs of your cabinets and appliances (or getting one of the Bunnings / Mitre 10 planning brochures you can cut out) so you can move them around the page without having to draw new versions constantly. 

My very unprofessional but serves-the-purpose kitchen plan.
The weird gaps represent dead space under the benchtop but won't be visible. 

I like to spend a few weeks on this – I come up with some ideas, then mull them over for a few days, tweak (or completely reconfigure) and then rinse and repeat until I can’t think of any improvements. It's also worth spending a bit of time reading up on kitchen design tenets (plenty of info readily available online) as there might be important factors you've overlooked, like making sure there's enough room to open the dishwasher. 

A few tips and pointers: 

• Some cabinets need extra buffer panels - for example corner cabinets usually need this. If space is constrained (e.g. if your cabinets run wall to wall) you'll want to confirm this before you finalise the plan to ensure you don't run out of room. 
• End units will need end panels or some other type of finishing except where they butt up to walls. You don't have to buy the purpose-made panels (we like to build our cabinets in with gib and framing where required) but you'll want something and will need to allow space for these too. 
• It's often easiest to do this with a list of the available cabinets and dimensions on hand - if you know where you'll get your cabinetry from get their price list, which will usually provide this info, or seek it out online. 
• Cabinets can be custom-made into just about every size and shape but usually this comes at a premium. If you can, design for the standard sizes as much as possible - you may still end up needing one or two custom cabinets but that'll be much less costly than a whole custom kitchen. 
• Google for ideas and design help - there's lots of info out there to help you along. 

5.       Confirm design factors 

There are lots of decisions to make – cabinet door shape and colour, handle type, wall colour, backsplash/tile colour, flooring materials, window treatments, benchtop material, lighting...

Google image search comes into play a lot in this stage too, and to avoid decision fatigue I take the easy route for things I don't feel strongly about. This can also help save the dollars - e.g. I scored some (barely) secondhand custom made curtains for the big kitchen window on TradeMe, much cheaper than getting new ones and they will be one of the biggest visual features. Obviously I couldn't choose the exact fabric - I had to accept one of the available options in the size needed (which can be a waiting game too). But now we have this bold feature it helps default some of the other decisions, like paint colour.  

6.       Source cabinetry and components

Cabinets can take a month or more to arrive so don't leave ordering them until the last minute. Also try to get orders in place for the other key components (like any major appliances) as early as you can. 

7.       Schedule the work

Plan out what needs to happen when - but leave some buffer time in your schedule, as there will always be something that crops up when you're not expecting it. 

It's smart to line up your key tradies (electrician, plumber, builder, plasterer, flooring specialist, is there a name for a benchtop person?) as if they're good at what they do it often takes a while to get into their calendar. 

Usually the sequence is something like this but sometimes things go in different orders depending on your design and specifics of your build: 

• Any building work / electrical pre-wiring / plumbing pre-runs
• Plastering & prep for painting
• Painting
• Installing cabinetry
• Benchtop
• Completing electrical work / plumbing
• Flooring

8. Be prepared for disruption! 

This isn't critical for the success of the project, but is for your mental health. Get some strategies in place - maybe you can set up a semi-kitchen in another room to tide you over, maybe you can just eat instant noodles for a couple of months (no, don't do that!). 

As I write this we have a sink, very small bench and our hack dishwasher in one room, with our dishes, cutlery and food in boxes and trays on the floor, and oven, fridge and microwave in another room. The whole floor seems to have a permanent layer of dust and it's not very fun for cooking, nor is it child-friendly... But it's a means to a very worthy end! 

Have you lived through a kitchen renovation? Do you have any tips to help us along? 

Selling a house

One of our main life philosophies is to be as open and honest as we can, which applies to pretty much everything... But it would be fair to say this is not the standard operating model of the real estate industry. Because we had a house when we discovered this new project, we had to quickly work through how to sell a house, and we have a few things that we thought worked well and some that we'd change next time around.

Agents vs private sale
We chose to use an agent, though one with a flat fee (and a lighter service, which was fine with us), rather than a commission-based agreement. We thought that their knowledge and negotiation skills would be well worth the price we paid. Certainly they possessed both of the aforementioned qualities but next time (which hopefully won't be for quite a long time) we'll probably do it ourselves.

The main issue was that we wanted to be upfront about everything, and their perspective on what this meant didn't quite align with ours - see the bit about the paperwork below.

For plenty of people using an agent would be the right choice, so I'm not recommending against it - just spend plenty of time talking to them first to make sure you're on the same page.

Preparing the house
This is the obvious bit, but it can be pretty time consuming. Well worth doing though - people can be turned off by the smallest things so safest to give it a good tidy up before the photos get taken.

We had a couple of jobs that weren't quite finished that we rushed to complete when we knew we were selling - the big one was painting our bedroom. We also put a few things into storage (the main thing being a double mattress we had leaning against a wall) and made sure everything was shiny and clean before each open home (no mean feat with a baby smearing things on any available surface).

Preparing paperwork
This is where we'd really do things differently next time... And where our path differs from the mainstream.

For our recent sale we wanted to get a builder's inspection to make available to potential purchasers. The agents advised us against it, largely because a potential buyer would still probably get their own due to liability issues with using ours. Unfortunately, though this is true, when our first potential purchaser got their inspection they freaked out at [what we consider to be] very minor defects and pulled their offer.

We don't mind them not buying our house (we want the new owners to be completely happy) but it caused a huge amount of stress having the house under offer for two weeks and then having it fall over - not least because we had necessarily set up our move to the new house (including family flying in to help us shift). And because we then had a failed offer based on building inspection the defects had to be declared and we had to get our own inspection anyway (because you can't share the report the other people paid for) - so we didn't save any money. 

So I would recommend getting one in advance -  the $600ish can easily make itself worthwhile (that's about the holding cost of the average Wellington house for one week - so if having it makes your house sell one week quicker you've made your money back) and save lots of stress.

We did get the LIM ourselves, as that is completely usable - makes much more sense for the seller to get it once than for every potential buyer to get one. They are about $400.

I'm tempted to get a valuation next time too, make it available and then just ask for offers at the valuation level. Still not completely sure but I quite like the transparency of that, and hopefully would reduce the need for negotiation.

Setting a price
Though it's not necessary, we decided from the outset that we wanted to list the house with a price, because the tender process seems wildly unfair. We'd heard stories of people unknowingly putting tenders $50k above the main cluster of bids just to get their "dream home," and while you could claim that having a willing buyer therefore makes that the market price, I tend to think that actually real estate agents lead people to believe things that aren't necessarily true. Obviously there are lots of variables in agents - but the process being so secretive opens it up to abuse. And auction didn't appeal either (though at least it's more transparent) - I don't like them for buying houses so didn't want to sell ours that way.

To set a price you do need to have a good idea of what the market price is, but fortunately because I'm a crazy lady I'd been tracking all the house listings and sales in our suburb for about a year.

There are a few ways to get this data but the best that I've worked out (for free) is as follows. Firstly, I record all the new listings (noting key credentials, like number of bedrooms and bathrooms, parking, size and general condition). To get sales data, I scroll to the bottom of the new listings on Trademe (I have a saved search for the suburb) and record the addresses and sales amount for the listed "Recent QV.co.nz sales information" - usually three addresses are provided per listing.

This does require some time - a few minutes for each listing - and it takes a few months for sales of houses you've recorded details for to show up. There's also no guarantee you'll see data for a particular house. But it provides a pretty good picture of what houses are actually selling for in your area - the number I thought was about right from this data was what we were paid.

We listed it with a slightly ambitious number, which gave us a little room to negotiate if needed. The offer that resulted in the sale was $5k below that and we accepted it without any qualms - no negotiation needed.


Have you ever sold a house? What do you wish had been done differently?

How to hot wire a dishwasher

Okay, so it's not really hot wiring, but if, like me, your existence is so pampered that the prospect of an extra month without a dishwasher seems intolerable, and you happen to have a tap which can serve the purpose, this is a good temporary solution. Especially because it's extremely easy!

This does require you to have an available hose tap or washing machine tap, as those already have threads on them that make the job easy (doing this with a sink tap would require changing out the fittings, which is probably getting in the too-complicated-for-short-term-gain category). You'll also need a drain nearby, and a power point for the dishwasher.

I should note that this is at your own risk - the main risk being leaks, so if you're at all unsure watch the connections when the dishwasher is running to avoid catastrophe. And if you're really unsure, get a plumber!

If you have those amenities, here's what you need to do:

1. Make sure you have the fittings you need

20mm crox / hex nipple

Depending on the proximity of your tap to the location of your dishwasher you may need an extra hose. We're using a hose tap outside the kitchen window, with the dishwasher inside, which means we need an extra hose to reach all the way through the window. I bought a 2m mesh-encased washing machine hose from Bunnings for $33. You can get cheaper versions but when it comes to plumbing I'm risk averse, even when it's a short term thing.

If you need the extra hose you will also need a fitting called a "20mm crox nipple" or "20mm hex nipple." This is a small piece of brass with an external thread on each end, so you can screw the two hoses together. It's a common plumbing fitting but the small Bunnings I visited didn't have it so I went to Zip Plumbing Plus - a full-size hardware store should have these though.

You'll also need some tape to make sure the drain is held in place - I picked some up from the plumbing store, you might already have something though, so long as it will hold.

2. Make sure the tap is running clear
This is just a precautionary step in case it hasn't been used for a while. Our house had been unoccupied for nearly a year when we moved in so there could have been some gremlins in the pipes and you don't want to clog up your dishwasher with gunk, so just run the tap for a minute or so to flush it out.

3. Connect up the hose
If you are using a second hose you'll need to screw both the dishwasher hose and the extension onto the nipple, and you'll also need to screw the other end onto your tap.

All connections need to be screwed on firmly - at least as firm as you can do with your bare hands. Using tools for this is not advised because you can damage the thread and that can cause leaks - but if you're a weakling like me gentle use of a tool may help get it snug (i.e. don't do it as tightly as you can with the tool, just use the tool to get it a bit tighter than you can with your hands). Otherwise get someone with strong hands to tighten it!

4. Fix the drainage in place
Put the drainage pipe from the dishwasher where you want it - ours is draining into the kitchen sink. This does mean the sink needs to be kept clear of obstructions to avoid flooding the kitchen (one of many reasons this is only a short term solution!).

The drainage pipe is the darker grey one poking down behind the mixer -
see the sophisticated tape job, only the best here! 

You will need to tape this firmly in place (ours is fixed to the taps in a highly professional manner) as it will move when draining. You know how garden hoses turn into vicious snakes when turned on full? The last thing you want is that happening in your kitchen with your dirty dishwater.

5. Turn on the dishwasher
Yep, simple as that! It pays to run a rinse cycle to flush it out before you wash a load of dishes (regardless of whether it's new or not) but otherwise you're good to go.

The dishwasher will be unstable without a bench above holding it in place, so you may want to rest something heavy on top of it, or at least be careful loading and unloading.

The finished setup... It'll do for now. 

So now, glory of glories, after six weeks without a dishwasher we have one again! Do you think we're nuts for setting it up, or are you similarly attached to yours?

Creating a haven

This post has been moved to my active blog: http://www.mrscake.co.nz/2015/08/diy-creating-haven.html.

Fake Furniture

This post has been moved to my active blog: http://www.mrscake.co.nz/2015/08/fake-furniture.html.