Two years ago this afternoon, a woman at the title company slid two keys and a garage door opener across a conference table and said, "It's all yours." I remember the opener best, because it was beige and held together with tape, and because I pressed the button the whole drive over to make sure it worked. It didn't. The battery was dead.
This morning I sat at the kitchen table with coffee and scrolled the house sheet all the way back to row one. Row one is $245,000. Row two is a $14 box of furnace filters. Tessa leaned over my shoulder and said, "You're getting sentimental about a spreadsheet." A little, yes. Two years, one wedding, one dead water heater and more Saturdays than I can count are all in there, so here's the look back, sorted the way I sort everything.
What we'd do in a different order
The big one: insulation before anything cosmetic. In the spring of 2025 we pulled the upstairs carpet, refinished the floor, built Tessa's raised beds and painted the garage. All good projects. But the home energy assessment didn't happen until late September, and the insulation crew didn't come until late October, which means we spent a whole first winter heating the knee-wall attics.
Our 2024-25 heating season cost $814 in gas. This past season, after the air sealing and cellulose, it was $664, and our January bills went from 178 therms to 139. Two winters are never the same, and rates move, so I don't pretend that whole gap is the attic. But I'd rather have started seeing it a year sooner. The assessment cost us nothing at the time. I could have booked it the week we moved in.
The second one is replacing big things before they fail. The assessor flagged our 2009 water heater as aging in September, and in November it leaked across the basement floor. That turned into a three-quote scramble and a $1,780 Friday. We learned. The sump pump got replaced in March while the old one still ran, and the 1998 furnace is next, this summer, once we decide what replaces it. In planner terms, I finally started treating the big appliances like parts with a known lead time instead of surprises.
Where we overspent
Honestly, our overspending was small and mostly impatience:
- A $229 phone thermal camera I bought in October to "see" the insulation problems. It made dramatic purple pictures and told me nothing the blower door hadn't. It went back in November.
- A $7 toilet flapper in the wrong size, then a $9 one in the right size, when the $19 fill valve was the real problem all along.
- $48 for new rubber paddles on the used snowblower, because I checked everything on that machine except the part that touches the driveway.
- About $140 extra to get the water heater done on a Friday instead of waiting four days for the cheaper big-box install. That one I'd pay again, gladly.
None of those hurt much. The bigger lesson is that our money mistakes were about timing, not about tools.
The jobs I'm glad we didn't hire out
Four jobs did most of the heavy lifting on our budget. The bedroom floor cost us $410 against a $1,950 quote. The PEX run to the kitchen cost $262, crimp tool included, against $1,150. Painting the garage was $298 against $2,200. And the ice dam stain in February was $186 against a $640 drywall quote. Together that's $1,156 where the quotes added up to $5,940.
None of them came out perfect. There's a gouge by the closet where I let the drum sander sit too long, and I see it every morning. The floor also produced the tensest Saturday of our engagement, which Tessa and I have agreed not to reenact. And the PEX job only happened because Gary spent his Fourth of July weekend in our basement. But each one taught me something I used on the next job, and that part doesn't show up in the quote column.
Just as glad: the jobs we paid for. The water heater (gas, venting and a permit), both garage door torsion springs ($285 on a 12-degree morning), the insulation blowing and the $1,100 maple pruning in February. I never once wished I'd done those myself.
What's next
The tub faucet has been dripping since March. The yard looks like it lost a fight with the city plow. And now that we've owned the place two years, I'm calling our servicer about dropping PMI, which I'll write about once I know how it goes.
Tessa says year three should include at least one weekend with no projects at all. I added it as a row in the sheet. It doesn't have a date yet.
