I love my house. Even more than that, I love where we live. We lucked into a living on a great street with fantastic neighbors, something we couldn’t possibly have known when we bought our house because we bought while the neighborhood was still under construction. I love that I was able to pick every last detail of my house when we built (well, from a pre-determined list). But it was our first home, and if I had it to do all over again there are a number of things I would do differently.
Planning for K’s upcoming birthday party, I glance wistfully out the window at our tiny porch. When we built the house, we were given the option to add square footage to the porch, basically extending it the width of the back of the house. The total cost to do this, $3,000. Mind you $3,000 is a lot of money, but remember we were building. That meant that $3,000 would have been added to our mortgage. So, $3,000 over 30 years at 5% (actually a bit less, but I am rounding on the percentage). That would have only added $16.10 to our monthly bill – $16.10 to have room to play. Ahhhh hindsight.
Of course to add that same square footage now we’d have to take off the screen enclosure, add more decking and then put on a bigger screen. I have no idea what that would run, but I guarantee it would be more than $3,000 and we’d have to pay out of pocket – not add it to the mortgage. If only increasing the size of the porch were as simple as grabbing some PVC Pipe Fittings and putting the PVC pipes together like a kids puzzle to create a bigger frame. If it were that easy, I’d run out and buy a supply of Schedule 80 Pipes today and have a bigger porch in time for the party.
But it isn’t that easy. So we will have the party outside in the yard where there is plenty of room to roam. But someday I’ll have a bigger porch with enough room to play around the pool and it won’t be made of PVC pipes. I promise.
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