Freed by 50

I am in the third year of renovating my house, and frankly I’m sick of it.

So what business does a blog about financial independence have writing about renovations? Hear me out. Until about four years ago, my quest for financial independence was a fairly typical slow burn. I was paying off debts as fast as I could while slowly increasing my savings and investment rates. Then a few things happened at once.

First, I ran out of debts (except my house) to pay off which dramatically increased my savings and investment rates. Second, I got a promotion and a series of substantial raises. Third, due to the previous two points I was able to max out my retirement savings, ESPP, and set some lofty post-tax investment goals. Fourth, all of my emergency funds were fully funded.

This still doesn’t explain why I felt it was important to renovate our house, and how this helps my journey to financial independence. As I’ve documented on this blog, my wife and I have considered selling our home in New York and moving somewhere else a number of times. Ultimately, we decided we’re happy enough where we live and moving would just introduce new problems. We plan to stay here until we retire or the kids all graduate high school, which means at least 18 years. With that in mind, and with our income at an all time high, and all savings and investment goals met, we decided to make this house our own and future proof as much as we can.

The funny thing is that after eight years of living here and three major renovations already completed, we finally realized that when we bought this house we bought a really nice fixer upper. Sure, the roof and siding were new. A couple of bathrooms were updated. The bones were good, as realtors say. But it’s a 30 year old house, and that’s the sweet spot for having to replace everything. I know this because everyone in my neighborhood whose houses were all built around the same time are all experiencing the same issues.

The first thing we did was finish our basement. It wasn’t a necessity, but it gave me a dedicated office space, gave the kids a dedicated playroom, and since all of our family lives out of town, it gave us a space to house them when they come to visit. Overall, a basement reno is pretty great since it’s not very intrusive. It’s been two years since the job was completed and I don’t regret it for a second. One day I’ll have three teenagers in this house at the same time and being able to banish them to the basement sounds like heaven.

Next we updated our outdated and quickly crumbling kitchen. It was either live with a half-assed piecemeal kitchen as we replaced broken parts over time, or enjoy a whole-assed renovation of the space. We chose the latter. I’d argue that there’s nothing more intrusive than a kitchen renovation, except maybe a kitchen renovation that starts the week before a pandemic. The job that should have taken three weeks took about two months. Trying to keep two toddlers out of the construction zone in a wide open house was nearly impossible. Cooking and cleaning up with a makeshift kitchen in the dining room and washing dishes in the bathroom sink was awful. The mess managed to permeate the whole house. Fans of “open concept” houses listen up, when you have no walls there’s no way to contain the mess! With that renovation behind us I wouldn’t trade our kitchen for anything. It completely changed the look of our home and made the space infinitely more useful. Still, the pain of that reno is too near.

We also decided to replace all the windows in the house, re-pave the driveway, add central air, go solar, and replace the boiler and hot water heater over the years. All of these were pretty painless and either added value to our lives (the central air was the greatest decision we ever made), or fixed big problems.

So this year we decided to finally take on the fun project of redesigning our backyard. We’ve been saving for this for about four years, and even though the cost was higher than we wanted it to be, we decided it was worth it if we’re going to enjoy it for at least two decades.

We started early. Very early. Back in January we planned everything out with our contractor. By February, after meeting with eight different mason’s, we selected one and made a down payment. In March, we discovered our pool coping with integrated liner hangers needed to be replaced, so I opened the pool in March! The contractor jackhammered out our walkways, and the pool company replaced the parts. Our mason ordered our stone in early April for an early June start. I demolished a 20 foot stone retaining wall myself, ripped out a 14×14 deck by hand, cut down trees (and ate my lunch and had a very nice day), and prepared the yard as best I could.

And then everything stopped.

Shortages. SHORTAGES?! Six months ago half the world was out of work, destitute, and in desperate need of the world governments to give them handouts to get by. Now in June the whole of the United States is somehow doing renovations?! Mason supply yards cant keep stone on site without it getting scooped up the day it arrives. Cambridge Paving Stone had to buy another plant to keep up with demand. People are ordering composite decking direct from the manufacturers and being told they may have to wait months.

And thus I’m once again completely stalled in a post-demo renovation.

My own woes aside, the fact that there are shortages of supplies not completely because of supply chain issues, but because of demand, in a market where people are being told their homes are worth tens, or hundreds of thousands more than they owe, scares the pants off of me. I want to believe that all these households saved like never before during 2020 and are now opening the coffers and doing updates they wouldn’t have otherwise done. However I’m of the belief that what we’re seeing is 2005-2007 all over again. People are spending equity. And this can’t end well.

Update: On July 28th, over six months since we started planning and working on our back yard renovation, we finally have a completed patio. Our mason wound up spending as much time on the phone trying to locate pavers as he did actually laying them, but in the end he completed the job and it is amazing. We are still only 1/3 of the way finished, though.

Unfortunately, due to the lumber price spike in May/June, the world switched to composite materials. This means there is now a shortage of composite decking. It doesn’t look like we’ll be refacing our deck in 2021, and we’ll have to live with it in its current, very bad, state. I would normally put on a coat of paint and replace any broken or over-worn deck boards, but I don’t want to sink money into something I plan to throw out.

With any luck, our contractor may be able to install our new “pool house” (it’s a glorified shed) and pergola before the end of summer.