Budget Busters!

They are inevitable. Those sneaky little expenses that like to creep up on you and take complete advantage of your intricately composed budget. Being quite well versed in the budgeting department (I LOVE DAVE RAMSEY), I of course wouldn't set foot in a construction zone without a finely tuned budget on hand. But even with all our [my] planning, there's no way of predicting the unpredictable expense. There is, however, a way of drawing the line.

Budget Buster #1
The overhang was framed today that acts as a little shelter over the back door and also helps to tie in the odd cantilever.


It's looking absolutely fabulous and has completely changed the look of the back of the house...except for one thing.

DARN YOU ELECTRIC METER (see that white box to the right of the overhang). The eye sore of an electric meter that sits on the back of our house is sticking out like an absolute sore thumb. Somehow, with the addition of this overhang, the blasted meter seems to have morphed into a virtual power plant on the back of the house. So the options presented themselves:

A) We are putting all of this time, money and effort into completely renovating this home, WHY would we leave this eye sore in the most visible location possible (remember our new back door will be just inches to the left of this meter)? Let's bury the power lines and move the electric meter out to the garage.

B) Forget digging up the yard to bury the power lines 3 feet below a perfectly decent lawn, let's just move the electric meter to the side of the house and leave the power lines as is.

C) Forget it. Let's leave the electric meter where it is and hope that once all the pipes that hold the wires are painted, it will blend right into the body of the house.

And the verdict is? [...Blank space here while you decide what your guess is...] C!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Leave it exactly as it is and blend that puppy right into the house by painting it out.

The thing is, we live in Minneapolis. Virtually every home in our area has an electric meter on it. And while it would be nice to have our yard free and clear of power lines, burying ours ain't gonna eliminate the big ol' power pole in the middle of our alley. And by saving the money on rearranging our personal power plant, we will be putting the funds towards a security system upgrade. Our house already has a security system, but it's LITERALLY one of the original security systems known to mankind (aside from a big old hairy beast on your front stoop). So saving the funds on the electrical will give us the opportunity to make sure our purrrty new house is also one we feel safe in.

And finally, just to give you an idea of what kind of funds we were dealing with here, moving the electric meter out to the garage and burying the power lines would be more than $5000. Moving them to the side of the house would be close to $3000. We truly don't believe these would be funds we could recover, so at the end of the day, we believe this is the smartest decision we can make...not to mention we can upgrade our security system for a tiny fraction of that price. Oh no you don't budget buster!!!!!!!!