This is not meant to be a sad tale about how we encountered some unexpected home maintenance costs this year. It is simply a reminder of the sorts of costs involved in owning a home that can pop up unexpectedly during the year. And how it’s important to budget an amount of money for these sorts of repairs even if they don’t happen.
It’s also a good reason to have an emergency fund at the ready to deal with these unexpected expenses. You don’t want to go into debt to cover unexpected home maintenance costs… especially in retirement.
We Got a Reminder About Unexpected Home Maintenance
I first thought about writing this article when the Love-goddess came home from visiting her son, who lives in another city, and reported that he had experienced a couple of unexpected and unwanted costly maintenance issues with his home. “Home Maintenance” being the need to repair or replace.
It is a 1950s bungalow that looks very similar to the one I was raised in. He purchased the house about 12 years ago, and even then, it looked like one of those places where things were going to start to happen anytime soon. I know the big appeal when he bought it was the enormous, treed lot on which it was situated, where he could enjoy playing sports and other activities with our grandson. He may not have been thinking that he had to be wary of how old the home was and how little it had been updated since it was originally built. Fortunately for him, he has lived there for over a decade without any unwanted maintenance surprises. That all changed very recently.
He does a really good job of managing his money and laying out and sticking to an annual budget. And he certainly could never be accused of being inclined to overspend because, like his mother, he is of Scottish Presbyterian descent and has a genetic predisposition to cling onto his money tightly.
Like most people, I don’t think he had sufficiently budgeted for unexpected home maintenance expenditures. First up, the dryer that came with the house died, and he spent several weeks drying his clothes by hanging them on a line to dry in the basement. Over time, he set aside money to buy a new washer and dryer set so that wasn’t an immediately painful experience that required speedy action and spending.
However, near the end of that little episode, he experienced a serious plumbing incident which required him to hire a plumber to replace a substantial amount of piping in the home. I’m sure that’s going to be repeated fairly frequently over the next few years. This led to more mumbling and groaning about having to lay out money expectedly for a totally unplanned repair. Do-do happens!
Throughout this, I was sitting at home smugly thinking away to myself helpful thoughts like… “welcome to home ownership” … “Everyone needs to budget for unexpected home maintenance costs”… “Learn to expect the unexpected” … “This is why everyone needs an emergency fund stashed away in a bank account” … Etc. Etc.
In the nye on 30 years that the Love-goddess and I have been together, we have owned three different homes and each of us had owned various properties before we got together on a blind date on that fateful night at Lulu’s… The world’s largest bar at the time… listening to Barney Bentall and the Legendary Hearts… But I digress. So, we know all about unexpected maintenance surprises and always have had money set aside for these unanticipated events that pop up from time to time.
The short of it was, I was feeling VERY smug about our level of preparedness… Until it happened to us!
The Fit Hits the Shan
This summer, we experienced three different situations that required spending on maintenance and updating work unexpectedly, or at very least somewhat unexpectedly. As I think about it, these three situations represent a few of the different ways in which homeowners typically spend money on home maintenance, repairs, or updates. In this case, weather related damage, home renovations, and the replacement of worn out features.
The first came close to being an unexpected, very expensive, weather-related, total disaster. The second occurred when we chose to modernize the railing and spindles on the staircases in the home. The third involved a need to replace all the Venetian blinds in the home because the mechanisms that allowed us to raise, lower, or tilt the blinds in several rooms had become inoperable all around the same time.
All three of these situations involved some drama, but I will begin with the most dramatic of all, the near flooding of part of our basement. And I will have to admit that a lack of attention to a needed repair was the cause… My bad.
Home Maintenance Debacle Number 1
During an extended torrential downpour in July of this year, a combination of unfortunate events allowed a basement window well to completely fill with water. The galvanized steel window well had completely sunk down to ground level on one side. This allowed groundwater to flow into the window well unrestricted. Not a good situation. Especially given that the drainage pipe was sealed, and water was not properly draining out of the window well.
This was exacerbated by the fact that water also cascaded off the roof directly into the area because the downspout attached to the eavestrough was blocked with an old bird’s nest. In this first photo, you can see how the galvanized window well has sunk down to ground level on the far side.
When I rushed to the basement to check out the situation, I could hear water trickling down behind the drywall alongside the window. This resulted in me throwing on all kinds of rain gear and heading out in the downpour to leap into the well with a pail and start bailing it out. This happened a second time the following week before we had any chance to make repairs.
The second photo is of me standing in the window well bailing it out the second time. The first time the water was right up to my backside. Not a great way to spend a summer day. You can also see how easily the water would have flowed off the ground into the well. It had stopped raining at this point.
Before I dashed outside, I asked the Love-goddess to head down to the basement and start yanking all my vinyl albums out of the storage unit that was directly below the flooded window. You can see how everything was set up before the incident in the first photo of the following photo carousel.
The net result was a basement full of vinyl albums and hastily displaced furniture. 🙂 In the third image, you can see how the galvanized steel window well has very noticeably sunk on one side.
Click on the first photo in each carousel to view them all in a larger format.
Assessing the Damage
After I finished my bailing and ran downstairs to move furniture, I immediately called the insurance company. I was assuming that there would be an expensive repair ahead of us. After I described the issue, the agent said that we would probably not be covered for damage because the problem was caused by “overground water” and we weren’t insured for that. Sheesh! We are now insured for overground water in case something like this happens again.
The agent did say that he would pass along the claim to the actual Insurer, and they would probably dispatch someone to make the final determination. After that, I contacted a buddy who works for a firm that does fire and water restoration work. I was not waiting around for the insurance company to send someone over to determine whether they would cover the damage or not.
Art arrived, and he and I began to take things apart. I got a pry-bar, and we worked off the ruined baseboard that you can see in the photos. Then we pulled back the dampened carpet. Fortunately, it was not wet too far out from the wall, maybe a couple of feet.
This was followed by some wonderful and brilliant news. Not much water had come in, so there was no damage to the drywall and no real damage to anything on the floor, except for the ruined baseboard. He had me set up a fan with a heater blowing across the exposed surfaces to dry things out and then, after that, I was to go to the hardware store and get a specific product with which to wipe down everything in order to kill the mold that had already started to grow.
We had dodged a costly and unplanned-for home maintenance bullet.
And then it happened again! Another torrential downpour and the window well started to fill up again. I was on it quickly, but it did remind me that I needed a permanent solution to the situation. A Google search quickly discovered a list of folks who do window well replacements in our area, so I called the one that looked the most promising… whatever that means. 🙂
The Quick Fix
Shevon and his small team came very quickly, and I immediately learned something about window wells that everyone should be aware of. In the first photo below, you can see that the drainpipe appeared to be full of gravel and dirt. This is a re-creation on my part after the fact, just so I had a photo to show you. When it happened, it was still full of water even after all the water had drained out of the window well into the ground.
Seeing the clogged drainpipe, Shevon immediately leapt in, cleared out the gravel, and exposed a cap that had been stuck into the end of the pipe… To prevent the plastic pipe from collapsing in on itself, I suppose. He pointed out that the builder had failed to take the last important step, and that was to drill all kinds of holes in the cap to let the water drain down into the drainage pipe and then further down into the tile around the footings of the house.
So, they did drill, as you can see in the photos. They also did this exact same thing to the three other window wells in our house to prevent future blockages and flooding. This by itself would have allowed future excessive amounts of water to drain freely down into the weeping tile, but it certainly would not have prevented groundwater from easily flowing into the window well. A permanent solution was required.
The Big Fix
Two weeks later, Shevon and his crew showed up to replace the entire window well. And they did a fabulous job. Here it is in pictures and captions.
Although this whole thing unfolded as if there were going to be very substantial costs involved, in the end, the price tag was exceptionally reasonable.
Window Well Total Cost: $600
Home Maintenance Debacle Number 2
The second “debacle” wasn’t, in the end, a complete debacle. But it did still end up costing us money.
We had arranged to have all the railings and spindles in the house modernized. As you will see in the pictures, we had the traditional wooden railings and spindles throughout in a very dated color. In our last house, we had this sort of thing converted to a cherry-stained handrail with white spindles, but this time we thought we would go ultra-modern.
What could’ve been a total disaster struck on the very first day of construction. Although we were having the spindles and railings replaced, we weren’t having anything done with the stairs. They were covered in a nice carpet that matched the rest of the house, and we didn’t have any real need to convert them to hardwood to match the new railings. Unfortunately, the contractor doing the work, didn’t get that message from the woman who sold us the project and was overseeing the installation.
On the first day that the contractor arrived, the noise was such that the Love-goddess withdrew to her office, and I retreated to our living space in the lower level. They were cutting out the spindles with a reciprocating saw, and there were easily over 100 spindles to be removed. Later on, when the contractor was finished, he called us back to have a look at what they had done.
What we both noticed at the same time was that he had not only removed the spindles but had also stripped all the carpeting off the stairs as well. When asked about this, he said he took off the carpet “because you’re getting new hardwood stairs”. We had to explain to him that we weren’t planning on getting hardwood on the stairs. The project manager had failed to communicate that to him.
He said he could reinstall the carpeting, and we even determined we had some extra leftover carpeting that could be used on the angled stairs.
He left for the day, and we assumed that the problem was solved. And then it dawned on me what a bad idea it would be to put the old carpeting back down again after it had been yanked off. I also noticed when I looked at the garbage piled up on the front porch that he had also cut all the bull noses off the front of the underlying wood treads.
I called in the project manager and the contractor the next day and gave them a “stern lecture” and pointed out to them that the only solution to the problem was for them to install new hardwood stairs… at their expense.
They agreed, and the work was completed to our satisfaction. However, I took some pity on both and did not force them to pay for a new carpet runner down the stairs. There was no way we were going into our “dotage” with slippery hardwood stairs facing us every day. 🙂 So, we ended up having to pay for a new runner to cover the new stairs. Another unplanned maintenance expense.
You can judge for yourself in the photographic evidence to see if the grief and aggravation we suffered was worth it. 🙂
Carpet Runner Total Cost: $2114.23
Debacle??? Number 3
OK, this one wasn’t really a debacle because we knew it was coming… eventually The straw that broke the camel’s back, however, occurred when the opening and closing mechanism for the big window in the bedroom broke and left the blinds permanently closed. Clearly, it was time to take action.
The only part of this that approached being a debacle was that when the installer came to inspect the job a few days before the actual installation took place he informed us that the quote did not appear to include the special frames that would allow us to open our type of windows fully. He didn’t realize our windows required them until we told him. However, it did all work out, and we got what we wanted at the quoted price. Perhaps it was included; perhaps it wasn’t. No harm, no foul.
Shutters Total Cost: $8,965.99
So, all of that added up. As to the other things that happened this year, I’m about to itemize. But we did budget $6,000 for maintenance in 2024, so we knew things would pop up, just not to the degree that they did.
All the Other Stuff
I would be remiss if I did not mention the major expense we incurred right at the end of 2023. Our fancy gas stove’s electronics got fried in a power surge, and we had to buy a new stove. It would have cost almost as much to get the electronics replaced as it would have to buy a new stove. And apparently, it would have taken months to get the new electronics. We decided to get a new dishwasher at the same time because the one we were using had been in the house when we bought it and was getting kind of operationally wonky.
Appliances Total Cost: $4239. 76
Here is a breakdown of all the other things that fell under our house maintenance budget and costs in 2024.
New Thermostat Installed – $433.14
Garage Door Repair – $60
Plumbing – $ 302.84
The only one of the above that requires any mention was the thermostat. Our thermostat died on Thanksgiving Monday. The company who installed the furnace wanted approximately $1300 to install a new touch panel to control the furnace. NOT HAPPENING!
That sent me off to Home Depot, where I bought a beautiful Ecobee unit and had it installed by an electrician. It is fantastic. We can control the temperature in the house from anywhere in the world now.
Things Don’t Look Good for 2025
It looks like our unexpected house maintenance expenses are going to continue in 2025. Our four-year-old 75-inch Sony television has just died and cannot be repaired. Ouch! This can definitely wait until the new year before we replace it.
Total Cost: ~$3000
So, there you have it. The point of all this was not to make you feel sorry for us. To repeat, it is simply a reminder of the sorts of things that will pop up unexpectedly during the year and it’s important to budget an amount of money for these sorts of things even if they don’t happen. It’s also a good reason to have an emergency fund in cash on hand to deal with these unexpected expenses.
You have been warned. 🙂
