Saving on Home Repairs- Master Bathroom

A house is an investment and with any investment you have to plan on maintaining it. But a house also needs repairs not just maintenance. We finished our master bedroom addition about 10 years ago with the plan to spend no more money on it. Of course we were wrong. In September, I stepped close to the shower to grab something on top of the shower wall and my foot went through the floor.



The detective work began. We needed to figure out first how much damage there was, second what was causing the damage and third how we were going to fix the damage.

The damage was much worse than we even thought

It actually took several months for us to figure out and completely repair the problem. We discovered that the shower surround itself was leaking. The only solution to this problem was to replace the entire shower surround. We decided to order the replacement from Home Depot for several reasons, first they would deliver to house and second we could stretch the payment to 6 months without interest. Unfortunately the cost of shipping was over $100. Total cost for the replacement shower surround $725.

Fortunately, we had saved excess material from the addition work. We even saved multiple pieces of the glass tile that we used as an accent in the shower room. We found large tile that matched closely to the original for $0.78 each. We also had saved the gout needed to match the original. We decided to rework the design of the floor and used the remaining glass tile. I actually like the look of the finished project much better than even the original. We also used gift card earned from Swagbucks in order to decrease our overall expense. We did have to purchase a tile saw and tile clippers. We plan to use these in the future to update the hall bathroom. Total out of pocket other than the surround $101.34! This is a huge win for us!

2020 Budget

Am I the only nosey one? I have been stalking several blogs and facebook to see a real family budget. I want to see if my numbers are any where close to others and to find if I left anything out? In lieu of being able to compare, I decided to just go ahead and share our budget lines.

Hair50
Gas/ Auto up keep500
Offering520
Piano120
Clothing50
BracesĀ 100
Chores350
Car Payment436.42
Spending300
AAA/Insurance78
Groceries550
Gifts100
Summer200
Saving30

Mortgage 1019.17
water32
electric260
Road runner147.46
Car Payment344.03
cellphone476.25
Adobe/Computer21.39

Creative Left-overs

I cooked a huge meal for Christmas lunch, knowing that I would be able to stretch it for several more days. The day after Christmas we shared left-overs with our friends and ended up with about 1/4 of a spiral ham and even more unexpected was the left-over BBQ pork from my family gathering. So far, I would consider our use of left overs a success! We been eating up the left-overs for 7 days now but I have been able to use things in different ways and actually freeze several easy to prepare meals to use in the next couple of months.

The first creative left-over was ham bone soup. I cut most of the remaining ham off the bone and threw the bone in crockpot with an additional 2 cups of chopped ham, added a bag of navy beans, chopped up cooked carrots, a couple of stalks of celery that were not used, 1/4 teaspoon of red pepper flakes, 1 teaspoon of pepper, 1 teaspoon of salt and 6 cups of turkey stock. We ate this for a dinner meal and I froze a container to use as a quick soup meal.

I pulled out my food processor to make ham salad. This is an awesome snack or lunch.

Yesterday, I chopped up some of the ham and mixed with remaining mac and cheese. Kendall, who is not a left-over person loved this and requested that I make it again! Today at lunch, we finished up the ham by making ham and cheese quesadillas.

Left-over BBQ was eaten as several meals of sandwiches, next I made two containers of Pork Fried Rice. We ate one for dinner and finished as a lunch. The second container was frozen again for a easy meal in the future.

Turkey is an easy sandwich of course. But I have also made a pot of Turkey taco soup, simply chop up the cooked turkey instead of ground beef. This also made two meals with one in the freezer to use later on.

Can you share a creative left-over that I have not thought of?

2020 Goals

  1. Grocery Budget of $550- This includes all household supplies and will include any and all meat that we need. This goal is probably more difficult than in the past due to need to purchase a cow this year and the increase in the price of all groceries. I am beginning with a pretty well stocked pantry and some meat so that should keep us on track for at least January.
  2. Record and keep up with gas/ auto purchase- I am not setting a goal but need to determine the amount to budget. Currently we budget $500 but this may not be enough.
  3. Use a cash envelope system for everything possible. I have set up separate accounts for gifts and clothing that I can easily on the spot transfer money to and from a debit card. Gas will be placed on our Sheetz credit card to help with tracking.
  4. Blogging- 15 post per month.
  5. Fitness- Goal is to walk 3 times a week. I also want to increase the distance to 3 miles at a time.
  6. Bible study- Goal- I am thinking 3x a week to start with but increasing to 5 times before the year ends.
  7. Attempt at least 52 new recipes this year. In order to stay accountable, I will have to report on each with a blog post.