AnnieW625
12-06-2012, 03:41 PM
Backstory:
We bought our then 55 yr. old house in 2005. The kitchen was remodeled by the prior owners in 2003 or 2004. They used cheap Home Depot MDF cabinets or just replaced some of the original wood doors with the MDF cabinents and left the original wood cabinents (I still curse myself for not noticing that when we went through the open house--they look a lot nicer from far away). They put in an apartment size dishwasher, and put in low to mid grade vinyl flooring. We have always thought we would replace everything all at once.
Current Dilemma:
our dishwasher is leaking and is causing the vinyl floor to buckle, and therefore we think that is going to eventually rot the floor boards in the kitchen. We had been noticing the floor issue in the last 6 months, but since we usually run the dishwasher at night when we go to bed we didn't notice the leak (and it must have dried out overnight--benefit of living in a warmer climate!).
DH has been out of town all week and we discovered this on Sunday night before he left. We had previously thought the flooring had just been installed hap hazardly (we had reason to believe because we have had to repair other hap hazard things in our house because except for the granite counter tops they used everything else in the house was done on the cheap!), but now with the water leak we are kind of freaking out. I haven't used the DW since DH left.
So, WWYD?
Option A:Would you stop using the dishwasher now and continue to save up money (we have zero equity in our house so a home equity loan is NOT an option:() so everything could be replaced at once. This could take 6 months to a year of really hard savings for us.
or
Option B: Just have the floor replaced now (I would love to replace with actual Linoluem (this IS NOT vinyl!) or Marmoleum) and deal with the other stuff at a later date, but then I am worried about spending more money on flooring and or having to spend more on labor for essentially doing two jobs vs. doing one large job.
I am thinking depending on the floor board issue the max I want to spend on this $20K. Is that even possible? If you are in the LA/LB/Orange County area your input on contractor costs would be greatly appreciated.
We don't need super high end appliances (if budget allows we'd add a wall oven, but all we really need is a new hood or over the range microwave (although our current one works fine so another could be extra, but with the cost of hoods a new OTR microwave isn't that expensive), a full size dishwasher, and a new fridge--although we could just use the old one until it dies, but make the spot large enough to fit 36" wide fridge) and would prefer that we are able to spend more money on a the higher level Ikea or Lowe's cabinents (DH is not impressed with anything at Home Depot for the most part) or potentially have some custom ones made depending on if cabinet makers are still not working as much due to construction being slow, and are able to still haggle out good deals (our interior designer friend has a guy who does good work for a good price). We have a small galley kitchen as well and if in a pinch we could just replace the current cabinets, but want to add a few more as we would lose storage space due to putting in a larger dishwasher.
We bought our then 55 yr. old house in 2005. The kitchen was remodeled by the prior owners in 2003 or 2004. They used cheap Home Depot MDF cabinets or just replaced some of the original wood doors with the MDF cabinents and left the original wood cabinents (I still curse myself for not noticing that when we went through the open house--they look a lot nicer from far away). They put in an apartment size dishwasher, and put in low to mid grade vinyl flooring. We have always thought we would replace everything all at once.
Current Dilemma:
our dishwasher is leaking and is causing the vinyl floor to buckle, and therefore we think that is going to eventually rot the floor boards in the kitchen. We had been noticing the floor issue in the last 6 months, but since we usually run the dishwasher at night when we go to bed we didn't notice the leak (and it must have dried out overnight--benefit of living in a warmer climate!).
DH has been out of town all week and we discovered this on Sunday night before he left. We had previously thought the flooring had just been installed hap hazardly (we had reason to believe because we have had to repair other hap hazard things in our house because except for the granite counter tops they used everything else in the house was done on the cheap!), but now with the water leak we are kind of freaking out. I haven't used the DW since DH left.
So, WWYD?
Option A:Would you stop using the dishwasher now and continue to save up money (we have zero equity in our house so a home equity loan is NOT an option:() so everything could be replaced at once. This could take 6 months to a year of really hard savings for us.
or
Option B: Just have the floor replaced now (I would love to replace with actual Linoluem (this IS NOT vinyl!) or Marmoleum) and deal with the other stuff at a later date, but then I am worried about spending more money on flooring and or having to spend more on labor for essentially doing two jobs vs. doing one large job.
I am thinking depending on the floor board issue the max I want to spend on this $20K. Is that even possible? If you are in the LA/LB/Orange County area your input on contractor costs would be greatly appreciated.
We don't need super high end appliances (if budget allows we'd add a wall oven, but all we really need is a new hood or over the range microwave (although our current one works fine so another could be extra, but with the cost of hoods a new OTR microwave isn't that expensive), a full size dishwasher, and a new fridge--although we could just use the old one until it dies, but make the spot large enough to fit 36" wide fridge) and would prefer that we are able to spend more money on a the higher level Ikea or Lowe's cabinents (DH is not impressed with anything at Home Depot for the most part) or potentially have some custom ones made depending on if cabinet makers are still not working as much due to construction being slow, and are able to still haggle out good deals (our interior designer friend has a guy who does good work for a good price). We have a small galley kitchen as well and if in a pinch we could just replace the current cabinets, but want to add a few more as we would lose storage space due to putting in a larger dishwasher.