Mortgage Monday: Time To Keep It Simple

With all of the work being done on the house lately things have been rather complicated. So far, nothing has been as simple as it should be. Everything on our project list has had a few subsections added to it with the floors and the exterior doors being prime examples of this ongoing process. However, in the end, many of these things, all of these complications, are going to give us what we have been picturing in our minds as our ideal home. Further, many of the things that have been uncovered and a couple of the future projects have and will remove some of the complicated aspects of our home.

The best examples of this are the HVAC overhaul currently underway and the electrical overhaul that we have on the schedule. The old oil and electric system required a heck of a lot of copper pipe running across the basement and up the walls to supply the baseboard heating. The air conditioning, being an afterthought of the original homeowners, was something that was put in as inexpensively as possible leaving us with duct work running through bedroom closets and really not being very efficient. The boiler, oil tank, and all of the copper pipes are now gone, the duct work has been overhauled, and we have now simplified the two zone (the heating was originally on four zones) system running forced air for both heating and cooling.

This project is nearing completion but the electrical work has yet to be started. While a few steps have been taken to simplify this (i.e. old whole house fan has been removed) there is still a lot of work to be done with new matching fixtures being installed and a lot, and I mean a lot, of outlets and switches that are going to be removed (with a few simply being moved). This will eliminate the need for a lot of the wiring that is running throughout the house and will put things (or leave things) in place that actually make sense (i.e. I don’t need three separate switches for the kitchen lights).

It is definitely a process but, as I said before, it will simplify some of the basic aspects of our house. After all, I don’t like having excess pipes and wires running through the walls when they don’t need to be there. After that it should be much easier to maintain. So, we will have to deal with a little more complication before we can reach a point of simplicity. Well, at least until the next round of renovations and projects.