The Good News of Home Renovations

When renovating a home, you have to be aware that there will always be unexpected twists and turns as things are uncovered and you start to bring the house up to the level it needs to be.  Most of these end up costing you money, but some end up not costing you as much as you were anticipating.

Remember the whole radon mitigation problem?  Go HERE to read more about that.  Well, this week we started in on the process to allow for better mitigation and I hired someone to start putting in french drains.  The cost was not cheap.  While I wasn't holding out much hope for there to be gravel under the foundation, I still wanted to be sure, so I had them start in an area near a spot that had to be repaired anyway in the basement.  This is what they found:

That looks like a whole lot of gravel to me!!!!  HAPPY DAY!!!  I was so thrilled.  Since we found rock in this area of the basement they went close to the radon mitigation pipe and dug there to see how far we needed to come before hitting rock.  Lucky again, it was within a foot from the pipe.

Here is the floor filled in after they dug and found gravel near the mitigation pipe.

The basement literally had no rock in the one place they stuck the radon pipe.  You know what though, I'll take it.  It saved us money overall and that is a happy place for me.

Of course the same day I found out this wonderful news, my contractor called to tell me the garage door broke - as in no going up or down (fortunately it was stuck in the down position).  

If it's not one thing, it's another.  Luckily I was already budgeting for new garage doors.  I was just hoping it would have lasted a little longer.  It's a trip my friends.  Luckily it's a trip I'm still enjoying.

Happy Tuesday!!