Last weekend, I had dinner with my very good friend, who happens to be my mortgage officer. Due to a variety of scheduling conflicts, I hadn't seen him in a while, since around Christmas time.

We were chatting about our houses, how much we liked them, what we wanted to do to them, and I mentioned my kitchen floor fiasco. I bought tile at the tile sale a few weeks ago, and I'm now procrastinating in making the decision whether to install the tile myself or hire someone to do it.

While I was describing what I had to do to the kitchen floor, I casually (and stupidly) mentioned the remodelling fantasy that I've been harboring for about a year and a half now: to expand my kitchen to the edge of the back deck and build a master suite above, turning my thousand square foot 2 bed / 1 bath into a maybe 1500 square foot 3 bed / 2 1/2 bath. My friend turned to my brother, the architect, and they quickly cacluated how much something like that would cost. The number was large.

I laughed, and said something like "but I could never afford that..." My friend, who knows all of my financials, having financed my house four years ago and refinanced it two years ago, said "of course you can afford it." He pointed out that my house has appreciated in the last four years about the same amount that the remodel would cost. He mentioned the program that his bank is offering for remodels like I talked about.

I quickly changed the subject to less terrifying matters.

Allow me to point out that I don't need a master suite. I don't need another bedroom. I don't need another bathroom and a half. I don't need to double the size of my kitchen. I certainly don't need to increase the amount of space to cool down in the summer (though I really should look into whether or not I have enough insulation, and whether I should weatherstrip the doors and windows and whether or not there are any existing cracks in the house). My dogs don't need to have construction workers tearing apart their house for six months or so, especially since they've (the dogs, not the construction workers) been banned from visiting my parents' house (stupid neighbor) for the foreseeable future. Also, Relampago has been having trouble with stairs at the ranch lately, so I'm not sure that he'd like the idea of having an upstairs bedroom. No one is moving in to live with me, I'm not having kids, I'm not even getting another dog.

I do need to partially remodel my kitchen, starting with the floors and ending with some of the cabinets. I may or may not need to investigate new methods for doing laundry, depending on what's causing the leak that lead to the floor fiasco.

But.

A good friend of mine just started a construction company (which will probably be used for the kitchen floor regardless of what I do). And, my brother is an architect, so it's not like I'd be paying an arm and a leg for a cool design using reasonably inexpensive materials. And, it'd certainly increase the value, for rent or for sale, of my house beyond what the investment is. And, there's been talk of a raise. How much, I have absolutely no idea, but it's possible that the whole thing could be revenue neutral.

I should have never brought it up.

Tags: home improvement