How are people affording all this hardscaping

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We make $600k a year. Seriously, that’s what it is. Writing a check for $20 or $50k is just no big deal.

Well DH makes 750K a year and even for us writing a check for 50K was a big deal! But yes, that's how we afforded hardscaping. It sucked and the only reason we bit the bullet is because of drainage issues.

Oh man, some of you just love humble brags!

[Anonymous]

We shop around A LOT, word of mouth recommendations from our circle, know how to do the work ourselves also, and then we supervise the heck out of everything.

Oh, we use the Hispanics to do this work for us. Pay in cash.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We shop around A LOT, word of mouth recommendations from our circle, know how to do the work ourselves also, and then we supervise the heck out of everything.

Oh, we use the Hispanics to do this work for us. Pay in cash.

There’s a landscaping company named “The Hispanics”?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:we had an estimate for a screened in porch for $100k. We have combined income of 400K and decided we just could not (did not want to) swing it. Can't have it all.

In 2020 we had some money to burn for a renovation and wanted to upgrade something exterior like getting a new driveway. We were quoted $14K. We decided to wait a bit and get a kitchen, and figured I'd be OK parking a brand new car on the street with the money I didn't spend on that driveway.

Got quoted 9K for an 18 x 20' patio extension in 2018 (by the one landscaper who got back to us LOL). I don't want to know how much it would be now...

[Anonymous]

It's freaking expensive. And given how expensive it is, you want it done right--so you hire people who know what they're doing. We had to prioritize it over other projects because our front steps/path were 90 years old and crumbling but....it looks beautiful, the drainage is majorly improved and no one is tripping or falling on our stairs anymore!

[Anonymous]

We did a huge deck upgrade for 18k. A heloc is helping us disperse the payments over a year.

We did almost half up front. Then used the loan (overall expecting the payment to last from Jan 2023-Dec 2023). Almost done.

[Anonymous]

I don’t come close to $750k a year. I do use annual gifting from my parents to pay for a lot of my house stuff.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We DON'T make 600k a year, but we do budget for 2.5% of our house price every year for repairs. So 20k on our 800k home. A new deck is like 80k, new roof was 15k, new ACs, new windows, fixing our brick walkway was $4,500. We can't afford to do everything at once. We split our basement remodel to 3 years so that we weren't spending so much at once.

Very smart!

[Anonymous]

We spread projects out over time. Last year was the patio, this year was driveway, next year will be front walk and stairs.

[Anonymous]

DIY...we did all our hardscaping ourselves for just the cost of tool rental and material, which turned out to be $1000 in 2020 to replace a sinking walkway with pavers, $7500 for a master bath full renovation in 2020, and $1200 to refinish stairs and replace wood balusters with solid iron ones in 2022. BTW, was 700k last year and 520k this year. We truly enjoy DIYing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DIY...we did all our hardscaping ourselves for just the cost of tool rental and material, which turned out to be $1000 in 2020 to replace a sinking walkway with pavers, $7500 for a master bath full renovation in 2020, and $1200 to refinish stairs and replace wood balusters with solid iron ones in 2022. BTW, HHI was 700k last year and 520k this year. We truly enjoy DIYing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We DON'T make 600k a year, but we do budget for 2.5% of our house price every year for repairs. So 20k on our 800k home. A new deck is like 80k, new roof was 15k, new ACs, new windows, fixing our brick walkway was $4,500. We can't afford to do everything at once. We split our basement remodel to 3 years so that we weren't spending so much at once.

That must be one heck of an amazing deck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We shop around A LOT, word of mouth recommendations from our circle, know how to do the work ourselves also, and then we supervise the heck out of everything.

Oh, we use the Hispanics to do this work for us. Pay in cash.

We use a contractor who only employs people with the correct working papers. It’s more expensive for us, but we know he pays his employees well and they are insured in case of an accident. We don’t want to pay lower prices because a contractor is treating his employees unfairly I prefer to pay a price that takes into account paying the workers a fair wage.