Self Auto Repair

The rear brakes on my wife's car needed replaced. I ignored the problem to long, or just ignored my wife's comments about it. Anyway by the time I reacted, the rotors needed replaced also. This could cost more than $300 at a repair shop. With only $80 in the auto repair budget, that would blow the blow the budget out of the water.

When I was in high school I worked at a auto repair garage for 2 years, and I've always work in the industrial maintenance field repairing equipment since college. So I good with tools and know how to change breaks. I probably put it off, because I work on stuff all day, and didn't want to do it at home went I got off. But putting this repair probably tripled the price.

So we went and bought rotors and brake pads for $128.07. And this gave me the opportunity to show my wife how to change disc brakes. She didn't get her hands too dirty, she operated the floor Jack and handed me the tools and parts. But she saw the process.

In the end we still broke the budget, but we damped the blow, so it wasn't that bad.

Dishwasher breakdown

At the beginning of the month, our dishwasher broke. The top washer/sprayer(3rd level) assembly fell off. We decided to just wash the dishes by hand for a while. The problem with that is, my wife hates washes dishes. After a week or so, I starting feeling like my sex appeal seems to trend with the amount of dishes I do. So getting this problem being solved is going up in priority. When I finally go around to researching the problem. Buying a new dishwasher was out of the question. We didn't need a big expense while working our debt snowball. So we looked for parts online. We found a site appliance parts pros. They had the diagrams with parts break downs and actual pictures of the parts. We ordered the part standard shipping and it still arrived in 1 day. My wife even put the part in while I was a work. See, I told you she hated doing dishes.

The total Price with shipping $10.87!!! That is alot better than +$300 on a dishwasher.

Home Improvement for Valentines day

My Wife came up with the idea, instead of giving valentines gifts, we would take money budgeted for the "gift given" fund and put it into "home improvement" fund. To help finish the front entry of the house. Last month we had $100 budgeted for home improvement. We finished the drywall and painted primer on the walls and ceiling. The room is a blank slate.

With our changes to the budget we aside $300 this month for Home improvement. The biggest part of this project is going to be the floor. We decided on ceramic tile. We needed to find the right tile at the right price. Luckily we found a lot of discontinued tile at Lowes. We were able to buy the tile, with 20-30 extra for mistakes, and stay in budget. We bought the ceramic tile, cement board, 200 pounds of thin-set adhesive, 2 gallons of wall paint, paint rollers, and painter's tape, all for $271.21. Under budget!!!

Luckily we had all the tools we needed for laying ceramic tile.

We got all walls painted, and all the ceramic tile laid. We have 30 tile to take back to Lowes and one bag of thin-set mortar to take back. That will be about $30 dollars back, and will hopefully be about enough money to cover the cost of grout and sealer.

As for next month... we'll be working on molding, baseboard, door trim, and closet door.