I spry!

Nimble with a checkbook, swift with the thread!

Hypermiling, anyone? March 29, 2008

Filed under: Gas, Home Improvements, household, repairs, vehicle — jennjitsu @ 12:33 am
Tags: , ,

http://www.hypermiling.com/

I thought it was a bit extreme at first, but have you SEEN the numbers on the gas station signs?  Will they take Monopoly money, do you think?  I already unwittingly practice some hypermiling techniques; I don’t have a heavy foot, don’t brake until necessary and let the engine do that for me, don’t step on the gas straight out of a stop etc.  But this guy takes it to the max!  He even has a video that was pretty enlightening about how often people get zero mph by getting crazy with the brakes.  They also have training for businesses with fleets!  My father owns a business but hypermiling would kill him.  He has a heavy foot.

 I’ve been out of the blogging loop due to unforeseen home improvement projects.   NOT a way to save money, that home improvement thing.  The projects multiply and have babies over night.  One thing leads to another! We just wanted to finish laying the laminate!  Then we realised we had to pull out the cabinets in the bathroom to do it properly.  They fell apart so we had to get a new set which doesn’t sit in the same place, so now we have to tear the wallpaper off and repaint.  If we are going to repaint the bathroom, we should just do the whole house since we have to in a year anyway.  Although, FYI if you do mostly one colour, you can just get the 5 gallon buckets and save at least the cost of one gallon.

We are trying to get reassigned to a base with more doctors for our daughter, the reason for the sudden burst of Home Makeover.  We are aiming for a compassionate reassignment which means we could be out of here lickety split, leaving little time to get the house sold.  We are looking at it like a rental property for at least a year, so we are trying to get things accomplished on a tight budget without looking cheap. It’s not easy!  We are saving on the paint by going with 5 gallons of the semi-gloss in a neutral off white colour.  Semi gloss is easy to clean and the neutral shades will attract more people than my usual colourful preferences!  We decided to carpet the stairs instead of doing laminate.  In our house, they are the first thing you see and since we are doing it ourselves, we don’t want to do a botched job that immediately greets the eye.  We managed to find some cheaper but durable carpet that wasn’t hideous and Home Depot was doing a free measurement incentive.  It looks like we’ll get the job done for less than $400 and it will be much nicer to see professionally installed carpet than amateur laminate with gobs of maple coloured caulking! 

 

Catch a curveball February 22, 2008

Filed under: bills, cutting expenses, energy, repairs — jennjitsu @ 6:19 pm

All the preaching I do about saving money?  Handy stuff, that saved stash!  We were going on a snowshoe trip last week but woke up to a house that was 50*  I accused my husband of lowering the thermostat, but he went to the garage and found a dead furnace!  Fifty degrees isn’t so bad , say in Georgia, but we live in Alaska.  That just won’t do!

This was also a Sunday morning, and if you haven’t needed a service on the weekend I’ll let you in on the double price not-so-secret.  We called around and everyone had a service fee of double what it was during the week.  Meanwhile, we had a very cozy fire in the fireplace and some space heaters set up, that brought our temp back up to about 68*, where we normally keep it anyhow.  We opted to wait until Monday.  Long story short, we shaved about $200 off our bill.

Speaking of shaving, I was experimenting with our electric bill last month.  I knocked $20 off by using the dryer only for towels.  That downstairs bathroom can handle more than I though.  My husband found one of those twist shower rods and hung it over the middle for an extra rack.  Even the jeans dry and they aren’t so bad on.  The stiffness was unnoticeable after a minute. I’m guessing I was using it about every 3-4 days.  Unfortunately ever since the furnace incident, it  hasn’t been heating very well.  It’s very old for a furnace and we may have to dip into that savings soon :(