Way Off
We like to sort of bet on lots of things. Nothing's really at stake, but the competitive spirit in me is always playing my own little version of The Price Is Right. When we go grocery shopping together, we guess how much the total bill will be. When we watch House Hunters we try to guess which house the people on the show will pick. That sort of stuff.
Sunday we went to a basement open house. One of our neighbors had their basement professionally finished and saved some money by holding an open house to help advertise. We've thought about finishing our basement so we thought we'd go check it out and see how much it would cost, and what kind of things they can do.
As we walked down the street to the open house, we guessed how much it would cost. I guessed $5,000, and Megan guessed a more conservative $7,500.
(It should be obvious to you at this point that we are both total noobs at true home improvement. $5,000? Who was I kidding?)
It's a really nice system that they were advertising, and we ended up learning a lot about basement refinishing. Now more than anything, I want to go down and rip out all of the drywall that the first owner of our house put in – especially considering all of the mold that could be growing since a certain leaky window incident.
As nice as it would be to finish our basement — like we need even more room in this house right now — when we heard the price we knew instantly that it's not in our budget. It turns out the house was the exact same model as ours, so we had a good basis for comparison.
They started at around $30,000.
By precedent sent from previous bets, Megan wins. But can you call it a win when you're $22,500 off?
justinT ~ Aug 4, 2008 at 9:57 PM
Ed ~ Aug 4, 2008 at 9:57 PM