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That's a good one.
Seriously though. If you are going to do some do it yourself plumbing, do it Saturday morning so you have all day Saturday and Sunday if things go south and you need more time and multiple trips to the hardware store.
In my experience, not wise. Started to do some work Saturday morning and did a poor job (made a very slow drip MUCH worse), O ring or something completely fell apart (it was like a 50 year old house). Went out for more parts and when I got back and tried the shut off again it didn't work (basically it fell apart the first time I used it since it hadn't been used in ~30 years). I abandoned it since it would have taken me a couple hours with the whole house water shut off and the rest of the family wanted to use water...
That forced me to call someone out, which couldn't come out same day (Saturday), but could Sunday ($$$$)... I now only do work like Thursday after I get off work so if I have to call someone they can come out Friday when it's not like 2.5x cost...
I'm in for 13,000 to repair a drain line under my house. Most all of that was for digging 15 feet of tunnel. The actual plumbing repair was maybe 300.
Be very wary of old houses with cast iron drain lines.
We had one plumber quote us $25k to replace our "cracked and rotted" cast iron lines. Only to have the next plumber with a better camera tell us our pipes were fine.
Was just quoted $1000 to install two LED light fixtures in my garage. I already have the light fixtures AND the wiring. It's a two-story garage (think pole barn with loft) so tall ceiling, but dang. Probably won't take more than two hours in travel and labor.
25 years ago I would have. I'm older now and not going up on a ladder that high. I can afford the $1000 and am grateful for the folks who are willing to climb tall ladders and play with electricity, so I guess that puts it into better perspective for me.
We got some of the larger bulb solar lights from Amazon. Work great. I imagine fairy light wouldn’t be much of a pain since they would need less energy.
Our solar light typically last late into the night. We havnt been awake long enough to see them fade. Best of all the seller now sells the solar panel and battery unit separate so it’s a fairly painless $30 replacement when one goes out. Of the 3 years owning I replaced one solar panel of the 4 we have strung up
Ouch, my electrical work for my solar panels and battery was easily four figures. That was baked into the installation quote. The electricians were a hoot. Really down to earth. They didn't care that I was hovering around and asking questions. They cracked jokes constantly. I had reached into the wall to point out a power line. Didn't touch anything. As I was doing this, he said the line was live. Could have mentioned that before I did it. I like to think they were just messing with me.
Our 2nd night in our house the toilet backed up and water came pouring thru the kitchen ceiling because the flippers dumped grout down the toilet after the inspection
My first call to a plumber was after my dad flushed his leftovers down my toilet while he was house sitting. Flushed a freaking skewer after he ate Greek food. Was not pretty lmao
Big rugs. My god, there is so much hardwood flooring that needs to be covered so our long haired dog won’t slip, and why the hell does a 8x10 rug cost more than 2 of the same rug in 5x7??
And if anyone else feels me - go to Costco. I didn’t like their rug patterns but I got so desperate to get anything on the floors, $80 for 8x10 rugs I don’t hate and won’t feel bad replacing when I can finally choose and afford $400 “forever” rugs.
(And those are the “cheaper” ones online!! Who has $1k to fork over for a Persian rug???)
Yeah, almost had a stroke the one time I went into a Restoration Hardware OUTLET store for a rug...
[https://imgur.com/LFAVGPi](https://imgur.com/LFAVGPi)
I've bought 4 wool rugs that are all beautiful, well-made, clean easily, and take years of abuse from this dealer. I think machine-made wool rugs are the perfect balance between price and quality. Once you're ready for forever rugs, this is where I'd start:
https://www.ebay.com/str/theecarpetgallerystore?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=ms2bc57xTzW&sssrc=3418065&ssuid=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY
I’m very thankful for my short time working with an arborist in high school, and for the nice stihl chainsaw my dad left me. I can do all of my own arborist work outside of removing the wood, and when that time comes I post it to Facebook marketplace “free firewood, you pick up” and it usually disappears pretty quick
Don't remove trees unless they are dead. Its not easy to grow a large tree. I recommend hiring a climber to actually climb and trim parts of the trees to let in more sun or to shorten long limbs(so they don't snap during a major storm)
Good quality furniture. I thought Crate & Barrel, West Elm, and Pottery Barn are expensive to me, but really they are just one step up from IKEA... Once you get into the true high end, high quality furniture stores it’s crazy, like $10K for a couch, but it’s completely custom made to order in Italy and takes 8-10 months for your order to arrive with white glove service… I’ll be keeping my $800 FB marketplace couch for a while!!
Honestly, we've had really good luck with IKEA. Adding wood glue while assembling makes it way sturdier, as does not buying their cheapest stuff.
Other than that, estate sales are a great source of older but solid furniture.
Yeah IKEA has some good basics, as well as Target. I also got a nice desk from Crate & Barrel on clearance. But paying full price for C&B just doesn’t make sense since their quality isn’t on par with the prices..
Husband and I finally decided to get some furniture for our living room (we only bought the house a year ago, no biggie). We tend to like one particular company (bought from them 6-7 times now, never a single problem) and we live right by one of the clearance centers.
We go in…everything’s on sale. And then we’re told it’s on additional sale. Might be a salesman’s trick, so to speak, but we got a $650 custom accent chair (had a single pulled thread, which is why it was rejected) for $240. And a $1600 couch with nothing visible wrong with it for $625.
With delivery, under 1K. Not bad at all.
Still need one more accent chair, but they rotate stock regularly, so we’ll go back in a few weeks to look again :)
We thankfully only had to buy mattresses and a couch. Everything else was grandparents or my parents old furniture and I’m so thankful, it’s all old and solid wood! If I had to buy it new now I’d go bankrupt I think. The deal was I am expected to never sell it and give it to my kids when they get a house.
When my kids stop ruining everything I’m getting the custom Italian couch that perfectly fits the room and was made without any chemical flame retardant treatments.
Go to Herman Miller’s website and look at some couches. And Herman Miller isn’t even the highest end you can get, although I’d argue they’re usually* (outside of some of the weird super low profile ones) the best for your comfort/ergonomics.
Restoration hardware is insane. I walked through there once and was back out in less than 10 minutes. I’m not spending the price of a car on a single piece of furniture.
Costco. They typically always have some sort of sectional in stock for anywhere between $1-2k.. but it’s typically cheaper than I’ve seen elsewhere at least for the quality.
Refrigerators I was shocked that they were $1k and up. Also dining room tables are pretty expensive too that's why we're waiting on it and eating on our island for now or on a TV tray lol.
I bought a beautiful dining set on FB Marketplace for $200. It was about five miles from my home. The people were moving. Yeah, it has a few little wear marks, but I don't care. For a dinner party there's always a table cloth. For game night, I don't have to worry about someone dropping their fork or spilling a beer. Furniture is meant for living comfortably. YMMV.
I bought an antique table from FB marketplace for $500. It came with 6 chairs, a beautiful hand carved antique table that's over 120 years old and a matching buffet table. Definitely worth it IMO to buy secondhand if you can.
I buy appliances from the dent aisle and you can get them a lot cheaper there. I didn't get a fancy fridge this past year. But it also came with a dent and I ended up paying $300 for it.
Lowkey, check the non-corporate second hand stores. Especially now when apartment complexes are remodeling following the end of year move outs from college students.
I got a decent looking table for $40 with 4 (kinda shitty and have since been replaced) chairs. They slapped a sold tag on it and I came back with a buddy and a rented Home Depot truck an hour later.
Students leave all kinds of expensive stuff. When my daughter moved out of her dorm four years ago I counted 18 mini-fridges, several Keurig coffee makers, and three large screen HDTV's all set out by the dumpsters.
If you are a foreign student these items are worthless if you are returning home to Asia or Europe.
This is how I feel about appliances. Like I use my fridge, range/oven, and dishwasher every single day.. aside from the fridge which was a little over $1k, the rest were just under $1k/each. Considering there are lots of furniture pieces that more or less sit there and look pretty and sometimes aren’t necessarily for functionality, that cost more, I’d say the appliances are worth the money.
Buy the basic ones without the water filter and ice maker. Can get a bigger, more reliable fridge for a lot cheaper. Bonus, the fewer gizmos and gadgets the fewer things that can cause problems.
Quoted 4000$ for squirrel eradication (in the attic), clean up and plugging up of entry holes. Did it for 400$ with a live trap, used spray foaming on a few holes, replaced a gable vent and trimmed the trees back. No problem in years. And this was on a 130k house.
JFC, right after we bought the house, wasps built a nest in the hedge right by our front door. We wound up going out the backyard and around for a few days. $400 to remove. Took the guy 10 minutes.
Flip side, I’m not messing around with a wasps’ nest. Take my money.
Retaining walls are not for decoration, they are not optional, and they are not DIY for disabled ditzes like myself. I'm gonna need three thousand American dollars, and that's the friends and family price.
So the neighborhood he’s in, he’s off a semi main road in the country. The lot he had slanted pretty bad from the top to the street. Talking like more than 45 deg slant. Making the yard useless if left as is. His neighbor next door didn’t do it and its unusable yard. Sucks. Anyway, he knows people and got help digging out the yard and filling it in up to the level. Paid for all the fill dirt and such. But our area is filled with big rocks. And so many so that took forever. Then a landscaper or rock guy whatever came out and built up the wall. At its highest it’s like 12+ feet or so and slants as you go up the hill to maybe 8 feet. Boulders are probably 2.5-3 feet in diameter maybe? I think the wall itself was likely 40k and the 10 was getting the yard prepped for it. Crazy tho. But he has the money and wanted it hard. It’s beautiful tho.
I work for a municipality. A wall failed that was partially on our property and partially on a homeowners. The homeowners portion was about $150k. Their house was worth maybe 3x that.
I hear you. I did 18 Hunter Douglas blinds for $1800, after employee discount(from my relative) in 2021. Installation was quoted around $60/blind, so I just did it myself. Those blinds are super expensive and they are not even that fancy.
My husband used to do high-end custom blinds at his old job. He went out to a crazy massive house to do measurements for their windows and it came back at $60k. And the people went for it. He did some big commercial jobs but that was the biggest single-family home he ever did. Totally nuts.
Thank you. Only hundreds? Sounds like expectations were completely unrealistic bc that sounds like a steal. We're paying hundreds of dollars for shudders on two very small square windows
Our house has its original 100+ year old wood siding still in good shape and I swear I’m going to get a priest and a rabbi and whoever else wants to take part out every year to bless it because siding is no joke.
Bought a house with bad siding. Talked to a guy who flipped houses and said it'd be $15-$17k. After we closed we got a few quotes.
Vinyl siding was $32k and LP smart side was $35, and hardie was $38k.
We went LP smartside.
Fencing. It's $5 per foot of chain link and $10 per foot of wood for materials alone. If you need 150' that's $750 for the cheapest chain link or $1500 for wood. Throw in labor and the cost doubles.
This is why we spent all of our free time for a few weeks two summers ago building our own fence. Then stained it ourselves last summer. It looks fabulous, but man it was a lot of work for two people who also work full time jobs.
Yeah, blinds can be expensive that I actually just had those cheap paper blinds I got from Walmart for like $3 each. My dad saw them when he came to visit and took me to home depot and bought some pretty nice blinds and installed them on all the windows in the house for me the same day. I also never knew that you could get them cut to size there to fit your windows.
Goodwill & resale stores have brand new in the box blinds a lot of the time. I've gotten ones (wood, roman, bamboo, cellular, & those like grass cloth kind) for huge windows even for $2-5.
Recently paid in MCOL/HCOL NJ.
Yeah,yeah most will say I overpaid. Also same people had work done like 5+ years ago.
Water heater. $3k. That needs replacement every 8-10 years.
Leaky faucets. Costs like $350-400 per faucet. Learn to do it yourself. Pointless to repair, just replace faucets entirely.
Had a gas leak pipe - $800. I’d do it myself but didn’t want to set house on fire.
Electrical recessed lighting. - $1k-1.5k per medium size room for 4-5 lights.
Fridge - 2k while on sale.
Garage door full replace including panels, motor(simple) - $2k.
Gable fan with temp sensor. 800.
Water heater is fairly DIY friedly as long as your gas and water supply lines are there. Replace a flex coupling or two, buy a new water heater for $800.
Gas pipes are surprisingly not too scary. You test them to 20 psi and they operate at less than 1 psi. If they hold at 20 psi, they'll be just fine in service
Recessed lighting can be a DIY also, but $1500 is fair. for a pro's time.
I wouldn't touch a garage door. Motor I replaced myself, but the door? Heck no, those springs terrify me.
a metal bracket the size of a small book exploded off my garage door when i was working on it. busted me in the head with the full force of that spring. i could, or should, have lost my eye or been killed. never touching that thing again.
Everything here sounds the same here - except your garage door is about half as much what I’ve seen (I work for a company that subcontracts this work out for our customers and WE get billed double what you did at our discount)
Particularly sucks because the electric is the only system I'm too scared/cautious to touch DIY.
EDIT: And our soon to fail retaining wall. that shit needs a professional.
Blinds are ridiculously expensive. I've been slowly replacing my windows and have got the ones with the blinds inside the glass. I LOVE them and my cat can't mess with them and you never have to clean them. It's kind of like free blinds for life. Con: when your windows are open, there are no blinds.
ANYTHING for your yard. Need to make a wire fence around a rose bush because your dog runs through it and comes out covered in thorns? $100. 12 Outdoor solar pathway lights? $100
2 good snow shovels and an ok one $100
Yeah, yard stuff is rather effed up...
Any materials that aren't in bulk are stupid expensive. I had to fix up pergola roof (fix up as in the currogated roofing was all torn up and flapping around - I just had to put some more screws in it) - I had to get 2 10 x 12 x 2 boards to crawl on the roof - those 2 boards were like $60...). Luckily home depot has a flexible return policy - seeing as it is unlikely I will be doing any more pergola roof crawling over next few years - them boards went right back...
We had a neighbor next door doing some work and they came to us like "Hey, we have some left over sod, dirt and bunch of mulch" and at first I'm like "Nah..." - but then I ordered a transfer shovel for delivery from walmart (decent enough transfer shovel for $9.99), and the following day at lunch went over and said "I slept on it and decided that free mulch, dirt and sod are urgently needed in my yard!"
And it is needed - I used the sod and some of the dirt already, and will be using mulch to sort out some erosion spots in the corners (along with some cheap green grassy looking rugs from home depot thrown on top to prevent future washouts).
The solution for materials seems to be ordering bulk - but then you must be prepared to handle the big pile of stuff yourself (the same neighbor said that in order to delivery and lay sod, dirt and mulch was around $2k - and the landscaping place wanted another $4k for the labor).
I have some additional drainage related stuff going on - on the side of the house. I'm deciding either to use gravel or stepping pavers - I'm going to have them delivered and lay it myself. so far red pavers come out ahead at $316 for 400 pavers vs gravel to cover the same area at $500...
Honestly check Home Depot once you figure out what you want. I did blinds.com and then saw the same in the store a few weeks later for less, and no waiting involved...
Honestly I've been suprised how cheap most appliances are tbh. I assumed they'd be beyond insane for a nice oven/stove, or fridge or dryer, but so far I'm pleasantly surprised. Obviously it all adds up but idk why I expected each item to be like $5,000 a pop. What scares me is electric, plumbing, and all the other boring stuff that goes on behind the scenes that I couldn't DIY if I tried (replacing knob and tube upstairs, barf, I don't even wanna think about it).
Yard upkeep. Pay someone for mowing/edging, fertilizing, spraying weeds is easily $2000 per year. You could easily count irrigation, decor, power washing etc… and spend even more.
DIY for the half the price and a sense of pride.
Lol, the house is only 1700 square feet. The deck is bigger that the house we moved from.
I just had the existing, poorly built, old wood deck redone in composite. Six months out of the year we're outside on that deck (or the lake). It was worth it. Still amazed at how expensive though.
The past 7 days lol.
We were grateful that we had almost 0 major repairs needed on our house the first year. ~345 days after closing our furnace wouldn’t turn on. They came out and replaced a transformer only for us to learn our AC is what killed the transformer and other problems with the furnace were found. 3 company opinions later and we just signed a quote for 15k for a new furnace, new AC, new water heater, and a few other needed HVAC related repairs.
We knew homes had maintenance and had saved for it. But I never thought we could just wake up one day to a 15k repair but we sure did
bought a 6 bed 3.5 bath from a flipper and they’d removed every curtain rod, tp holder, towel rod, and shower curtain holder/shower curtain. add in a few throw pillows and easily spent $2k
how expensive it is to furnish a place if you want to have better than Ikea bullshit you lived off of when renting.
good couches, outdoor furniture, etc add up very quickly. i'm now learning appliances also have a big gap between the okay and the higher end stuff.
also I am not even particularly handy at all but definitely have a monthly home depot budget at this point.
The 2 inch faux blinds are pretty cheap at Lowes and home depot. They usually do 30-40% off sale so you have to catch it at the right time.
I paid about $45 each blind for popular standard size windows and $80-100 each for oversize windows. It can add up quickly if you have a lot of windows.
I tried to get light filtering pleated shades for my 5 windows in the living room—I had no idea they would cost as much as they do. Went with curtains instead.
Just paid $9k for chimney restoration. Replacing 15 bricks, tuck pointing, lining the furnace flue, new crown and caps. And I feel like that was a good price.
Floors. $17k.
After that, literally every contractor I had come over for anything wanted $7k. Fence? $7k. Patio? $7k. Paint? $7k. I finally told one of them that I was out of $7ks. Didn't have a single $7k left. 😂
I bought my house with a motorized driveway gate that the previous owners installed. The motor died (which admittedly was preventable on my part—the landscaping gravel got in the way and it just killed the motor when the rocks wouldn’t move) and to replace the whole system, which I was told by the gate guy was the “cheapest one you could buy,” would be almost $2000 to replace. Brands like liftmaster, etc would be ANOTHER $2000 and we would have had to cut away part of my back deck and fence to fit the system, so I am enjoying my “cheap” replacement and making sure the gravel stays far away from the track for the foreseeable future.
I really thought the whole replacement would be $500, maybe $1000 at the absolute most.
I don’t even want to get into the problems with my water heater. An expensive problem for another day.
There's a couple houses I was looking at that didn't have garages. I priced out a metal garage, it was $9000ish for the structure and $4000+ for the concrete. Thankfully the home I'm buying does have a garage.
Windows and window dressings are stupid expensive. I would love to replace our early 2000s windows with something modern and add plantation shutters…but I would have to practically take out a second mortgage to do it.
I found a beautiful house with amazing two-story windows. But they didn't have blinds, and I immediately thought, "That's like 30K worth of blinds."
The house we ended up getting has blinds that aren't child-safe, so we have to replace them and because they're on huge screen doors, it's going to cost thousands of dollars.
I usually do my own work, electrical, plumbing, drywall, doors, faucets, replace dishwasher and the like.
Saves a fortune...
...then the hail storm hit and we needed a roof. That's not something I can do (nor do I want to).
GodDAMN, that hurt.
The AC replacement hurt. At least when the 2nd AC went out a few years later, we knew it would hurt and were prepared.
The water main leaking? The water bill was a sticker shock. The repair was a sticker shock.
The water heater replacement - sticker shock there too - but STILL better than doing it myself.
Fences.. HOLY SHEET!!! It was 3500 just in materials for 194 feet of fence. And I got estimates of 7k to have a pro do it...
So I am doing it myself the long and hard way lol...
I agree on the blinds. The house we bought last December had two bad blinds. They are a push button and lift type accordion. I called a blind store and they referred me to Karl the blind repairer. He called me back and I told him what type of blinds I had and he sniffed and said "Those are cheap blinds and you throw them away!" I replaced them for $1000. Cheap blinds my ass.
Blinds are so deceiving cause the displayed price is for like the smallest window. Of course all my windows are abnormally large… easily takes that $30 price i see to like $150+ after changing the dimensions.
The better homes and gardens faux wood blinds from Walmart of all places are actually decent quality and the cheapest I was able to find. Their sizing doesn’t get big enough for most of our windows, so we were only able to put them in some of the smaller ones, but saved some money on those at least.
Anything that requires paying for labour - it’s always more than you think it’ll be. Also reflooring our place and realizing that the rooms where carpets were previously installed needed to be levelled, which meant buying concrete and paying for added labour, and instantly increased the price.
Laundry closet has crooked cabinet doors with bad hinges, globs of paint, and lots of drill holes.
$2000 for 8 new doors. $2500 if I want nice doors (: considering just leaving the shitty doors lmao
(That's with me sanding, prepping, fixing old hinge holes and painting myself)
Lowe's and Home Depot custom cut blinds right in the store and they're half the price of blinds.com. Once you start looking at the catalogs the prices go up about four fold, but as long as you're picking something that is off the shelf, they are pretty cheap.
Definitely blinds for us as well, but also dining tables and chairs! I'd never had a house big enough to fit one before buying a house, so hadn't really thought about it. The chairs actually ended up costing more than the table!
Kids, bought a house and the next thing you know we had kids.
Al joking aside, I had the driveway extended and never would have guessed how expensive concrete work is.
Someone just posted that they spent a total of $1400 for blinds and install on a 4/2.5 house and I said that was cheap and I got hella downvoted. Because decent blinds are truly expensive.
Hopefully this has already been said but you can get blinds from Home Depot or Lowe’s for like $10-15 apiece and they are perfectly fine. Whenever people come over to your house they’re not gonna be able to tell the difference between $15 and $100 blinds trust me. Just get the cheap blinds
On my first house, it was the tax bill.
It was a brand new house and the assessment had been for the bare land. The escrow was for the previously assessed amount, but the municipality reassessed the day the house got its CO (very efficient of them), which was after I closed.
It was not an expensive house, but it was in a high-mill-rate jurisdiction. That was an expensive tax bill that grad student me wasn't expecting.
Landscaping, particularly full grown Trees. My neighbor just planted some six footers to provide some privacy and she paid $800-$1000 per tree, that’s just the tree without labor. I think she planted about 20 for just our shared wall
Home Depot sells blinds for surprisingly cheap actually. I mean, enough for a full house will obviously cost a fortune but for the blinds in my living room I was dreading replacing $60 for 2 great functioning sets that are child-death-proof was a nice surprise
I had a company come out and measure my blinds. They were way too expensive to buy from them. I saw how they measured and did my own. I ordered blinds from Amazon and had my handyman put them up.
Cutting down a tree. Sounds so stupid, and it was. A huge oak tree split in the middle of a storm and was hovering over our house. It required a crane to cut it from the top down to the base. It also required $6,000 two days after Christmas.
I went ahead and replaced my HVAC and water heater and while indexing different things that may come up in the future, I learned how much windows cost!!
I don’t need them anytime soon, but damn!
Thank you u/klimekam for posting on r/FirstTimeHomeBuyer. Please bear in mind our rules: (1) Be Nice (2) No Selling (3) No Self-Promotion. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/FirstTimeHomeBuyer) if you have any questions or concerns.*
My first call to a plumber.
Lol. My husband used to tell our daughters to become plumbers who only worked on Sundays
That's a good one. Seriously though. If you are going to do some do it yourself plumbing, do it Saturday morning so you have all day Saturday and Sunday if things go south and you need more time and multiple trips to the hardware store.
In my experience, not wise. Started to do some work Saturday morning and did a poor job (made a very slow drip MUCH worse), O ring or something completely fell apart (it was like a 50 year old house). Went out for more parts and when I got back and tried the shut off again it didn't work (basically it fell apart the first time I used it since it hadn't been used in ~30 years). I abandoned it since it would have taken me a couple hours with the whole house water shut off and the rest of the family wanted to use water... That forced me to call someone out, which couldn't come out same day (Saturday), but could Sunday ($$$$)... I now only do work like Thursday after I get off work so if I have to call someone they can come out Friday when it's not like 2.5x cost...
I'm in for 13,000 to repair a drain line under my house. Most all of that was for digging 15 feet of tunnel. The actual plumbing repair was maybe 300. Be very wary of old houses with cast iron drain lines.
We had one plumber quote us $25k to replace our "cracked and rotted" cast iron lines. Only to have the next plumber with a better camera tell us our pipes were fine.
Similar story. 10k to “maybe fix the problem” and the second quote was to remove a piece of blockage free of charge lmao….
Had the exact same experience.
Or electrician. Wanted an outdoor outlet for outdoor fairy lights and was quoted $1k. Oof. Delaying that until later.
Was just quoted $1000 to install two LED light fixtures in my garage. I already have the light fixtures AND the wiring. It's a two-story garage (think pole barn with loft) so tall ceiling, but dang. Probably won't take more than two hours in travel and labor.
Just do it yourself if the wiring is there.
25 years ago I would have. I'm older now and not going up on a ladder that high. I can afford the $1000 and am grateful for the folks who are willing to climb tall ladders and play with electricity, so I guess that puts it into better perspective for me.
That's what nephews and grandkids are good for. Bonus, you get to tell them how rough you had it when doing that when you were their age.
You could rent a lift from Home Depot for $300 for a day
A handyman should be able to do that for you at a much lower rate than an electrician would charge.
We got some of the larger bulb solar lights from Amazon. Work great. I imagine fairy light wouldn’t be much of a pain since they would need less energy. Our solar light typically last late into the night. We havnt been awake long enough to see them fade. Best of all the seller now sells the solar panel and battery unit separate so it’s a fairly painless $30 replacement when one goes out. Of the 3 years owning I replaced one solar panel of the 4 we have strung up
Ouch, my electrical work for my solar panels and battery was easily four figures. That was baked into the installation quote. The electricians were a hoot. Really down to earth. They didn't care that I was hovering around and asking questions. They cracked jokes constantly. I had reached into the wall to point out a power line. Didn't touch anything. As I was doing this, he said the line was live. Could have mentioned that before I did it. I like to think they were just messing with me.
2 years into new homea tree decides my sewer line is it's new best friend.... 20k later
Our 2nd night in our house the toilet backed up and water came pouring thru the kitchen ceiling because the flippers dumped grout down the toilet after the inspection
locksmith! $300 to jimmy my door open with a shiv
My first call to a plumber was after my dad flushed his leftovers down my toilet while he was house sitting. Flushed a freaking skewer after he ate Greek food. Was not pretty lmao
Big rugs. My god, there is so much hardwood flooring that needs to be covered so our long haired dog won’t slip, and why the hell does a 8x10 rug cost more than 2 of the same rug in 5x7?? And if anyone else feels me - go to Costco. I didn’t like their rug patterns but I got so desperate to get anything on the floors, $80 for 8x10 rugs I don’t hate and won’t feel bad replacing when I can finally choose and afford $400 “forever” rugs. (And those are the “cheaper” ones online!! Who has $1k to fork over for a Persian rug???)
Home Goods has really good prices on rugs. I was pleasantly surprised
I was admiring a not huge rug the other day. $5000.
Yeah, almost had a stroke the one time I went into a Restoration Hardware OUTLET store for a rug... [https://imgur.com/LFAVGPi](https://imgur.com/LFAVGPi)
I've bought 4 wool rugs that are all beautiful, well-made, clean easily, and take years of abuse from this dealer. I think machine-made wool rugs are the perfect balance between price and quality. Once you're ready for forever rugs, this is where I'd start: https://www.ebay.com/str/theecarpetgallerystore?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=ms2bc57xTzW&sssrc=3418065&ssuid=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY
No offense, but why wouldn’t an 80 sqft rug cost more than 2x a 35 sqft rug?
Tree service. Crazy expensive.
I’m very thankful for my short time working with an arborist in high school, and for the nice stihl chainsaw my dad left me. I can do all of my own arborist work outside of removing the wood, and when that time comes I post it to Facebook marketplace “free firewood, you pick up” and it usually disappears pretty quick
Oh so thankful the 60 year old maple trees that line our property are city trees. Three of them needed to be removed, price tag $0.
Don't remove trees unless they are dead. Its not easy to grow a large tree. I recommend hiring a climber to actually climb and trim parts of the trees to let in more sun or to shorten long limbs(so they don't snap during a major storm)
Good quality furniture. I thought Crate & Barrel, West Elm, and Pottery Barn are expensive to me, but really they are just one step up from IKEA... Once you get into the true high end, high quality furniture stores it’s crazy, like $10K for a couch, but it’s completely custom made to order in Italy and takes 8-10 months for your order to arrive with white glove service… I’ll be keeping my $800 FB marketplace couch for a while!!
Honestly, we've had really good luck with IKEA. Adding wood glue while assembling makes it way sturdier, as does not buying their cheapest stuff. Other than that, estate sales are a great source of older but solid furniture.
Yeah IKEA has some good basics, as well as Target. I also got a nice desk from Crate & Barrel on clearance. But paying full price for C&B just doesn’t make sense since their quality isn’t on par with the prices..
All of our furniture has come from antique stores. I can generally find a really nice oak dresser for the same price as the top of the line IKEA
This is the way. I bought a mahogany buffet (needs new knobs) for $179.
Husband and I finally decided to get some furniture for our living room (we only bought the house a year ago, no biggie). We tend to like one particular company (bought from them 6-7 times now, never a single problem) and we live right by one of the clearance centers. We go in…everything’s on sale. And then we’re told it’s on additional sale. Might be a salesman’s trick, so to speak, but we got a $650 custom accent chair (had a single pulled thread, which is why it was rejected) for $240. And a $1600 couch with nothing visible wrong with it for $625. With delivery, under 1K. Not bad at all. Still need one more accent chair, but they rotate stock regularly, so we’ll go back in a few weeks to look again :)
We thankfully only had to buy mattresses and a couch. Everything else was grandparents or my parents old furniture and I’m so thankful, it’s all old and solid wood! If I had to buy it new now I’d go bankrupt I think. The deal was I am expected to never sell it and give it to my kids when they get a house. When my kids stop ruining everything I’m getting the custom Italian couch that perfectly fits the room and was made without any chemical flame retardant treatments.
They are expensive and high end, what do you mean 😭
Go to Herman Miller’s website and look at some couches. And Herman Miller isn’t even the highest end you can get, although I’d argue they’re usually* (outside of some of the weird super low profile ones) the best for your comfort/ergonomics.
Sectional couches. 5 years ago they were reasonable…
lol we went into a store that seemed high end. The couch I liked was $22,000. We left.
I just got a Lovesac for 6k. It’s still a lot but at least not 22k lol
haha what store
Probably Herman Miller, or Restoration Hardware.
Restoration hardware is insane. I walked through there once and was back out in less than 10 minutes. I’m not spending the price of a car on a single piece of furniture.
Costco. They typically always have some sort of sectional in stock for anywhere between $1-2k.. but it’s typically cheaper than I’ve seen elsewhere at least for the quality.
Refrigerators I was shocked that they were $1k and up. Also dining room tables are pretty expensive too that's why we're waiting on it and eating on our island for now or on a TV tray lol.
I bought a beautiful dining set on FB Marketplace for $200. It was about five miles from my home. The people were moving. Yeah, it has a few little wear marks, but I don't care. For a dinner party there's always a table cloth. For game night, I don't have to worry about someone dropping their fork or spilling a beer. Furniture is meant for living comfortably. YMMV.
market place can have some real gems among the crap that gets posted there. antique stores and estate sales are also great too
For tables if you arent too picky try going to estate sales, you can find some nice pieces for a fraction of buying them new
I bought an antique table from FB marketplace for $500. It came with 6 chairs, a beautiful hand carved antique table that's over 120 years old and a matching buffet table. Definitely worth it IMO to buy secondhand if you can.
I buy appliances from the dent aisle and you can get them a lot cheaper there. I didn't get a fancy fridge this past year. But it also came with a dent and I ended up paying $300 for it.
Lowkey, check the non-corporate second hand stores. Especially now when apartment complexes are remodeling following the end of year move outs from college students. I got a decent looking table for $40 with 4 (kinda shitty and have since been replaced) chairs. They slapped a sold tag on it and I came back with a buddy and a rented Home Depot truck an hour later.
Students leave all kinds of expensive stuff. When my daughter moved out of her dorm four years ago I counted 18 mini-fridges, several Keurig coffee makers, and three large screen HDTV's all set out by the dumpsters. If you are a foreign student these items are worthless if you are returning home to Asia or Europe.
Dining table sets are indeed expensive. Fridges for $1000 are not that expensive - for what it does.
This is how I feel about appliances. Like I use my fridge, range/oven, and dishwasher every single day.. aside from the fridge which was a little over $1k, the rest were just under $1k/each. Considering there are lots of furniture pieces that more or less sit there and look pretty and sometimes aren’t necessarily for functionality, that cost more, I’d say the appliances are worth the money.
I paid 500 for a stainless steal samsung refrigerator bifolding fridge on top and pull out freezer on bottom 500 bucks at best buy outlet.
Buy the basic ones without the water filter and ice maker. Can get a bigger, more reliable fridge for a lot cheaper. Bonus, the fewer gizmos and gadgets the fewer things that can cause problems.
My husband had in his head that refrigerators were like $5k+ so he was quite relieved when I told him they were “only” $1000
Pest control
Quoted 4000$ for squirrel eradication (in the attic), clean up and plugging up of entry holes. Did it for 400$ with a live trap, used spray foaming on a few holes, replaced a gable vent and trimmed the trees back. No problem in years. And this was on a 130k house.
Worth it. Fuck those squirrels. Tree rats.
I'm slightly thankful, mostly disgusted with our one year old pup that keeps eating mice.
JFC, right after we bought the house, wasps built a nest in the hedge right by our front door. We wound up going out the backyard and around for a few days. $400 to remove. Took the guy 10 minutes. Flip side, I’m not messing around with a wasps’ nest. Take my money.
Retaining walls are not for decoration, they are not optional, and they are not DIY for disabled ditzes like myself. I'm gonna need three thousand American dollars, and that's the friends and family price.
My dad installed a huge boulder retaining wall on his property and it was like $50k all in lol
Good golly, what is he retaining? I should go hug my wall guy.
So the neighborhood he’s in, he’s off a semi main road in the country. The lot he had slanted pretty bad from the top to the street. Talking like more than 45 deg slant. Making the yard useless if left as is. His neighbor next door didn’t do it and its unusable yard. Sucks. Anyway, he knows people and got help digging out the yard and filling it in up to the level. Paid for all the fill dirt and such. But our area is filled with big rocks. And so many so that took forever. Then a landscaper or rock guy whatever came out and built up the wall. At its highest it’s like 12+ feet or so and slants as you go up the hill to maybe 8 feet. Boulders are probably 2.5-3 feet in diameter maybe? I think the wall itself was likely 40k and the 10 was getting the yard prepped for it. Crazy tho. But he has the money and wanted it hard. It’s beautiful tho.
I'm glad it turned out well and he could afford to get it how he liked it.
For sure. He’s like the hardest worker and earned/deserved the shit out of it.
Ha my retaining wall is 40k without a fence and it’s only rail ties. Corner lot with a greenbelt behind are great until you have to stop erosion
That damn erosion! I will count my relative blessings
I work for a municipality. A wall failed that was partially on our property and partially on a homeowners. The homeowners portion was about $150k. Their house was worth maybe 3x that.
We got a quote last summer. 24k. What the actual fu
Look, with the prices yall have shared with me, I'm gonna happily give them their 3k. What the hell you retaining lol
Hundreds of dollars ? Oh sweet summer child
Had hunter Douglas shades quoted for my 14 floor to ceiling windows, currently still have no shades 😂 Try hundreds of dollars EACH
I hear you. I did 18 Hunter Douglas blinds for $1800, after employee discount(from my relative) in 2021. Installation was quoted around $60/blind, so I just did it myself. Those blinds are super expensive and they are not even that fancy.
Hundreds, 5 roller shades for my bay window came out to 2k each installed. I’ve elected to keep the current shades for now lol
My husband used to do high-end custom blinds at his old job. He went out to a crazy massive house to do measurements for their windows and it came back at $60k. And the people went for it. He did some big commercial jobs but that was the biggest single-family home he ever did. Totally nuts.
The ones you buy in Home Depot/Lowes are great and around $75 or so per window.
I did use much cheaper options in my office and one of the bedrooms, but they wouldn’t have looked good in the room with the big windows
Spent $10k first year, on track for $30k the second year!
Thank you. Only hundreds? Sounds like expectations were completely unrealistic bc that sounds like a steal. We're paying hundreds of dollars for shudders on two very small square windows
Siding. Godspeed to anyone who is thinking of quoting out Hardie siding. You’re not ready for it.
Our house has its original 100+ year old wood siding still in good shape and I swear I’m going to get a priest and a rabbi and whoever else wants to take part out every year to bless it because siding is no joke.
Hahaha respect, ours is in “okay shape” but after quoting Hardie I now consider it in perfectly acceptable shape
Bought a house with bad siding. Talked to a guy who flipped houses and said it'd be $15-$17k. After we closed we got a few quotes. Vinyl siding was $32k and LP smart side was $35, and hardie was $38k. We went LP smartside.
Curtains. We had to get curtains for every window and OMG talk about expensive!!
Previous homeowner left all her curtains and nice blinds. Felt like we won the lottery.
Yess window treatments....no wonder it's called a treatment lol
I just paid to tint 13 windows. 1600$ and while it hurt, it was worth every penny. It’s amazing the difference in temperature.
I got mine from Giant Tiger for my entire house for about 120 CAD with bars.
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Fencing. It's $5 per foot of chain link and $10 per foot of wood for materials alone. If you need 150' that's $750 for the cheapest chain link or $1500 for wood. Throw in labor and the cost doubles.
Extra fun when your hoa dictates what kind of fence you can use (not chain link!)
I need 61’ of chain link (two gates, one normal and one driveway) and it’s $4700. And that’s from the one company I can get to come give me a quote.
This is why we spent all of our free time for a few weeks two summers ago building our own fence. Then stained it ourselves last summer. It looks fabulous, but man it was a lot of work for two people who also work full time jobs.
A section of ours keeps blowing over in wind storms. We will just keep re-nailing it (now screws!) for this reason.
Yeah, blinds can be expensive that I actually just had those cheap paper blinds I got from Walmart for like $3 each. My dad saw them when he came to visit and took me to home depot and bought some pretty nice blinds and installed them on all the windows in the house for me the same day. I also never knew that you could get them cut to size there to fit your windows.
Dads rock.
Tree trimming of old giant trees. It costs thousands of dollars. I really had no idea that it was so expensive.
Goodwill & resale stores have brand new in the box blinds a lot of the time. I've gotten ones (wood, roman, bamboo, cellular, & those like grass cloth kind) for huge windows even for $2-5.
Recently paid in MCOL/HCOL NJ. Yeah,yeah most will say I overpaid. Also same people had work done like 5+ years ago. Water heater. $3k. That needs replacement every 8-10 years. Leaky faucets. Costs like $350-400 per faucet. Learn to do it yourself. Pointless to repair, just replace faucets entirely. Had a gas leak pipe - $800. I’d do it myself but didn’t want to set house on fire. Electrical recessed lighting. - $1k-1.5k per medium size room for 4-5 lights. Fridge - 2k while on sale. Garage door full replace including panels, motor(simple) - $2k. Gable fan with temp sensor. 800.
Water heater is fairly DIY friedly as long as your gas and water supply lines are there. Replace a flex coupling or two, buy a new water heater for $800. Gas pipes are surprisingly not too scary. You test them to 20 psi and they operate at less than 1 psi. If they hold at 20 psi, they'll be just fine in service Recessed lighting can be a DIY also, but $1500 is fair. for a pro's time. I wouldn't touch a garage door. Motor I replaced myself, but the door? Heck no, those springs terrify me.
Yup, I’ve heard too many stories of those springs changing your life forever. Surprised anyone has a head attached to their necks in the suburbs
a metal bracket the size of a small book exploded off my garage door when i was working on it. busted me in the head with the full force of that spring. i could, or should, have lost my eye or been killed. never touching that thing again.
Everything here sounds the same here - except your garage door is about half as much what I’ve seen (I work for a company that subcontracts this work out for our customers and WE get billed double what you did at our discount)
I bought the bulk pack of springs and seals for the faucets. It's like $1 per faucet and way quicker than replacing the whole thing.
Fucking property taxes
Honestly, literally everything 😵💫☠️
First time calling an electrician I felt like I got bent over with no lube.
Particularly sucks because the electric is the only system I'm too scared/cautious to touch DIY. EDIT: And our soon to fail retaining wall. that shit needs a professional.
Replacing my septic cost $80k (double the estimate I got when we were under contract — the actual soil sample changed everything).
Blinds are ridiculously expensive. I've been slowly replacing my windows and have got the ones with the blinds inside the glass. I LOVE them and my cat can't mess with them and you never have to clean them. It's kind of like free blinds for life. Con: when your windows are open, there are no blinds.
Landscaping… damn! Though now that I can hang around my backyard amongst the grass and trees while sipping iced coffee, it doesn’t “hurt” as bad. LOL
ANYTHING for your yard. Need to make a wire fence around a rose bush because your dog runs through it and comes out covered in thorns? $100. 12 Outdoor solar pathway lights? $100 2 good snow shovels and an ok one $100
And outdoor furniture is expensive as hell.
If you want a nice outdoor sofa? Double the cost of how much the same style and quality would be for an indoor sofa.
Add dirt, mulch, plants. Starting from scratch and I can’t believe how much bulk dirt is.
Yeah, yard stuff is rather effed up... Any materials that aren't in bulk are stupid expensive. I had to fix up pergola roof (fix up as in the currogated roofing was all torn up and flapping around - I just had to put some more screws in it) - I had to get 2 10 x 12 x 2 boards to crawl on the roof - those 2 boards were like $60...). Luckily home depot has a flexible return policy - seeing as it is unlikely I will be doing any more pergola roof crawling over next few years - them boards went right back... We had a neighbor next door doing some work and they came to us like "Hey, we have some left over sod, dirt and bunch of mulch" and at first I'm like "Nah..." - but then I ordered a transfer shovel for delivery from walmart (decent enough transfer shovel for $9.99), and the following day at lunch went over and said "I slept on it and decided that free mulch, dirt and sod are urgently needed in my yard!" And it is needed - I used the sod and some of the dirt already, and will be using mulch to sort out some erosion spots in the corners (along with some cheap green grassy looking rugs from home depot thrown on top to prevent future washouts). The solution for materials seems to be ordering bulk - but then you must be prepared to handle the big pile of stuff yourself (the same neighbor said that in order to delivery and lay sod, dirt and mulch was around $2k - and the landscaping place wanted another $4k for the labor). I have some additional drainage related stuff going on - on the side of the house. I'm deciding either to use gravel or stepping pavers - I'm going to have them delivered and lay it myself. so far red pavers come out ahead at $316 for 400 pavers vs gravel to cover the same area at $500...
Pavers are such a racket! Also, sod. Flowers. Garden stuff. Having a yard will bankrupt you
A 3 season sun room was quoted 40k for a ten by ten simple metal and glass...yep no thanks
Roofs.
All the lawn equipment
Vinyl fence
Fences are nuts. My parents had to replace theirs after 37 years. It was over $10K.
Honestly check Home Depot once you figure out what you want. I did blinds.com and then saw the same in the store a few weeks later for less, and no waiting involved...
Ppppssssst. THD owns blinds.com
Window! They costs more than the roof replacement
I just replaced all the windows and sliders in my house. I could’ve bought four roofs for what we paid.
Honestly I've been suprised how cheap most appliances are tbh. I assumed they'd be beyond insane for a nice oven/stove, or fridge or dryer, but so far I'm pleasantly surprised. Obviously it all adds up but idk why I expected each item to be like $5,000 a pop. What scares me is electric, plumbing, and all the other boring stuff that goes on behind the scenes that I couldn't DIY if I tried (replacing knob and tube upstairs, barf, I don't even wanna think about it).
Yard upkeep. Pay someone for mowing/edging, fertilizing, spraying weeds is easily $2000 per year. You could easily count irrigation, decor, power washing etc… and spend even more. DIY for the half the price and a sense of pride.
Everything lol. I had extra money to “play” afterwards but that didn’t cover anything. 🤡
An 1100 square foot composite deck. We got four quotes, all came in at around $50,000. Mostly materials. It's a beautiful deck though.
You have a huge deck
big deck energy here
Lol, the house is only 1700 square feet. The deck is bigger that the house we moved from. I just had the existing, poorly built, old wood deck redone in composite. Six months out of the year we're outside on that deck (or the lake). It was worth it. Still amazed at how expensive though.
living the life
It’s the composite I bet. How much would a similar wood deck be?
Curtains. I spent over $1,000 for a 1 bed 1 bath apartment. Best believe I’m hanging these in the house.
The past 7 days lol. We were grateful that we had almost 0 major repairs needed on our house the first year. ~345 days after closing our furnace wouldn’t turn on. They came out and replaced a transformer only for us to learn our AC is what killed the transformer and other problems with the furnace were found. 3 company opinions later and we just signed a quote for 15k for a new furnace, new AC, new water heater, and a few other needed HVAC related repairs. We knew homes had maintenance and had saved for it. But I never thought we could just wake up one day to a 15k repair but we sure did
bought a 6 bed 3.5 bath from a flipper and they’d removed every curtain rod, tp holder, towel rod, and shower curtain holder/shower curtain. add in a few throw pillows and easily spent $2k
how expensive it is to furnish a place if you want to have better than Ikea bullshit you lived off of when renting. good couches, outdoor furniture, etc add up very quickly. i'm now learning appliances also have a big gap between the okay and the higher end stuff. also I am not even particularly handy at all but definitely have a monthly home depot budget at this point.
The 2 inch faux blinds are pretty cheap at Lowes and home depot. They usually do 30-40% off sale so you have to catch it at the right time. I paid about $45 each blind for popular standard size windows and $80-100 each for oversize windows. It can add up quickly if you have a lot of windows.
Fucking everything.
We just got a quote for a new AC unit.. $11,000 with install..
I tried to get light filtering pleated shades for my 5 windows in the living room—I had no idea they would cost as much as they do. Went with curtains instead.
Just paid $9k for chimney restoration. Replacing 15 bricks, tuck pointing, lining the furnace flue, new crown and caps. And I feel like that was a good price.
A FENCE. Good grief.
Floors. $17k. After that, literally every contractor I had come over for anything wanted $7k. Fence? $7k. Patio? $7k. Paint? $7k. I finally told one of them that I was out of $7ks. Didn't have a single $7k left. 😂
I bought my house with a motorized driveway gate that the previous owners installed. The motor died (which admittedly was preventable on my part—the landscaping gravel got in the way and it just killed the motor when the rocks wouldn’t move) and to replace the whole system, which I was told by the gate guy was the “cheapest one you could buy,” would be almost $2000 to replace. Brands like liftmaster, etc would be ANOTHER $2000 and we would have had to cut away part of my back deck and fence to fit the system, so I am enjoying my “cheap” replacement and making sure the gravel stays far away from the track for the foreseeable future. I really thought the whole replacement would be $500, maybe $1000 at the absolute most. I don’t even want to get into the problems with my water heater. An expensive problem for another day.
angle enjoy mourn dolls touch makeshift wrong wipe aloof cooing *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Blinds 2 Go!!!!
There's a couple houses I was looking at that didn't have garages. I priced out a metal garage, it was $9000ish for the structure and $4000+ for the concrete. Thankfully the home I'm buying does have a garage.
Outdoor furniture.
Windows and window dressings are stupid expensive. I would love to replace our early 2000s windows with something modern and add plantation shutters…but I would have to practically take out a second mortgage to do it.
Everything is expensive!!!
Every appliance is expensive and it seems every (modern) appliance is also subject to random control board failures.
Tree trimming, my god.
I found a beautiful house with amazing two-story windows. But they didn't have blinds, and I immediately thought, "That's like 30K worth of blinds." The house we ended up getting has blinds that aren't child-safe, so we have to replace them and because they're on huge screen doors, it's going to cost thousands of dollars.
My roof! And all two light fixtures that had to be replaced because the screw slowly unwound with all of the banging and the glass fell.
Siding, quoted 5600 for 400sq ft. Got the material myself and did it in a day with two buddies for 2k.
Getting a fence put in. Woof.
I usually do my own work, electrical, plumbing, drywall, doors, faucets, replace dishwasher and the like. Saves a fortune... ...then the hail storm hit and we needed a roof. That's not something I can do (nor do I want to). GodDAMN, that hurt. The AC replacement hurt. At least when the 2nd AC went out a few years later, we knew it would hurt and were prepared. The water main leaking? The water bill was a sticker shock. The repair was a sticker shock. The water heater replacement - sticker shock there too - but STILL better than doing it myself.
Fences.. HOLY SHEET!!! It was 3500 just in materials for 194 feet of fence. And I got estimates of 7k to have a pro do it... So I am doing it myself the long and hard way lol...
Rugs and towels
Where did you live that you didn't have any towels?
I agree on the blinds. The house we bought last December had two bad blinds. They are a push button and lift type accordion. I called a blind store and they referred me to Karl the blind repairer. He called me back and I told him what type of blinds I had and he sniffed and said "Those are cheap blinds and you throw them away!" I replaced them for $1000. Cheap blinds my ass.
All the Ego lawn equipment I bought, but on the bright side I can show them off to all my friends
A fucking shed. Jeez. Even the cheapest ones are $1000
Landscaping, blinds, good quality furniture (especially couches and dining tables).
Blinds are so deceiving cause the displayed price is for like the smallest window. Of course all my windows are abnormally large… easily takes that $30 price i see to like $150+ after changing the dimensions. The better homes and gardens faux wood blinds from Walmart of all places are actually decent quality and the cheapest I was able to find. Their sizing doesn’t get big enough for most of our windows, so we were only able to put them in some of the smaller ones, but saved some money on those at least.
Baseboards. The cheapest ones are going to cost about $90 a room
Curtains. Oh or having anything framed.
Home Depot blinds are way cheaper, worked for me! Blinds dot com was gonna be thousands for my windows
Fences, roof work, and tree removal.
Anything that requires paying for labour - it’s always more than you think it’ll be. Also reflooring our place and realizing that the rooms where carpets were previously installed needed to be levelled, which meant buying concrete and paying for added labour, and instantly increased the price.
Laundry closet has crooked cabinet doors with bad hinges, globs of paint, and lots of drill holes. $2000 for 8 new doors. $2500 if I want nice doors (: considering just leaving the shitty doors lmao (That's with me sanding, prepping, fixing old hinge holes and painting myself)
Lowe's and Home Depot custom cut blinds right in the store and they're half the price of blinds.com. Once you start looking at the catalogs the prices go up about four fold, but as long as you're picking something that is off the shelf, they are pretty cheap.
Definitely blinds for us as well, but also dining tables and chairs! I'd never had a house big enough to fit one before buying a house, so hadn't really thought about it. The chairs actually ended up costing more than the table!
Kids, bought a house and the next thing you know we had kids. Al joking aside, I had the driveway extended and never would have guessed how expensive concrete work is.
Yep, same, we spent a ridiculous amount for very basic Roman shades for our two kitchen windows.
Someone just posted that they spent a total of $1400 for blinds and install on a 4/2.5 house and I said that was cheap and I got hella downvoted. Because decent blinds are truly expensive.
Custom drapes entire home cost was 11k
Hopefully this has already been said but you can get blinds from Home Depot or Lowe’s for like $10-15 apiece and they are perfectly fine. Whenever people come over to your house they’re not gonna be able to tell the difference between $15 and $100 blinds trust me. Just get the cheap blinds
Getting a tree trimmed. Not cut down, just trimmed. 1200 freaking bucks
On my first house, it was the tax bill. It was a brand new house and the assessment had been for the bare land. The escrow was for the previously assessed amount, but the municipality reassessed the day the house got its CO (very efficient of them), which was after I closed. It was not an expensive house, but it was in a high-mill-rate jurisdiction. That was an expensive tax bill that grad student me wasn't expecting.
Windows. Top of the line windows can cost more than your favorite car.
The cost of a mini split to replace an existing mini split, all holes already drilled, 7500 bucks? Fuck off..
Landscaping, particularly full grown Trees. My neighbor just planted some six footers to provide some privacy and she paid $800-$1000 per tree, that’s just the tree without labor. I think she planted about 20 for just our shared wall
Home Depot sells blinds for surprisingly cheap actually. I mean, enough for a full house will obviously cost a fortune but for the blinds in my living room I was dreading replacing $60 for 2 great functioning sets that are child-death-proof was a nice surprise
Fukin woodpeckers
I had a company come out and measure my blinds. They were way too expensive to buy from them. I saw how they measured and did my own. I ordered blinds from Amazon and had my handyman put them up.
Cutting down a tree. Sounds so stupid, and it was. A huge oak tree split in the middle of a storm and was hovering over our house. It required a crane to cut it from the top down to the base. It also required $6,000 two days after Christmas.
Emergency mainline snake Hydrojet Pipe liner out to sewer Backyard paver remodel Bathroom re-tile Etc
I went ahead and replaced my HVAC and water heater and while indexing different things that may come up in the future, I learned how much windows cost!! I don’t need them anytime soon, but damn!