I never win anything, why now?
When we first purchased our home in North Pole Alaska, there were only a couple of things that we found ourselves dissatisfied by. The kitchen was a bit on the small side, the master bath had a shower only, and the hall bathroom had a tub that our realtor called “an old person tub”. The bathtub was extremely shallow. It was useful for taking a bath only if your intent was to soak the nether regions of your body. Even my son exclaimed that the bathtub was useless. Actually, I will disagree. It was useful for washing the cat.
Summer in Alaska is short, chaotically busy on our property. It is always packed full of work that needs to be done. We have essentially four months to get a large amount of work done. Now, that we’ve added so much livestock to the mix, it’s only upped the pace. So much so that during the summer we get almost no time off to relax, or have fun. So that being said, if I were to add a bathroom remodel to our list of projects it would not happen during the summer months. Or so I thought I had told the universe.
I never win anything, so why expect anything different now?
For the past couple of years, we have moaned, whined, and complained about how nice it would be if we had a soaker tub to use after a long day of work around the property. We happened to have a moment of providence when a friend sent me a message in late May telling me to go take a look at the Alaska Radio auction because they had a bathtub listed there for $800. The auction would be ending at 5 pm and thankfully I already knew the dimensions for our bathtub alcove. This meant we could make the decision quickly. That was important because I received the message from my friend at 3:29 pm.
After a bit of discussion back and forth between my husband and me as we worked in the garden, we finally decided to bid on it, simply because I am one of the least lucky individuals alive. I almost never win anything. I told my husband, fine, I’ll bid on it because we know we won’t win it. Knowing my luck, I’ll never win. Right.
Uh oh.
One and a half hours later my phone pinged. With garden soil all over my hands, I grabbed my phone to read the notification and had to announce to my husband “umm babe? Uhhh, we just won the tub.” Oh boy. While we were excited about getting a new tub and excited by the prospect that finally we would have something to soak in when we were stiff and sore from a long day’s work. We realized that we just added one new task for our summer. We already had enough work to do this summer. How in the world would we accomplish a bathroom remodel?
Logistics
First, we had to pay for the certificate that allowed us to contact the Jacuzzi dealer down in Anchorage. We then had to start putting the wheels in motion, literally, to get the bathtub from Anchorage to North Pole, Alaska. We could drive but that would easily take 2 days and several hundred dollars in gas, meals, and hotel expenses. No good, so my husband contacted coworkers from the Anchorage office to get things moving. They helped us then move the 250 lb tub from Anchorage via truck to here in the interior for the sweet price of $71.
We unloaded the bathtub from my husband’s truck on June 11th. It sat in the garage until friends would help us install the tubs plumbing and electrical. My husband and I are adept at woodwork, tile work, painting, and basic repairs but plumbing and electrical setup were completely new to us. We discussed the project with our friends who would charge us $500 to help us just do the basic setup of the tub, along with the plumbing and electrical. Edward and I would do the demolition and do all the tile work, painting, and anything else involved. All this time, I kept shaking my head, my God, I never win ANYthing. And now, I win a tub? Are you kidding me? In summer?
The work begins.
July 3rd the work began. Never before have my husband or I removed a tub but we figured “how tough can it be?” Our goal was to keep as much intact so we could sell it. Unfortunately, the shower surround had been glued to the studs. It quickly tore so off to the trashcan it went. Meanwhile, the tub came out rather easily and then was deposited on our back deck. I quickly listed it for sale on the Facebook marketplace. It sold in a week. We began to remove as much of the glue, concrete board, and drywall in the area where the new concrete board and tile would be applied at.
July 5th our contractor friend came over to begin his side of the work and by the end of the day, the tub was now placed. We had a couple of hiccups to get over however before we could move forward. One hiccup came in the form of the new faucet and shower head that we ordered but then it never showed up. I ran into town one weekday to purchase another one and cancel the other order. (typical Alaska problem, shipping is hard for us up here).
Meanwhile, I suddenly came down with salmonella poisoning due to handling the meat chickens, which suddenly slowed this project down to slower than a snail’s pace. By July 16th I was finally starting to recover. My husband took a day off so we could just FOCUS on getting this done so our son could finally have his own bathroom back.
Now we’re moving!
While it seemed at the time that it just went so darn slowly, we made good progress on that Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. That of course came with several nights of working till 1030p to 1230 am. Of course, we also had to harvest the last 10 meat chickens. (Remember last year when we only raised three? Yes well we upped it some this year!) Remember how I said that I would never plan an extra job like a bathroom remodel in summer? Yeah, uh-huh. Never again. I still kept repeating to my family apologetically “but guys, I never win anything!”
Thankfully Edward and I have worked tile jobs before on our previous rental property along with our kitchen in this house. We had experience and only had to do minimal research to figure out anything new that we didn’t already know. The biggest challenge in this tiling job was that the tiles were so incredibly big and heavy. Add thinset to the back and the 3 lb tile turned into 5-7 lbs of very slippery, breakable tile. On top of that challenge, we also miscalculated the amounts of thinset and tile that we would need, and somehow our spacers from previous jobs vanished into thin air. I still wonder if we will find the spacers somewhere, sometime in the future in a really odd place. So, after three unplanned trips to Lowes, we finally finished the first part. Thinset & tile. Next was the grout application.
Got grout?
Thankfully by the grouting stage, I was moving more freely and energetically as I recovered from the salmonella poisoning. My son and I applied the sticky, sandy grout and then worked to remove all the supporting boards that kept the tile up while the thinset cured and hardened. I’m thankful that at this point we had no more tiles slipping.
I repeatedly cleaned thinset and grout messes that were dropped in the tub. Both thinset and grout can really mess with the finish on the tub. At this stage, I felt like we’d already worked so darn hard for this tub that I wanted to make sure we kept it in pristine condition! The painting was coming up next! Our past realtor has joked that my husband and I have become experts at painting due to all the work we did ourselves for our rental property in Fairbanks. While I’m good at it, it’s not something I fully enjoy.
Done!
Or just about. We still have to work on the lid to the cubby near our toilet which will be used to hold toilet paper or other toiletries. I have a few touch-ups on certain areas of the wall that my perfectionist’s eye has noticed are lacking, well, perfection. But otherwise, this job is in the bag.
The fun part. The financials.
At least that is to me. See, I’m silly like that. I love to break down costs and mostly, I love being able to build value while being frugal and keeping our costs down low. I almost never win anything and most frequently have to work really hard to find bargains, deals, or any other great opportunity. At Bells of the North Homestead, we are constantly as frugal as we can get away with.
The first breakdown is the true financial cost to complete this unexpected bathroom upgrade. As you might notice, we increased our cost by $100 to our contractor just because we felt like he put in a lot of work and that was kind of him and helped us a great deal. Plus we like to take care of our friends.
The second excel sheet is the actual value. This is what it would have cost if we had outsourced all labor, and had bought the tub at its true cost. The true cost of the tub was verified by staff at Alaska Stove & Spa. I acquired the tub install and tile work/painting labor costs through Lowes. This was a very basic estimate. They did not want to give me an absolutely correct estimate because Lowes up here in Interior Alaska does not work with any contractors in the area. I prefer not to add in this estimate any items such as paintbrushes or other such tools that we repeatedly use.
Total value added
$6745 added all because I never win anything
As I look back at this job I am amazed that we have just added $4500 worth of value for the cost of $2100. When we work on projects around the house, sometimes it is just a small repair, other times it’s an addition to something. We are always mindful of wanting to add value with the least amount of cost. On top of that, any time we make purchases for our property, it is also with the mindset that the purchase must in some way bring future value.
For instance, a bathroom upgrade, or a tile job in the kitchen, or trees for the orchard. All of these items could at one point bring more value in the future. Yes, we might enjoy the addition now, but we want to know that we are constantly adding future value. This means we do our best to operate at the lowest cost possible. Not because we do not have the money to do so, but instead because it is financially wise to be frugal. We operate our day-to-day lives, with the mindset that we want to preserve our wealth as much as possible and not waste it on useless items. This is not only good for our wallets but good for reducing waste and clutter.
Proverbs 13:22: “A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children.” (NKJV)
Proverbs 21:20 – In the House of the wise are stores of choice food and oil, but a foolish man devours all he has.
