That was a rhetorical question, by the way. Of course I’ve mentioned the old house. I’ve been writing about it lately because I’ve been thinking about it lately.

I spent most of yesterday working on old house projects. My brother-in-law helped me (stop – reverse that) install a new water heater, because the old one was leaking.

I spent quite a lot of time researching water heaters when I first noticed the leak. Every inch of my being cried out for a new point-of-source water heater, complete with 30% tax credit. But it just wasn’t feasible. When you figure that it would cost about $1500 for the unit and then start adding on costs to that, it gets expensive real quick. First off, you have to have the right size of gas pipe, which is incredibly unlikely in an old house. Then you have to vent the new water heater, which means it has to be beside an outside wall (and you will have to knock a hole in that wall). That also means redirecting water to the new water heater location. That kind of installation will cost you at least a thousand bucks, but even if it cost half that, added to the $1500 for the unit, you’re now at $2k. The tax credit would then be $600 (assuming you actually pay taxes, which isn’t the case for everyone), which is nice. But that means your net cost is about $1400. Our new water heater cost about $500 including installation. And yes, the point of source heaters are cheaper during the year and last several years longer than the old units, but you’d have to have a lot of savings to make up for an additional $900 up front. And I’d be willing to bet that my guess of $2k was waaay short of reality.

Anyway, so we put in a new water heater yesterday, and that inspired me to install a new toilet in our master bathroom, too.

And that inspired me to get my tail in gear and start planning to fix up the upstairs bathroom. My plan is to rip out everything except the bizarre, square pink bathtub. I think it’ll take me about a week to finish it, and I get to learn how to install linoleum/vinyl. w00t?

So that’s what I’m doing in my spare time today: reading up on vinyl installation. It should be interesting. And I’m excited beyond words to see the room finished and usable again.

Of course first I have to finish painting the front porch, which I’ve barely started. But then we will start to see real progress around the house. I hope to do the porch, the bathroom, then redo two bedrooms and the dining room.

It should only take every waking minute I will have over the next two years.