It’s a busy weekend at the WunderHouse.

Jen and the kids are heading down to her sisters house for the day. They will have a great time!

I have to go into work for a few hours to finish up something. Not something I like to do, but it isn’t too bad.

Then I may go shopping and later I may start painting the room recently vacated by Madi and Mei.

Jen and I have been having lots of discussions about the house, mainly the kitchen. If you remember, last year we had the floor retiled and I painted the walls. However, the BIG ticket items still remain. Namely, replacing the cabinet doors, the hardware and the drawers. Right now the drawers do not have nice slide rail things….its just wood on wood. Then we need new countertops and backsplashes and finally we need to remove the oven and stove and replace it with an all in one unit. The wall of cabinets that is currently housing the oven would then be turned into a pantry. An honest to goodness pantry!

Here is what it looks like now:

Anyway, I figure that may cost $10k. Then there is the hall bathroom which needs to have the floor replaced. So add a bit more to that.

So, how to pay for it all? Yeah, that’s always the trick isn’t it.

At this point saving up for it would take oh, I don’t know, a year and a half….IF nothing else came up….I could use my yearly bonus to help, but that is never a sure thing and Jen wants to go to Disney before the kids go off to college.

Luckily I think we have a good solution. We have a loan that we will finish paying next March (2011) so the thought is we are currently paying a loan payment, so why not just get another loan for the improvements and knock it out at one time? This move would be budget neutral and would get the house “Sale Ready” if we decided to sell it.

Speaking of…It was around this time 8 years ago when we bought this house. I remember because Jen was BIG pregnant with Charlie and we were in the house about 2 months before he was born. Anyway, at the time I had this grand idea of a Five Year Plan.

The plan was to clean up the house and sell it after 5 years and buy a bigger one in a nicer area. Well, then we had another kid, then we had yet another kid….. The next thing we knew we had been here 7 years! Last year Jen and I talked about what to do and we decided that you know what, a bigger place would be nice but we don’t NEED a bigger place. So we decided to stay put for now.

But we would at least like the place to look nice if we are going to stay here….and if not…having the kitchen redone will definately help the house sell.