Recently, Kenny and I decided that we were going to refinance our house here in Texas to a 15 year fixed. We originally had plans on selling it in 2010, but the markets are good for refinance, and chances are, we won't sell anytime soon. So I took action to get the loan refinanced from a 30 to 15 year.
Since we've committed to staying in this house a little longer than we originally thought, I've been looking at the house with new eyes. Now I'm seeing all the home projects that need to be done since it will be a long term stay. Things like new paint colors, landscape ideas, and one area that definitely needs addressing are the upstairs windows.
There isn't anything wrong with the windows, per se. They work fine. But the placement of them on the upstairs level is just ridiculous. They are only about 2 feet off the ground. They are tall windows...this isn't a matter of aesthetics. The problem is that with a 3 year old in the house, we can NEVER open them upstairs. It's just too easy for Keegan to fall out of them. I don't know what architect thought of this brilliant idea. Anyway, it's something that we need to get fixed if we ever want a cool breeze to flow through our house.
The other day, I heard on the radio an advertisement from a window company offering 10 windows for $39.95. I was only half listening, but it caught my attention and registered in my brain: 10 for $39.95. I mentioned it to Kenny, a bit perplexed at the catch and he asked me if it was for window cleaning. I said I didn't know and would listen for the add again. So when I heard it again and verified that it wasn't for window cleaning, I wrote down the information and called to make an appointment for a free estimate. All this time, I had been wondering what the catch was. Is this for the glass only? How much for the hardware and labor? I thought that they were going to say, "Yeah, the windows are that much, but the labor is $800."...or something like that. I knew I was stepping into some marketing scheme. But my thought was that if I could get a ballpark figure as to how much it would be, at least I'd know what route to take regarding our upstairs windows.
Well, today was our consultation. Kenny had been up all day and decided to stay up until the guys showed up. I ran out to pick up the boys from Kathy and on the way back, I called Kenny to find out if the window guys had shown up yet as I was running about 5 minutes late. He told me that they had shown up and had already left. Kenny, I'm sure, played the part of "I-can't-believe-my-wife-is-so-dingy" husband as he teased me about my window find. He told me that the 10 windows were $4,000. I couldn't understand this no matter how I ran the math. Even if they were $40 a piece, that only amounted to $400. So what extra cost brought them to $4,000? Kenny actually had to explain it a couple of times until I realized that the radio advertisement was for $3,995 for 10 windows....not $39.95. Uh.......oh........yeah.......that makes sense.........wow, this is really embarrassing......really.....really....embarassing. Well, at least I wasn't there when the window guys showed up. Then I would have had to face that embarrassing dilemma personally. Wow....this is almost as embarrassing as when I walked into that pole a couple of weeks ago....just like this guy.
