It has been a busy three weeks around the Glover household. We are happy and proud to announce that we now have central heating and air in our house! This has been an ongoing project (thought process) for the past three years. Let me start from the beginning....
We LOVE our house! It is two story, 2,000 square feet, in a nice neighborhood, 5 bedrooms, 2 1/2 bathrooms, formal dining room, and really cute porch with a porch swing. We fell in love with this house the moment we drove into the driveway for the first time. This house was VERY ran down. Dirty and outdated barely described it. It had been on the market for 10 months, and therefore the price had dropped low enough that it was now in our price range. Now, neither my husband nor I have ever lived in a house with central heating and air, so when we were told it didn't have one, we both thought it was just fine, and we could upgrade it later. We moved in, painted, and made ourselves at home. After the first year in our home, we decided to start getting some estimates for the cost of central heating and air. This was when the sticker shock slapped us right in the face. The lowest estimate we could find was right at $10,000. There was NO way we could afford that. We never expected it to be that expensive. We just decided to hold off another year, and try to figure out what to do. We looked at refinancing our house, using student loan money, getting out a bank loan...and still, didn't know what to do.
My parents had central heating and air installed in their house in 2010. Talk about jealous!! They found an awesome company, and they had it completely done in two days! We decided to give them a try, and let them give us an estimate. $5,500!! That was pretty much half of the cost! We were so excited, and made plans to have it installed summer of 2011. That was until, they informed us that we needed all the electrical stuff updated on the outside of the house. Our house didn't have enough power to have the unit installed. BRICK wall...again. The lowest estimate we could find was $3,000. Ouch. We didn't have that money, plus the $5,500 for the central heating and air, so once again, we decided to just wait. 2011 summer was one of the HOTTEST summers I have ever lived though. Our swamp coolers could not keep up. They were always breaking down, not running at all, leaking water....what a mess! We knew after last summer that we just could not go through another one like that ever again. We were miserable inside of our own home.
This brings us to this year. I am now pregnant (due in August) with twin boys, and the thought of enduring another miserable summer, while ginormous, made me want to cry. We asked around our church (why didn't we think of this sooner?) to see if there were any electricians. Sure enough, the "candy man" as many of the children in our church call him, is an electrician, and was more than willing to do the job for us! He came over, and had all of the electrical work done in ONE day! He knew the people to call to get the inspection done, he made all the calls, it was approved, and we were one step closer to our goal! The best part, he only charged us $1800. Thank you Lord! Next, we called up the same company that my parents used. It had been over a year since we received the estimate for $5,500, so we were really hoping that it hadn't gone up too much. We called, and the estimate hadn't changed! The best news, they could be there in two days to start on it, and be finished in another two days!! They came over, the nicest people, and started on the job. More than half way through, they tell us we are going to have to hire a plumber. OH NO. How much will this cost, because frankly, we have little money left over?! The gas line that they needed to tie the unit into had been cut off. We called a plumber, and after a lot of back and forth, got an estimate for $220. We can afford that. It was finally official. We would have it all done and completed by the end of the week!
We've now had it for 4 days, and talk about life changing. We may not have any money left in savings, but it was SO worth it. I enjoy our house now. I enjoy being at home. I enjoy not having to worry if Natalee's room is too hot or too cold. I enjoy the blessings that God sent us. I enjoy the patience that we've had. I enjoy everything.
The next project is to spray in more insulation into the attic (2nd story). It is not insulated well at all, therefore the upstairs is still pretty toasty. When we know that we are going to spend time up here, we just touch it down to around 69 or so downstairs, so the cool air will stay on for a while. We are hoping to have this project completed in the next 2 or 3 weekends, and then the long process will finally be complete.
We are so thankful. YAY for being a "cool" family.
Krystole
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