The pitch

The commercials promise significant savings over the manufacturers suggested retail prices.  For someone building a home or remodeling, that can translate into huge savings, which theoretically would allow you to buy higher end products while staying within your original budget.  All you have to do is call for an invitation to an open house.  At this point, you have nothing to lose.  So far, everything is free.

The open house

Basically you listen to a long sales pitch touting the benefits of joining the “club.”  The initial membership fee is quite significant (four figures) as are the annual renewals (three figures).  But the membership pays for itself, you see, if you make enough purchases.  And with savings of up to 40 or 50% and more, it won’t be long until you start enjoying the real benefits of “paying what the retailers pay.”  It almost sounds too good to be true, but they give a few examples and run the numbers and everything seems to add up.  It may take a few years, but in the long run, you can envision the potential savings.

The hard sell

Here’s the catch (and a huge red flag):  You must decide today whether or not you want to join.  You can only join at the open house, and once you have used your invitation, you will not get another chance.  At least that’s what they tell you.  I can’t imagine them turning someone away who later decides to join, but I don’t know of anyone who has tested this theory out.  You are not given a whole lot of time to make this major decision, maybe an hour or so.  I would have liked to have had a week or so to weigh the pros and cons to decide whether or not membership was right for me.  Based on the sales pitch, though, it seemed like a good deal at the time.

The Cost

It ain’t cheap, as I have already mentioned.  We’re talking 4 digits here, and the first one ain’t a “one.”  But that covers three years before the annual renewal fees kick in.  And your annual renewal fee is guaranteed for ten years– no increases.

How the club works

The club acts as a liason between you and the manufacturer.  Your local Direct Buy showroom is essentially a library which contains manufacturer’s catalogues with product descriptions and price lists.  You may also browse the member’s only website from the comfort of your own home.  You are presented with the manufacturer’s suggested retail price and the special member’s price.  Shipping options vary depending on the product and the manufacturer.  Sometimes the item will be delivered directly to you.  Other times it will be delivered to the warehouse and you will have to pick it up.  Sometimes shipping is included in the price.  Sometimes shipping is extra.

Why we let our membership lapse

The Direct Buy membership, for us, turned out to be a bad investment for a number of reasons:

• We prefer to “see” what we are buying.  Shopping on-line or from catalogues works well for some things, but not so well for others.  Sometimes a picture just isn’t enough.
• Ordering takes time.  A quick drive over to the department store is faster than ordering merchandise and waiting for delivery.  Even major furniture and appliance purchases are often delivered the next day by local retailers, whereas you may wait anywhere from a couple of days to a month for delivery of an order through the club.
• The savings claims are misleading.  It sounds good to say that the manufacturer’s suggested retail price on a specific product is $1000 and the member’s price is $600, so therefore you save $400.  The reality is that there are few retailers that will sell at the manufacturer’s suggested retail.  The retailer’s price may be $800.  Now your savings are only $200.  And there may even be additional charges on top of that.
• Selection does not always fit within budget.  Direct Buy is great if you are looking to buy a $10 widget for $6.  Our budget only allowed for a $5 widget.  We wanted to save money, but we never could find a $5 widget that we could buy at an “insider price.”  We would have been willing to upgrade to a $7 widget being offered at $5, but the simple fact of the matter is there were often no widgets being offered within our $5 price range. Virtually every purchase we made through the club was more than we had planned to spend.  And really, our tastes tended to gravitate toward the $5 widget anyway.
• We don’t always need the latest and greatest.  Retailers have sales and sometimes sell below cost.  Deals abound at year end closeouts and overstock sales.  Frankly, we are often happy with last year’s model if it serves our needs.  In ten years, there won’t be much difference between something that is ten years old and something that was state of the art nine years earlier.
• Retailers often upsell warranties, offer in-home service, or entice you with other add-ons.  With Direct Buy, you are buying directly from the manufacturer, so you will not have these after-market options.  We usually decline extended warranties and the like, but it’s always nice to have that option.

The final straw came last year when we ordered a tub/shower combination for our bathroom renovation.  We ordered it at the same time that we hired the contractor and the contractor was ready for it long before it was delivered to the warehouse.  We went to the warehouse to pick it up and it did not fit in the contractor’s van.  We ended up hiring a mover.  Hindsight being 20/20, I could have rented a U-Haul myself, but the professional mover seemed to be the best solution at the time.  The bottom line is that while we may have saved some money by ordering through Direct Buy, it cost us in the delay in the construction, it cost us in the time to go to pick up the merchandise, and it cost us in the alternative arrangements we had to make for the delivery.  It’s hard to say if we saved any money at all.

The commercials for Direct Buy effectively lay out the “pros” of becoming a member.  I have laid out what can be considered the “cons.”  But don’t misunderstand me.  For some people, Direct Buy membership can be a good investment.  That was not the case for us.  I wish I could have had more time to decide before signing up.  In hindsight, the membership fees we paid could have been better spent elsewhere.

Time crunch replaces cash crunch

Climbing out of debt is much harder than accumulating debt.  Little by little, we knocked down the low-rate credit card balances while keeping up with all the surprise expenses along the way.  And it seems that this year was full of surprises.  We are now a few weeks away from that magical zero balance, so I have no more excuses for procrastinating.  And with our summer house guests (mom and dad-in-law) expected to arrive in July there aren’t a lot of weekends to work through our punch list.

The one room that the contractors did not touch was the living room, except for installing a new picture window.  It is going to require a bit of work and money to bring up to the standard of the rest of the house:

• Remove wallpaper border.
• Repair any holes  and cracks in the walls.
• Run new circuit to repace the one that was abandoned during the renovations.
• Paint.
• Refinish hardwood floor.
• Install new trim.

The final piece of the puzzle is the stairway from the first to second floor.  I had removed the carpeting from the treads and risers a couple of years ago. The stringers had been finished with some one inch wide tongue and groove wood strips and some pretty ugly moldings which I stripped off several months ago. My plans call for beadboard paneling on the stringers and new carpet on the stairs.  But before that, I have to paint the balusters, and there are a lot of them.  That will be a very time consuming task to do it right.

Looking ahead

My dream of a garage/workshop remains elusive.  But after seven years, I am tired of storing outdoor equipment and bikes in the basement.  At some point this summer, I intend to lay down a concrete slab and build a shed.  Our existing steel shed saw its better days about thirty years ago.  It just sits on dirt with a mostly patio stone and dirt floor and it is just a matter of time before the rust completely eats through the metal.  A strong wood framed and vinyl sided outbuilding will be welcome replacement.

All this and yard work, too

It’s always fun juggling home improvement projects with general home maintenance projects.  There are only so many hours in the day and only so many days in the week.  And as far as I know, it is impossible to be in two places at the same time, so the two or three hours I spend cutting the grass is two or three hours that I can’t spend painting…

In a flurry of activity, they grouted the kitchen backsplash and installed under-cabinet lighting.  The cracked grout in the bathroom and hallway was removed and replaced.  Additional structural reinforcement was done in the basement to address the possible cause of the cracked grout.  Popcorn texture was applied to the living room ceiling (more on this at a later date), and a leaking window was addressed.

We had waited over six months for what took the contractors eight hours to finish.  But during that six months, we were able to rebuild our cash reserves.  And because we were paying time and materials, there was always a big question mark surrounding how much the finishing touches were going to cost.  That question mark has been removed, and the cost was much less than I had been anticipating, which is a very positive development.

There is still much work to be done, however.  And I can no longer put things off  “until after the contractors come back.”  So it looks like I need to reawaken my passion for DIY which has been dormant for the last couple of years and finish the following:

• The stairs (which I recently stripped of mismatched paneling and moldings):  the spindles are going to be painted white, the hand rail will be refreshed with a couple of coats of polyurethane, and new simpler paneling and moldings will be installed.  After the painting is finished, we will have new carpet installed on the steps.
• The living room walls need a bit of repair work and paint, the rest of the electrical needs to be updated, and the hardwood floor needs to be refinished.
• The workroom and storage room in the basement need to be finished.  We have not had any water issues since the new sump pump was installed, so I am confident that we can finish off this side of the basement and get a lot of my tools and supplies organized.

That should be enough work to keep me busy for a while…

I am typing this entry on our new laptop.  I am trying to restore our files and install the programs that we use the most while getting used to a new operating system.  Plus I have two weeks’ worth of work that has piled up (and continues to pile up) in the meantime.  Ain’t technology great?!

Where has my ambition gone? Why am I so pathetic? How do I get my motivation back?

Meanwhile on Tuesday, the contractors returned to install our front picture window.  They will return for one last time in about three weeks to finish grouting the kitchen backsplash, install the under-the-cabinet lights, repair the living room ceiling and perform any small repairs and touch-ups.  To save on labour, I will be doing a few things in preparation for the work in the living room, so I am fine with the three week wait.  I was also fine with the two month delay while the in-laws were here, so the three month span isn’t as bad as it may seem, though it would be nice if everything was finished now.  Of course, it would also be nice if we still had money in the bank, too.  Another three weeks will give us a chance to build up a little more savings before shelling out more money for labour.

Over the next couple of weeks, I will also be painting the stair railing and spindles, and hopefully in September, we will be able to have carpeting installed on the stairs.  At some point, I will paint the living room and install some new trim.  Not sure whether we’ll bother having the floor refinished or not, but that is far enough in the future that it isn’t quite on the radar yet.  I have enough work to do over the next couple of weeks to keep me busy.

It’s all a matter of perspective, I suppose.  My wife can see what I have managed to get done, but all I see is the stuff I didn’t finish.

The biggest accomplishment this week, if you can call it an accomplishment, was vacating one of our storage units.  I had planned on renting it for only two months, while the contractors were working on our house, but two months dragged into five.  And the stuff that was stored there was probably not worth the more than $300 we paid for storage.   All water under the bridge now, so to speak.  Instead of looking at how much we paid, I can now look at how much we are saving by eliminating that storage charge.

By contrast, our other storage unit is still jammed full.  I moved the bed and mattress that my mother-in-law was using during the visit, and I retrieved a couple of pieces of furniture, but it will be a long time before we are able to empty out that unit.

The return of the contractors

The contractors will be returning on Monday to install the picture window, but it is unlikely that they will finish the kitchen grout until a later date.  That will give us a bit more time to build up some savings,.  Maybe by then, I’ll have the bookshelf put together.

We have been in a holding pattern for the last two months.  The contractors moved on to another project, intending to return here at some point to finish grouting the kitchen backsplash and install the front window.  Apparently, they decided to wait until after our house guests left.  That gave me two months to get our house in order.  Sufficient time for most people, but I am not most people.

I’m lazy.  In fact, during the last two months, I not only accepted my laziness, I embraced it.  Once I finished off the rooms upstairs, all progress came to a halt.  Then, last week, with the in-laws’ visit winding down, I realized that I have a lot of work to do, some of which needs to be done before the contractors return.

Putting our house back together, the sequel

Our master bedroom is still not a master bedroom.  There are boxes and things that still need to be organized and put away.  All of the kid’s stuff that was in our room is now at home upstairs but here are still boxes of my wife’s books to be put away once I put our new bookshelf and audio tower together.  There are also curtains and blinds to hang and a whole lot of cleaning to do before our room can be considered finished.  But this is what I intend to accomplish this weekend.

Re-claimed living room

The living room was a catch-all zone for the contractors.  We had also left a few of our things in there as well.  I moved the bookshelf from our old bedroom and the pantry from our old kitchen to the basement (the other catch-all zone), and cleared out a lot of garbage and hauled it to the dump.  The living room is now almost empty.  We are planning to have the contractor refinish the living room ceiling which is in rough shape.  To help out, and to save some money, I was asked to repair the cracks myself.  That is on my list for the coming week.

Laundry room finished

We had the laundry cabinet laying around our family room for the last couple of months.  I finally installed it yesterday.  I don’t know why I didn’t get around to it before.  I guess it was in the back of my mind that I could have the contractors put it up (there’s two of them and only one of me) but we are at the point financially that we can’t really afford the “one more thing while you’re here” trap.

Hanging a four foot wide cabinet, solo… The easy way

To quote Homer Simpson, “I am so smart, s-m-r-t,….”  After hanging several laundry cabinets over the years, I tried something so simple that I feel stupid for not trying it before.  It is always a struggle to hold a cabinet in place and keep it level while trying to screw into the studs.  This time, I took an extra step before finishing the assembly of the cabinet that made hanging it so easy, even I could do it, without messing up the paint on the wall.

Most prefab cabinets have a strip of wood (well, particle board) that gets attached to the back of the cabinet to provide a means of securing it to the wall.  I took this piece, and before screwing it to the cabinet, I determined its location on the wall.  I marked the locations of the studs and then drilled a small pilot hole through the board and into a hollow part of the wall.

I drilled the hole in the wall for a wall anchor and inserted a screw so it was sticking out about an inch.  I then enlarged the hole in the board so it would fit over the screw.  After, I attached the board to the cabinet, completing its assembly, , started the screws in the board, then hung the cabinet on the screw in the wall.  The screw was strong enough to hold the cabinet up while I leveled it and drove the screws into the studs.

Other ways

A ledger board (usually a 2×4) can be attached to the wall for the cabinet to rest on during installation, but, if no back splash is being installed, there are holes to patch and paint to touch up.  With my method, I didn’t have to worry about that step.  A similar ledger board could have been attached to the wall inside the cabinet for the backing strip of the cabinet to rest on.  Because the resulting holes are inside the cabinet, the quality of the finish doesn’t matter as much.

The main key is to determine the stud locations ahead of time and start the screws in the backing board before attempting to hang the cabinet.  I did it alone, I did it relatively quickly, and I didn’t damage the wall paint at all.

Our laundry room. The work surface on top of the washer and dryer is made by Whirlpool for models similar to ours. Above is the cabinet, which I installed yesterday.

Onward to the master bedroom

I think I have procrastinated enough.  There is work that needs to be done.  As much as I would like to take advantage of an empty house by laying around in my underwear and swilling beer (not a pretty sight, sorry for the visual), I would much rather be able to get our bedroom in order for when my wife returns in a couple of days.

I have installed shelves in the hallway closet which gives us even more storage upstairs.  There is room for puzzles and games and some of the kid’s larger toys which will help reduce the clutter in her room.  The plugs and switches in the hallway have also been replaced with white ones.

In the guest room, which is, right now, my father-in-law’s room, the shelves and rods have been installed in the closet.  There is still the matter of the plugs and switches and QuickPorts, but I fully expect to finish those today.

The closet in the guest room is an awkward one because of the slope of the ceiling.  After learning that there is indeed a standard height for closet rods, I was determined to get at least one installed at the proper height which I was able to do, but with limited hanging space (about 20 inches).  This full-height rod is in the funky closet-within-a-closet.  The rod in the main closet could only be oriented one way, and had to be installed at four feet, where the kneewall meets the cathedral slope.

The original configuration of the closet back before the renovation. The shelf in the back part is now close to the standard height.

Once again, as with the kid’s closet, I used ClosetMaid wire shelving which is very easy to install.  In the hallway closet, I used the ClosetMaid Shelf Track system, which seemed to be a little more robust and gives us the ability to adjust the shelves.

Soon the last of our daughter’s stuff will be moved out of our bedroom and we will be able place the bed and furniture where we want.  By then, the contractors should be returning to grout the backsplash in the kitchen, install the picture window in the living room and repair the living room ceiling.  It won’t be long before we have full use of our house after more than six long years.