Our first home improvement project is done – we’ve had the house completely reinsulated. It was perhaps a bit crazy to get that done in January, but it made a noticeable difference even as they were just doing some of the preliminary sealing work before they got really serious about the actual insulation. (We got totally new blown in insulation in the attic, and they did all the walls.)
As part of the work, we also got a new bathroom fan. We knew we needed to replace that anyway – the existing one was likely older then me. It vented into the attic, and the only reason we didn’t have a mold problem up there is that it didn’t actually move any air. So that was replaced, and we got a unit that could also go into the half bath, so we can vent that (and by extension, our bedroom). Our bedroom ends up being the warmest room in the house, and with BF’s cpap at night, we were getting condensation on the windows. The new insultation took care of most of that, and the fan is taking care of the rest.
They had the electrician that they usually work with in, and we were able to have them do some other work, which worked out really well for us. Electricians are next to impossible to book for regular home work right now. I listened to the main guy tell several people that had his direct cell that he could book them in in a couple months, and he totally understood if they managed to find someone else faster in the meantime. So we got some smaller project (moving the cable jack to the other side of the living room, fixing some outlets, hardwired smoke alarms, that kind of thing) out of the way faster than we would have been able to otherwise.
This isn’t cheap, but we had the money set aside (part of the reason we went with 10% down instead of 20% when we bought the house). However, we did finance this, because we were eligible for a loan through the state with an insanely good rate. Since we’re still in the first year here, we figured we’d sit on the loan payment for a bit, and make sure nothing else comes up. If something does, we’ll have the money, and can keep paying the loan. There’s pretty much no way we’d get better financing for most other things that could happen to the house. So all and all, pretty pleased with the experience.