(no subject)

This cracked me up so much at such an ungodly hour of morning that I had to share.

(no subject)

Back in February, one of the things the home inspector told us we would have to do in the house is replace the stair railing, because the balusters are too far apart to meet current code and could present a safety hazard, particularly to little kids. Since we're going to have one of those beetling around the place in the relatively near future, we figured we'd better get this taken care of as soon as possible. This is just as well because the current railing - a sort of wrought-iron thing with a green-gold plastic handrail - is, while inoffensive, one of those details that kind of dates the place. A nice wooden railing, while it seems like kind of a stupid persnickety detail, would actually be a very nice update.

The first place I called was Stairworld, since I knew they make stair components, but apparently they don't install them. They did, however, give me a couple of contacts for outfits that do. I got a ballpark quote from the first place today: $2500 - $3200, depending on the style of balusters we want. Yeeeeeouch. We'll see what the other guy has to say - he's supposed to drop by in the next couple days to give us his estimate - but as Corey pointed out $2500 is maybe not that surprising, given that by nature every such structure would have to be tailored specifically to every different house.

I begin to understand why the government offers incentives for first-time home-buyers...it's certainly prompting us to throw an unprecedented amount of money around. Yay for the economy. Sigh.