My husband came home this morning from Home Depot with two new power tools – a hammer drill and a jigsaw drill.  He had planned to rent a hammer drill (since one wall we’re attaching cabinetes to is concrete), but then they told him it was $24 to rent it for four hours.  $34 for the day.  And the cost to buy one?  $60.  Since we’re going to need this again for when we vent the hood to the outside brick wall, it made sense to just buy it instead of renting it for two days and paying $72 plus tax. 

While he was at it, he picked up a jigsaw to cut the countertop with.  Well, not to cut the countertops, but to cut the spaces for the sink and cooktop in the countertop.  This is one of the prices you pay for doing your own home improvements – an ever growing collection of power tools.  🙂

It’s pretty amazing when I think that until we bought this house a year and a half ago, we had never done any renovating or remodeling.  My husband could fix a hinge or screw in some blinds, but never did much more than that.  I’m very appreciative to him for agreeing to be involved in all my home improvement schemes.  He’s very busy and wouldn’t choose to spend time or money on these things if it weren’t for me. 

 And me – I didn’t know how to do anything!  I never even used a drill.  Actually, even when we were doing the first projects that I decided on, I was the one telling my dh and son how to do it (because I read the books and studied the situation).  But I still didn’t know how to use a drill myself until after some of kids learned.  Now it’s funny to me how easy so many of these things are to do.  A friend was here a few days ago, and when she heard we were redoing the kitchen, said, “Oh, you know how to do all of that stuff.”  As if I was some kind of long term expert.

It’s also been another fun area to apply my frugal genius to. 🙂