Saving money on home improvement

I have several posts mulling around in my noggin but I have been too tired at night to get them out this week as we have been getting home from work and going straight to work, scraping the old peeling paint off the side of our house.


You can tell from the second picture how high I up I have to go to clean up the second floor windows and and digging into the old paint with a hand scraper that high up is kinda not cool.


But we have been scraping and painting one side of the house each year for three years. I have not priced out how much we are saving, painting ourselves, but I imagine it would buy a Wylie fund or two...


I just realized I do not have a good picture of either of the two sides we are done with. This one shows the front which we painted last year. The new color we are using is similar, but a bit more blue. You can also see the bags of leaves and pine needles we raked up, waiting to be taken to be composted by our town. Yes, we also do our own 'landscaping' which probably saves us enough for a few months of subsequent investments in a Wylie fund or two.