Home Repair, Home Repairs

Home Repairs Costs - Keeping Them Under Control

Preventative home maintenance is the most effective way to keep home repair costs low. One of the costliest home maintenance tasks is repainting the interior and exterior of the house. When your house is badly in need of repainting, not only does the market value of your house go down, but it is less fun to live in it.

So how do you manage these costly maintenance tasks and still keep home repair costs to a minimum? The cost of paying someone to repaint your house will vary depending on the area you live in and the size of your home. But let’s say it cost $2500 to repaint the outside of your home and $1800 to repaint the inside. The inside of your home may need repainting every 10 years, whereas the outside of your home may need repainting every 7 years. Of course these numbers will vary depending on whether you have children living at home, the weather in your area and so on. But we can use these numbers for purposes of illustration.

So, let’s take $2500, your exterior painting cost, over seven years. That comes out to $357 per year, or $29.76 per month. Add to that your interior painting cost of $1800 over 10 years, it becomes $180 per year or $15 per month. So if you set aside $29.76 + $15.00 every month into a home repair savings account, you will never have to worry about the cost of repainting your house. (Of course you will have to substitute your own numbers if you think your costs will be different.)  You can take this approach to all your home repair costs, such as fixing the roof, putting up new fences, and taking care of the sprinkler system to ensure that you always have cash resources. Having cash on hand in a home maintenance savings account will allow you take care of small jobs before they become big jobs and because you will never have to put off getting them done.

Of course, the cheapest way to do any home maintenance is to become a home repair handyman and do the home repairs yourself. Labor is the most expensive part of any home repair costs, so the more you contribute your own labor the more you are saving in the long run. For example, you can reduce the amount of your interior painting costs by deciding to paint one room of your house every year. Not only will this save on your home repair costs, but it allows you to keep up with decorating and color trends, making your home more marketable at any time without having to invest in a total paint makeover. Also, it will give you the opportunity to attend to repairing minor blemishes in walls by doing small spackling repairs. You can also take advantage of this time to rearrange the wall décor and give your home a new look. After you are done painting you can then rearrange the furniture, and buy new window furnishings. By updating one room in the house every year your house will always have that clean, fresh feeling of a new home, and you will also be keeping your home repair costs under control.