Alright, Betts and I are racing to get our Federally Flooded house ready for us to return to. (Try paying a mortgage, and rent on what is basically a home that passes as a dumpster AND paying for contractors and the materials.) Material costs have gone up over 30% because the home building industry is going down the tubes due to the junk mortgage B/S. The Gulf Coast is the only place left for the home building industry, and they are fucking us royally.
Since we have to buy four bathrooms and three kitchens for the Trans Compound, we needed to get some lavatory faucets for our baths in the main house. It came in around $200 for the lavs. (I don’t buy junk.) What shocked me was that our kitchen sink stuff is running at $270. Sweet Zombie Jesus, they are just chunks of metal.
Our carpet company really helped us out for the two carpeted rooms in the house: Lowe’s wanted almost 250% more and we got better products. We also caught a sale on some area rugs that we need since the bulk of the house is done in Terrazo tile. (Wake up in the middle of the night needing to potty? Running across tile is torture. I want our tootsies to be warm.)
So I now present an essay/diatribe from last August concerning the insanity of our our consumer society that I witnessed after joining a buying club when it comes to potties:
(Crossposted from GentillyGirl
You know You Live In a Decadent Culture When…
One distributer has 666 different toilet listings, 4,300 listings for bathtubs and 200 pages of shower equipment.
American Culture has gone totally freakin’ batshit insane. Style is something one projects about one’s life, not what the faucets look like. You can’t buy style… it comes from within. I can have a standard plain-jane sink, and yet that is not indicative of who and what I am. What we are comes from US, not the things around us.
I don’t care if my toilet looks like Louie the 14th took a dump in it. I’m concerned with longevity, ease of cleaning, etc. I want things to be functional and easy to maintain. I’m a practical gal, but it seems as if my fellow citizens are more concerned about “putting on airs” as my Aunties would phrase it. I just can’t understand this difference in desires.
$2,000 for a damn toilet? That thing better mop my floors, cook the bacon and give me sexual gratification for that price.
I’m creating our buying list right now. We need three kitchens, four baths and I still haven’t tackled our furniture needs for the house. (All we have now is a bed and the computer desks and chairs. Oh yes, there is the cat tree…) Since we are buying direct to save money, I have to do things now in order to accommodate shipping times and save on the costs.
If I lose my mind in the next few weeks, you now know why. I’ve never had to do something on this scale.
2 comments
we were just looking at bathtubs… we’re converting a storage shed/house to a living space~ later to be used as a guest cottage for visitors…
they had a clawfoot set up ~ $2300.00 for the tub
JUST the tub. the faucets were more, the drain thingey was more… at the end it was over $5000.00!! & I asked the guy ‘but this is just a display, correct? the real ones are bigger?’ NO! I couldn’t even lay back much…. Ghaa!
A question… why so many kitchen, baths?