Doing it for Dan
Yesterday I had an appointment for someone to give me an estimate on hurricane protection for my windows/doors. The salesman was named Dan. I could tell from the phone call he was an older gentleman. I didn’t realize how much older.
I met Dan at the house. He commented on my Tesla and how he heard it making noise. I tried to explain why that was but he said he didn’t understand how these things work (electric cars). Through our conversation I found out he was 76 years old and he had been married for 50 years. He told me how he was leaving for vacation on Friday with his wife. It will be 100 hours in a car overall and he wasn’t thrilled about it, but she wanted to do it this way.
The entire experience was conversational and casual. In the prior estimates I had told the companies that I just wanted to do the windows but Dan and I talked about protection for both the front door and the massive rear sliders. After taking measurements we sat down inside where he told me stories about his youth as he calculated the numbers by hand using only a calculator and paper. Despite my immersion in technology there is a part of me that likes old school, hence why I still have a budget book that I fill in by hand every week.
He broke the job down into three sections, the windows, the rear lanai and the front door. For the lanai he suggested that instead of trying to cover the two sliders that we instead install large accordion style protection on the inside of the screens. When needed you simply pull them shut and the entire lanai would be protected. It’s a slick but also expensive option. With the front door he gave me pricing on installing panels and also a roll down style which again is more expensive but more complete and easy to deploy.
The bottom line price to do everything was way more than I was planning to pay originally but I never seriously considered protecting the lanai area to this extent. I told Dan I needed to run through some numbers to see if I can make it work. During the day I mulled it over. I plan to stay at this house long term so it seemed like a solid investment and yet another thing that increases the value of the home as well as potentially decreasing my home owners insurance. But another factor was I just liked Dan. I appreciated someone his age out there still plugging away. I called him later and told him I wanted to move forward with the project. I will meet up with him later today to sign the paperwork.
This was the last significant improvement I had targeted for the house when I moved in. Once it is in the rear view mirror it will be time to recast my mortgage to apply the equity from the sale of my old house to the new mortgage. After that it’s time to buckle down on my financial discipline that has clearly been very fast and loose the last several months.