Sorry – no pictures today. But I did want to make a note about the new deck. We’re putting on a new deck and so I went to buy some of the materials. Lowe’s is having a promotion where for every $1000 you buy, you get $100 in gift cards. This promotion ends on Saturday so I wanted to make sure I bought all the stuff this week. I’m also going to buy all of our carpet (probably another $2000) this week.

Naturally I also have 20% off coupons that I am combining with this deal, so it’s like 30% off. Actually they have a totally separate gift-card promotion similar to the one above so it’s like 40% off.

So anyways, I already bought some of the deck stuff last week but I had to buy the rest of it. Lowe’s has a little deck design program that spits out all the stuff that you need with quantities and such.

So I went to the checkout lane and put in all the stuff. The subtotal came to like $2330, and I gave them my coupon. The guy was having some problems putting it in. The coupon said that it was good for 20% off up to $2000, so we both agreed that it should be $1930 (20% off $2000 = $1600 plus the extra $330). But he couldn’t figure out how to put that into the system.

So he calls over his manager who is not sure what to put in and in fact was getting a little snippy with me. At first he looked like he was going to give it to me for just $1600 which I told him was wrong. Then he snips at me that he can’t give me the discount on the extra $330, which I knew and was not trying to have him do.

Anyway he too had problems, so a 3rd person was called over. This guy looks at the coupon and says that it means that it’s good for a DISCOUNT of $2000 (I guess up to purchases of $10,000), so he just gives me the 20% on the whole thing, so instead of $1930, it was $1864 – a savings of $66 plus tax!

Gooooo me!

Still looking like an end of May move date; it’s getting closer! We’ve been painting here at the old house trying to get it ready to rent out.

Over at the new house they have put on all the interior doors and all the drywall. We’ll be going over on Saturday I think to finish priming and then putting the paint on early next week. Also I believe it’s finally been dry enough that my contractor is renting a Bobcat to do the final grading of all the dirt in the backyard (we’re sloping it). And the siding should be arriving soon; so that will go up probably next week. Good times for all!