This weekend was fairly productive. We priced out some items and picked paint colors for the house so probably next weekend we will restart the house projects. The cork floor I want for my kitchen will only cost a little over $400 so we are going to start saving out for that. Retrimming the doors will cost $30 for each doorway side which means the trims with 6 coats of paint (that were never sanded) can go bye bye.

I also found out that we could possibly refinance the mortgage which would lower the interest rate and drop the mortgage insurance. Should be interesting to see what number they attach to the house. I know its worth more than the original sales price but how much more has never been established (which is why I use sales price in our networth calculations).

Its now or never with the refi though. And yes never is okay too. Mortgage insurance drops off in 3 years so it just wouldn't make financial sense to refinance closer to the drop off date because 6% isn't a very high interest and our loan is too small for interest rates alone to make up closing costs.

The car is at a different shop today. Decided that since the last two times, the shop had given us back a car with more problems than we sent it to them with, we would try someone new. It means we will probably pay more than we should to fix the previous guys mistakes but that is better than trusting them with our car again.

The new shop already sounds better. Instead of dismissing our change in transmission sound, they told us that the other shop probably used too heavy a weight of transmission fluid when they changed it. If they can hear that noise, they should have no problem hearing the clunking in the middle of the car (other shop told us they couldn't find that noise and then changed the transmission fluid and claimed that cured it, un hunh).
*Sigh* This is why I didn't own a car for a number of years. They are a lot of work.

On a slightly depressing note, my friend with the much newer car has had to send her car in for repairs even more than us (we have been mostly doing maintenance, hers is new things breaking) despite us getting a bad job the past two times. I'll pass on the new car thank you.