Sunday, March 13, 2005

...Or Maybe Not

As is my wont, once I get an interesting idea, I spend a great deal of time looking around for information on it. So, now, I know a lot more about residential elevators than I did three hours ago.

It can be done. Its expensive.

The going rate seems to be around twenty-five to thirty thousand dollars for installation of the elevator and its associated equipment. Probably more if it's being done external to the house.

Since this would be part of a significant remodeling, involving addition of a bedroom, conversion of the existing master bedroom to a entry way for the elevator, as well as closets, and an extension of one of the upstairs baths into part of the space currently used by the master bedroom, the overall cost could easily approach one hundred thousand dollars.

In a saner world, this would be enough for me to say Okay, thats it, thanks for coming. But in a saner world, new houses don't sell for three hundred thousand dollars, and climbing. (Some townhouses not too far from here are selling for four hundred thousand!) So, spending one hundred thousand so that we can stay in a house we like for a good long time might be worth while.

Justifying that cost, though: years ago, I had Michelin tires put on my car. I won't say what kind of car it was, but it wasn't a speed machine. (Well, unless you happen to be driving through Sundance, Wyoming, which at the time had a quite nifty little town revenue generator running out there on the highway.) A friend asked if my car handled better now. I told him, truthfully, that I had just spent a lot of money on tires -- of course I'd say that it handled better now!

Quantifying the value received for that much money will be significantly more difficult. Heck, we spent months thinking about whether we should spend one percent of that number.

This is not going to be a casual decision.

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