Fixed Rate Can Fix a Lot More Than Just Mortgage

We have this bathroom problem in our house: three people and one bathroom. When we all need it at the same time, there is a certain amount of recrimination that takes place. We also have this variable rate mortgage problem. It was all we could manage at the time we took it. But each year it goes up as steadily and irrevocably as the national debt.

Although they seem like disparate problems, we were able to deal with both of them with a single stroke of brilliance. Well, sort of. We told a bunch of mortgage brokers and banks if their interest rates ever hit 9 3/4% for a fixed-rate mortgage, we’d buy. One of them did the other day--for a few hours--and we were waiting. So we are presently refinancing our home loan to a fixed rate. And in the process we are going to get some cash with which we hope to put in a new bathroom and thereby prevent the disintegration of our family.

This has led to some curious and unexpected problems. Because the money we expect to receive will probably permit some other sorely needed structural changes, each of us--me, my wife and the 11-year-old kid--have spent it mentally in different ways, depending on our individual needs and desires. That became clear after several dinner-table conversations, so each of us agreed to draw up plans of the new construction as we envisioned it. Then last Saturday, over breakfast at a beachside restaurant, we brought our plans out and discussed them.

There were a few givens. We all accepted the need for a new bathroom and for a larger bedroom for the 11-year-old kid who will soon be 15. My wife and I more-or-less accepted the fact that $20,000 won’t buy much these days. The 11-year-old kid tended to ignore that. Neither the difficulty of acquiring money nor limitations in spending it influence much of his thinking right now.

So, naturally, his plans were the most ambitious. They consisted almost entirely of an enormous expansion of his room, with a small corner of growth--about the size of a closet--thrown in for the master bedroom as a kind of bone. He tried to manipulate the new bathroom as his own, but even his creativity didn’t stretch that far.

My wife’s fantasies centered on a sunken bathtub, enough closets to start a boutique and a space she could use as an office at home. I supported the latter since I feel the creative juices are rather severely impaired when work space is shared--and I’m not keen about sharing my home office.

I also preferred to take some of her closet space to enlarge our TV/family room, which is the only place we can put up guests; when the couch in that room is opened into a bed, even our miniature Dachshund has trouble squeezing through. And although I had the distinct feeling that I would be regarded as an interloper when applying for time in either of the bathrooms, my chances would be enhanced with two instead of one, so I supported that addition ardently.

In the spirit of compromise, the 11-year-old kid gave up a few feet of bedroom space (leaving his new room about the size of a tennis court), my wife wavered on the sunken tub, and I gave her back a closet. We were still a long way from a consolidated plan, but we agreed it was time to turn the matter over to our friendly contractor for a price estimate.

We haven’t done it yet because all of us are a little reluctant to hurry into that step. Whether we admit it or not, we are presently in the most--maybe the only--euphoric stage of home improvement: fantasy planning. Since we don’t yet know what anything is going to cost, we can stretch our $20,000 to underwrite any number of dreams. And as long as we don’t have to face the reality of figures, of a contractor’s raised eyebrow and sharp pencil, of cutting and paring and compromising, we can sustain the dreams.

We want to nurture that stage a little bit longer. We want to mentally live in spacious rooms with new furnishings selected to meet our specific tastes and needs. Walk-in closets. A luxuriant bathtub. More privacy. Expanded work space.

We know that once we move beyond that stage, we will have to deal with cost estimates, refining the dreams into plans we can afford, being torn up for weeks during construction, discovering the costs we overlooked and wondering how we will pay for them. That sort of thing.

Oh, yes, there was even a prefantasy period when we were going to use part of the money to travel next summer and the rest for construction. Even euphoria wouldn’t cover that one. So we’ve earmarked the money for improvements, and right now, we all have exactly what we want. It has occurred to me to wonder how long we could sustain that feeling--”anticipation is greater than realization,” somebody (not a contractor) once said--before we would have to act. We could take a couple of trips and think it over some more. Then the problem would be solved because we probably wouldn’t have enough money for even a new bathroom.

But that clearly is the coward’s way out. No more speculation. I’m going to call a contractor next week. Or the week after that--at the very latest.