Here is what our garage looks like now – stacked with renovation products; we shall see how many months they stay in the garage! A single hour in the store yielded:

• About 200 square feet of laminate flooring
• Two low-flush, ecoEnergy-authorized toilets
• Glass sliding doors for a new closet
• Steel door for cold cellar in newly insulated laundry room
• Neo-angle shower stall
• Vanity and sink for bathroom

As you can imagine, Home Depot on a Saturday was a zoo. Couples picking through messy aisles of product, occasionally sharing tips with other frantic buyers. I saw no reason not to tell that friendly pair that the toilets they are eyeing qualify for the ecoEnergy retrofit grant money – in case they didn’t know. (They didn’t.) Of course, that kind of helpful sharing stopped when there was only 1 item left that we wanted!

We bought a lot of stuff – more than $2,000 in fact, which is what we needed to spend to reach the maximum amount of HRTC tax credit when we file for 2009.

That maximum is $10,000 and it yields 13.5% tax credit, so we’ll get $1,350 back from the government, thank you very much!

Coming Up…

In the next blog post, I’ll focus on the items we bought that will get us the good ole “Double Dip” (actually triple if you think about it)

1. HRTC tax credit
2. Rebate from the federal government (ecoEnergy retrofit grants)
3. Matching amount from Ontario government (ditto)

BEFORE: Our old front door, right

AFTER: Our new EnergyStar front door, far right

About a week ago we had our old, drafty wooden front door replaced with a new EnergyStar-certified (to climate zone B) steel and lead-glass front door.

Here’s what the new door actually cost us:

Door (prehung): $480
Cost of contractor to hang door: $500
Handle & lock set: $120
Total costs: $1,100

Minus:
HRTC credit (13%): $143
ecoEnergy rebates:
provincial: $40
federal: $40
Total deductions: $223

What our new door – all in – actually cost us: $877

According to our home energy audit report, we are supposed to keep the door sticker to show the auditor at the end of all eco renovations in order to claim it for the rebate money. We tried to follow that advice, but the only way to get the damn sticker off the glass of the new door was to scrub it thoroughly with warm water, which naturally dissolved it to illegible shreds.

We are Heather and Doug, an Ontario couple who own a drafty 1950s home and dream of renovation. Alas, we have been too lazy and tight with money to have done anything about it in seven years of ownership…. until now.

This is our “EcoRenovate” journey; our goals are to:

1. Recoup upwards of $3,000 from the government for renovations we desperately need.
2. Save hundreds of dollars each year in energy costs.
3. Move our EnerGuide rating from 61% to 82% and get their stamp of approval – meaning a better selling price for our home.
4. Do all this no later than March 31, 2011 to get the rebates back (including the cost of our “before” and “after” home audits).

‘Green Real Estate’ Research

I just lucked into this kind of information. As a self-employed social media and search marketing consultant, one of my clients is a major real estate company in Canada for whom I blog. Every day I monitor dozens of RSS feeds for news sites and blogs about real estate, mortgages, home design, renovation, and the like.

So I was trolling the news feeds and I came across some articles talking about Natural Resources Canada’s ecoENERGY Retrofit program. What? The government wants to give me thousands of dollars for renovations that make my home more energy effiicient?! Could this be finally be the way to convince my frugal spouse to replace our ancient front door or drafty windows?

More than the HRTC

I already knew about the Home Renovation Tax Credit (HRTC), which doesn’t require renos to be eco-friendly, but is the feds’ effort to stimulate the economy by boosting renovation.

Telling my husband about the HRTC did make him perk up his ears and at least consider renovating something in our shabby 60-year-old home. The pilot light of my dream home project was lit!

That was months ago. We haven’t yet sourced a single product or material, or contacted any contractors. We did look at a couple of home design websites briefly, and walked through a local home show to see some doors. (Naturally, our front door turns out to be a non-standard opening requiring a custom order costing thousands more… sigh.)

A Little More Action, a Little Less Conversation

We recently admitted to ourselves that the prospect of a $1,300 tax credit at the end of the year isn’t getting us any closer to a renovation. On top of being tight with money, my husband is lazy and, I confess, I’m not a whole lot different.

That’s when I learned about the ecoENERGY money pool for renovations/retrofits. I couldn’t get on the phone fast enough to tell Doug. Now we feel like we have enough reasons to get off the couch and start seriously renewing our neglected home.

Here we go! Wish us luck! Keep coming back to check on our progress: We will be posting photos from our home projects, short videos, Tweeting about it, and more!

(Auspiciously, we start this blog on July 1st – the birthday of Canada, the greatest nation in the world!)