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)

Starting July 1, 2010 in Ontario, we will have to pay the new Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) of PST + GST = 13% on all services, and materials, of contractors and renovators. That will mean an increase of 5% over what we pay now, which is:

• No PST on labour and overhead – about 2/3 of renovators’ bills
• PST (8%) of materials – 1/3 of cost

It’s expected that HST will make the underground economy even bigger – meaning, folks paying cash ‘under the table’ to renovators, contractors and other servicepeople rather than fork over the HST.

I don’t want to “pay under the table,” though. It’s breaking the law, but even worse, it robs our country’s coffers of much needed tax revenue for our great infrastructure, health care coverage, etc.

So, we need to step it up and book those contractors now!