We are putting skylights in our third floor. I am very excited to get a bunch of natural light in there. They’re going to be well worth the expense. That said, skylights are freaking expensive.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We picked out the skylights that we wanted by going to the Velux website. We took a ride over to Lowes to see what they looked like (Seriously? What is up with these non-big box stores and closing at 4:30? Every single one of them closes for the day when we’re still at work). While there, we discovered that the skylights that we want are a stock item and they sell them right there in the store, no need to custom order or anything.<\/p>\n
They’re also about $50 cheaper than the same skylights at a local, non-big box store. Each.<\/p>\n
Fifty dollars x four skylights = a whole lot of hookers or blow (but not both, it’s not quite at the hookers and<\/em> blow level).\u00a0<\/p>\n I asked the local store if they price match and they said, “Against Lowes, no way?” Totally understood, Lowes is at an economy of scale where they can afford smaller margins. They also probably get a volume discount from the manufacturer. This is also where I start to feel torn. I like the little guy. I want to support the little guy. I detest the strip-mallification of America. I’d rather see my money go to a smaller, service-oriented business.<\/p>\n At the same time, I do love me some hookers and blow. Or, in this case, further work on the part of our electrician. Who discovered, when putting in a new bathroom light\/fan\/heater unit that our second floor bathroom is wired so badly it is basically a death trap of the electrical variety. All he has to say is “fire hazard” and the checkbook comes back out. Oh, the joys of buying a house from a plumber who thought that he was an electrician.\u00a0<\/p>\n We don’t have the luxury of spending extra to make a moral point. So, we will be purchasing our skylights from Lowes. Even if we did have that kind of spare dough laying around, it would sure feel silly paying extra for something that is basically a commodity. I will pay extra for good service. I will pay extra for higher quality. I will pay extra for sustainable practices. I’m not so sure that I’ll pay extra to prove some sort of nebulous point about urban planning. I can hardly claim some sore of moral high ground here. The majority of our house was furnished by IKEA.<\/p>\n What would you pay extra for? Would you ever pay more at a smaller store to avoid a big-box chain?\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We are putting skylights in our third floor. I am very excited to get a bunch of natural light in there. They’re going to be well worth the expense. That…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[29,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-house-stuff","category-random"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5yggS-nZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1487"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1488,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1487\/revisions\/1488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}