Friday, May 23, 2008

My New Grill!


We got a new grill yesterday from Lowes. It is awesome!

Now, I know what you're thinking...This guy claims he wants to get out of debt, but he's out buying brand new gas grills! Well let me tell you the story...

Lowe's and Home Depot offer 10% discounts to military and veterans several times a year (Memorial Day, July 4th, Veterans' Day, etc.). Well, I knew that we wanted/needed a grill, so I started thinking about if it was worth it to buy one this weekend. After talking it over with my wife, we decided to go for it. (My wife and I lead a community group at our church and we were hoping to have a cookout at our house on the last week of the semester. So the lack of a grill would have posed a problem there. We are also having two sets of guests this weekend and grilling would have been more fun and cost effective than eating out.) There was a low end grill on the Memorial Day circular for $89 which looked like it would work.

As I was sitting in my fabric covered workspace thinking about the new grill I was going to get that evening, it dawned on me that I had some items in my garage that could be returned for store credit. We have been in a constant state of home renovation since 2005 and I had bought a lot of trim and lumber which I never used.

Well, I had no idea how much I really had! I started digging through the piles of wood and MDF hanging on a rack on the east side of my garage and slowly but surely our 1999 Japanese SUV-ish vehicle was being filled up. I also found a box of unused caulk, a sheet of plywood, some small metal brackets, and on and on. I basically filled up the car.

So, we get to Lowe's and I grabbed one of those blue lumber carts and proceeded to fill it up. As we approached the entrance with our monstrocity of a cart, a guy was walking up behind us with a small bag in his hand. Being the philanthropists that we are, we let him go ahead of us.

Well, the lady at the returns desk was very nice. She didn't snicker or sneer and told us that she had nowhere else to be anyway so she didn't mind. She did have to process the whole thing in two transactions because she was afraid that if there were too many items, the computer would delete the whole thing and we would have to start over.

The total was almost $230 in returns! I had been running my own little satellite Lowe's warehouse. We decided to spring for a better grill, and we got the one listed above along with some plants for our front porch to impress our guests. The grand total after the gift card and military discount was ... $13.69. With the purchase of a new grill also came a free propane exchange (Memorial Day special). So, all told, we saved $42+.

All in a day's work.

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