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Jul 15, 2021    |       31 comments

About the House

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I bought a house. First time that I have ever bought a house really. And I did it ALL ON MY OWN!!! You have no idea how incredibly proud I am of this.

The total loan amount is $98K. My monthly payment will be $662 for now. And it appraised for $130K. I think I did good, really good. Thoughts based on those numbers? We are two weeks in from closing (June 15th) and thus far, no buyers remorse. I really thing this was a good move.

What I Bought

The home is a single story, all brick house built in the early 70s. (I thought it was the 50s, but have been corrected by county records.) It was 3 bedrooms, 1 1/2 bath with a little over a quarter acre lot. No updates had been done to the home since it was built.

The seller (my landlord of 4 years) paid for a new roof, new blower motor for the A/C and new electrical. It was still a fuse box!

Similar homes, based on the appraisal and Zillow searches, are selling in this area for an average of $115-142K. I got it for $95K and he paid closing costs. (I started at $90K but went up to $95K when he agreed to pay for the improvement listed above.)

What We’ve Done

We have been BUSY! And I have learned a lot about power tools. We tore out the kitchen in its entirety and Gymnast BUILT new kitchen cabinets. Seriously! My 16 year old designed and built new cabinets. No top cabinets at all. And the bottom cabinets are all open shelves. We then used plumbing pipes and reclaimed wood to make some “floating shelves” up top.

Pardon the chaos, we are in “home makeover” mode

We don’t have countertops, saving money for those after I pay off my car. So we’ve just got plywood laid on the cabinets for the time being. It works. On the other side, we made space for a future dishwasher, but we know that’s months away. While I worked extra jobs to save for a sink, we did all our dishwashing in the bathroom sink…that was a ROYAL PAIN. But so worth it.

We lived without a sink for about 3 weeks as I worked extra jobs to save for one. It’s now been put in, temporarily with our plywood countertop. The hole for the dishwasher will remain empty until I can cash flow one with ‘extra job’ money. Something to look forward too.

We put in a fence and back deck with the help of one of the twins’ firefighter friends. Since wood is so expensive, we used hardware cloth (larger opening chicken wire essentially) between fence posts instead of wood.

We had planned to build wood railings, but again with the price of wood, these pre-fabricated ones were cheaper.

Next goal is to put in a back door, but that’s another savings goal. I’ve begun a running list of house projects. But we are trying to DIY as much of it as we can. So far, I’ve been super pleased. And we are learning ALOT!! I really enjoy this type of work.

We have decided the style of our home, the inside at least, will be industrial meets shabby chic rustic farmhouse. I love it. I am loving doing it. My kids are participating in the improvements and making it our own. And I am definitely loving having my very own home. After WAY TOO MANY moves since the kids’ dad and I split, 13 years ago, this is heaven. So grateful!

Jul 14, 2021    |       2 comments

Maybe a New Side Gig?

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We have really been enjoying staying at my sister’s cabin near the Great Lakes. It’s beautiful. It’s peaceful. It’s just lovely.

Or…was lovely…until the plumbing broke.

But, I guess if plumbing is going to break unexpectedly, a good time for it to happen is when a plumber is present. My husband was able to fix the immediate problem but as is common with old vacation cabins in the country, the plumbing problem started a chain reaction of other problems. The flooring needed to be replaced, the cabinets needed to be removed and replaced, the toilet had to be repaired. If you’ve ever lived on spring/well water, you know there is also a complicated system of pumps and water tanks. All of those needed repair. When the dust settled, my husband ended up working 10-hour days for a week and a half. The material costs were $1,200 but if my sister had to hire someone to do the actual repair, it would have easily surpassed $10,000.

She felt terrible of course. We had come to enjoy the lake and he spent most of the time fixing her house, even replacing some broken light fixtures and fixing her mower. She was on the phone talking to her friend, who also has a cabin in the country, explaining what happened and her friend said, ‘Are they headed to Minnesota? I’ve got some things that need fixing badly! Please tell me they are headed north!’ Then, when my husband and sister were at the hardware store, they were approached by a fellow customer and she asked if my husband was a contractor (he wears his construction t-shirts everywhere) and if he could do some repairs at her place. A few days later, a neighbor stopped by saying he had seen my husband carting in lumber and piping and wanted to know if my husband was available to do some work for him.

We debated if he should work the rest of our stay here. There was clearly a need and we could make some decent money but with only a week and a half left at the cabin (and the fact we drove halfway across the country to spend quality time with our kids and my sister) he declined all the requests. It’s always hard for me not to want to find ways to earn extra money but I need to be cognizant that we need to rest sometimes too.

BUT, we decided to consider a trip out next summer just to pick up some extra work and be able to visit my sister.

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