Archive for the 'New House' Category

May 22nd, 2006 - Frugalest $1000 lost + garden news

We made the most frugal decision we might ever make last week: We’re not buying the house. We made the decision essentially 2 weeks ago. I couldn’t post about it because I don’t think it’s right to write about ongoing contract negotiations. It all finally came through on Sunday morning–signed and delivered to our agent that they agreed to let us out of the contract and they kept our earnest money. It was quite a stressful two weeks trying to get them to agree. 10 days in I finally called a lawyer (the one who did our wills turns out to be real estate attorney as well to our luck) and she said we wouldn’t be in too much trouble if we simply walked away. The worst they could do was sue us to buy the house anyway. And that was unlikely because they had to keep trying to sell it. (This, by the way, is NOT something I found out online. Everything there said “You signed the contract. You have to buy the house. No other option.”) And suing us would be very expensive in terms of legal fees. We were betting they would agree–especially since it was an estate sale and they wouldn’t want to tie up the estate for months or years over it.

So, we lost the $1000 plus the money we spent on the house and the storage unit. And, I get to look forward to months of unpacking. On the positive side of that, we’d already decided we’d carefully go through everything for consideration of getting rid of it. We’ve been able to live quite nicely without everything so far. (We can’t get rid of all of it–it includes things like winter clothes, books, the power cord for my keyboard, and the mini chopper–things we don’t use often but still want around!) I’ve already started piling up things that weren’t even boxed yet to get rid of. We really like the openness of the house–and it wasn’t cluttered before.

I cried over the decision–I should note it was Eric who insisted on it. But I immediately felt relieved that the decision was made. I, too, had been worrying about it. For a while, we thought we might have to go through with it anyway. And I realized I would prefer to lose $10,000 or so reselling it because I’d have more sleepless nights and worries about money in that house than I would if we lost the money and stayed where we are.

So I got a late start on the garden this weekend. (It rained and rained and rained for the last two weeks, so I couldn’t have done all that much sooner, although we would have tilled earlier.) Friday I ordered 5 yards of shredded wood mulch which was delivered Sat morning. Eric tilled up the grass on Saturday. I had a lovely vision of dark earth appearing after he tilled, just like our neighbor’s garden looks after tilling. We were sorely disappointed, although recognized our mistake immediately. Their garden is years if not decades old. It’s all lovely, lovely earth. Ours is still mostly grass!

Yesterday, I laid out the beds and started on the aisles (with Eric’s help). The middle aisle is still to be done–hopefully after work today. Then I’ll slowly start planting and mulching the beds. It’s a bit overwhelming, but I’m telling my self I don’t have to plant everything all at once, even though I want to! A little bit each night after work or after Maggie goes to bed and I’ll be done by the end of the week. I have 10 beds, plus some planting in the back garden. (The back garden was going to be raspberries and strawberries but that will wait another year. So I’ll put in some flowers and popcorn instead.) I think I need to buy a pitchfork; I’ve wanted one for years and keep looking at garage sales to no avail. I’m certain I could put it to good use turning the dirt in the new garden to make things easier to plant. So I’m going to go ahead and pay full price.

We also have the rest of the mulch to spread. So this morning before work I weeded the back part of the tulip bed–no tulips there because I thought it wouldn’t get enough sun. Was going to plant with lillies from the neighboor; another thing that will await next spring. Had to weed so that we can put mulch there. 5 yards is a lot; we’ll use about half on the garden aisles, which leaves quite a bit for other areas of the yard.

I’m really looking forward to fresh veggies! So I ground up almost all of what was left of last season’s dried veggies. (For Maggie’s crackers and sprinkling on her meals.) I know I won’t have anything from my garden for a while, but the farmer’s market starts up June 3 so I can get fresh veggies in just 2 weeks!

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May 5th, 2006 - House updates

Today, our house went up for sale! I can’t particularly say much on being frugal in selling one’s house, that’s for sure. We’re spending/have spent money on a storage unit, painting, eating out because we’re tired or, hoefully soon, someone’s looking at the house during dinner time, buying fix-it things full price, buying special cleaning supplies, etc. The one frugal thing that might come out of this, however, is that Eric commented yesterday that we should carefully consider everything we unpack to see whether we really need to keep it. We’ll be living without the things in the storage unit for the next 6-8 weeks. Maybe we can live without them longer.

We don’t want to live without all of them. For instance, 4 or 5 boxes are clothes for Maggie to grow in. A few more are out of season clothes. But there are definitely things I packed rather than sent to Goodwill simply because I couldn’t take the time to make thoughtful decisions. We are both very aware that the much larger house, combined with such ample storage (full attic + a decent basement) could be very, very dangerous to keeping out possessions simplified.

Our house feels pretty empty already. The completely bare walls (except 2 paintings in the dining room) help (not that we had all that much up before either). Maybe it’s more the clean, blank, freshly painted walls instead of the color wash (living room) and mess (stairwell–three different colors, cracks, etc.). There’s more to do, such as the bits and pieces in the kitchen, extras in Maggie’s closet, things in the basement….I don’t intend to keep pushing myself as hard as I did the past two weeks however! Tomorrow is my day off and I’m taking it! I haven’t had one since we were in New Jersey. Not sure what I’ll do. Maybe read all day….

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April 28th, 2006 - CNN.com - ‘Green roofs’

CNN.com - ‘Green roofs’ growing more popular - Apr 28, 2006 I wonder if homeowners can do this too? Our “new” house actually does have a flat roof over the front porch. Wouldn’t it be cool to have a garden up there?

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April 5th, 2006 - Updates

I’ve been quiet because I’ve been so busy both at home and at work. So some quick updates so you aren’t afraid I fell off the face of the earth.

* We are definitely moving. The house inspection showed only a few more minor items and that the furnace needs replacing (we’d figured, but hoped it wasn’t true). We waffle on being excited and totally overwhelmed.
* My bathtub has never been so shiny. I cleaned it with a paste of 1 c baking soda and 1/2c vinegar (don’t pour in all at once!). It hasn’t been scrubbed in over a year and we have hard water. Oddly, the tub part is ultra shiny, but the upper part isn’t as shiny–has lots of water spots. Not sure what the difference is, although I did them on different days.
* Since my experiement with the flashlight, I haven’t had to recharge it much to use each day. I do about 5 shakes to get it back up to full brightness each morning. However, now that the light switch on the back entry is working again (we had to have it fixed before putting the house up for sale!), I may be tempted to use the switch again. Hopefully, I will stick with the flashlight. Although, as spring moves towards summer, it will be light enough in the morning to not need a flashlight to let the dogs out. WOOHOO!
* We had a lot of beautiful dark woodwork on the first floor. Our agent rec’d polishing it up. So I researched natural polishers. They didn’t work. At all. (Variations on vinegar, salt, and olive oil.) So we bought Old English polish which he’d rec’d. The natrual ones did nothing; OE turned the wood milky white! AAck. And I’d foolishly done in an obvious place because we were trying to see whether things got shiny. Eric recalled a product his Mom had adored, Solid Gold. We found it and our woodwork is now amazing! The same company that I bought carpet cleaner from the week before we decided to buy the house does have a wood polish, but we were hesitant to spend $12 (incl shipping) on another product that might not work. If we refinish any of the wood in the new house–or maybe for the unpainted kitchen cabinets–I will indeed try it. We’re realizing we have far more natural woodwork that we tended to notice on a daily basis. ::whew::
* We tried out the new carpet cleaner. The carpet looks good, but almost no cleaner left the machine. I don’t know if it’s the machine (clogged?) or the cleaner (doesn’t go through?) I figure that just the hot water cleaning will do the carpet good so am not worried at this time about what’s going on. (Thanks to Frugal Veggie Mama for the rec’d on the cleaner. We haven’t cleaned our carpets since Maggie arrived because I couldn’t stand the thought of the chemicals she’d come in contact with all day long. I feel so much better already.) We plan at least one more cleaning before the house goes up for sale.
* A handyman is going to do some minor repairs next week. Mabye he’ll remodel the bath in the new house, too.
* We’ve gotten nowhere except a really high estimate on getting the paint/wallpaper done. I’m hoping the handyman can do it as well–for less than the painter’s estimate. We could afford it, but it would eat up all of the money I’d planned to spend on readying the house. (The hallway/stairwell alone was $2000, not counting the actual wallpaper. The other two rooms were $800-900 apiece. I think it didn’t sink in that we wanted fast and cheap, not expensive and last-forever at this point.) This is the biggest sticking point. The house could go up next Wed except for the painting. The hall/stairs really look bad so we don’t want to show it in the current condition. :(

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March 31st, 2006 - How to Stay Warm II- Make Window Insulators

We might need this next winter: How to Stay Warm II- Make Window Insulators. I’m thinking about painting them black and leaving them up in unused rooms all day long.

Did I mention we are definitely moving? It’s been a busy week. The one new, big thing the inspector told us is that the one working furnace is about 22 years old and probably hasn’t been serviced since at least 1990. Oh, and it heats only the first floor. You know, the old furnace was also the worst thing about our current house. ::Sigh::

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March 23rd, 2006 - Answers to comments

To answer a few suggestions and comments from the house post

A) unfortunately, I put in the bulb garden only last fall, so no pictures of it in bloom! However, if spring ever comes here, it would be in bloom when people start looking at the house. So here’s hoping. We do have some nice photos of the house and yard from summer time that I hope he’ll use. Because right now everything is brown and muddy and yucky looking.

B) I did plan to ask the new owners if they were interested in the bulb garden. If they said no, I’d offer to come back in the fall and dig it all up (and cart off the stones for them). And buy grass seed if they want it. I’m trying to decide whether to plant the cannas and then say I have to come back and dig them up or see if I can plant them at the new house. These flowers came from my grandfather’s garden. While I can get more from my Dad, I hate to waste them this year. Or, maybe a friend would plant them at their house for me.

C) We aren’t currently foster parents. We want to wait until Maggie goes to school, with the hope of fostering children her age or younger. If we do, we’ll be 3rd generation foster parents. My husband’s grandparents were the first and his parents still do foster care (once again, they’ve sworn R is the last one, but we’ll see….) having started when Eric was only 2. We’ve been planning on being foster parents since before we were married!

Posted in General, Garden, New House | 1 Comment »

March 22nd, 2006 - To keep in mind once we get this far….

Paint Strippers - New, Easy, and Safer Ways

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March 22nd, 2006 - Forgot to mention

The house was built in 1891. It’s about 9 years older than our current house (est. built in 1900 [the courthouse burned in ‘49 or ‘50 and most tax records were lost; the majority of houses in Oshkosh are listed as 50+ or probably 55+ now).

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March 22nd, 2006 - A new old house

Eric and I just did something completely nutty.

There’s a big old Victorian home I pass on my way to/from work every day. I’ve always liked it, and enjoy dreaming of living in such houses. It contradicts my desire and love for the Not So Big house, but….

A number of weeks ago, they started cleaning out that house. I couldn’t tell from the stuff whether it was “we’re moving,” “we’ve got junk and need to clean up,” or “someone died and they had a lot of junk.” It’s a house I’d dreamed of owning, so I kept an eye out to see if it would go up for sale. It would be fun to at least see the interior. On Friday, the sale sign went up–sort of. It was only the post, not the actual sign. I called up our agent who helped us uy our present house, and he couldn’t find it listed yet. aaargh. I haunted the house all weekend, and the sign went up Sunday morning. I called after church, and the agent called me back 15 minutes later.

It’s an old, big Victorian, so I figured it would be out of our price range. But it was right at what I said was the biggest mortgage we could possibly afford without killing ourselves!!!! Of course, that probably meant there was some issues….

We got to see it that afternoon. And, indeed, there are some issues. The house has not been maintained (but on the good side, that also means there aren’t 6 layers of paint or 3 layers of wallpaper glue!). The bathrooms are pretty bad–one of tubs/shower is compeltely unusable. The other, the shower probably isn’t although the tub looks like it is. Paint is falling off in many of the closests. The upstairs enclosed porch (yes!, although it’s small) is sloping). The furnance may or may not heat the whole house (it is an estate sale, so the trustee doesn’t know details). The electrical wiring is the old kind. The place needs a deep, deep cleaning. The belongings for the estate sale aren’t even organized yet. (We figure the last two being taken care of alone would add at least $5000 to the sale price.) We’ll have to put a lot of work into it, but if we do, it could be a great investment! Most of the work (we believe) we can do ourselves–it’s not like it’s falling down. It just needs some cleaning, paint, some cracks repaired. (For the most part, there are some small areas in worse shape.)

But, oh, the YARD! It’s on about 1/2 an acre. The backyard is like a small park. It has a ton of trees. And the backyard is already fenced (requirement with 2 dogs!). There are flowers and veggie gardens (although not fenced away from our dogs). Without the yard, we wouldn’t have considered it.

It has 5 bedrooms upstairs. There’s supposedly one downstairs, but we wouldn’t use it for that. There are 2 full baths (well, except that one isn’t usable). There are two living rooms and a dining room. Plus a kitchen. It’s so big that we can easily work a room at a time w/o disrupting our lives.

So we put in a bid on Monday afternoon and it was accepted Tuesday morning. We’ve MOVING!!!!!

We have an inspection scheduled for next Tuesday. We can see all the obvious problems. We want to be certain it won’t fall down around us. And we want to get a quote on replacing the wiring, and find out if we can do it room by room or if the whole house needs to be done ASAP.

Eric always said he wouldn’t move farther north. The house is 6 blocks south of our current house! (And one block farther south than our apartment.) The first time we moved about 10 blocks. Now it’s 6 blocks. I guess next time, we have to move less than 2 blocks away! LOL

Because of our frugal living, we’ll be able to afford this house. And to even afford to carry both houses if Bent Ave doesn’t sell right away. Luckily, we’d paid off my education loans 2 years ago and the second mortgage last year. Because of our aggressive payments, we’ll be able to either put 20% down, or carry a second mortgage to give us enough money to redo the bathroom and the electrical work. To keep saving money towards upgrading the house, we will need to cut some areas. Oddly (to me), we are probably going to cut down on our retirement savings. However, we expect the house to be an investment. The redone Victorians in the area have gone for $250,000+ (and that was 5 years ago). And those houses didn’t have the yard this one does.

The oh-so-very-large house also means two other things for us. A) We definitely have room for our sister to come live with us (she’s 11 now and we will become her guardians when necessary). B) We will still have 2 bedrooms for foster children.

Oh, I forgot to mention: The huge attic which could easily be made into more rooms. And the large basement with high ceilings. And one other drawback: the ceilings in the house are something like 12 feet high! Heavens that far too high for my tastes.

We’re not prepared to sell our current house. Luckily, we keep it fairly clean and uncluttered. My biggest disappointment is the work and money I’ve put into the gardens. The $500 fence for the new garden is probably compeltely wasted. And the $200 I personally spent on my flower garden, including those stones I love. At least I’ll get to see the bulbs bloom this spring. Hopefully, the new owners will love the flower, veggie, and fruit gardens. That would make me feel a LOT better about it.

Posted in General, New House | 4 Comments »

August 4th, 2005 - No mow lawn

A Wisconsin company sells a “No Mow” Lawn Mix which I’d just love to have. It slowly grows to a max height of 4-6 inches. You have to mor 1-2 times a season. Unfortunately, you need to plant it on bare ground–it can’t c ompete with regular grass. But perfect if we build somewhere….

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July 27th, 2005 - Gimme Shelter Online

Despie the corny name, Gimme Shelter builds all their homes green. Despite most of the featured houses being large, a recent/current project is just 1300 sq ft. I wonder how much it cost?

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July 27th, 2005 - Green Built Home - Wisconsin’s residential green building program

Green Built Home - Wisconsin’s residential green building program. WI actually has a state-wide network focusing on greener homes. You have exceed standards by 15% to have a home certified.

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July 27th, 2005 - Estimated Remodeling and Repair Costs

From Freddie Mac via This Old House, here are helpful numbers for Estimated Remodeling and Repair Costs. Of great interest to me is that sanding/refinishing hardwood floors generally is less expensive than wall-to-wall carpeting. I hadn’t imagined that. Hardwood is everywhere except probably the stairs. And our downstairs carpet must be removed before we consider selling this house.

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July 27th, 2005 - How Much Will Your New Home Cost?

How Much Will Your New Home Cost is a nice, small primer on things to keep in mind as I consider designs for a new small home.

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July 27th, 2005 - Ross Chapin Architects

Then there’s the drop-dead gorgeous 1100-sq footThree Gables house. Check out the pictures on the right.

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July 26th, 2005 - Tumbleweed Tiny House Company

Due to links somewhere else (was it Treehugger? or Escape Adulthood?), I’ve become interested in small homes. One “manufacturer” is Tumbleweed Tiny House Company. I’m not thinking something quite that tiny…but it did get me thinking. And I’ve long been a fan of Sarah Susanka’s Not So Big House concept. We live in 1500 sq ft. And there’s really a LOT of wasted space. For example, the bath is 9 ft by 9 ft. So is the half bath/laudry/cat room. (The house is from about 1900 and was built before indoor toilets. They used to be rooms for something else. The upstairs one was likely a bedroom. The downstairs one? No clue. Another bedroom? That’s a lot of bedrooms for a 1900 house as there are three others, too!) The kitchen is huge and could easily fit a dining table, except that the layout is horrible–the only place for the dining table is in the pathway through the kitchen from back door to doorway to the dining room/rest of the house.

Anyway…one problem with buying/building our dream house is that I think it would cost upwards of $200,000. That’s a lot we need to save as our current house is worth about $100000 and we still owe $85,000 on it. But what if we found the perfect land and built a smaller house? Especially if we built something with the intention of adding on later. Currently, we need only two bedrooms. We could live with one bathroom (we essentially do as the downstairs toilet is on the fritz more than it works lately and we don’t want to pay someone to fix it but are hesitant to fix it ourselves).

I can’t forget that we’d need to build a garage, too. WI winters call for it. Maybe $100000 is a bit of a dream, but even $125,000 for land and smaller house might be doable. What we really want is 5+ acres with room for the dogs to run. With lots of trees and preferable some water (pond, stream, whatever, just water). Within a 20-minute drive to work since I hate commuting (the 20-minute walk is what I love….replacing it with a drive is all I could handle).

I wonder where we’d put the deep freeze? What’s the point of the big garden I’d have if I have no where to put all the food? Anyway….it’s a nice dream to think about and a small footprint on the earth would go far in my book. (Plus, if we build, we can incorporate more green principles than if we buy an existing house.)

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My Adventures in Simple Living

Archive for the 'New House' Category

May 22nd, 2006 - Frugalest $1000 lost + garden news

May 5th, 2006 - House updates

April 28th, 2006 - CNN.com - ‘Green roofs’

April 5th, 2006 - Updates

March 31st, 2006 - How to Stay Warm II- Make Window Insulators

March 23rd, 2006 - Answers to comments

March 22nd, 2006 - To keep in mind once we get this far….

March 22nd, 2006 - Forgot to mention

March 22nd, 2006 - A new old house

August 4th, 2005 - No mow lawn

July 27th, 2005 - Gimme Shelter Online

July 27th, 2005 - Green Built Home - Wisconsin’s residential green building program

July 27th, 2005 - Estimated Remodeling and Repair Costs

July 27th, 2005 - How Much Will Your New Home Cost?

July 27th, 2005 - Ross Chapin Architects

July 26th, 2005 - Tumbleweed Tiny House Company

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