The few weeks after we brought our daughter home from the hospital and moved into our new house we put the final touches on the kitchen in 1/2 of the duplex we own. Basically, we finished what had been an extremely long project just in time for our new Tenants to move in. The transformation was pretty dramatic, but unfortunately we have no before shots just a halfway started shot, some in progress shots and the finals. Anyway, take a look:
Not bad for our first kitchen.
Every home needs a Camp Chair whether it’s your primary residence, vacation home, RV or your cabin in the woods. The camp chair should be warm, cozy, well loved, big, green and a tiny bit of smell doesn’t hurt either. It should immediately make you sleepy, or at least make you contemplate a nap. It should have a nice view of the fire and be in close proximity to it so as to add warmth to make you sleepy. It should have memories, and it should be not just yours, but everyone’s favorite seat in the house. It should never stay unoccupied for long because someone else will surely be along to slumber in it.
I’ve had 2 previous camp chairs in my life and both fit that description perfectly. We just recently added a lazy-boy recliner from Rachel’s grandmother’s house to our living room and it immediately struck a chord. It’s brown not green but it’ll do nicely.
The really fun part though is planning the camp chair for the new addition on our camp. I think I have a perfect spot picked out we just need to find the chair.
Apparently people don’t like when you leave them hanging. Everybody wants to know what the meaning is behind Delilah’s name. Sort of funny given that it’s not that dramatic of a meaning but it’s still fun and makes for a good story.
There’s actually a few meanings:
And what everyone’s been waiting for… Some more pictures from Little Lila’s first few days of life:
Wow! Last weekend was an insanely hectic few days.� Not only was our daughter Delilah born but we also moved into a new house.� We’re finally settling back into normalcy, well… as normal as it can be with a 1week old baby and a new house.
Even though we had to move the closing date due to little miss Lilah’s early arrival we were fortunate enough to get the sellers to agree to an early possession.� 7am last Saturday I left Rachel and her mother at the hospital so I could get the move underway and so we could be all set by discharge time (which I convinced the nurses to do LATE in the day).
I did the final walk-through at 8am, picked up the 26′ U-Haul truck at 9 (no I’ve never driven something that big before) and we had the move under way by 10am.� At the new house a little after noon with the truck and my father’s snowmobile trailer fully loaded.� Completely unloaded by 1:30pm.� Not too shabby.
Couldn’t have possibly done it without all the help.� Thanks George, Dale, Brian, Ryan, Mike,Cory, Bill, Chris, Eric.
During the whole process I made the following time-lapse.� There are big gaps because well… I was busy.
We’ve had a lot going on lately.
With all that’s going on I constantly need to remind myself to just slow down & breathe. It’s hard sometimes. There’s a lot to get done and it often feels like I’m not getting anywhere. I get tired of people telling me about it though, I’m fine. I take it all in stride, and whatever happens happens and we’ll deal with it as it comes.
Ze posted a song a while back that I had totally forgotten about until today, when he posted the story of how he made it. It resonates with me perfectly. I get it.
http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer.swf/track=397380065/size=venti/bgcol=FFFFFF/linkcol=4285BB/
Hey, I’m Ok.
I’ll be fine.
Just Breathe.
Authors Note: This post is in response to Mint’s latest article The Renter’s Manifesto which makes a pretty good argument for renting
Some people like to say
Renting is throwing your money away. At the end of your lease you have nothing to show for it.
I’m sorry, but I need to disagree. Not only does renting not throw your money away (you’re getting a place to LIVE remember?) but it’s also cheaper than buying in a lot of scenarios. You may not be building equity, but what can you do with that extra 300 or more per month? That’s right… build LIQUID equity.
You’d have a hard time convincing me that a Single Family Home is a good investment. To me owning a house is nothing more than a LifeStyle choice. If it were a purely financial decision there would be a lot fewer home owners.
However; owning a rental unit is 100% different from owning a house. It’s an investment. We made that investment a few years ago, and it’s paying off.
Some numbers:
When we were renting we were paying $715 out of pocket per month. That’s it. Stupidly, we didn’t have renters insurance, so there’s $25-50/month we should have been paying that we weren’t. So really… $740/mo
When we bought the house that dropped to about $600 out of pocket per month. Add on about 75/mo for insurance (for the whole house) and you’re now at $675/mo. Then there’s maintenance. We’ve done a lot, to both sides. new kitchen, lots of new drywall/paint/cleaning/etc. My records show somewhere in the neighborhood of $2-300/month amortized across the life of our residency. Now we’re up to $975/month without even trying.
Those are the hard numbers, now the soft:
When we bought the house we put a 10% down payment on it so we had a decent (not huge, and certainly not useful) amount of equity right away. This put us in a good situation with the principle, however our interest rate was at 7.25% only .25% above the average and we could have gotten better, but it would have increased the bottom line on the house. The previous owner gave us a hell of a deal (by my accounts at least a 10% discount off the true market value of the home) because we didn’t involve any realtors or banks.
4 years later and we just completed a refinance. This hurt, a LOT. but it was also one of the best decisions we’ve made. It took us from 7.25% to 5% flat but it cost us about 3 years. It’ll take us 3 years to recoup the cost of the refinance. That’s ok though, because we’re in it for the long haul.
Now we’re down to about 775/mo out of pocket and we’re not done.
We just bought a single family house because our family is growing and we’re running out of room (remember that I said it’s a life style choice). That and because now we can finally treat the rental property more like a business instead of an extension of our home. I expect maintenance costs to shrink dramatically as a result.
If you look at our current out of pocket monthly expenses… it’s almost a no brainer to buy a duplex as a starter home. I recommend it to every one I know that’s looking for a house. As long as you’re a little handy and can deal with the tenants calling you in the middle of the night to tell you the pilot light is out… you’re owning for next to nothing. Yes our out of pocket is more than what it was when we were renting, but there’s a few factors there:
Buying a single home though…
Just remember that it’s a LifeStyle choice, not a financial one. If it was a financial one, you already know the answer, it’s going to cost you more for the same quality of home and location… Financial decisions are all about getting the most for your money which isn’t the case with a house, unless you consider the lifestyle ‘more’.
Oh and one more thing to add… If someone is renting a house to you, it’s costing them less to own it than they’re charging you, otherwise they’d be pretty dumb. However; they’ve probably owned it for years and years, which pretty much wipes away the initial cost of ownership. Closing costs Suck and eat a huge amount of your equity up right away. Just food for thought.
Ok, so my 2009 goals were a bit lame despite my efforts. Here’s to a better set of goals for this year and therefor better results! Some of these stem from what I see as some personal failures in 2009, others are just brand new.
Join an activity group on a regular basis. this can be anywhere from Geocaching to Flickr meetups to the ADK club outings to toastmasters. The point is to do something on a regular basis in order to forge some new relationships. We’ve started with ADK but we didn’t keep up with the meetings.
Don’t hesitate when given an opportunity. If I want to do something, do it, if I don’t, likewise. This is something I really need to work on. I tend to flip flop and wait until the last minute to make decisions on things like this.
Run a profitable Photography business. Given my goals of last year this one almost seems comical. However my first income will be coming in 2010, and my planned expenses are minimal, just some equipment rental for said income. This probably won’t be hard to do.
Do 2 weddings. Along the same lines as above. I’ve got one booked already and I have another possibility. I’d like to start booking some more but if I can manage 2 this year, maybe I can double that next year and then really get something going. If you know someone looking for a Photographer please let me/them know!
Finish the work in the basement. this isn’t a real finishing job, it just means some cleaning (a LOT), implementing some better storage solutions, doing some wiring work and fixing the lighting situation. Still though, some things I’ve been dragging my feet on and just need to get done.
Buy a new house. We pretty much need a miracle for this to happen without selling our current home(which we don’t want to do). We need to though, we’re outgrowing our current home. Not so much the floor plan, but the yard and the storage. That along with a new member of the family coming soon pretty much necessitates a new, bigger house. which brings me to my next goal:
Do everything in my power to ensure the well-being of our new child. This is pretty self explanatory but something not everyone might think about is:
Lead by example. We can’t hope to have a child with healthy habits if we don’t first develop them ourselves. This applies to everything from sleeping properly to exercising regularly to only watching extremely minute amounts of television. This might seem too broad to be a goal, but the idea here is to simply be aware of my decisions and their implications on my own life and for the little one.
Lose 20lbs by May. Lose Another 20 by the end of the year. The first 20 I’ve done several times and isn’t really that difficult for me. the second 20… that will put me back to my junior year of college weight, and will be far more difficult to do. I don’t think keeping it off will be an issue since I’ll have done it by (re)developing better habits, NOT a diet.
Some carry-overs from last year:
2010 is going to be a really exciting year!
Our experience with insurance companies of all kinds is horrible. We’ve had the absolute worst luck although We’ve never really written about it here in detail before. Our car insurance has been canceled several times (for reasons beyond our control) and our house insurance is expensive because of a few punk kids in Fairport and a stupid AllState policy.
We’ve dealt with our high cost house insurance for 2 years because it was the best we could get at the time (thanks to AllState, jerks). We figured after living with it for 2 years things would have settled by now and we’d be able to get a better rate. Through phone calls to at least 15 different companies, we’re not gonna have any luck and it looks like we’ll be stuck with what we’re paying now: about DOUBLE what seems to be the local average.
Three reasons we’re having trouble:
The first 2 issues I can gloss over because not every company had those restrictions and they almost seem reasonable since a company can choose what to cover and what not to cover. The 3rd however; is inexcusable. I simply do not understand where the idea that Huskies are an aggressive breed it’s coming from.
We were just trying to get a big win by getting our yearly insurance cost lowered. It looks like this won’t be happening anytime soon thanks to yet more retarded insurance policies. The whole industry is a giant scam in my opinion. As soon as you want to USE your insurance, they drop you or raise your rates. Why can’t we lower our rates every year (or month) we DON’T use the policy?
Our yard seems to be a breeding ground this spring. We’ve had everything from baby robins to baby rabbits. The baby robins showed up last weekend (completely expected, their nest has been in our garage for a few weeks/months now). Had I noticed the nest getting built It wouldn’t have lasted long (birds cause a mess) but I didn’t so we were graced with the presence of at least 2 baby robins. Rachel and I saw them both make it out and into the wild. Our garage is now safe from the birds, thank god!
Thursday while trimming the grass around the various bushes Rachel found a nest of rabbits. They were all huddled in a hole in the grass around a young lilac bush she planted last year. All of the rabbits hopped away and hid under the bushes next to the house.
When I got home that night Rachel wanted to show me, so we went outside and found Felix. Rachel has a tendency to name random animals we see, like charlie the squirrel in the Grand Canyon and now Felix the baby rabbit. There have been countless others, but their names escape me.
All the rabbits were gone (read: hiding) except for Felix. In fact, he seemed quite friendly, and even allowed us to pick him up and hold him for a bit. I’ve had pet rabbits before and usually they fall into one of two categories:
At first Felix seemed to fit into the second category. However; the longer we held him he seemed to become comfortable and even curious, sniffing and moving around a bit.
While it was fun to play with him a bit, we thought it best to get him back to his mother, so we put him under the bush next to the house (where we knew the rest of them including the mother had gone) and he hopped inside and disappeared.
We’ve seen baby rabbits every day since then, but we don’t think we’ve seen Felix again yet, all the markings have been different and the ones we’ve seen have run away as fast as you can see them.
Normally I wouldn’t like rabbits, but we only have a small flower garden to worry about so it’ll be fine. Also the bush that they’re calling home for now is scheduled for removal very shortly. I assume once it’s gone they’ll vacate the premises. Until then we’re happy to share our home with Felix the rabbit.
My parents are off on another adventure. This time they’re in Florida. I wonder if this will become a recurring theme now that my Father is retired? My mother claims that she’s going to work forever just for the health insurance benefits she gets through Wegmans so maybe not. I can’t imagine she’ll hold out quite that long, especially at this pace, though.
I’m happy for them. They’ve worked their whole lives and now get to reap the rewards. I hope they take even more trips so I can see the pictures. Or maybe next time they’ll take us with them? Or maybe we’ll take them with us.
While they’re gone this time we’re watching the house, well not the house really but my 17 year old dog Chewy. She was born in the middle of the Ice Storm of 1991 and is probably the healthiest 17 year old dog you’ll ever see.
I never realized while growing up here but the scenery is quite beautiful. My parents live in Marion Ny in the same house that I grew up in. While I was growing up it was completely surrounded by fields, valleys and farms. now there are 3 houses across the street instead of fields, and they mostly block the view. Even so the colors of the trees on the other side of the valley are always gorgeous and I had forgotten the sunrises were often so amazing. I woke up to a beautiful sunrise Thursday morning. What a wonderful way to start the day.
Randy Aldrich 