Well, wow! I have been on plenty of construction sites in my life but never anything like this. When you go though something like this, you just have to ask yourself, WTF are we doing?
The land looks like a bomb went off in the front and another in the back.
On the other hand, it has to have been at least 30 years since the front of the house proper has even seen daylight. Four wild bee hives and wasps nest later, we still have quite a bit to go.
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Well, finally (it seems) we have started some of the physical processes involved with this. The guys pulled in around noon today, chopped a bit here and there, and brought down one of the largest trees. Ah, progress.
And, in the mean time, we noticed a bit of land going to waste just two lots from our house. Ends up that this area is quite desirable and realtors are actually knocking on doors looking for home owners willing to sell. I wonder what I could get it for, get it cleared out (we’d probably get at least double for it once cleared out) and how quick we could flip it.
Viv has already done her para-legal thing and found out who the owners are and their phone numbers etc. We’re just waiting on our Realtor opinion on the matter to see if it makes sense.
The way I figure it, if I can make a quick five grand while we are in the re-platting process over here, why not?
More to come on that one for sure.
All of this and trying to work as well. That’s right, not retired yet. I’ve got a fair number of customers who depend on me to keep their sites ranked and business coming in though the web.
There is one room in the house that we are actually using, it’s what we are calling the “extension”. It’s what used to be the garage but the last owner turned it into an extension, or an apartment. It’s certainly not in great shape but it DOES have electricity. So we are using it for both storage and my home based working space.
Nice, right?
Well one of the major issues was and still is to a degree, is the prevalence of creepy crawlers. The roaches aren’t too bad because they really don’t even show until the are dead. But because of spiders and such I decided to bug bomb the place . . . just couldn’t handle them all over the place.
So, I bombed the crap out of the place and walked into a grave yard the next day, dead roaches all over the place. Not little ones either, everything is big in Texas right?
So, had to move them to the side a bit just so we could walk in and out. 🙂
However, the point of the post is that with the house being closed up on itself for so long, the the bombing, i’s not exactly fresh air in here. The screen door for the sliding door we use to get in here was TOTALLY jacked and not working, and I couldn’t keep the slider shut all of the time.
So, ran down to home depot, picked one up for around $65, came back to the house and dropped it in there . . . and it didn’t fit. Easy enough to fix as they make them reversible. Took the half hour to do it right, got it back in there with the help of my very able assistant (thanks Vivian) and we are ready to roll.
I see that Vivian updated you about this morning . . . . so much fun. There I was, water shooting up to about my waste, wondering what the heck I was going to do. It all worked out in the end, so that’s good. :-).
This is not the easiest thing to do, totally upending everything because, well, why not. Totally goes to my needs to always be pushing the limits, always be growing, always be moving. But TOTALLY goes against the man,s sense of “protecting the family, being a good provider, being a stable provider” on and on. So a lot of inner tugs and pulls in different directions.
We lived in a great house, surrounded by great friends in a great community.
We now live in a camper next to an old busted up house that many people here are wondering why we would ever do such a thing.
Why indeed.
Both Viv and I have lived fairly rough lives, really. Long stories that neither of us often tell or speak of, but not easy lives. And I think it’s mostly because of that, we want to make a difference, a very positive difference. Certainly we could have done so in Colorado, but we felt a need to better our own financial situation at the same time. For me, it comes down to making sure Vivian will be taken care of for the rest of her life, no matter what ever happened to me, and I didn’t feel I could really do that in Fort Collins.
I am sure that many of the feelings we both get are the same type of feelings that the settlers had. Which settlers? It doesn’t matter, choose any of them. They all wanted more than what they felt they could achieve where they were. I don’t think I have ever really thought of it like that, but it fits.
All in all, we are pretty darn happy with what we have done and what we are about to do. Our contractors start phase one of Landscaping on Wed of this week and will soon start building our first building for us, a shed. More on that later.
I’ve been meaning to write about our forward movement and some awesome experiences we’ve had since being here in paradise, but today turned out to be frustrating and I think I need a moment to vent.
We’ve been buying bottled water for drinking since we’ve been here. The local water just isn’t delicious like Fort Collins water. So we made a conscious decision to set up a water filtration system for our camper. Yesterday we went to the local Walmart and bought a filter and drinking water hoses. Gotta do it correct, right?
This morning before heading out to SPI (South Padre Island) Garret went to turn off the outside faucet and detach the old hose to hook up the new. Well the old corroded faucet broke below ground level and the old hose and faucet were fused together, probably hadn’t been separated in over 25 years! Well the pipe broke, about a foot in the ground. We did not know where the water turn-off valve was located and the long time tenant, Charley, was gone at the time. Of course we panicked, not wanting to waste precious water, panicked as if we would have in Fort Collins, thinking about the $$ rolling down the road. About an hour later Charley showed up and told us where the valve was located and we were VERY glad to get the water turned off. One thing about the water here in RGV (Rio Grand Valley)… it’s cheap, cheap, cheap! I don’t know if we’ll ever adopt the view that water is not a precious, expensive commodity. Just doesn’t seem right, don’t ya know.
During our panicked moment we called our Construction contractor to see if their plumber could come out to repair the broken water line. They came quickly to our aid, fixed the water line in about 15 minutes and saved the day! So now we have filtered water and tomorrow I’ll test it to see if it’s going to meet our tough standards of having delicious water to drink.
We’ll save SPI for another day =)
When Garret and I began looking for a warm inviting climate to move to South Texas was at the top of the list, over and over again. And as everyone knows we are here, for over one week now. It was quite the journey getting here but we made it, and so did our things. More about that in my next post.
I want to truly thank my good friend Michelle for helping. Her hard work and positive attitude was, is and will always be truly appreciated. She took time to label boxes and containers and was helpful with keeping the labor guys moving along . Michelle was very instrumental helping us right until the moment we left. I love and miss you Michelle. BYW Michelle you have a lovely singing voice!
Garret’s good buddy Scott helped pack and kept the party alive with his positive attitude. Our good friend Steve helped and he also loaned us his dolly to move boxes and stuff onto the trailer. Somehow the dolly made it to TX with us, sorry Steve. Katie brought over home made cookies, which everyone loved, “thanks Katie”. We also had an awesome crew of guys loading the trailer, educated in moving by the seat of their pants… and it appears that everything made it here in good shape! And my sweet loving husband cracked the whip the last couple of days to assure we left our beautiful home of 16 years on time Monday Februaryt 13th.
We said our “see you soon” to our family, friends and neighbors and headed on down the road to write a new book of our life adventures.