The road lately has been filled with super duper potholes. Some of them have no visible bottom. What am I talking about?
I've been away from blogville for over 2 months. Yes, life does get busy with someone sick at home but things have been happening fast and furious over the last few weeks.
We have an additional property that we own other than our house. Our mortgage is paid off--a good feeling--and we purchased this additional property to help out our daughter and her family. They both have had lots of hardships and about 10 years ago they lost their new house. For a couple of years they lived in several places that were somewhat unsafe. (bad neighborhood, bad landlord) Fast forward to now and they are finally back on their feet and hopefully things will be smooth at least for a while. About 8 years ago my SweetiePie (and me too) offered to help their housing situation by purchasing a house with the understanding that after two years they would take over payments and finish paying for the house and it would be theirs. Sounds good doesn't it?
Fast forward to two more kids, still some medical problems and finally things have evened out. They didn't want to live in the home any more and moved into a rental on their own. Now I was proud that they could make that big step. Renting from a stranger is much scarier than renting from Mom.
Now we need to fix the house and get it on the market. We are both on fixed income and ebay sales have not been too good. Some weeks I do good to make $200, other weeks I make $600. But it isn't as good as it was a couple of years ago.(But when sales were good I saved.) Is ebay oversaturated with small sellers? (yes IMHO) Does ebay promote "brick&mortar" stores over their small store sellers? (yes IMHO) I'm trying to make up for my lost salary and not having much success. I need to sell and I have SweetiePie to take care of and now another "thing" to do.
So now the reason I am crazy.
I am doing a total remodel on the "other" house fondly called the "country estate". It does have 2 acres, a pond, a 2 car garage and a 1766 sq ft house. It was a nice place until two large dogs were allowed to play fetch inside on the carpet and scratch all the doors and moldings. I have never seen so much dog hair in my life left behind. Oh and we need a new roof. So that is where I have been. Ripping out bathroom cabinets, cheap fiberglass showers, and carpets. This is all stuff that my daughter and son in law were going to do but never did. Now for the fun stuff. Getting the roof done and learning how to do...everything. I'm trying to do as much of the work as possible to make my funds stretch as far as possible. I do have a budget.
I have followed Shampoo & Booze since the folks over at Scavenger Life started that blog. Not because I wanted to restore a house for a rental. No, it was just interesting. Never did I think that I would use the information on my own house. We have been getting estimates for the roof to be replaced and they have been very broad. From $8K to $4K.
The first roofer also offered to take the house off our hands so "we didn't have to worry with it". His generous offer was $40K. To put it nicely, jerk, the land is appraised at way more than that. His estimate to upgrade was $45K. We had a whole upstairs of our 1.5 story house finished and ready to move in for less than that.
Has this man never heard of Habitat for Humanity Restore or Craigslist for supplies? Get real. I get totally thrilled when I find a undermount bathroom sink at Restore for $8 and a white enamel kitchen sink for$15.
So if I am a little slow on blogging and ebay selling that is why. I am kicking back in the recliner and taking a nap. I deserve it.
