The Home stretch

After I wrote my last post, I went out to the mailbox and got the mail. There it was, my acceptance letter. Now I have to figure out if I can still register for classes, if there is still space for me.

Yesterday I planted tree's 13 and 14. I cannot believe how many trees I now have. Not only that, but I have no idea how any of the previous owners could have enjoyed being outside without any shade. We do have 3 very large Maples, but they are at the edges of the property and provide no shade to the areas around the house. I have been a tree planting nut. The crappy part is that they won't really be at shade giving size for another couple of years. We have planted 2 Aspen (which is my favorite tree), 3 river birch, 3 Bradford pear, 2 October blaze maples (those should be pretty in the fall), a Japanese maple, a peach tree, a king crimson maple, and a golden chain, which offers sweet smelling yellow flowers in the spring. Fortunately, I do have the property for all these trees, and outside of the Maples, they will stay within a 15 feet width, so I think I am safe for space.

I am thinking that we are into the final stretch with this project, otherwise known as our home. When I decided on this house 3 years ago, it wasn't my first choice, it was more like 5th or 6th on the list. The first 3 houses I lost due to an incompetent realtor who didn't act as quickly as I needed him to bid on houses. One weekend I found a house that I really liked and it was for sale under market value. I went directly to the owner only to find that they already had 3 bids on it. Later my realtor yelled at me for going around him. To make a long story short...his ass was fired. I found another realtor who took us seriously, and was willing to put in the time to check houses even though we were in Florida. One day after looking on the MLS, I came across an amazing little Tudor in a great area. Our bid was accepted, and we had a contract. I was so excited. Then the results from the inspection came in. Problems, big problems. It had been remodeled, but it was all facade, none of the guts of the house had been touched. It had 4 layers of asphalt shingles in addition to the original layer of cedar shingles. It was amazing that the roof hadn't started to collapse on itself. We asked the owner to replace it or give us credit for a new roof. He said we were exaggerating. Hummmm. It made us wonder what else is this guy was hiding? We got out of the contract. I was very disappointed. I had started looking at the burbs, just for something to land in, but nothing really grabbed me at the time. That, and I really didn't want to end up in the same neighborhoods I had left. I didn't really want to "come home" as much as I wanted to come back to Utah.

Then this house showed up. Pretty good location, nice house, needed some updating, great trees (hahaha), and for about $70,000 less than the last house. Sounded good. Then the nightmare began. Yes, this house passed inspection, but the updating part is the part that got us into trouble. Since we bought this little pain in the butt that I am starting to warm up to, we gutted the basement adding 2 bedrooms and a bathroom, updated the upstairs, new kitchen, new flooring, new windows, a new front porch, tore out the old rickety 1 car garage and driveway and built a new 2 car garage with workshop (for moi), all new landscaping, and a new sprinkler system. I am sure I left something out, but that pretty much covers it. It has been 3 years of almost hell, and now I am finally seeing an end to the pain. We didn't hire contractors, we did the vast majority of the work ourselves. And I hope to never see a caulk gun or a paint brush ever again (or at least until I get sick of the grey : ) ).

The only redemption is that we have learned a lot and that we really don't ever want to do this again. Our conscious is helped in that since we bought our house, our value has gone up almost 3 fold, which ain't too shabby. It does helps me sleep at night. Of course, we didn't buy it for financial profiteering, but we did have a long-term investment in mind, and I guess when all is said and done it will pay out someday. But I do have to wonder sometimes, the time and money it has eaten away at, what was the real cost? I am just happy to be done and be home.