Today is the final inspection. 10/16/2014.

Gifted this cute table, I set up my sewing machine

in front of the upstairs window .. it brought a smile to me face.

Hank, prepping the wall for the hood of the stove to be installed. 

Brian drilling the vent hole through all the layers of my house. 

looks so nice, back to cooking on a real stove.

Jeff creating a hearth box for the fireplace. 

 

hearth box to be finished with Brazilian slate

at a later date.

Builders, Brian and Jeff and son Jeremy

we are toasting the completion of my house. 

bye you guys...I will miss you.

history continued ... 

 

                 With my newly constructed house only days from completion and the final Inspection,  I need to bring my history up-to-date and conclude "Building My House."

 

 The first builder and I finally came up with a house plan that was okay.  Somehow it went from 1,000 sq.ft.  to 1,524 sq ft , getting big but it was nice enough and we submitted it to the county for a building permit.  We were approved after a lot of paperwork and patience.
 I couldn't start to build, however, until my house in Colorado closed.   We were already rolling up pennies and had to consider, daily,  costs for dinner, gas, bridge tolls and the unexpected.  It was getting old pinching pennies, but, we hung in there working on the property mowing and putting in an adorable vegetable garden (my friend Marsha gave me my first starts...raspberries, strawberries, a lilac tree, forget-me-knots and a lemon something-which are all doing wonderful) and we trimmed and burned debris and waited and waited.

 

     It is now early November 2012 my renter/buyers contract will be up by the end of this month. I make the call to my realtor and ask what is going on.  They have had two years to clean up their credit (thanks to me).   He and they say NACA is working on their loan as well as another bank.  They tell me it is close and I am excited.   They need a few extra months for all of the paperwork to go through and that March of 2013 is the month their credit will be good.  So, I agree, thinking they are trying their hardest to buy my house. 
Finally, the next four months pass and the end of March rolls around.  My realtor let's me know that the renters have been approved, by the other institution they were working with.  Problem is the bank will only lend them an amount that is $100K short of my asking price.  Would this be okay and could we sign another contract to pay off the balance in a year.    I told my realtor I needed the entire amount to even start the building of my house and to pay off my debt that has been accruing over the last 2.5 years waiting for them.   We decide to wait to the end of March first of April when NACA says they should have something.  Pacing, it is now well into  April... tired of waiting and struggling, I telephone them and ask if they would please let me know if they are serious about buying my house or not ?   I almost fell off my chair when she said, "well, we can't afford your house so we need to move out! "  "We can be out in a couple of months."  My blood began to rise and I told her they needed to be out in a month....normal notice. 
 

It get's better !
 

Now to protect the names of the innocent I will just say that it was found out that these folks, after getting approved for the lower amount,  went out and bought another house.  They hired another realtor and found a house on the eastside of Denver (hahaha.. far from the mountain house).

 

I had asked a neighbor friend to drive by the house.  They took pictures and sent them to me.
  This beautiful piece of land now had vehicles parked everywhere..two sheds and a dirt road plowed in down below on the land...it looked terrible.  After viewing the photos of the outside, what did the inside of the house look like.   Thinking, I need to fly back to Denver and see what is really going on and what the house looks like, meet my realtor and get my house back on the market.

I called an attorney friend to ask his opinion on what to do.  He wrote a one-page letter to these folks telling them they had to be out by the end of the month and the property, house and land cleaned up like it was when they first moved in and any damage would be charged to them.
 

I flew back to Denver and was touched that my friends met me with buckets and brooms and vacuum cleaners to help clean up wherever necessary.   I met the man for the first time cleaning up outside, he wasn't exactly nice and was bitter things did not work out.   They did however take that letter from my attorney very seriously because they were cleaning up nicely...thank goodness !!!

I needed to repair the deck and fix a leak in the roof ... with little money and charge cards the only way out.   Thanks to Louis, my realtor, we got the house back on the market.

 The house sold in 8 days to a lovely couple who lived on the other side of Denver.  The house was perfect and a VA Loan was initiated, approved and we closed at 4:45 pm October 2013.. Finally, after waiting for 3.5 years, I was free  and out of debt. Not quite the profit I had hoped for but it was enough to get us out of debt and move on with the building of my house.

 Looking at the approved house plan, I realized I wasn't going to be able to afford that big of a house and we started to downsize, but a lot of time had passed and my permit was about to expire and I had lost interest in this house.  My builder wanted to start over.

 Back online, I found a new house plan that caught my eye.  It was different and only 880 sq. ft.  more like what I was thinking.  I emailed my builder, my excavator and two others this house plan asking what they thought.   No reply.   

 



 Christmas 2013,  I went Christmas caroling with an organization I now volunteer for, caring for the elderly here on the Key Peninsula, and I was talking to a lady on the van who gave me the name of a local arborist and her husband, who was a builder. 

 

 Six months go by and I decide I am ready to build my house. 

 

 I gathered my courage and dialed the number the lady had given me but found I had dialed the arborists number by mistake.  It was a great mistake.  He told me that the builder I was calling was very busy but he knew another builder who lived in the area and was just finishing up with a house.  I called him, Hank, and we set up an appointment to meet, along with his architect to view the above plan.  We made some changes on the plan and I was very excited about this house and the builder.   The house was small, with an upstairs suite with a bath and it had character.  A house I could grow old in. 

 

With renewed excitement, the new builder worked up a bid.  I told him I could come up with $100k.  and I was so sad when he came back with a bid of 148k.  We parted, both thinking it was too much for me to come up with and probably was not going to happen.

 How could I possibly come up with another 48k ?  I slept on it and then in the morning I took a look at all of my $0.00 balances on my 5 credit cards and found they were offering a 0 % interest for a year on all but one of my cards....I added up my credit and I could come within 8k of the bid.  I called my new builder and we decided to go forward. 

 

 I would let my creator and the universe know my needs.

Let the building of my house begin.

 

a little more to be continued ...

We are almost to the end.

The plumbers arrived to install sinks, toilets and faucets.

  After 17 days of semi-camping this was a most wonderful day !!

The plumber told me to go take a walk for about an hour,

so my son and I drove down to the Heron Ferry dock watched the clouds form interesting

designs in the sky while we waited.

Installing my awesome sink.  Check out the light fixtures.

The first sink they brought me was a stainless steel double sink.

It was ugly, I wanted the one above...and I love it.

No more washing dishes outside with the hose.

ah, the toilet-a.

Here comes Dave to bury the trenches from the septic, power

and water.

Removing the temporary utility drive-way of large rocks.

Smoothing out the front yard

and creating a walk-way.  

 All in preparation for the final county inspection.

I planted a flowering ecological lawn mixture.

 

history continued ...

 

I last left off crying in the rain because of a broken awning and a leaking trailer.

Two times, I kid you not, I was awaken from a nightmare of raindrops dripping on my head.  It wasn't a nightmare at all, it was a reality.  More tarps and this time a piece of plywood on top of the trailer to block that leak.  We located the leak to the shelf above my head.

 

    It is now November of 2010 and I haven't heard from my renter/buyers for about five months,  not a word about "buying me out by the end of the year."  So, I finally gave Her a call to see how things were going and I was shocked when I heard her say, "they took out a two-year contract so they could have time to complete the sale of their house. "  It was if she had never said they would buy me out by the end of the year.  Now, to make things even worse, I hear they sold their house but is was a 'short sale' which I now know ... means your credit sucks for the next two years.  This means another year, November 2011.  They were working with NACA to get their loan.  I readied  myself to spend another year in the trailer and sincerely hoped they would get their loan and honor our contract.

Once again, I heard the words, "nothing will stop us from buying this house we love it.

 

I mentioned earlier about the extreme heat that first summer and now as we prepare for our first Thanksgiving,  a snowstorm showed up.  It was exciting and fun ...... until the tarp tents around the area started filling up with snow and yes, they start to cave in and fall over, along with a Madrona tree across the drive-way.

It is Thanksgiving 2010 and with the snow falling  we are to spend holiday in the trailer.  Our drive-way is quite steep and it looks like we may be stuck for a bit until the snow lightens up. My friend, Crystal, had a friend with  a 4-wheel drive truck and offered to stop at our local store and bring us some sort of dinner.  She brought us  two Cornish game hens to cook for dinner.  This was kind of fun....until the temperature dropped and our porta toilet  froze.  Omg this is serious, we need our toilet.  I must say this was somewhat entertaining watching my son outside with a portable heater trying to thaw the septic lines.  I was, in the meantime, collecting snow from outside in a pan,

thawing it on our propane stove and turning it into hot water to pour down the porta toilet....After a lot of effort the septic thawed and now we were free to pee.

We are having fun now, not.

 

At this same time, my neighbor Jarvis, lost his wife, Mary.  They had been married 50 plus years

and he was about to start his new life.  We joined forces and became friends and helped each other through the next two years.  I will always be grateful for those two years.  Trailer life was difficult and Jarvis and I would go and do something fun every Thursday.   He introduced me to the wonderful Museums in the Tacoma area and lunches at fun restaurants.  We would even go to the movies, which neither one of us had done in years.  This was good for both of us while we adjusted to our new lives.  Jarvis has been a very good friend since and will continue to be.   We no longer play on

Thursday's but I value his friendship very much.  My son and I were counting dollars (soon pennies)  and there was no room for entertainment or splurge spending and those Thursday's were cherished.

 

to be continued ...