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Future Planning

November 02, 2004 16:21

Due to some unexpected expenditures, I'm suddenly going to have a lot less money available in the near future. I've had enough money set aside to work on the house to get it livable AND get the majority of the construction done so I could move in and wouldn't have to trip over myself trying to work on the house at the same time. Certainly it'll be a couple years before I'm completely done with everything, but the utility room addition, and bedroom furnishings and all the major adjustments to the house, like foundation levelling, I wanted to get done before getting settled down there. Once that was done, I planned to get another job and work an obscene amount of hours and throw a $1000 or so each month into additional house renovations. This way I'd have enough money for both the house and funding the site and other things.

However, because of this sudden loss of money I'm going to have to make some adjustments. First of all, I was planning to tear down most of the kitchen when I redid the utility room, since I'd already be doing all that work, an additional 23x12 room wouldn't be too much of an improvision. The walls, floor, ceiling and roof all need to be replaced or significantly fixed up. That.... doesnt' leave a whole lot. Might as well tear it down and build it at the same time I build the utility room and that way it would all be one structure, and more solid than if built separately. But now since I don't have the money, I'm going to delay upgrading the kitchen until sometime next year. I won't be able to build any of the counters or do any plumbing work in there until then. I'm going to just get some cheap appliances and that'll hold me over until we get a chance to fix it and do it right.

Secondly, the backyard was going to have a nice deck, some type of flower garden, a storage building, and eventually a garage. While I don't plan to build the garage for at least a year or so, to keep the backyard available for another planned activity, the deck and garden I wanted to get done earlier. The garden at least needs to be partially planned out and planted this fall. I'll probably do part of the garden and forgo the deck for now.

I COULD put off the utility room for the time being, but that's a critical room since I need to rewire the house and have someplace to install the AC and heat. I could likely get through the winter without any more than a window unit, by the time summer hits, I'm definitely going to want the AC unit in there. Therefore this will still be a high priority expense.

The upstairs bedrooms have no functional closet space. However, since they're all fairly large, I'll be building armoires, cabinets, shelves, and builtin dresser drawers to utilize wallspace and minimalize the need for additional furniture in the rooms. This will likely cost $250-500 per room depending on what quality of wood I use.

The upstairs bathroom will likely cost about $1000 to fully fix up, paint, drywall, floor, and putting in all the fixtures. That's going to be the only functional bathroom until the addition is completed, and even then, the downstairs bathroom will likely only be a 1/2 bath for the immediate future as I'm not going to put a tub/shower down there until later.

Although the bedrooms will get painted and carpeted soon, I won't likely do the same to any other rooms. I'll fix the floor in the dining room and leave it as is. The walls will need to be torn down and redrywalled, after fixing all the electrical wiring, but painting and additional cosmetic work will likely be put off for a while.

I currently have internet service at the house, although the upstream is pretty low. It's enough for one cam during the construction process, but there is no way I'll be able to run my original contingent of cams off of it, along with the lights. There are broadband options available that have better upstream, but I won't be able to afford it now, and I'm not even going to bother putting cams at the new place. I'll instead keep lamps and cams set up elsewhere and push to get other people's cams and lamps online. I'll have a cam set up for certain events, but otherwise I'll have to keep them off so I have enough bandwidth available for work.

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