On the surface, my last project wasn't a huge success, at least not in the short term. I struggled for nine months to get the damn thing installed, lost 80% of the heating season still burning oil, paid several thousand dollars more than my original quotes, and after all of that, the price of oil has plummeted from where it was when I made the commitment.
Nevertheless, I'm shortly planning to tackle an even bigger project, a seven hundred square foot addition to our living quarters. It will have a separate living room, a kitchenette, a bedroom, and a bathroom. The idea is that a future owner, or when E moves out of the house in about five years, would be able to rent this as a self-contained unit. Otherwise, it simply does not make sense from a business standpoint. Three beds and a bath would be plenty for 90% of the prospective owners of this place or, indeed, for any other inn owner in the valley. We have four kids and they are growing fast.
My biggest issue is the septic system. It can obviously handle what we've got now, and it's not like our family will be flushing any more toilets or taking any more showers than we do now. The state, however, likes to get involved with these things.
I tracked down the firm that did the original work for us, but unfortunately, they moved offices last year and dumped a bunch of their old files. Ours was one of them.
That means I'm likely looking at spending roughly $2,000 to pay these guys to do a new perc test, application, etc., and that's just to get approval for the project. The good news is that the guy knows the soils in this area and says he thinks we have good, gravelly leach fields. He doesn't anticipate a problem. But you never know.
We've had a pretty decent winter so far, although early March is not proving overly impressive, but still, this is going to use more of our cash reserves than I would like, given the current state of the economy. The worst case scenario would be if Melinda got laid off (doesn't look imminent at this point) and we had a bad snow year next year at the same time the economy continued to deteriorate.
But, we do have some other resources to draw on, we've survived the first year of what I'm thinking will be three or four tough years in pretty good shape, and it feels like it's either now or never.
Friday, March 6, 2009
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5 comments:
Wow, that's great you'll be expanding your living space -- I'm sure that will make things a lot easier for four kids. It is brilliant to add it on as a self-contained unit. I hope the project goes smoothly -- this is a loaded question, but when do you anticipate completion?
Our prospective contractor said sixty days from when they start digging the foundation. I'll take that with a huge grain of salt.
I'm hoping to have all permits done by the end of April, start in May and maybe finish by the end of July. Might take all summer and into fall, though, knowing how these things go.
I'm thinking it is too soon to say that your wood heat project wasn't a success. I can imagine that you'll be real grateful for it in the foreseeable future.
I hope you're right Megan, although too much of a success would probably mean our way of life is going into the crapper as energy grows more expensive and scarce. I'll settle for a modest success.
We are thinking about doing an addition on our house. It is so scary to figure out all the details and decide if it is worth the added expense. I feel your pain!
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