Thursday, July 13, 2006
The Spanko Residence, Part IV
After taking a day off, here is the fourth installment of the tale of how our fabulous living quarters came to be ours. The last part completed with Angela and I christening the barn with a spanking and a boink, and a decision to buy the property.
For the next few days, we discussed several different ways to make the little house bigger. We thought about tearing the house down and building a new, bigger house, but that sort of defeated the purpose of purchasing the property, and, besides, the old house was very cute. We considered adding rooms to the house, but we were afraid of ruining the character of the house. Everything we considered just didn’t seem quite right. We began to despair.
One evening, I was conversing with a close friend on the telephone. I have known this gentleman since prep school. He has a creative mind, and has some skill in carpentry. I told him about the farmstead that we had become interested in, and about the difficulty of coming up with a design to increase the livable space in the house.
His response caught me off guard. “Why you don’t just leave the house as it is and remodel the barn?” he said. “If that barn is as sturdy as I think it is, you could do anything you want with it. Just live in the farmhouse for a while, and build your real house in the barn.”
I discussed this concept with Angela, and she practically squealed with delight. She began to invent all of the exciting rooms that we could install in the barn. While her ideas were sound, the sheer number of them had me thinking that we might have to construct a second barn to include them all. So after some discussion, we contacted the real estate agent and asked her if she could hold the property for us while we explored financing options and did some research to determine if our grand plan was feasible.
My friend flew in to take a look at the barn with us. He and Angela spend the next two days huddling and designing our dream house. Not being architecturally inclined, I left them to their folly while I negotiated with the bankers, architects, and builders to see if we could have just a tiny bit of our life savings remaining after supplying the down payment. On the third day, friend and Angela went to visit an architect, who met with a builder, who came up with an estimate of how much money it would be, which he then presented to me.
When I regained consciousness after my fainting spell, I locked myself in my office and attempted to calculate whether or not we would be able to eat should we choose to proceed with this effort. I determined that, as long as Angela continued to work, and even though it would pretty much cost us every penny we had in the bank, and although I would have to sell my pretty, expensive, new car (on which the monthly payments were substantial) and buy an older vehicle that I could pay off completely, we would be able to afford to purchase and remodel the old farmstead and still be able to buy food, although not much else.
Thus ends part four. Part Five will be the final installment. It will give a description of how the new home turned out, and the first spanking that Angela and I engaged in once the barn remodeling was finished.
Conclusion ==>
For the next few days, we discussed several different ways to make the little house bigger. We thought about tearing the house down and building a new, bigger house, but that sort of defeated the purpose of purchasing the property, and, besides, the old house was very cute. We considered adding rooms to the house, but we were afraid of ruining the character of the house. Everything we considered just didn’t seem quite right. We began to despair.
One evening, I was conversing with a close friend on the telephone. I have known this gentleman since prep school. He has a creative mind, and has some skill in carpentry. I told him about the farmstead that we had become interested in, and about the difficulty of coming up with a design to increase the livable space in the house.
His response caught me off guard. “Why you don’t just leave the house as it is and remodel the barn?” he said. “If that barn is as sturdy as I think it is, you could do anything you want with it. Just live in the farmhouse for a while, and build your real house in the barn.”
I discussed this concept with Angela, and she practically squealed with delight. She began to invent all of the exciting rooms that we could install in the barn. While her ideas were sound, the sheer number of them had me thinking that we might have to construct a second barn to include them all. So after some discussion, we contacted the real estate agent and asked her if she could hold the property for us while we explored financing options and did some research to determine if our grand plan was feasible.
My friend flew in to take a look at the barn with us. He and Angela spend the next two days huddling and designing our dream house. Not being architecturally inclined, I left them to their folly while I negotiated with the bankers, architects, and builders to see if we could have just a tiny bit of our life savings remaining after supplying the down payment. On the third day, friend and Angela went to visit an architect, who met with a builder, who came up with an estimate of how much money it would be, which he then presented to me.
When I regained consciousness after my fainting spell, I locked myself in my office and attempted to calculate whether or not we would be able to eat should we choose to proceed with this effort. I determined that, as long as Angela continued to work, and even though it would pretty much cost us every penny we had in the bank, and although I would have to sell my pretty, expensive, new car (on which the monthly payments were substantial) and buy an older vehicle that I could pay off completely, we would be able to afford to purchase and remodel the old farmstead and still be able to buy food, although not much else.
Thus ends part four. Part Five will be the final installment. It will give a description of how the new home turned out, and the first spanking that Angela and I engaged in once the barn remodeling was finished.
Conclusion ==>
