Though I would share the evolution of my housing from 2008 to present. It has been a interesting and educational journey. Some much better than others but all serviceable to one degree or another. Since I am starting in 2008 I will include the house I bought in lived in from 2002 through July 2008. Something important to keep in mind is that I was single with no children living with me through a lot of this time. LOL I guess I believe in long engagements as Mrs T5R and myself had met and been dating since 2000 we did not get married until late 2010. Having kids and a spouse from my experience have a lot to do with what kind of housing is deemed acceptable A persons mindset and how they want to be perceived by others also play a strong role in housing selection. Bought this place in 2002 for $124,000 cash in a Absolute Auction Appraised value was $310,000 1800 square feet of first level and 1600 square feet of fully finished basement underneath 2 full kitchens, 2 living rooms, 6 bedrooms, 3 1/2 baths and a big dining room. 48x90 barn, 42x72 barn and 27 acres. Taxes were $2400 per year to start and the tax bill for 2008 was just a hair over $9,000. 7 Miles outside of the State Capitol and all of the land around me being bought up by developers to build fancy named "Estates" sub divisions. And Since Big Red is in the picture hehe He was a whopping 1 year old here. The Landscape Company, the truck and this property represented my entire life savings at the time. Which was around $140,000. Trucks were a lot less expensive then I sold the Landscape Company, rented the house and property out for $3,000 per Month and kept Red and the T5R Farm equipment and relocated 220 miles to Southern IL in July of 2008 using the Money from the sale of the landscape company to buy the first 40 acres of raw land here. Sold the House and property to the renter in late 2009 for $520,000 (A wealthy Chicago political type that used it for a place to slum it whilst in Springfield) LOL I lived in a basement bedroom and the basement in general. The future Mrs T5R lived up stairs. We went different directions in 2008 which was not uncommon through most of our premarital relationship. Just the nature of her job more than anything. I don't have a picture of my original first home down here. But it was Identical to this wreck I dragged home to strip. A 16' Taurus Camper Nothing spectacular about it other than it was ample space for myself and my two dogs. I lived in it until I built the Line Shack. The line shack in combination with the camper was much better space wise. It consisted of a 10x12 bedroom, and a 5x12 kitchen with a outhouse 50 feet away. Line shack is still here and serves as a catch all storage shed now days. The first Cabin! I had always been interested in taking one of these portable buildings and converting one into a habitable cabin. I found this repo for $3500. A 12x32 It was a total stinking filthy wreck inside but structurally sound. Shortly after finishing it The Future Mrs T5R and her dogs moved in and It became painfully obvious that there was NOT room for 2 people and 4 dogs in the little cabin! I got pushed out and back to living in the Line Shed again The First Cabin eventually became the commercial kitchen and still is to this day. To solve the living space issue I started looking for a junky mobile home and I found this 14x70 for $1000 a couple of miles away. Dragged it back to the farm with the Massey Tractor and dropped it there, leveled it and put around $4,000 into rewiring it and making it livable. When I bought the 16x46 portable building and got it finished the mobile home became obsolete and well it always was a eye sore. So I demolished it and salvaged everything useful from it and either scrapped or disposed of or burned everything else. I ended up with a pretty good pile of good 2x4s and salvaged a lot of the electrical and wire I had put in. Pretty much everything else was burn, bury or haul to the scrap yard. And since Big Red is in this picture and still running strong and dependable well over 20 years later.......... The Current Cabin, soon to be abandoned or at least moved out of and converted to the on farm store..... Another not so cheap repo portable building. I paid $9,000 for this one and have put around another $17,000 into it finishing the the Shell into a home. It worked very well for two people and the dogs up until Covid and Mrs T5R Work from home Mandate. LOL I slowly got pushed out as my home became a .Gov Field office First the bedroom, then the living room got a desk and the furniture got moved out to be replaced with file cabinets, another desk and computers and when the kitchen table finally got stacked with files and became home to the office lap top......... I bought the 1990s something camper a 22 footer in very good shape and me and my two dogs moved over to it. I am to lazy at the moment to walk out and take a picture of it right now, so just using the pic of when I bought it. Parked it behind the Cabin and ran a 50 amp breaker and line from the Cabins 200 Amp box to it, T'd into the cabins water line and ran that to the camper and put in a stink line from the black and gray water tanks to the cabins stink line that runs to the septic tank. If I ever move it the hardest thing to disconnect will be the water line and that is a matter of diggin down a couple feet and cutting and capping it. The work at home order/mandate for Mrs T5R comes to a end in a week and the field office can finally go back to the field office!!! Seems to me the Government Owes me a couple years worth of rent LOL. In 2012 I had a Barn Building Company build a 30x40 open sided barn for me in the woods. That company does a Monthly Special on barns and I saw that Months and for $7500 for it, I thought Heyyyyyyy why not and I don't have to build it!!! Since that time it has not been used for much other than being where I park my baler, another catch all and my fix it shop. So we decided to have the same Barn Company turn it into the new house shell. I am getting to old to dick around with concrete work... That last 21 yard job putting the Machine Shed 6" floor in..... convinced me of that! Yesterday Morning the Salesman and Architect from the company came and did all of the measuring and figuring to put a Fiber Concrete 4" floor in, Close up the open side, spray foam insulate the roof with closed cell foam, install 10 windows, install 2 man doors and install a sliding glass door and change the existing gutters to seamless trash poof gutters. We set a $25,000 cap on the budget for their part. I learned a long time ago to never reveal what your budget is to a contractor...... because they WILL spend every dime of that budget When it was all said and done their numbers came up to $19,976 I am good with that. I already have a 800amp electric service over there and a 400amp cable running to a 400amp box in the building. That box powers everything from that barn to the West side property line. Will probably have Ed either divert 200amps of the 400 to a breaker box just for the house or have him run another cable and use 200amps of the 400 remaining at the disconnect box for the house. I just don't want to mix the house circuits up with all of the other circuits in one box. We have roughly 700Square feet in the cabin now. The barn Conversion will up us to 1200 square feet. which is a long way from the 112 square feet of my first camper here Mostly my Fix It Shop where I hide and tinker with stuff So in about 3-4 weeks the rock will be down on the floor and the concrete poured, a week after that the roof Spray Foamed, a month after that the building crew will come and close in the open side and install the windows and doors and in less than 3 Months the Shell will be complete. During that time I will get the 1x Pecan and Hickory for the interior walls and ceiling milled, stacked and curing, buy the junky ass pine they call 2x4 studs now days for the room partitions and start collecting the sheets of fiber insulation to do the walls, going to do fiber glass between studs, then sheets screwed to the studs and the hickory and pine on top of the sheets. Then either blow in or bats in the ceiling joist. If I do 8' ceilings there will be room for a loft room on each end with the center open. The barn is 12' on the eaves and that would give the rooms a sloping ceiling with about 7' between center floor and ceiling. Not useful really for us tall people but good for storage and hidey holes. I have most of the big ticket stuff for my end of the project...... I collect STUFFs like hot water heaters, and spools of electric wire ranging from 14-2 to 6-3, boxes of switches and outlets, ample pipe and fittings, bath tubs and shower inserts and I am going to build all of the cabinets and counter tops and the bulk of the lumber other than the wall studs I am going to mill myself. SO we have a budget of $15,000 for everything else. Cost of Original Barn $7,500 Barn upgrades and Conversion $20,000 Cost of Finishing barn shell to habitable House $15,000 Total cost to build a very nice custom and unique 1200 Sq' Pole barn house $42,500 This will be the last housing here! So I am planning it for the rest of my life and aging. I remember to well how Grandpa struggled with steps more and more as he got up there in age. I figure the problems I already have with my legs that I will eventually be in about the same boat as he was. Thus NO STEPS just a flat patio in the front and wide concrete side walks around to each door. I snagged a nice shower insert that is wide and deep with a seat in it, plenty of room in it for me and my future walker LOL. Not going to put traditional doors on the interior rooms, will be putting those sliding barn like doors on the them. They take up wall space but from what I see they are a lot easier than traditional swing doors. All cabinets will be under counters and curtained shelves above, Can slide the curtain with my cane and hook stuff and pull it down off the shelves if I ever get all hunched over. Nothing fancy, I just am not a fancy person I like more basic and highly functional. Most important I like ease of use and easy to clean and keep clean with minimal effort! And of ultimate importance..... If I croak before MRs T5R I want everything to be easy for her. Have detailed maps and diagrams of every water line and electric line I have ran under ground. Same for the septic tanks and stink lines. Detailed diagrams of the buildings electrical and plumbing circuits and lines. ALL OF the breakers in the Disconnect and Breaker Boxes boldly labeled. A list of plumbers, electricians, handymen/women and their contact info that I trust and Expect to still be around and in business after I am gone. LOL detailed treasure maps to where I have buried valuable stuff in the Sealed PVC Canisters. A lot of folks think I had a fat inheritance and that is how I got to where I am today. Truth is much more ugly than that I GASP Worked HARD and I Worked SMART and I caught a few lucky breaks a long the way, NO ONE have every given me anything beyond life and opportunities that I could either take or decline. Pretty much everything I have done since 1998 I have been told was foolish, would not work or that I would fail. They were right in some ways, Some things I did were foolish and did not work but knowing what does not work is often just as important as knowing what does work, I have never met a wise person that did not gain that wisdom by doing some foolish things and learning from it. At the same time I have met a lot of fools that claim to be wise. I DO NOT FAIL it just is not in my nature to accept failure as the end result. Over, Under, Around or Blowing your way straight through there is always a way. When I stop doing something, it is not because I failed at it, it is because Wisdom and Logic dictates that the time for that whatever has came and gone or that is time to move forward into a new phase of things. When I left there in 2008 and moved from a big house into a tiny camper the general assumption was that I went bankrupt and had lost everything. When in fact the exact opposite was the case and I had lost nothing but had gained everything I wanted to start a new phase of life. I just plain don't care what other people think, well I kind of do because hearing about myself through the rumor and gossip mill is very amusing to me at times! What I do care about is what My Dogs Think, What MRS T5R thinks and that we are all comfortable, secure and content. I have been 100% Content and Happy with my life since 2008. I am as free as a person can be, I live or die by my own choices in my world of natural consequences and my housing, vehicles and equipment have never defined who I am or what my value is. I spend 95% of my awake time outside in a shop, a field or in the woods doing what I love as I choose to do it. My housing requirement is that it dry when it rains, warm when it is cold and cool when it is hot. It does not matter to me if that is 8x8 Unibomber style shack or 3600 square foot half a million dollar big house on a hill. I just need space for a desk, a bed and a place for the dogs to curl up and sleep anything beyond that is just bonus space that requires cleaning and maintenance LOL. Most folks that start looking at going rural, buying a piece of remote raw land are going to in one of three categories. The first on a very tight budget and paying to improve as you go. Second have a nest egg and can get started with everything. Third going to finance the whole thing and have big debt load. I was #3 but being a big cheap AZZ did it like a #1. I hate debt personally and strictly live and have lived my life with the if I can't pay cash for it, then I can't afford it mentality. Seen way to many people that could make the payments as long as things were good and stable lose it all fast when there was a bump in the road and things were not so good and stable. If you are comfortable with taking on large debt and paying on it for 10-30 years that is your choice. It just would never work for me and I would stress myself to death over it LOL. Plus I am terrible at making payments I have a hard enough time remembering to pay the electric bill and to go to the Court House and pay the property taxes once per year. Hehe I usually remember the electric bill when the lineman arrive to pull the meters and Knocks on the door and says "Hey Mike call the office and pay your damn bill! I don't want to drive all the way back out here tomorrow to put the meters back in!!!" For most of us starting on raw land will mean starting with modest housing and improving it over time by choice or circumstance. And getting looked down on by folks with the nice big houses. That is not so bad where I am with the County having a median household income of $36,000 per year. A lot of people in the county and town living in junky mobile homes or a House on the borderline of condemned. What is right and works for me probably won't be right or work for most. Anyway thought I would share the Housing Journey I have had since 2008 with everyone since that journey is coming to a end with the last house I will live in being built. My path through life has been very much like a Drunk following a snake down a mountainside in many ways but I have for the most part been content and happy with trip and seen and experienced a lot of things I would have missed following the well tread traditional paths. I mean how many people can say they have woke up in the morning with a 6' king Snake coiled up on their chest working on swallowing a Fence Post Lizard....... Never did figure out how that snake got in the Cabin LOL. Priceless seeing Mrs T5Rs expression and how fast she could go from sound asleep to running screaming into the next room! Snake is still here BTW just around 7' long now and made lots of baby king snakes since then, see her in the wood piles and Machine shed regularly, just not in the Cabin since that morning. I did get a little concerned when Mrs T5R came back into the bedroom with a shot gun pointed at the snake and my chest
I applaud you on your life , wife , and decisions. I had opportunities that I regret to this day ,, all because of a high falutin woman . One I thought was the one. And that cost me some good property deals . Now I'm doing without some of what I could have had ,,, but I'm better off now ,, than having to give away half of what I would have paid all of . Life works out in weird ways sometimes.
Had that ONE my self that was a very painful life lesson, fortunately it was very early in the game of life.
