Building Department, Round 6.825

So... after getting that mildly threatening letter from the county, and being told that we have to get a surety bond to renew our residence permit...

After telling them that the original inspector told us we didn't need one...

After contacting multiple online surety bond companies and being told that we can't get a surety bond for simply moving/disconnecting a trailer...

After contacting multiple local surety bond agents and being told the same thing...

After calling the building department and having them refer us to the local agent that supposedly does these surety bonds...

After driving to the recommended agent's office...

The agent looks the building department's form and says he can't write a bond for simply moving/disconnecting a trailer.

He calls the building department and tells them this.

Now the building department says we don't need one.

This is my face right now

On the plus side, now I can use that money for building materials instead of a stupid bond. We also went ahead and renewed the building permit and I can start doing some preliminary work on the site. It's still too cold to start on the masonry, but I can get things ready. I want to hit the ground running this spring.

Dealing with the Building Department, Round 6.5

I actually don't know what round this is. Really, I don't think there are rounds. It's more like a continuous melee.

But whatever.

Yesterday I got a letter from the Building Department telling me my building permit expired. Well, duh. The next step is masonry. I can't exactly do masonry in below freezing weather, now can I? So, why would I renew the permit until I can actually work?

They also said my temporary residence permit expired. What? I was under the impression that it didn't expire.

So I go down there.

Getting the building permit renewed: $125. I knew that. No paper work involved, so there's a bonus.

The residence permit didn't expire. She said my surety bond expired.

Oh, boy.

When we first got started on this project, I read about the surety bonds. These bonds are a guarantee that once building was complete we would remove the temporary residence from the site. Some of the county's sources said we would have to pay a bond for the travel trailer, others said we didn't. So I asked John, the first inspector I worked with. He said we didn't have to pay it. There was no reason to pay it because a travel trailer doesn't have to be removed; we just stop living in it.

But, nooooooooo. Now it's a different story. Now they want a bond. A $5000 bond.

They have to have this bond. How else will can they be sure that after we build our house we won't live in a trailer next to it?

Who does this?

No one. No. One.

No one builds a house so they can live in a trailer in the back yard.

It's already against zoning regulations to do so. We could be fined for doing so. But it is such a threat that they have to have a bond to make sure that they can fine us and get paid.

Really?

Really.

Yeah, really.

So, I'm getting bond quotes now. Later I will eat country ribs and beans. And whiskey.

UPDATE: One of the bond underwriter people persons called us back. He can't give as a quote because he can't write a bond to guarantee something like this. So, there this saying about asses and holes in the ground...

Etsy, Google Sheets, Smarty Pig, and Managing Debt Free Home Building

Since El Nino has run out of steam and our unseasonably warm weather has left us, I have a moment or two to catch up here. Briefly, we've been winterizing the little house, making some handmade Christmas gifts, and putting Jack in fuzzy sweaters.

Draw me like one of your French Girls

Raising money through Etsy

As I've stated in previous posts, I have supplemented our income by selling off our possessions, most notably my massive collection of My Little Ponies. I had to stop while I was working on the house, but I started back up in mid November.

The last round of pony sales went on eBay. I've been selling there since 1999, but over the past several years I have grown to HATE that venue. Their website is clunky, their fees suck, and sellers regularly get screwed by unscrupulous buyers.

Fortunately, since the items I'm selling are vintage I have another option. I have been selling handmade items on Etsy since 2010 and I LOVE selling there. I have opened up a new shop for my vintage items and it has been going pretty well. In the six weeks it has been open I've been able to raise over 75% of the money we need for our next step.

It's mostly stocked with collectibles and household items ranging from the 1940s to the 1970s right now, but I have so much more to add. There are more collectibles and boxes and boxes of ponies that need to go.

See all the things here

The profits from every sale I make are directly funding our homestead. In order to keep the funds organized, I have employed a couple different tools.

Google Sheets

The first is Google Sheets. Google Sheets is simply a spread sheet program that you can access through your Google Plus account. This is very handy considering how often I bounce from computer to computer. Here's an example of how I have mine set up:

The first column is the price that I sold the item for. The next column is what I originally paid for the item. This is an important figure to have as it will be needed come tax season.

The next two columns are Etsy fees. Etsy charges $0.20 for listing an item for three months, and processing fees after it sells.

If you use PayPal, you'd want to include those fees as well. However Etsy now has a feature that manages direct payments and PayPal payments through their account manager.

The next two columns are the total profits and self-employment tax. Total profits are figured by taking the sale price and subtracting the item cost, listing fees, and processing fees.

Since I am selling items at a profit, I must pay taxes on the income. One of these taxes is the self-employment tax. The self-employment tax is your FICA taxes: social security and Medicare. The rate is 15.3%. So, to find your total tax, multiply your profit by .0153.

You also have to pay income tax, however since we alway have extra withheld from my husband's paycheck, I don't bother saving for that.

The next column is an adjustment column. Most of the time, I only put the net profit into savings. However, on some items (mostly ponies), I want the initial cost of the item to go into savings as well. This column allows me to offset the initial cost being taken out of the profits.

The column marked "Total for SP" is the amount I put into savings. The last column helps me keep track of which sub-account that total is deposited into.

Speaking of sub-accounts, that brings me to:

Smarty Pig

When we first started packing money away so we could buy our land, I started shopping around for a place to stash our money. I don't like having it all in our checking account (darling husband is a spender) and I wanted to earn a little interest.

My Google Fu led me to Smarty Pig. Their interest rate was attractive. Well, as attractive as interest rates get in this day and age (which is pretty sad).

State of this country's banking system aside, Smarty Pig is a really great tool for saving money. The feature that I love the most is the ability to create sub accounts within your Smarty Pig account. These "Savings Goals" really fit into how we are financing this build. Here's their info page on creating goals.

When we first started planning how to do this, we were torn between buying a kit house like a Katrina Cottage or buying plans and building it all ourselves. One benefit to kit houses is that they would be easier and faster to build. A down side is that we would not be able to do any work on the house until we had saved 100% of the money.

This would be a big problem when it came to our temporary residence permit. Most counties (ours included) will want you actively building to keep your permit.

With the DIY house plans, we have the ability to save funds for each piece of the house, and build it as we reach each individual savings goal.

For example, late last winter, I calculated out the material cost for each part of our foundation. I started savings goals for the footings, the rebar, the cinder blocks, and the mortar. (I had to combine the funds and shuffle things around because of the re-design, but the funds were there nonetheless).

Smarty Pig lets you set automatic payments into your goals, or if you're a control freak like me you can transfer funds manually. It seems that they used to require a monthly transfer, but from my experience that is no longer the case.

A word of advice concerning goals: it may be wise to keep your goals small or even divide larger goals up into a couple smaller goals. Once the money has been transfered into a goal, you cannot do a partial withdrawal. If you have an emergency crop up and need to free up some funds, you have to close out the goal and withdraw all of it. This isn't a HUGE problem. You can just transfer it all back to the bank, and then create a new goal and transfer some of the money back to Smarty Pig. That's a little clunky, but not the end of the world.

One you reach your goal, you get to close it out and go buy things. This can be done by transferring it back to your bank, or you can put it on a gift card. They incentivize the gift card option by offering a bonus cash boost. There is a hardware store on the list of retailers, so this can really help on a project like this. Here's their page with gift card info.

I've been able to integrate this into my Etsy shop and use it as a tool to show customers exactly where their funds are going. Recently, the most aggressively funded goal has been the architectural blocks.

With each purchase I'm including a thank you note that tells them what part of the building project their purchase will go to. 

I'm going to try to update with more detail on each piece of the build so people can see exactly what is being saved for, where it fits into the house, and when it is purchased and installed. Until then, I have some Etsy orders to fill.

Pouring the Foundation aka More Things Are Happening!

Quick but pivotal update tonight: we have achieved concrete. I may have jinxed myself with the last post on being almost done, as three days later we had a catastrophic collapse around 85% of the trench.

Now, I'm not going to say that I wish I had stuck to my guns and refused to compromise on my original plans. However, When 6-8 inches of mud has fallen into the bottom of a trench, it is significantly easier to clear it out when the rebar is only three inches high than when it is 24 inches high.

So I spent many uncomfortable weeks straddling an awkward metal cage, which is held together with sharp pointy wire. I lost about three gallons of blood in the process and ripped the crotch out of five pairs of jeans.

Being that we are rapidly approaching winter, I was afraid we would run out of appropriate weather for pouring concrete. I think we managed to hit the last warm snap of the season. Thanks, global warming! Thanks, El Nino!

This morning I was all set to get my daughter to school and come home to pour some concrete. I started this journey by stepping off the porch, rolling my ankle, and falling right on my face. I thought, oh no, a wonky ankle is going to totally fuck up my day.

Oh, but the Fuck-up Fairy wasn't done with me yet.
I drop off my kid, start heading back, my tire blew out, and I skidded into a ditch.

Mind you, this is the tire that I just replaced in May. This is also the one day I decided not to put on jeans and went out in my PJ bottoms. No one is going to see me, right?

Wrong. Everyone dropping their kid off to school that day got to see me in my jammies yelling at my tire in a ditch. C'est la vie.

So, Mom to the rescue (thanks, Mom!) I get dropped off just in time to do 2 hours worth of prep in 45 minutes. So much panic.

All the drama aside, it's done. We worked 13 yards of concrete into a 24 inch high,134 foot long footing before breakfast. Before coffee even.

Level up.

Here's a few photos of before and after. There was too much to do to take any "during" photos.

I am disappointed that Jack did not supervise us at all through the pour. The little snot slept through the whole thing. Oh well. Here's a photo of him snuggling his grumpy cat plushie anyway.

Now I can relax a bit. The next step is to build four courses of architectural blocks on top of this footing. I'm not going to have enough warm weather to get anything significant done on that front, so it's time to head to the garage for some wood working.

Update on the Foundation Redesign and Other Things

After what's felt like a horribly long time of getting nowhere, things are finally coming together. We've had a break in the rain. The trench was cleaned out, the sides have been mostly repaired, and we're just about ready to have another inspection.

After talking with the inspector, he had a suggestion that would speed things up and make it a bit easier on us. Instead of pouring our footings 10 inches thick, we're pouring it up to 24 inches and laying a cinder block stem wall on that. It's costing us a little more and requires us to do a bit more rebar than the original plans. I've been a bit stressed out about that because I've never done rebar like this nor did I have a lot of time to go over the code. I really hope I got it right, because there's not much time left before cold weather sets in. No pressure, right?

This required three pieces of rebar running horizontally and vertical rebar placed every four feet. The verticals had to be placed just so since they will be running through the cavities of the cinder blocks. To make sure I was on the mark I ran the lines on the batter boards and checked my placement with a template of the cinder blocks.

Jack decided that cats are more interesting than rebar. I agree.

So here's more Jack:

Beyond the rebar, we've just been enjoying a quiet summer on the prairie. Our garden has done pretty well for the first year. We have a tiny black cat that has been hanging around. We're calling her Beyonce. She loves to sing, and since all our cats are boys she is the single lady.

No photos of her yet. She's still very skittish.

We have some prairie sunflowers that have grown on the property. Normally, I dislike sunflowers. A lot. Sunflowers are what interior decorators use when they want a place to be Kansas-y. I always associate them with truck stops, gas station bathrooms, kitschy gift shops, and the girls locker room all throughout the 90s. OK, that last one was just Elizabeth Arden's Sunflowers, but it still sucks.

These sunflowers, however, are MY sunflowers, so they're totally different. I love them. The bees really seem to like them too so they are definitely staying.

Edgar is still doing well.

I put up our mailbox and started decorating it. I'm painting mushrooms from my favorite 1970s enamelware set, and yes, the stems look like dicks. Ha ha, dicks.

diiiiiiiiiiicks

The farmer that owns the surrounding land came through and hayed. Now we have large hay bales.

Yeah, they're really not that interesting.

Not us though. We don't really want the grasses cut and hauled away. We're letting it grow wild for now and will be mulching it so we can help restore the top soil.

Damn long-grassed hippies.

I've done some work down in the tree line. There's flat spot that I want to turn into a meditation garden. It sits under a huge oak tree and next to our little stream. Right now it's full of flowers...

Awwwww.

... and a giant honking orb spider.

EEEEEEEEEEEE

That's pretty much it for now. I've had some new stuff happen as far as the trenches go since I started this post, but that will wait for now. Hopefully I'll be sharing some concrete pouring in the next week or so.

Holy Crap, Things Are Happening

Yes! Things are happening. We've had our little house at the build site for a couple months now and thing have been steadily moving forward. One of the latest additions is a mobile wifi hotspot so that should make keeping the internet up to date much easier.

So, let's catch up.

We have actually been ready to start digging the foundation since mid-April, but the weather has been quite uncooperative. It rained.

                                   

                                                OH MY GOD DID IT RAIN

This month we've received about ten inches of rain, which is more than three times the normal monthly average. On the plus side, we've learned where all the low spots on the property are. On the down side, some of our neighbors have had their fields flooded.

The excavation we dug for our root cellar has become a pond.

                          

Complete with tadpoles.

Tiny sperm-frogs!

With all this rain we've only had four full days of sun. Why so little sun? Oh, because we expanded our solar electric system and mounted the panels on a nifty solar optimizing swivel mount. Of course. Mother Nature gives zero fucks about my ability to produce electricity. I know how it is.

Now with 90% more swivel

Jack does not approve of solar energy. Jack wants to watch the whole world burn.

We have our cats out here with us now. I was afraid that they wouldn't like the change, but that has not been the case. Jack has really enjoyed the new stomping grounds. He has effectively murdered all the rodents that were holed up in our shed. Given the poop and damage they were inflicting on our stuff, I'm not terribly upset by that.

Sweet, sweet murder

I've kept busy getting the gardens started. I started a bunch of plants from seed earlier this year. This year I was pressed for time so I just cut three garden plots. Eventually, I hope to have several raised beds.

Tomatoes, peppers, and okra

It's been tricky keeping all the plants happy with all this rain. The tomatoes and pepper are doing well, as are the rhubarb, melons, strawberries, and brussel sprouts. The okra doesn't seem to like the cooler weather, the onions the goji berry bush have gotten too much water, and I lost the sweet potatoes to root rot. Plus with the ground as wet as it is, weeding has been a pain in the butt.

Gutter berries

If the weather people are not lying to me (YOU BETTER NOT BE LYING *fistshake*) the weather should be clearing up soon and we can start the foundation. We tryed mowing the grass down and it was so wet that it destroyed the drive belt. So, I took the grass whip to the build site.                          

Whip it good

I braved the western swamp to measure out our setback and get the first stake put in place. Once the ground dries up a little more we can put up the batter boards.

Until then, we'll just relax a bit and enjoy the scenery.