New plan

Since our current house didn't appraise as high as we thought and hoped it would, we're going to take another route to pay for The Cat House.

We were going to take a line of credit (equity) and pay for it that way, but it would have an adjustable rate which could turn out really bad in the long run. No closing costs, but the interest could eat us up. Instead, we're going to refinance the thing at 4.9% for 15 years, which means the monthly payment on both places together will be about $600 more than we're paying now. We can manage that if I work until I'm 90 get a job in the Keys next school year and work a few years longer. There are still assistant positions open in several of the schools this year, so I'm hoping that I can get into one next August. Of course I have to have the summer off. I'd make half of what I make now and I'd have to work with *shudder* kids again, but I'd prefer that over staying up here another two or three years and being cold and in another state than Tom. Another state physically and mentally.

We won't be able to fix things up as quickly as we'd like; the plan now is to 1) make one bedroom liveable (upstairs guest room with tile on the floor as opposed to nasty carpet); 2) get the a/c running; and 3) get that pool going. We have an apartment sized stove that I never used and a small fridge that I did use; we'll haul them down and see if they work. If not, then we'll buy used and cheap to get us going. We'll tear out the cabinets in the kitchen so we can put down the new ceramic tile all over the house at the same time. The deck will be demolished right away and rebuilt when we have money. The toilets all seem to work and the bathroom upstairs isn't too nasty, so we can make do with that till we win the lottery rob a bank sell our current place and are able to start doing things right.

Lowe's has an online room visualizer which is helpful when I'm not cursing it remember to log in so I can save the rooms I put together. I did the entire master bath yesterday, couldn't save it no matter how much I cursed, closed it, then remembered that you can't save if you don't sign in.

The master closet HAS to be torn out and redone (that little mold problem) and we'd like to rearrange the bathroom anyway because it has so much wasted space. We'll put the bathroom where the closet was (in the very back) with French doors leading to the deck and the outside shower. When we actually have those two things. There won't be a window in there when it's rearranged. The bath will be 10' x 10' instead of the current 10 x 13. The closet will be between the bedroom and bathroom, not totally sure about the size but probably the same size as the bathroom. Smaller if we decide we want the bedroom to be bigger. That probably won't be necessary, though, because we'll have built-ins in the closet so we won't need any furniture in the bedroom but the bed and bookshelves.

When we go down to close (probably the last week of this month) we'll take a load of crap stuff with us, possibly the bed in the guest room, or at least the mattress, and if the place doesn't stink too much (tile in that bedroom, remember) we'll actually stay in our house in the Keys. Doesn't that sound nice? I'll be adding it to a lot of conversations; "We're retiring to our house in the Keys." "Oh, yes, we bought a little place in the Keys." "We're living in the Keys." Like that.

We'll have to have the electricity turned back on in our name, same with the water. We may take our little window a/c with us because that a/c unit in our house in the Keys won't be operational. We'll arrange for tenting the place (damn bugs, mainly termites).

I want this house to look really nice when we're finished, so I'm stepping out of my comfort zone and actually putting color on the master bedroom walls. Color that's not off white. Color that's sort of a dusty blue-green. Tom loves all shades of green, but they make me very uncomfortable. Don't know why. I'm trying to compromise with him by going the blue-green route. Darker walls. Maybe I'll sleep better then.

Maybe it's going to happen after all. I still can't quite believe it.