This “he only takes cash” thing keeps coming up, and I’m sick of it. So I write a check to Bobby’s guy for $200, and tell Scott to give it to him and if he won’t take it, forget about it. Scott likes to come in my house at the end of the workday, plop himself in the comfy chair in my office and jaw for a while. It doesn’t matter if I’m in the middle of working. It doesn’t matter if I’m on the phone with a client. He just waits. Usually he’s updating me on stuff they got done that day, but most of the time that’s simply a prelude to brandishing a list of stuff he needs along with his hand out for my credit card or a check.

I originally had a home equity line that was supposed to finance this project. When that ran out, I applied for an increase. Due to the unfolding mortgage crisis, the bank only gave me half of what I asked for. When that was gone, I dipped into my rainy day money, spare cash in my brokerage account, my secret emergency stash, and then just started paying from my own earnings and praying that each week I would find enough money to pay for materials and labor. Then, I borrowed money from my mother, which I swore I wouldn’t do. Then, I decided to re-fi my house. Bank of America has taken its sweet time to do me. I applied for my loan on April 16, 2009. It’s now July 16 and still, no closing date. They say that I’m supposed to close before the end of August, but as of today, I don’t have anyone assigned to do me. I could turn this post into a long, angry rant about how I’ve been treated by Bank of America but I’ll spare you.

So, back to the story. Scott barges in, plops in the chair, and tells me he got the insulation. We were speculating earlier that it was so cheap because it probably “fell off a truck” somewhere, and I ask Scott if that was the case. He tell me that Bobby’s guy, whom we’ll call Wilbur, was living in a house with his girlfriend which was owned by her father. Wilbur is a very experienced construction guy and was fixing it up in exchange for rent. Scott says the house was in bad shape and that Wilbur was doing a bang-up job. According to Wilbur, he left for work one day and was barely out of the driveway (we’re talking about a rural area here, and the driveway can stretch quite a distance) when he realized he forgot something, so he turned around and went back. He walked in the house and discovered his girlfriend in bed with her father. Wilbur was sufficiently grossed out by that he decided not to live there anymore. So he’s got a bunch of construction materials in the yard that he’s not going to put into a house that he doesn’t live in. So that’s how we got a mess of insulation for a song.

Next thing I know, I see a guy in my yard that I don’t recognize. He’s small, wiry, shirtless, nearly toothless, and he’s drinking beer from one of those oddly tall cans. I only see him from the back, but I instantly suspect that it must be Wilbur. When Scott barges and plops later that day, he confirms it. Has he hired Wilbur, I inquire. No, he hasn’t, because he might drink too much, but he does specialize in a skill we might need later, and he’d do a really bang-up job. 

The original budget for the project was $71,000, which was the amount of my home equity line. In the beginning, Builder Scott told me he could turn the garage into something rentable for that. He even made me some budgets, which I found not so long ago and showed him. How naïve we were!

In June of 2008, I realized that we were going to run out of money. So I applied for an increase to my equity line. Since my house has increased in value more than 300% since I purchased it, I was fairly certain this would be a no-brainer. I asked for $50,000 more. Unbeknownst to me (and just about everyone, at least right then), the mortgage crisis was unfolding in all its glory.  Bank of America took 12 weeks to decide that they would increase me, but for $25K instead of the $50K I asked for.

As of January 2009, I have about $3000 left. I’m currently paying more on the equity line than I pay on my mortgage. So, basically, I’m paying for two houses every month. Except one of them isn’t finished. One of them has no roof, no wiring, no plumbing, no walls, no floors and no tenant. It has some really nice framing. And an unfinished wine cellar/storage area. It has uninstalled cabinets which currently live in my dining room. It has a really nice refrigerator, currently on my front porch. It has the Cadillac of wood stoves, the Tulikivi, which is in pieces all over my house.

I pay 4-5 guys every week to work on it. Yes, we have a lot of free/cheap materials, but there is lots of pricey wood from Nature Neutral. I feel like I’m the one that’s keeping Allied Concrete in business. I pay to rent scaffolding. I buy a lot nails. I still have to pay for the roof. The electrical. The plumbing. Flooring. More kitchen appliances. And what seems like a million other things.

How to do it?

Since I can’t afford to pay back any more than I’ve already borrowed, my only hope is that I can somehow EARN enough money to finish the cottage. I have no idea if this will work, but I’m going to give it a go.

So, for the cost of a little trucking, we now have enough brick to finish the porch columns and the back side of the Recycled House. We also have floor joists, bridgework, and some nice heart pine. And some steel beams that we will have cut, not fabricated. And some cool track lighting. Oh, and a package of GreenGuard insulation board, still wrapped, that costs like $40. Scott and Helper Cary are going back tomorrow to score some more. They are planning to rip out a wood floor and they are moving backwards out of the room.

It was going to go some landfill. We will be giving the materials a good home. So, a win-win!

Builder Scott called me late in the afternoon last Wednesday.

“I’m at Habitat. There are cabinets here. Come over.” he says.
“How many?” I say.
“There’s four. They’re hickory. They’re good. Come over.” he says.
“That’s not enough,” I say. “I think they should all match, don’t you?”
“It’s a small kitchen. These are good. Come over.” he says.

So I go. (Actually, my stupid car wouldn’t start, so Scott came and got me and we went back together.)

The cabinets are good. But there are only four. There are guys bringing other cabinets in the door as we’re standing there.

“What about those?” I say.
“They’re white,” Scott says.
“But there are a ton of them,” I say, “And they all match!”
He ponders.
“Maybe we could send them out to the cabinet shop and get them painted,” he says.
“Or maybe we could paint the walls some crazy color and clean them up and keep them white,” I say.
“Maybe could send them out to the cabinet shop and get them painted some crazy color,” he says.

We ask the guy to price them. We know that if we bought them at say, Lowe’s, or a custom shop, they would be anywhere between $2500 - $6000.
Scott predicts the guy will come back with a price of about $1500.
I make no prediction, because I don’t incessantly and compulsively hang out at Habitat for Humanity like Scott does.
The guy comes back with a price of $850.
I buy them on the spot.

Here’s how they looked on that day. I’ll put a picture of the finished result in the slide show.

You can smell the cedar-y loveliness through the plastic. When I saw him later in the day, I asked him what it was for. He’s already put in a wine cellar, which I think is ridiculous in a rental. We now refer to it as the “wine cellar/storage area.” So, I’m never quite sure when he leaves stuff like this on the bench.

“Everyone loves cedar closets,” Scott replies.
“It’s a RENTAL!” I say. That’s pretty much what I always say. Have I mentioned that costs are spinning out of control? The last thing I give a crap about is cedar in the closets. I parlay all this to Scott.
“I already have the cedar,” he says.
“And how much did I pay for the cedar?” I say, incredulously. I write all the checks. Scott usually tells me what they are for. I’m unsure how he’s snuck a bunch of cedar planks into our recent purchases, although we have been buying a ton of wood lately.

Scott goes on to tell me that I haven’t paid for it. He tells me that about a year ago, he’s at the gas station filling up his truck. He sees a guy there with a bunch of cedar logs in his truck. So, Scott being Scott, he approaches Cedar Guy and asks him what he’s planning to do with it. Cedar Guy tells Scott that he’s cut down a bunch of trees for his mother. He’s cut some of the wood into 3-5 foot portions because he thinks they would be nice to burn in his fireplace, but most of it is uncut and he’s not quite sure how he’ll get rid of it.

Scott offers to take it off Cedar Guy’s hands. Cedar Guy agrees, but he wants Scott to pay for his gas to get it over to Scott’s house. Scott agrees, and off they go. As a bonus, Scott offers to fill up the guy’s tank afterwards, too. Cedar Guy is thrilled, and Scott has a bunch of beautiful cedar logs, some of which are going into the Recycled House with the rest going into the house Scott’s building for himself, if he ever gets around to actually building it.

I mention this to Scott. He’s pleased that I’ve got it. W.A. Hartman is the local tombstone company. He’s contracted with them to carve us a cornerstone. They’ve sent the proof. They want a grand total of $34 for it.

I happily agree. We make some modifications to the layout. They make it. We send it back a few times, because we want to background to be brown, not black. So it ends up costing like $100. It’s nice, though, don’t you think?

Simply because I’ve stopped purchasing them doesn’t mean I don’t want them. So every once in a while, I cut up a potato, heat up a bunch of oil in pan, and make them. They come out great, but I hate messing around with all that oil.

I was on the web a few weeks ago looking at baked potato chip recipes, which seem to be healthier. And then, I stumbled across a MICROWAVE recipe. Woo-hoo! After some experimentation, I’m now making them um, nearly every day.

Here’s how: (makes 1 serving)

1. Use one medium size potato. Not the waxy kind. The russet-y kind.
2. A food processor with the slicer blade makes slicing the potato take like one second. A mandolin would be good, too. Or just use a knife to cut thin slices.
3. Arrange in concentric circles on a plate. Spray with cooking spray, or brush with olive oil. Don’t drown them, and don’t spray the crap out of them. Turn over, and repeat.
4. Sprinkle with salt. Or salt and pepper, or whatever it is you like on your chips. Experiment with salting on both sides, or just one side. Note: do not think you can salt them after they’re cooked. You can’t. The salt doesn’t stick.
5. In my microwave it takes about 9 minutes. Microwave temperatures vary, so watch ‘em at the end. They turn brown at the very end. Just cook ‘em until they are as brown and crispy as you like. Toast your bread for sandwich, make your sandwich, do a few dishes from yesterday and play with your pets for a few minutes and they’ll be done.
6. Enjoy!

We’re finally starting to go UP! Builder Scott has started framing the back end of the structure where our little sunroom will be. The center part will contain one of our gigant-o windows, and although it’s a small space, it should be a pleasant one.

We’ve been lucky enough to have a young fellow named Jamison who’s been helping out Scott for the last couple of weeks. He’s been a pleasure, as he speaks English, takes direction well, and digs ditches like there’s no tomorrow.

Jamison is leaving town, so the search is on for some more helpers.

A couple of hours later, he rang the doorbell. Somehow, he'd dropped his phone down a hole and he couldn't get it out. He'd been trying for quite some time, and was out of ideas. So, I accompanied him outside to investigate.

A little backtracking. I was the one who insisted that Scott get a cell phone in the first place. I signed him up for his plan and gave him an old phone I had. He's lost it a few times, left it in places, and changed the phone number without telling me, but basically, it's worked out pretty well. Now that he has it, he uses it all the time, but is mad that he can't get along without it.

He does have one of those little cases that clips on to his belt. It's not a good one, though, and the phone falls out of it sometimes when he's bending over or crawling around. That's what happened today, and that phone was five or six feet down in a little hole in the foundation.

He'd tried getting it with his crowbar, a bungie cord, a long wooden stick, and other devices he'd cooked up, to no avail. I suggested we try the Coat Hanger Method, and he agreed. While I was walking up on the little piece of wood we use as a gangplank, it fell off, sending me tumbling unceremoniously a few feet down into the mud. Stupidly, I was wearing sandals, and my toe is now killing me. The Coat Hanger Method was a bust. I suggested that we contact the phone people and have them Fed Ex a new phone. But Scott was in no mood to wait.

Finally, he used brute force. He used the crowbar and his big mallet to cut a hole in the concrete block. We could see the phone through the hole. Scott's hand was too big to fit in, so I climbed down, reached in, and was able to grab it.

Back in January, I wrote a little something about The Angry Neighbor who owns the house behind me but doesn’t live in it.

I got a call from the City of Charlottesville, and apparently, she’s still angry. She’s angry about this 15-foot strip of grass that’s between her yard and mine. She’s convinced it’s some sort of public roadway. And she’s mad that she can’t drive her car on it because we have a bunch of construction materials there.

The gal from the City was quite nice. It’s not clear who “owns” it. Water and sewer lines are under it. It is clear, to the Angry Neighbor, that the power pole I paid Dominion Power $600 to move on it is making it impossible to drive her vehicle on it. Let me be clear that this area is not paved. It’s doesn’t have gravel. It does not in any way resemble what could be called an alley, a street, or a road. It’s a strip of grass.

The Angry Neighbor actually called me the other day. I attempted to be very friendly and helpful. I asked her probably eight times why she wanted to drive her car in there. She just kept saying that I was denying her access to her property. Finally, she mumbled that she wanted to get some bricks that were in the back of her yard. I offered to have my guys move the bricks to wherever she’d like them. She replied that I was denying her access to her property, and that if all the neighbors whose homes touched that strip of grass decided to split it, or buy it or somehow take ownership of it, she wouldn’t be able to access her property. And that she thought it was quite thoughtless of me to have not discussed my project with her before I embarked on it, since I was denying her access to her property.

I told her that I discussed the project with the people who lived there before her, and that they were fine with it. She told me that she’s owned the property for two years. I replied that I’ve never seen her, and that since she doesn’t live in the house, there was really no way for me to have done that, and that her renters seemed to fine with it. She replied that she didn’t want to see playground equipment in my yard.

That stopped me. Apparently, the Angry Neighbor thinks I’m going to rent my funky little eco-cottage to a family with eight kids. And they’ll all be playing in my backyard!

I assured her that that would never be happening. And that I was trying to be a good neighbor, and what could I do to make her feel better? Finally, she said if I could move the pallet of bricks that are on the strip of grass she’d be happier. And that if I could move the power pole, that would be good, too.

So, I told her I’d “look into” both those items. She called back about five minutes later. FYI, she says. The City says that many of the old sewer and water lines are made of terra cotta. And they are fragile. And that heavy stuff on top of the ground might break them. So I should think about moving my bricks immediately, just in case. Oh, yes, of course!, I say. But I wanted to ask her what she thinks about driving her very heavy vehicle on there might do to those potentially fragile terra cotta things under the ground. But I didn’t.

My goal this week is to find out the actual status of the strip of grass. I will report back!

As an entrepreneur, Uncle Sam takes an awful lot of my hard-earned income. Therefore, I take every deduction possible, which means keeping track of every penny I spend throughout the year.

In the past, I was a Quicken user. I had it hooked up to my online banking. I would categorize all my expenses in there when I’d download my banking data. Then, at the end of the year, I could pretty quickly generate a report with all my expense categories.

Quicken had a bunch of hiccups a few years ago and it paid all my memorized transactions twice. That’s when I stop using it for bill pay. I did login periodically and download my transactions so I could categorize them for my tax stuff.

I attempted to that this year. I assumed I could just log in and download a year’s worth of transactions. To my dismay, I found out that my bank and Quicken aren’t supporting my version any more. I was only able to get a small subset of the transactions. Arg! And, to add insult to injury, my bank keeps only about 6 months of online transactions available for download. Double Arg!

So, I started looking around online for some other solutions. I found this site called Wesabe and it’s really making my financial life easier.

Wesabe describes itself as “a community of real people dealing with real money issues.” People use it to get control over their spending, or make budgets, or talk about their credit card debt. I don’t care about any of that. I just want to track my expenses! And I want it to be secure, secret and private! Oh, and by the way, it’s FREE!

They spend a lot of time talking about security on their site. So I thought I would give it a go. What it has are these uploader tools. You basically set up the accounts you want to track, and then, it automatically uploads the data to your Wesabe account. In Wesabe, you can tag everything, and it learns over time. So, if you have a transaction with Kroger, you can tag it as “groceries”, and the next time it sees it, it will remember. Or, you can tag something with a “one-time” tag, which is good for that transaction only. Or, you can apply multiple tags.

It took me a few tries to get everything working and uploaded correctly. I also set up a cash account to track things I pay cash for. I had to download a bunch of my older bank statements as text files and convert them to a format Wesabe likes for manual upload. It took me several hours to go through a year’s worth of expenses and tag everything.

The reporting tools are not very good. I couldn’t get a report by tag for the year, which it turns out that others are kvetching about as well. What I did do is export all the transactions from all accounts, pop ‘em into Excel, sort by tag, and then insert subtotals. That also took me a while to figure out, but once you know how to do it, it actually takes just a few minutes. I just printed out that puppy and skipped over to my accountant’s office.

Now, Wesabe is chugging away in the background, uploading my stuff. I pop in there every month or so and do a little tagging of things it doesn’t know. My tax report for this year is going to be a walk in the park!

Blinksale

Blinksale is an online invoicing service. I’ve been looking at it for a while, but was resistant. Now that I’m using it, I cannot for the life of me remember why.

My old way was to make an invoice in Word. Enter it into my little Excel spreadsheet. Send client the email with the attached file. My spreadsheet kept track of my total invoices as well as what was outstanding, and it served me well for many years. Except sometimes I would forget to mark if someone paid. And then I would have to root around in my bank records to find out if they actually did.

So, I signed up for the free account, which allows you to send three invoices per month. It also gives you a link to your PayPal account if you want to let folks pay by credit card online. Sometimes my clients ask me about paying by credit card. So, I upgraded my PayPal account to a business one, and started invoicing through BlinkSale.

It’s really easy. And in a weird way, a little fun. The thing I like about it is that I can see all my invoices in one glance, and see how many days they’ve been out. You can set how many days the client has to pay, and it goes red when they are overdue. There’s a feature called “Send Reminder” which I now adore. After a month, I upgraded to the $12-a-month account, which allows 50 invoices a month. (No, I don’t do that kind of business! Wish I did! But sometimes, the 3 per month wasn’t doing the job.)

The only thing I don’t like about it is there is no way to automatically add on the 2.9% PayPal charges if the client is paying with a credit card. I found that out when I had to eat $74 of a recent invoice. That’s a pretty good dinner for two! So now, I’m being more judicious with the PayPal link when I send out the invoice.

I’m not one of those people who get new computers every two years. I get a new one when my old one is really on its last legs, because transferring all my software and setting up all my applications takes days and days. So, in the past ten years, I’ve had a laptop and two desktops. The one I’m using right now is four years old.

For reasons I can’t really fathom, I like to save all my email. Well, most of it, anyway. I think I might need it. And I have referred back on occasion. I’m pretty organized when it comes to my email. I have a subfolder under my inbox for each client, and I have a zillion message rules set up to route incoming mail to the right box. That way, I have a record of all communications with clients for easy access. However, since I have currently have 1356 messages in my Inbox going back to the year 2000, perhaps I’m not as organized as I think I am. The older ones are just carry-overs from old computers.  I really should archive those. Or get rid of them. But for some reason, I think that the second I delete them, I’ll regret it.

Those emails are kind of like a weird diary, capturing things I did that day. Some of the emails are from people with whom I’ve lost touch, and I’m sure their email addresses have changed. Why do I keep those? And some are from friends and loved ones who have died. I lost my Dad last year, and somehow, looking at his emails (which were usually just Excel spreadsheets from our little family stock-investing club with “Love, Dad” at the end) are comforting.

You’d think I’d save all my paper stuff, too. But I don’t. I throw away bank statements, all my bills, and most of the snail-mail I get. So what is it with the ten years worth of email? Am I the only one, or are there others out there like me?

Builder Scott has been working with his guy Larry at the window place. (I originally had the name of the window place in this space, but Scott thinks if everyone knows his secret sources, they will all be calling asking for leftovers and there won’t be anything left for him to pick from in the future.) Yes, they have “state of the art showrooms with full-sized displays featuring the most current and innovative quality windows, doors, accessories and options”. We want a lot of windows for the Recycled House. We want some really big ones. And those babies are obscenely expensive. As mentioned previously, our budget is miniscule. We’ve budgeted $9000 for windows. Some of those big ones cost over $2000 each.

So the biggest shout-out of all goes to Builder Scott, who simply asked Larry, “What do you have that’s left over?” And Larry was happy to share that they have warehouses in Charlottesville and Charlotte that are full of cast-offs from persnickety rich people that he’d love to unload. So far, we’re getting over $20,000 worth of windows for about $8200. I haven’t actually seen them, but Scott’s just about swooning, which is quite amusing to see.

Builder Scott came to the door today, and I could tell he was frazzled. He was so frazzled I had to get him a glass of water so he could take his blood pressure medicine. Then I made him pet Miss Lily for a while because she’s very soft and cuddly and she makes him laugh.

Scott is in a continuous battle with Charles Manson. Charles doesn’t like change orders. Scott thinks that if Charles could work on brick ramblers for the rest of his life he’d be happy. But our project isn’t your usual thing. It’s fairly organic, and things are changing as they are happening. Scott is making adjustments to the structure because there have been some changes from the original plans due to some circumstances that Scott couldn’t predict. One of them was that the excavators dug a deeper hole in the ground than anticipated, so we have build the foundation up higher. We’ve also made some adjustments to where the windows will be, and a few other things. Charles doesn’t like the fact that Scott is questioning his 22 years of experience. Scott isn’t doing that. He just wants things done in a certain way, using specific materials in specific places, and Charles seems to forget who’s working for whom. Masonry is hard work. Scott’s trying to be accommodating. But trying to work with a curmudgeon is always a bitch.

To add insult to injury, Scott had a confrontation with the couple who own the house behind me. I was good friends with the older couple who owned the place for many years. They moved out about a year ago, and I never see the folks who moved in so I haven’t had an opportunity to introduce myself. Apparently, the woman who owns the place thinks what I’m doing is “an abomination” and that I’m “encroaching on the public right-of-way” and that my project is “ruining everything” about their house. Turns out THEY DON’T LIVE THERE! It’s a rental! And it’s a piece of crap house, too.

I told Scott that next time, send those types over to my house. I’m happy to tell them in a very nice way that I don’t give a flying you-know-what about what they think!