Killing time in a small "2 car" garage

[BoilermakerFan]

It will slow down when the interest rate starts creeping up. Our realtor here told me that our house has gone up in value at least 10% since we first spoke in early January. We listed and sold our land in TN in a day. The value of it went up more than 35% from December.

Houses are selling in a day or two in Carmel and within 5 days in north Indy, but fortunately, the values haven't skyrocketed and very few are having bidding wars. Most are just selling for full asking price. I look at the cost per square foot and most are in line with other areas of the state. If the cost per square foot is much higher than average to Carmel, I just skip over that house. They're usually in the most desirable neighborhoods and have been updated with higher end materials. Usually I find those gaudy or I just don't care to pay that dollar point when there are so many great neighborhoods in the area. If somebody else just has to live in that neighborhood, pay their insanely high HOA fee, and a 30%-50% premium per square foot; they can be my guest. Most of the neighborhoods in Carmel feed into the same high school so I'm perfectly fine buying a bigger house in an older neighborhood that doesn't have all the "amenities" or very restrictive HOAs of the premier ones.

The other item that does kind of shock me is how many houses are built on slabs that are going for the same price per square foot as a house with a basement! A house on a slab in the price range we're looking is a hard stop No Go for me and my wife. A basement is a must have for us. I don't care if it's already finished or not, in some ways, I'd prefer an unfinished basement, but we must have a basement.

I'd also prefer a 3 car garage, but we'll settle for a large 2 car garage as long as I can build a detached garage in the backyard later and put a yard barn out there for now. The cities allow that, but many of the HOAs do not. Carmel is much more likely to have a restrictive HOA than in Indy proper, but our realtor up there knows our desires and must haves so she can quickly let us know either way. I also usually use Google Earth to "fly over" the neighborhood. If I don't see any yard barns or detached shops, I know that neighborhood doesn't allow them and I move on.

 

[OutlawDrifter]

I could never live in an HOA...it would be hard enough for me to live in "town"!

 

[BoilermakerFan]

I could never live in an HOA...it would be hard enough for me to live in "town"!

I don't mind HOAs where the funds pay for snow removal, maintenance of common areas/parks, and ban political signs... but I have a real problem with them when they allow giant playsets/swingsets or trampolines while forbidding yard barns or detached garages. To me, a giant swingset and trampoline in a backyard is a much bigger "eye sore" than a building, especially when the city allows them and has very specific requirements for them. We saw several neighborhoods with large ponds in them and they where posted No Fishing. No Boating. No Radio Control vehicles. WTF! FU!

 

[BoilermakerFan]

Holy ****! What a crazy weekend.

Friday we hauled another trailer of stuff up to Carmel and looked at 3 houses.

The original house we thought we were going to buy through a private sale was cool, but not for us and not a good location. Plus the price has crept up and up. The latest price was $425K! AND they wanted to close the first week in June but but keep possession of the house until July 16th with no cost to them! We passed.

Then we looked at another that didn't have a basement but was pretty amazing and checked all the boxes. A neighbor backed into my daughter's car which we were bringing up to her. So we met one of the neighbors literally by accident. He was nice and he said he hoped we bought the house so he could pay my son to mow his yard!

The third was cool and HUGE, almost 4,000 sq/ft with the finished space in the basement, but needed repairs and it was seriously dated. Nothing had been done inside since 1986 and there was MILES of wallpaper in the house. Every damn room. We were very concerned because it would have the upper limit of what we want to spend and needed at least $40K in work in the first 2 years. Probably needed $75K total invested within 5 years.

We dropped off the Uhaul trailer Friday night and my daughter graduated from Purdue Saturday morning.

While waiting for graduation to start I talked to my folks and our realtor. We decided to write a very aggressive offer on the second house and skip the possible money pit. Our realtor wrote it up while we're at the graduation. We signed it that afternoon after the ceremony.

Then we drove home Saturday night.

By Saturday night, the money pit house was pending. Probably dodged a bullet there.

Offers were due on the house we put in for today by 5:30p their time. I reached out to our realtor this evening. She even put in her offer cover letter that we met the neighbor by accident. The seller's agent called her for the story. She said it's fate. The house should be ours.

We put in an escalation clause in our offer so we should be given the opportunity to beat any other offers. The house had 8 offers. They narrowed it down to three. One cash offer, ours, and another with a capped escalation clause. Our clause was uncapped. The rest of our offer was better than the other one with the capped escalation. Our realtor had our mortgage approval and had submitted that too, so our offer was as solid as the cash offer and we had a written guarantee that we could close within 21 days from our lender if necessary or they would pay us $2500. So we were just about as solid as the cash offer and only $3K less. The cash offer didn't have an escalation clause. Bad news for them, great news for us.

It came down to revising our offer by bumping it a bit, increasing the appraisal gap, and possession terms. Originally they asked for closing mid-June with 10 days after closing for possession. The revised offer is close June 16 or June 17 and they have possession until July 7 at no cost. I clarified if the selling price was staying the same at the slightly higher offer or was it escalated higher. It was staying the same. Uh. Hell yeah I agree to that! That's hella cheaper than increasing the sales price another $3K-$6K. The sellers have a family reunion the week before so they won't even be in the house. And then they sweetened the deal for us. Utilities stay in their name until July 7. So they're paying the utilities for those 3 weeks.

WE GOT THE HOUSE!

And I forgot to mention, the house sits on a 0.58 acre (25,250 sq/ft) lot and no HOA! But we can pay to have access to the facilities of the neighborhood just to the north, which is my favorite neighborhood in Carmel because it has an amazing lake. Seriously, we get the best of both! NO HOA and access to the amenities of the neighborhood we love but have been priced out of by crazy over bidding.

The attached 2-car garage is roughly finished as well. It needs to have some drywall repaired, then primed and painted. I'll probably epoxy the floors and make sure the exterior wall is insulated. I'll install the heater from our current garage so my wife will have a warm car in the winter.

Next summer I'll build a yard barn or detached shop. Neither will happen this year. But there's room in the garage for the popup camper and my motorcycle on the one side. The driveway is 3 cars wide already too, so when my son gets the Forester in 2 years, it has a parking spot. I'll be buying a Ford Ranger to replace the Forester as my daily and I'll add an engine block heater since it will be parked in the driveway.

Now we just need to get the punch list on this house done in the next 2 weeks so we can list it.

I won't be on GJ much, if at all, until that's done.

 

[xtremek]

Congrats on the purchase. No HOA is huge, very cool. Don't worry about a block heater, we don't get cold enough for them to be necessary, and they don't get you a warm car that much faster. All 6 of our running vehicles and the tractor sit outside year-round. If they fail to start, it's usually a sign the battery is due for replacement, not the outside temp.

 

[driftpin]

That's good news, congratulations. Work-time!

I grew-up just-south of Lake Ontario, and we never-had a block heater on our gas vehicles. I recall many times it would be in the minus-'teens or colder. My oldest brother had a ~'54 Mercury convertible which he had to get started in the pre-dawn a.m., and as the youngest boy, it was my assigned duty to go-out to the yard, and to help him start his car, while he popped the hood and used cans of ether with the air cleaner removed. Two things I'll never-forget: the sweet aroma of the ether, and his long and oft-repeated string of curses, as he struggled to get the car started to drive to work. The across-the-street neighbors used-to complain to my parents about his pre-dawn cursing. They said, "we already have an alarm-clock, and it doesn't swear at-us!"

 

[OutlawDrifter]

Congrats!

 

[BoilermakerFan]

Thanks guys. With the budget being tighter to make the purchase of the house we loved in the neighborhood we wanted to be in and the insanity of construction material prices, the detached shop is a couple to few years out. 7 weeks and 2 days until we get out of this **** town!

And thanks for the advice on the block heaters. I had a 1988 Plymouth Caravelle in college. It was the equivalent of the Dodge 600, a step up from the K Car. I got it in high school at the end of my junior year. It was my dad's former company car. Goodyear offered it to him for $3K! BlueBook was around $7500 and we knew it's history. My dad never had a single problem with it. Not one. I was driving and paying my folks for a 1981 Buick Regal at the time. My sister was getting her license and needed a car. So my dad said that if I was willing to drive a 4-dr box on wheels, he'd buy it and give it to me. My sister would get the Regal until his next company car was up for employee purchase. A free car is a free car. I ripped off the hideous hub caps, tinted the windows, and painted the chrome trim white to match the car. It looked like a cheap knockoff of a Nissan Maxima at the time. I didn't care. I think the car had 58K miles on it when I got it. Drove it through the rest of HS and college.

One day at Purdue it got stupid cold during my second junior year. My wife was my girlfriend at the time. She needed to get somewhere and her car was dead. Her friends cars were dead. My grandmother's car was dead. Nobody else's car would start or stay running. My tank fired up, slower than usual, but started right up. It was night time so when I turned on the headlights, both bulbs burned out instantly. BUT the car was running and the high beams worked! So I taxied friends to their jobs, rant to the grocery for my grandmother and basically drove around for about 4 hours shuttling friends or running to stores. The car never hiccuped once. Never got stuck in the snow or ice. That's when it was officially named the tank. We finally traded in that car for a 1996 Toyota T100 that Toyota basically paid me to drive... and I was given $2500 for it in trade! That car only depreciated $500 over the 6 years I had it! It had over 177K miles on it then. Never had to put more into it other than wear and tear maintenance items and 2 sets of tires either. I think it had nine different stereos in that 6 year span. 3 replaced under warranty because the CD players would break easily.

My wife and I still miss that car a little. A white shoebox on wheels that never left us stranded.

 

[Grumblebum]

Congrats on the new digs, sounds like it worked out well.

GB

 

[xtremek]

Thanks guys. With the budget being tighter to make the purchase of the house we loved in the neighborhood we wanted to be in and the insanity of construction material prices, the detached shop is a couple to few years out. 7 weeks and 2 days until we get out of this **** town!


My wife and I still miss that car a little. A white shoebox on wheels that never left us stranded.

The count down is too funny, but I get it. And those cars that are dependable are worth their weight in gold. I've had a couple of them. Old Ford pickups (pre-'73), 60's Bugs, late 70's Fiestas, and 1st Gen Saturns. They were cheap rides, but they held up to my abuse. And I use that word in its most extreme terms. I'd rather have a reliable 5hitbox that handles my habits, over an expensive vehicle that breaks down every time I push past its limits of intended use.

 

[BoilermakerFan]

Less than 7 weeks now until we get to move in. So my wife is in full PANIC mode that this house isn't on the market. I actually have our realtor coming over this week to walk through again and point out the last little items he wants done before we list. He's going to my wife in person that it's OK. Better to wait a week and get more little things done than go on the market faster with little details not looking their best.

I've had my cheap Porter-Cable 60gal air compressor for around 20 years now. It's served me well, but I'm not taking it to the new house. But in the last few weeks my wife has discovered how awesome a big compressor is to have ready to go. She just uses an air gun. To blow off sanding dust, etc. We discovered an awesome use for it. Blowing off all the custom window blinds in the house! What used to take hours to clean took maybe 15 minutes total.

So, since she's on the hook, buying a new compressor for the next house will be an easy sell... except I want to upgrade to a much better unit. And I run my compressor hard at times. But then it can go a week without being used at all. Sometimes 2-3 weeks. I'm really torn about buying once and crying once or buy a little cheaper unit and whimpering. The buy once, cry once dream compressor is the FIAC from Obsessed Garage. I used to sell industrial air compressors so I see the long term value of the 80gal vertical unit. But if I go for a cheaper 2-stage piston unit on a bigger tank I could buy an air dryer and still come in under the cost of just the FIAC. I was originally going to go with the Eastwood scroll compressor but their quality isn't high enough for the price they command.

Does anyone know of a quieter, 100% duty cycle compressor that in the $3K-$4K range?

 

[driftpin]

You're not that-far from St. Johns MI, home of Saylor-Beall, from the new home. Look at a 735, they have it in splash lubricated and pressure lubricated. https://www.saylor-beall.com/tank-mounted-vertical/ well-below $3K. 5 HP, 80 cu. ft. tank 240V 1 ph, 17.3 CFM and one of the best reputations around.

 

[xtremek]

Feel free to drop by if you head this way. One of their sales guys used to go to my church. Super nice guy.

 

[BoilermakerFan]

Thanks guys! I'll check out S-B.

Our current house is going on the market the first week of June.

The finish line is close! I'm almost done killing time!

 

[BoilermakerFan]

Ten days until we close on our new house!

We've been working non-stop to get this house ready to list. Lost 3 or 4 days last week because of rain. Now we'll be ready for pics on Tuesday but it's going to be raining through the week so our realtor is aiming for Wednesday or Thursday.

Oh well. At least today the rain was intermittent enough that I was able to finish up the exterior stuff like power washing the sidewalk and garage. Probably appropriate that this is the best the garage has looked in 21 years.

This pic will be the end of Killing Time!

 

[jon72vega]

Congrats on the new home!

 

[BoilermakerFan]

Congrats on the new home!

Thanks Jon!

Our realtor came by this evening to take pics of the exterior views for the listing. Tomorrow he comes back at 3p to take the interior pics and we sign the listing contract. Hopefully it's listed by Thursday morning and we'll have the showings start on Friday afternoon.

That gives me a little more time to finish up some small items in the basement and pack more stuff so the unfinished area doesn't look like a disaster!

T minus 8 days to closing and the sellers of our new house agreed to our inspection requests to have the insulated windows in the sunroom repaired and we're getting an $800 credit for the oven that went out after we were under contract.

I'm going to see if I can order the oven controller for the existing range and repair it. I already had to replace the controller on our Kenmore range about 3 years ago, less than a year after it went out of warranty. If I can't get the part, we'll use the $800 towards a nicer range we found at Lowes or HD.

 

[BoilermakerFan]

We closed on our new house Wednesday afternoon!

We accepted a contingent over asking price offer on our current house that morning but we still had showings all week. Saturday night we heard we were getting a second offer but our contingent buyers went under contract for their house so our house officially went Sale Pending Saturday night.

We close on our old house July 30th. The home inspection will be scheduled this week so we'll see what that turns up as a request from the buyers. There shouldn't be any items except maybe fixing some seals on windows in the sunroom. Everything else is good or already being addressed.

We get possession of the new house July 7th and will be unloading the truck the morning of July 10th. I will be pressure washing the garage floor the morning of July 8th so I can make an assessment of its condition and feasibility for epoxy coating it in the fall. My wife saw pictures of garages with epoxied floors when we were house hunting and loved the way they looked, so she's game to epoxying our garage floor.

 

[xtremek]

Congrats on the pending sale

 

[BoilermakerFan]

Thanks Xtremek! We're scheduled to close on the old house on July 30th.

We took possession of our new house in Indy today! We load the moving truck Friday and drive back up Friday evening. Then we unload the truck Saturday morning.

 

[BoilermakerFan]

Here's a few pics of the new garage... Thursday morning I'll degrease and pressure wash the floor. Then I need to pressure wash the patio, driveway, and sidewalks.

The garage door is insulated and the previous owner believes the walls are insulated, but it was already finished when they bought it. Because of the HVAC equipment, water heater, and water softener the garage is conditioned space. It's not cooled or heated to match the house, but he said it stays about 15-20 degrees cooler than outside in the summer and about 20 degrees warmer than outside in the winter.

I'm still considering adding a minisplit in the future.

The driveway and patio have quite a few cracks that I'll need to fix for now. Eventually we'll have both repoured.

And my wife wants to build the barn in the backyard sooner than later! She wants to add basically a car port off the back of it big enough to put the travel trailer under. She wants to make it big enough to protect a bigger camper since right now we just have the tiny popup.

I'm fine with her calling it a yard barn... I wanted to make the detached garage look like a barn anyway.

 

[BoilermakerFan]

Pressure washed the garage floor today at the new place. Even with concrete degreaser, it's not going to take epoxy well even with grinding.

I may call a pro out to see if they can grind down the center section and get a slope towards the door. As it is now, water pools along the top third in front of HVAC and water heater, but not right in front of it. If they can do that, then I'll probably have that done, then grind the whole thing so it can be sealed. I see RaceDeck or similar tiles in my future.

After I had the garage done I pressure washed most of the driveway. I don't think it's ever been pressure washed in 41 years. I didn't have time to pressure wash the sidewalks or patio. I need to clean up the grass along the edges of all the sidewalks before I clean them. The grass has easily overgrown the sidewalks 3-4" on each side. The previous owners or their lawn service didn't trim to the edge... it's all trimmed, but not where it should be. Oh well, that's a project for August.

The mover show up tomorrow to load the truck.

 

[xtremek]

Good luck at the new place.

 

[BoilermakerFan]

We officially moved out of the house on July 27. That's when we pulled away in a 15' Uhaul truck puling a 5x9 utility trailer with my CX500 and the KZ440 project bike in the trailer, as well as a lot of other items from the garage. I found out late on July 26th that our closing was delayed until Aug. 13 or Aug. 16. That pissed me off. We were supposed to close July 30.

I planned to take a pic of the empty (or at least as empty as it was going to get) garage to close out this thread, but I was just flat exhausted and wanted to get on the road, so I forgot to take the pic. Since we still own the house, I had my dad go by today and grab a few things I had left in the garage that I still wanted but didn't have room for on our last trip. He also went in the house and checked on everything to make sure there were no surprises. All was good.

I'm about to start a new thread for the new garage so I'll post a link here to the new thread. After killing time in our first place for 21 years, this chapter of our lives and of Killing Time has come to an end.

 

[Johanfpa]

Looking forward to your new thread, all the best on the new place, it's looking good but sure you will make some improvements.

 

[jon72vega]

So the adventure begins!
Good luck with the new home, and closing on the old one.