Rumplestiltzskin

I guess I haven't really sat down in this room for a bit. The office job continues to be just what I need right now. I gotta be a little more careful now I suppose because somebody will probably find this if I don't want them too, but I do think it is going to be the perfect job for me. I'm going to learn a lot about how to seal a building properly from the weather, which is an art that has been lost or value engineered out of construction over the last few decades.

But it still is (primarily) an office job, and as such it won't be that hard to leave when I'm finishing up at Concordia in about 19 months and need to student teach. At least that's the plan, which never seem to work out as they are planned, but I feel like I've got a few good options going. This job, teaching license in the future, and I will still have my contractor's license. So any of those three plus whatever life throws my way, I should be alright. I don't presume to know what will happen.

I met up with a realtor and looked at a house on Saturday, the one linked to in previous house posting. 4736 N Haight, ML#8046334. It is in fact the house and location of my dreams. For about the right asking price, $213k. And I crunched the numbers, and with the help/cosigning/$ that Fleming would offer me if I asked, I could pull it off right now. But it would be pretty ugly, a risk that I'm not even comfortable with, and I think that's saying a lot. Like butter spread over too much bread. Now if I wait until about January, my financial picture is going to be a lot simpler. I would still be talking about trying for an FHA loan with only 3% down, and things would certainly still be quite tight, but I think that then it will be a much better risk. And I'm still fairly Hazardous.

But this property was IT. It might still even be around in six months, but I won't be holding my breath. All the electrical (knob and tube) and probably the plumbing has to be ripped out and replaced, it needs a furnace and likely a roof, the basement might be a bit damp, the kitchen is original 1906, the garage is boarded shut and needs to be knocked down, the windows are rippled single pane and the whole thing isn't really insulated at all. The asbestos siding is actually in awesome shape and would be at the very bottom of the list of things to fix, but it is asbestos. All of which is why it might still be around.

It will likely be gone because I'm not the only one who can see the beautiful fir floors and ten foot vaulted ceilings throughout the entire 1000sf first floor. Or the potential to rip out one of the bedrooms and put in stairs to the huge empty attic space and add about 650sf worth of bedrooms, bathroom(s?), windows and skylights. Or the ability to finish and configure the basement space into about a 700 sf full apartment with separate outside rear entrance. And the golden location in NoPo near the booming Mississippi district, 12 blocks from the MAX and 10 from I-5.

I would imagine if I were to get in there tomorrow it would take me 3-5 years of evenings and weekends to get it to where it can be. But that would be a money maker, a 2600 sf property with easily 4 bedrooms, 3 baths, separate rentable space downstairs or up, wide open floor plan on the main floor, and a good mixture of new and old everywhere. You can tell I'm a little excited. But if this isn't the one for me there will be something better, I have felt a significant peace difference in my heart in the moments when I have thought about waiting vs. those of diving in right now. But if one of you wants to buy it I would highly recommend it.