Monday September 15, 2014
Blog For A Day!
Time to write another Blog. I wrote one 5 days ago so now I need to put on my thinking cap and write another one. Our daughter will have a birthday this coming Friday the 19th.
She will be 23 years old. She is mildly retarded but does a good job at most things. She loves to work with small children as you can see above. I think I will have to write more and finish this Blog tomorrow.
Tuesday September 16, 2014 I had to go to the next day to continue.
My Blog is a reflection of what I am dreaming about and based on my past memories.(I guess you probably already knew that!)
My first house was an interesting thing. Denny Wessels, who I wrote a tribute to a few Blogs ago, was involved in getting me set up with a contractor that he knew and was helping him with some of his construction challenges. His friend was in the process of building a 3 bedroom ranch-style home in the Northwest part of Fort Dodge. (21st Avenue North) to be exact. I went out there to observe the house and the workmanship. I had helped a contractor build homes as I was growing up in high school. I was taught good construction and poor construction. For example poor construction was when the builder used 2X6’s rather that 2X10’s for the floor joist and ceiling rafters.
I also learned to check the basements for possible water seepage. A good contractor will make sure that the basement walls are well coated with tar to seal them from the water.
There were many more things I learned to look for but they are too numerous to mention. I was convinced that this builder was doing a very good job. He was not finished with the wood trim, doors and windows on the inside. He also had not used any flooring other that the wood covering the floor rafters. He also had not done any outside yard seeding or landscaping yet.
I then had a great idea. Maybe he would lower the selling price if I did some of the finishing work. The house was priced at $21,950. He agreed to lower the cost to $19,500 if I did the finishing work. The materials would still be furnished as part of the building.
Finishing wood trim on interior of house…
It was a very cost saving move on my part and we spent our time doing all the finishing, painting and varnishing, finally it was done and ready for us to move in. We also did all the yard work. We seeded the front yard and sodded the side and backyard. The seeding took longer but was actually a better looking yard than the part that we sodded.
We were then ready to move in to our new 3 bedroom house. We enjoyed it very much. We put indoor/outdoor carpet tiles in the dining room and kitchen areas
Keeping it clean was pretty easy and if we spilled something really bad, we could replace the tile where it was ruined.
One interesting sidelight was that years later after we had moved to a different house there was a tornado that went very close to our street. Our original house had little damage but the houses around it were totally demolished.
See you at the next Blog.
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