orangecat92

Am about to sell a home in the metroplex, but I vividly remembering soaking up all of the info I could get. Back in the day, 2002-2004, there were "first time homebuyer" seminars all over the place. I kept learning the same things over and over, and one thing that stuck with me is turning off the water to your house when you go on a vacation. We have had a water softener in our garage for years. I know that there are three ways to turn off the water to my house and I can easily do two of them. I don't own a "key" to the cutoff in the driveway. Don't need it. I am told most homeowners don't even know where the water cutoff is to their house. Also, if you have a choice you want a home with a hot water heater in the garage, elevated about two or three feet above the floor of the garage. When it breaks the water can simply flow out of the garage onto the street. Our last water heater breakage was January 2018. Kitchen was a mess. The other major item of interest was that one night one year in mid-April I was doing my family's income taxes. We were still in our apartment and on the back page of the 1040 was this mysterious MCC. I researched and found that as first-time homebuyers on a moderate income we qualified. 14 years later, we are selling, but that little bit of research earned us a $2000 annual tax credit= $28,000 over the last 14 years. That payoff, along with appreciation makes all of this remodeling stuff worth it, imo. The only thing that really didn't payoff I think was the decision to buy a house a little too big. Our home was advertised as 2306 square feet, the appraisal came back at 2725, and we've accumulated way too much junk since. 2306 would have meant far, far less junk to get rid of. The plus side is that 2725 is an absolute unique number. The floorplan for our house is either 2709 or 2703 feet.

Yep, that is where the idea came from for the carryon of frozen beef with ice. If I can get about 16 steaks in that carryon, we can eat steak almost once a week until we visit home in December.

Will be teaching in a village, off the road system. Big milestone today, bought a duffle bag. I remember from my national guard days how much stuff you can squeeze into one of those suckers. I am allowed two suitcases and one carry-on. Suitcases are allowed to weigh 50 pounds. The duffle bag is one of those. I am told Amazon Prime will be my friend for groceries. I plan to stuff that duffle to the 50 pound limit with clothes and then fill a 2nd suitcase with food. The flight to the hub- Dillingham-population 2400- is 11 and half hours. I am toying with the idea of loading the carryon with ice and frozen steaks. Alaska Airlines only allows the medical kind of ice. Here is the neat thing. I am going up first-with our big dog, and then the wife will come up later, after the house sells with the little dog. That way we learn from any mistakes I make traveling. Questions: 1. Anybody with any good advice about the food situation? 2. Anybody have any experience hunting Caribou or Elk? Any fat on those guys or is it all lean meat? ( I am told the village elders might invite me to go hunting. Of course I will say yes) 3. Any good advice about brand of rubber boots? I am told that is the one article of clothing that is necessary. thanks

Arkansas is the favorite I am guessing? More rest, one less game played. Did Oregon State use up their closer for game 1? If Arky pitcher is on, I would imagine they have advantage.

Germania rocks. After I had the fight of a lifetime in 14 with Allstate, (they finally gave in after I wrote two old-fashioned typed letters to the bigshots in Illinois) I went with Germania. In the metroplex two months ago we had two hailstorms, April 6 and 13. After the April 6 hailstorm that beat on my garage door bigtime I took my 2016 Hyundai in and got an appraisal that the car had over $6100 in damage. 500 deductible so I got a check for 5600, and I finally got smart, asked my credit union if I could put that check towards my loan. In a quick second he said yes, so I now owe just a little bit on a 16 car. Next came the homeowners, and I got a new roof, architectural shingles, next to best looking roof in neighborhood. I still have over $1300 in withheld depreciation. I will submit receipts when work is finished and probably get just over $1000 from the depreciation. Sure rates will go up next month for homeowners, but my roof is updated, new, and ready for the house to sell. Who cares about auto rates, with a benefit of over $5600. You can see a few dents on the roof of the car but it does not look like anywhere near $5600. In short Germania acted professionally from the get-go and paid off more in 4 years than All-State did in 10 years.

New guy to remodeling here. Getting house ready to sell. House is Fox and Jacobs built 2001. Big house for the money, 2700+ s. feet. I talked to someone and found Surplus Guys in Gainesville. - I live in McKinney. The deals were so good, I rented a pickup from Enterprise to go pick up stuff. Sticking with neutral things that I know will help sell the house. We had a tiny little low down one sink vanity before. The plumber just left. We have a nice double sink vanity with granite that matches the granite we picked out from the floor store. New lighting is waiting to be installed. From Surplus Guys, we got 2 ADA toilets @79$ each, two doors, one front and one rear, for about $1000 total, and previously mentioned countertop and double vanity. Spent a total of just under $2k for that stuff and then went back the same day and bought baseboards. 2$ a stick! - about twice as large as what is in there now. I had measured 602 linear feet of baseboards, so I bought 640 feet of baseboards. I looked at realtor.com and to get this type of baseboard, you have to go to a 450k house or more. We will have new floors throughout. The only tile will be in the two bathrooms upstairs. All of downstairs will be some pretty nice laminate. Carpet upstairs, with a little streak of gray. New paint throughout, the gray everybody is supposed to like. New countertops in kitchen, cabinets will be painted and hardware added. If you include the two light fixtures from the bathroom, we bought a total of at least 10 new fixtures(five ceiling fan kits, and the rest plain lights). Got a new roof because of April 13th storm. New fence coming as well. Even if a family doesn't like all of that stuff, we've still got a great location. Walking distance to grades 6-12. Elementary is 2.7 miles away. Like most F and J, all bedrooms upstairs - 4-2.5-2. There are only two things I know will turn off a buyer, but one is easily fixed. Popcorn ceilings. tough - standard for the neighborhood, and the other is the backyard has a slope away from the house, toward the side street. Oh, and we are on a corner lot. Not as impressive as cul-de-sac, but still a little better than having two neighbors next door. I need to start counting the days. Probably 14 days until remodel complete. Maybe less. Cannot get here soon enough.