Surviving Contact with u2018The Plan'

Recently by Thomas Luongo: Preparations for the Pocky' Clipse

As I related in my last article, my wife said to me one evening after work, "I think it's time we had a kid…. And, I'm not raising it in this house." Little did I realize how profoundly those last 8 words would alter the course of my life, and not in the way you're expecting. This came out of her mouth literally days after we'd paid off the car we'd bought a year previously as well as all of our revolving debt. Visions of small piles of gold and silver coins were dancing in my head. This was August of 2002, gold hadn't even begun to embarrass Gordon Brown yet. The mortgage-burning party was moving up our entertainment calendar.

But the logic of my wife's clock refused to be ignored.

She was right. The house was really a glorified bungalow. It was 50 years old, 1100 square feet (generously) with 2-wire electricity and a septic system that needed a complete overhaul. On the plus side we owed around $42,000 on it and, PITI, was less than $450/month. So, it was either put all of our equity into rebuilding this house or finding other arrangements.

As I said, this was 2002 and the housing bubble was already being blown in north Florida. My house appraised at around $68,000. Land prices had tripled in the past 5 years. Our desire was always to have a rural home. Given the local taxing structure this also meant finding a place outside of Alachua County. My wife had asked for only three things over the course of our lives together; one new car (done and paid for), one vacation and a horse. She grew up on a 200-acre farm in rural Ohio raising quarter horses (among other things) and she missed owning a horse. So, knowing that this was likely the last time we would do anything like this, the requirement for anything we did had to include this. And it had to be done on a one-income budget. We'd agreed that no child of ours would ever set foot in a government school unless it was serving as a hurricane shelter.

The Backyard Homestead... Best Price: $4.91 Buy New $10.91 (as of 05:50 UTC - Details)

Unfortunately, the best we could do was a similar house on 5 acres. That wasn't enough either house or land. I'm not sure whose idea it was originally to build our own house, but once it got in my head, I wouldn't let it go. After a short conversation with a co-worker who did in the 1970's what I was considering doing now, I became convinced it could be done. I didn't think temporary insanity lasted this long, but hey, now I had a guru!

A plan had formed. We would find a plot of land between 10 and 15 acres, build a house on it, and then begin the fun part. I researched what/how we were going to build while Camille worked on finding the right piece of property. The perfect parcel fell out of the sky one Tuesday in November with one caveat; it was too big (19 acres) and, therefore, too expensive. Undaunted, we pitched an offer to a good friend, who agreed to become a cog in "The Plan" by pledging both to buy 5 acres and help us build the house. We would all then move into said home, allowing him to straighten his finances out and then we'd help him build his house when he was ready.

Amazingly, a lot of that has come true.

Back to Basics: A Comp... Best Price: $4.94 Buy New $7.53 (as of 04:50 UTC - Details)

We closed on the property on December 16th, 2002, which commemorates not only the Boston Tea Party but also the births of Beethoven and Philip K. Dick. I don't really believe in omens, but there it is. It was a 20-acre parcel (1/4 by 1/8 mile) with an acre cut out b/c there was a trailer on that acre. We were even able to convince Camille's parents that we weren't nuts and that we'd need their help. That Christmas my father-in-law gifted me with a wooden tool box filled to the brim. Financing would be handled via a HELOC at 4.5% and VISA as I refused to pay 11% on a construction loan when I was using 0% (for up to 18 months) credit card offers to light the charcoal for my BBQ.

Thanks Alan Greenspan, I bet you never saw that coming did you?!

We set upon building the house like a bunch of inept Amish-men in March of 2003. My father-in-law's experience was invaluable. Since Camille didn't work on Fridays I took off every Friday from March to December of that year. Yes, Virginia, state employees really do get too much time off. Yes, my boss deserves my thanks. Larry, the cog, came out on the weekends. Every weekend. We worked 7 days a week for nearly a year straight with only a week off that Christmas, which was spent in front of a PS/2 drinking coffee and developing tendonitis. I contracted only the well drilling, the septic, the trusses (to my design), the temporary power pole and the insulation. Everything else we did, including digging the 200-foot trench for the underground electrical conduit. And we did most of it in the North Florida summer. I thought roofing was hard, so I built two stories to minimize the amount of roof. A decision that could best be described as moronic. Camille was the electrician, I was the plumber. She tiled the bathroom, I did the kitchen counter. Larry was general labor, gadfly and part-time marriage consultant.

In spite of doing nearly everything wrong at least once, the house went up.

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We sold the house in Gainesville for 15% more than I had budgeted that October and moved in then, though there was still a ton to do. We passed our final inspection on January 7th, 2004 and filed for the Homestead exemption the following Monday. Larry moved in that May. We immediately started on a shed/work area.

From the beginning of the project though, I knew there was something else to this than just trying to save a few thousand dollars in top-line expenditures. It was the investment in ourselves building skills that we didn't have that we knew, deep down, we were going to need. Sure, my comparative advantage was as a chemist. I could have used my time more "productively" by leveraging those skills at a higher rate of remuneration and paid the contractor to build my house leveraging his skills accordingly.

Feh! If what I thought was coming was coming, I was going to need to know how to build stuff. Besides, while I'm very good at my profession, it ain't no calling. At the time it was just a job. This was my first taste of being an entrepreneur in my entire life and I wasn't going to shrink from it for any rational or sane reason like comparative advantage. Building a house sparked my imagination; the idea of building a consulting business cured my insomnia.

There was something else at work here. Our house became a group project of a sort. Maybe it was because of the sheer madness of it, but whenever I put out the call for people to come out and help they came. On one early Saturday I had 16 people on site building and flying the beams and building the walls. It became an opportunity for an old friend and me to rectify a regrettable alienation as well as a chance to help another who was between jobs and needed both a sense of purpose and some cash. It was beyond humbling and every time I look at the center 6×10 beam running through the middle of my house, I think about everyone who was there that day.

How could you not?

The last part of the plan, though, was the part that was beyond our control; our parents. From the beginning we embarked on this path to provide a place for them to choose to come before it became necessary for us to do so for them. The carrot for this was the grandchild. It was a big carrot. I'm the youngest of four; my sisters are 10 and 12 years older than me and had their kids in the 80's. My brother splits the age gap and is gay, so no grandkids from him. As for Camille, her sister had one child and he was nearly out of high school. So, our kid would be quite the occasion and another chance for them to help us, while ensuring that we were coming together at the right moment in time.

Honestly, I never thought I would be the one to be the caretaker of my mom. I'm the child that left at 18 and never came back. But, in creating "The Plan" I realized I was putting myself in that position. My siblings were willing, but not able to provide a place for her that would be suitable in the right time frame.

My mom was reluctant at first. She came up from Marco Island to visit early in the construction and my brother told me later that she expected to see a pile of crap on the ground. She would never say that to me. But, her expectations weren't unfounded. Imagine her surprise to find me putting the finishing touches on the stair well and most of the first floor shell finished when she arrived. Ironically the last of my father's tools I had inherited died that day. Again, omens. I walked her around the property and told her to pick a plot of land she liked, for future consideration.

She didn't make that decision until nearly a year later but, with our help and guidance, in February 2005 she moved into her new (and last) house on what was the northeast corner of our property.

The trailer, which I mentioned at the beginning, came up for sale cheap and my in-laws bought it as a winter home; my mother-in-law still has family in Ohio. They had sold most of their farm to an Amish family over the past 10 years. By this time, we had finished the shed, fenced the yard, survived two hurricanes and built a south-facing porch. We started work on the first addition that summer with seed money from them as a down payment on a future acre.

In the end, "The Plan" survived contact with us better than we could have imagined. Most of the things we set out to do, we did. The particulars may have changed along the way and the schedules may have slipped a bit, but all good plans leave room for improvisation. Moreover, the effects it had on our families and friends were bigger than I would have ever imagined. You don't set out on something like this and not wind up leading by example.

You also are not the same person you were before you started.

Is my house a paragon of architectural design and refinement? Ha! No way. Is the interior finished, most certainly not. But, it's ours, it didn't break us and I have the smallest mortgage of anyone I know which was exactly what I budgeted in 2002.

There were only two problems at this point. The first was I hated my job at the University and it was beginning to kill me.

And the second was I couldn't get my wife pregnant.

Ta,

August 10, 2010