I’m going to preface this blog with a statement: I have no idea what I’m doing. I have no experience with electrical wiring or running gas lines and I have minimal experience with plumbing, towing, and sewing. I am, however, a librarian, and if there’s anything librarians can do it’s find you the exact information you’re looking for. That said, I may not be a handy(wo)man but I have access to all the knowledge in the world.
Also I’m very smart, pretty ingenious, and a little crafty.
Okay, so here’s a little backstory:
At the beginning of May, my partner and I got a 60 day “Termination of Lease” notice from our landlord. We had done nothing wrong. Our 2 bedroom house with a deck and garage was set to be demolished to make way for townhomes. Instead of paying the two months rent and leaving at the end of June, we threw our stuff into storage and decided to vacate by the end of May so we could save money on rent and get our deposit back sooner. Until this point I had been living off student loan money and a death in my girlfriend’s family forced her to put some crazy amounts of money onto a credit card. Lo and behold, we found ourselves broke and basically homeless around the same time.
In the three+ years that we’d lived at our previous residence it seems that prices in our location had skyrocketed. We paid $1600/month for our place and suddenly were faced with ads on Craigslist asking for $1900+ for a 2 bedroom apartment. The world had moved on and we were left in the dust.
Unable to find a place that was A) affordable and B) accepting dogs, we were given the opportunity to rent a camping trailer in our friend’s driveway as an interim place. It was about 18’ and needed some TLC to get it in working order again. It wasn’t our first choice but it was at least a roof over our heads.
After a month we decided that we weren’t actually saving any money so, in a final act of desperation, we sought out to buy a trailer of our own. My partner and I hit Craigslist and, lo and behold, we found someone selling a 22’, 1971 Kencraft travel trailer for $500. It was a steal.
We drove the hour and change to go look at it and well…it was a fixer-upper.
In spite of how much work it needed, it was only $500. We couldn’t pass something like this up. We each put in $250 and purchased our first “home” together.
It was official: we were homeowners.
I hope you come to love our blog and follow us on our journey into home-ownerdom. At the very least it will be a bit of shadenfreude for you.
-J
Also I’m very smart, pretty ingenious, and a little crafty.
Okay, so here’s a little backstory:
At the beginning of May, my partner and I got a 60 day “Termination of Lease” notice from our landlord. We had done nothing wrong. Our 2 bedroom house with a deck and garage was set to be demolished to make way for townhomes. Instead of paying the two months rent and leaving at the end of June, we threw our stuff into storage and decided to vacate by the end of May so we could save money on rent and get our deposit back sooner. Until this point I had been living off student loan money and a death in my girlfriend’s family forced her to put some crazy amounts of money onto a credit card. Lo and behold, we found ourselves broke and basically homeless around the same time.
In the three+ years that we’d lived at our previous residence it seems that prices in our location had skyrocketed. We paid $1600/month for our place and suddenly were faced with ads on Craigslist asking for $1900+ for a 2 bedroom apartment. The world had moved on and we were left in the dust.
Unable to find a place that was A) affordable and B) accepting dogs, we were given the opportunity to rent a camping trailer in our friend’s driveway as an interim place. It was about 18’ and needed some TLC to get it in working order again. It wasn’t our first choice but it was at least a roof over our heads.
After a month we decided that we weren’t actually saving any money so, in a final act of desperation, we sought out to buy a trailer of our own. My partner and I hit Craigslist and, lo and behold, we found someone selling a 22’, 1971 Kencraft travel trailer for $500. It was a steal.
We drove the hour and change to go look at it and well…it was a fixer-upper.
In spite of how much work it needed, it was only $500. We couldn’t pass something like this up. We each put in $250 and purchased our first “home” together.
It was official: we were homeowners.
I hope you come to love our blog and follow us on our journey into home-ownerdom. At the very least it will be a bit of shadenfreude for you.
-J