Calamity Court

Here is the news on our new home. There isn’t anything new as far as the eye can see. No excavation, no work on extending water or sewer lines. No documents recorded by the County a new subdivision.

All these were put on hold when, about a week and a half ago, Joan came by and with great trepidation, announced that she had decided that now was not the time she should be building a house but she would instead begin preparing to serve a mission.  She had expressed anxiety about the project before but we found ways to calm her nerves and reassure her that we would help her if cash flow was the problem. And when she said that she felt spiritual guidance in her decision to serve a mission, we reminded her that having a home to come back to would take away some of the uncertainty afterward. But she said no, she couldn’t give it the attention that it would need and still be preparing for the mission. She felt bad but good about her final decision at the same time. 

So we had to decide what to do at that point. 1) Sell the property and hope we wouldn’t take a big financial hit doing so; 2) build a single family home on the lot; 3) try to sell Joan’s interest in the property and have a new buyer design the other unit; or 4) build her unit as a rental home and hope that the income would cover its mortgage.

It seemed that selling the property would result in the biggest financial loss. While it would allow us to look around for another location, I decided that there wasn’t another Provo location for a small home (such as a twin home) that appealed to me more than this one. So we would stay.

Building a single family home on that lot made no sense at all. It would cost far more than we would realize from the sale of our current home. It is also a larger lot than this one and one of the objectives was to downsize home and yardwork.

Finding a buyer would take some time and definitely would set back construction.

We wondered if we wanted to become landlords for the other unit and discussed it at length with an experienced landlord we know. He encouraged us to go for it when all was said and done. So we are. We met with our builder and talked about how to decrease the size of the other home so that we could afford to build it and set an affordable rent amount that would appeal to young families interested in living in the area.

The plans will need to go back to the engineers before the subdivision application and building permits can be approved. These are the next steps. In the meantime, our lot is really overgrown with weeds. I didn’t think we would need to clear them, or at least whack them, but if bulldozers don’t start moving there soon, maybe we should.

On the other hand, our house has never looked so good. Dad has spent time every day weeding flower beds and watering dry spots of lawn. We are picking up after ourselves every day, dusting, polishing bathrooms, and keeping kitchen counters clear of clutter. And you know what a challenge that last bit is for me. Maybe it will become a habit!