Thread: Getting to be an expensive week

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Thanks Stovens. We really wanted a one-level ranch home but I mentioned to the builder that I wanted a small office upstairs. We hired a one-at-a-time contractor and he had his own architect who whipped up what is pretty standard in this area as a "Williamsburg Style" home and even the brick is labeled Williamsburg Red. We were amazed at the room upstairs and the attic was tall enough so I could have put a basketball backboard up there but my wife said absolutely no bouncing dribbling upstairs so we recently finished it off with a combination of my amateur carpentry with help from a local jack-of-all-trades guy and we told the county it is a "Game Room" with a 1/2 size pool table but it has a small bathroom and can serve as a guest room for the grandkids when they visit. The point is that in Virginia there are a LOT of brick style buildings and I guess we have a prototype of the restored homes in Williamsburg. Where I grew up in Eastern Penna. field stone was the material of choice for "class" but in Virginia almost everything is either frame (faux frame as plastic siding) or brick as is our home. Still, very few homes in Virginia have basements as compared to where I grew up in Penna in which almost every home has a basement and usually a shop down there, so I had to get a small garage for a workshop. In my opinion the most desireable setup is where there is a driveway down to a basement garage but that depends a lot of the slope of a given plot of land and is the exception in this area. You know our house is paid for except that our county taxes are high and we leveraged our way through three homes buying and selling at appropriate times using the little blue mortgage book and ARITHMETIC. Even Einstein was amazed at the power of compound interest. I saw other folks buying houses they could barely afford including a neighbor who lost their home and had many go-around discussions with my wife regarding "moving up" against my better arithmetic judgement so regarding the housing crisis I have to wonder whether arithmetic is a lost art (due perhaps to use of optical scanners at the checkout counter and credit cards)? My mother was a book keeper for a plumbing business and they would keep her even when salesman were laid off because she could balance the books to the penny every month. Surely there must be some balance between aspirations and financial reality? Anyway our present house is roughly a medium priced home in a county which has many other bigger houses and the county taxes are annoying but our only form of "rent" at present. My wife is also a book keeper/secretary and heaven help me if I buy car parts that exceed what our previous monthly mortgage payment was so I have to space out parts purchases! Stovens, on one of my book shelves I have two of those small metal models, one is a '32 Ford 3W Coupe and the other is a '48 F100 in the original green and black paint scheme. Does your F100 have a flathead? I still have a 4" Merc crank in my shed waiting for some needy flathead and I will let it go for much less than a new crank from Speedway! I would like to see it go to someone who knows what to do with it!

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder