Why didn’t anyone tell me how hard it is to build a house? We continue to make progress on the lake house. A lot has happened since the last time I posted about it. We’ve been hard at work every weekend and have finally gotten to the point that we are ready for flooring and cabinets. The sheet rock is done, the painting is done and most of the electrical is complete. I still need to install a few more electrical outlets and covers but I’m close. Smoke alarms are wired in and functional, and all of the ceiling lighting is done.
As we get closer to being done, the excitement is building. I’m really looking forward to getting the final occupancy permit and can’t wait to sleep there for the first time.
We are planning on heading back out there the day after Thanksgiving and will spend the weekend working. We should have the bathroom complete by the end of the weekend, the deck done, and the flooring in the kitchen complete.
I’ve started to do some market comparisons just to get an idea of how much sweat equity we’ve got in the place. A conservative approach to valuing the place would give me a profit of about $50,000. Most of the neighbors and people I’ve talked to believe that the place will be worth at least $250,000. If that’s the case, we will have created about $100,000 in sweat equity. At this point it really doesn’t matter what it’s worth because we have no intention of selling it. The one reason I like to spend a little brain power looking at the value is because I’m looking forward to the day that we could potentially sell the lake house and be able to pay off our primary home’s mortgage. Even the most conservative estimate shows that we could sell the lake house in five years and pay off our primary mortgage. Knowing that we could do this seems to put my mind at ease a bit.
So, while it’s turning out to be potentially profitable for us (some day), it has still been a ton of sacrifice and hard work. In order to do this my wife went back to work, my daughter went to preschool all day and we’ve spent pretty much all of our free time working on the cabin. It’s a great feeling of accomplishment but it has also had a massive impact to our lifestyle. We are looking forward to the place being completed so that we can use it, but also so we can get our lives back to a bit more of a normal pace.
Here are a couple pictures of the current state:
Hazzard, It’s good to hear that you are making progress on the lake house. My wife and I just finished developing a raw piece of land across the Sound in Seabeck.
We spent several months without power, even longer without potable water. But we made it. DSL even came to the area during our year-long struggle.