The Slow Motion Retirement Plan

[dave1949]

actually, it's past time to find second gear. there is some progress however. we have engaged a home designer, given him my wife's 10 pages of single spaced requirements, wishes, druthers, and hopes and said designer has come up with a house that is pretty darn close. we've talked with glass manufacturers, structural insulated panel manufacturers, roofing contractors, excavation folks, and a bunch of other people.

we've almost got our condo remodeled and when that is finished my wife will start planning on getting our current house fixed up so we can get it on the market.

i hope to sign a contract in the very near future to get a 30' x 50' barn built this spring. we're probably going to go with a cleary building.

we have a lot of irons in the fire, but man is there a lot of work to do. so, next week we go on vacation

Sounds neat and you are making progress besides fencing.

Ya, lots of details, details, details involved in remodeling, selling, building. You are a glutton for punishment doing that three-way home thing. Just take it one vacation at a time if you want to keep your sanity.

 

[dhagood]

After several attempts to sketch out our own floorplan - we just gave up.

we tried to come up with our own floorplan over the course of almost a year. that ended when my wife said that she didn't like what i had done but couldn't tell me what she wanted changed. the big problem is that my wife is not able to visualize spatial relationships like i can. so i would present her with snippets of rooms or room details and ask what she thought about it. she couldn't place the snippet in any context within the floorplan so it didn't really help her very much. the designer presented her with a fully fleshed out plan, with outside elevations, furniture placements, cabinet details, and everything else. it's interesting how close my last attempt at a floorplan was to what the designer presented, but the designer's work was a better, more integrated floorplan.

we are going to make some changes to the first draft of the floorplan but at least we're over what turned out to be a pretty big hurdle. the first of many, i'm sure.

 

[wmonroe]

Exciting journey, I look forward to following it. Beautiful piece of property also.

 

[Gary Fowler]

I was just thinking about the title and really, aren't all retirement plans slow motion or at least should be as they should start when one is young with a retirement date in mind so you have 40+ years to save for it. Trying to do it all in the last few years of work never works out very well.
Good luck with your home construction. Might be a good idea to keep the wife away from it till it is at least dried in with interior wall in place. If she is spatially challenged, she will be tempted to start making some changes or trying to which could cost lots of money. Funny how large a house has to be to accommodate the wife's "NEEDS". We downsized from a 2400 sq. ft house when we had 5 kids living with us to a 2308 sq foot for retirement and would have been even more if the wife had entirely her way. Had to think a bit about cost of living in a huge house in later life.

 

[Gary Fowler]

By the way, beautiful property. I hope you enjoy many sunsets in your new home.

 

[dhagood]

my wife and i pulled the trigger on a 30' x 48' x 12' (11' interior height from grade to the bottom of the ceiling trusses) metal clad post frame building with an 8' wide porch along one of the sidewalls. one gable end will have two 12' x 10' overhead doors, a man door under the porch roof, a single window on the other gable end, and a 2' translucent panel along the sidewall opposite the porch. i had planned all along to build the barn myself but i just have too many irons in the fire at the moment.

i'm happy to get the barn underway, but writing big checks always makes me sad

 

[wmonroe]

Having someone build the barn for you will take quite a load off your plate and they'll have it done so fast you won't believe it. Great choice with the translucent panels, I did the same in mine and the amount of light they let in is fantastic. I'm not sure what all you're going to store in there but garage doors get short and narrow quick when moving equipment and trailers in and out.

 

[SandburRanch]

For windbreaks to be most effective the trees are planted in a V of some angle less than 90° although 90° is better than a straight E.W. row of trees which causes eddy currents. Not too far from Limon there is a V wind break on a ranch made of posts with metal sides nearly an eighth mile long with the V pointing NNW.

 

[Nelstomlinson]

the other big issue i had was getting both front spindles off the axle.

I realize you finished this months ago, but for future reference:

Screw that $60 tool that threads onto the wheel bearing adjustment threads into place, and beat on it with a big, heavy sledge hammer. I believe mine was an 8 pound sledge. Smash it as hard as you can to the left, then to the right, back and forth, and you will work the spindle off. Clean the rust, and then slather everything liberally with antisieze before you reassemble it. Next time, you will be able to wiggle it out with your bare hands.

 

[dave1949]

30X48 is a nice size building. I have a 28X48 detached garage with one 16' wide OHD and man-door. It holds a lot of stuff, but it's full--of course.