The Slow Motion Retirement Plan

[newbury]

Thanks for the update!

so i finally have the vw running again. what i basically did is to replace two gaskets on the back of the cylinder head. the total cost for parts was under 20 bucks with shipping. but with one thing after another of changing priorities, changing schedules, and rainy weather it took me something like 10 working hours spread over two full months to complete the task. bah.

no question as to why it leaked...

That's the way it is. Work for 15 minutes, hit a snag, and if it's not high priority go to another project.

i've been meaning to update this thread for quite awhile now, but bad weather, the holidays, and laziness have taken their toll. and thanks for your interest green power, your post helped get me off the dime.

so its been six months or so since my last update. when i seriously started to think about what i could report what i've accomplished i was pretty bummed out at how little i'd gotten done. what this has mostly been is a juggling act, and i can't juggle worth beans.

if you'll remember, i was working on the ranch, our old house in the denver metropolitan area, and my son's condo. one of the things that was not helping my productivity was the amount of driving i was doing. if i worked at the ranch, i'd spend 2.5 hours driving back and forth between the house and the ranch. that certainly isn't terrible, but i drove over 40,000 miles during the past year and never left the state.

another thing that didn't help was tools. i drove my passat whenever i could because it averages 40.9 mpg. the downside of that is there is very limited room for tools. i tried toolboxes. i tried tool buckets. i scoured the internet for ideas. but i never got to the point where i could drive up to any one of my work sites and have all the tools or materials that i needed. i couldn't take everything with me and i couldn't list every tool or material i would need. if i was in town, i could easily buy additional materials. but out at the ranch, the nearest store with any kind of building supplies or tools was 24 miles one way and the nearest home depot is 40 miles one way. doing that once was plenty bad enough, but i had more than one day when i had to make multiple trips like that. i alternated being angry with feeling really stupid when that happened.

so i finally gave up working on the house and the condo. my wife and i hired a contractor to finish our son's condo. there was the standard battle with getting the work you think you are paying for done to a reasonable level of competence, but the condo has a working kitchen now and the carpet should be installed this week. we also hired several contractors to work on the house and that is getting wrapped up as well.
<snip>

Reads a lot like my situation, I'm following your problems.
Similarities - three main sites
upgrading a residence for a son
pulling out of an area
building up a retirement place
Hardware stores etc. 40 miles away

I'm trying to retire to Mississippi and I've got 2 houses in Alexandria, Virginia - SWMBO and I live in one, my son and his family live in another. We were trying to upgrade the house where my son lives but finally hired a contractor to put on an addition when they decided to have a second child. Meanwhile I'm hauling tools all around in my VW Jetta TDI Sportwagen (up to 45 mpg). When I'm in Mississippi the nearest HD, Lowes, and HF is 40+ mile 1 way and there is only 2 small family hardware stores within 15 miles.
I've built up a significant investment in dual copies of most tools. Thank heavens for Harbor Freight. I figure my offspring will inherit the tools.
As we gradually clear out the house in Virginia I'm trying to do repairs my self, but can see the need for many expensive paid contractors before we leave.

Most the houses in my suburb are selling for about $500 thousand, so sloppy work will cost me thousands.

And now I order a lot of my hardware requirements through Amazon and avoid the long drives.

I'm really looking forward to being able to spend months in Mississippi and tackle some long term projects.

Please keep updating this thread because I am sure you have many followers.

 

[dhagood]

i meant to post another update a couple of weeks ago, but the forum ate the post a couple of times. so i’m going to create the post in a local editor and then cut and paste into the forum. it’s enough work to get a decent post put together once than i don’t feel the need to repeat the process multiple times. ok, enough sniveling.

so, in my last post, i mentioned the barn. like most everybody else, i built the biggest barn i could afford at the time. and like most everybody else, my barn isn’t big enough. i’ve been cramming stuff into it for seemingly endless months and i’m running out of space in which to cram still more stuff.



so this is a snapshot of what it looked like after i spent half a day organizing the barn (again). it had gotten to the point that i was a little nervous moving about. there were things on top of stuff that were more than a little rickety. if you wanted to go somewhere within the barn, it was often easier to traverse the length of the barn, go out one of the doors, and then traverse back down again. i say traverse because walking kind of implies a more or less straight line, and there wasn’t anywhere in the barn where it was that simple.

one of the things i did before the electricians came out again was to build what i call a skid for a freezer and refrigerator that we stuck in the barn. a skid is just a sheet of 1/2” osb on a pressure treated 2 x 4 frame. the frame is leveled on the uneven dirt floor (i’ll add some gravel here and there if necessary to speed up the process) so i end up with a level, stable platform. this is necessary for fridges and freezers.



i realized that part of what made the barn such a mess was that with the uneven dirt floor, it was pretty hard to stack things securely so stuff was spread out everywhere. so if i made another skid and stacked stuff on it, i could a) get things up of the dirt floor and b) consolidate things by stacking them on an even, level surface.



so i made another skid. and then another. and now i’m working on the third. it has helped quite a bit.

i got my wife’s bed done. it’s pretty tall, but that was done on purpose. the big section underneath will hold 6 double stacked large plastic bins where we will store food and kitchen ware. the small section underneath is for the dog.



i also made a skid for the flushless toilet we've been using. i added a wall for a little privacy, and voila! a bathroom.



i’m working on the passat again. a year and a half ago i hit a curb hard enough to destroy the wheel and tire, and the wheel bearing started to make noise. while i was in there, i replaced the driveshaft and the front lower control arm.



next up on the construction front is finishing one section of the loafing shed. on the maintenance front i’m going to have to replace or rebuilt the e4od automatic transmission in my f250.

and hopefully, in the not to distant future, we’ll start building a house.

 

[newbury]

Thanks for the update

thanks, i'm rather fond of the view.

another thing i've been up to is organizing the barn. originally i had almost everything laid out horizontally (ie, on the dirt floor). recently i've been working on going vertical.

and i'm getting a lot of the floor space emptied. this is good, because i've got another car i need to stuff into the barn.

GO VERTICAL!!
I wrote before about your need for pallet rack. If you lined the back wall with 12' tall pallet rack and the side wall with 10' tall rack you could get EVERYTHING off the floor and work in a lot of table space.

i meant to post another update a couple of weeks ago, but the forum ate the post a couple of times. so i知 going to create the post in a local editor and then cut and paste into the forum. it痴 enough work to get a decent post put together once than i don稚 feel the need to repeat the process multiple times. ok, enough sniveling.

so, in my last post, i mentioned the barn. like most everybody else, i built the biggest barn i could afford at the time. and like most everybody else, my barn isn稚 big enough. i致e been cramming stuff into it for seemingly endless months and i知 running out of space in which to cram still more stuff.

so this is a snapshot of what it looked like after i spent half a day organizing the barn (again). it had gotten to the point that i was a little nervous moving about. there were things on top of stuff that were more than a little rickety. if you wanted to go somewhere within the barn, it was often easier to traverse the length of the barn, go out one of the doors, and then traverse back down again. i say traverse because walking kind of implies a more or less straight line, and there wasn稚 anywhere in the barn where it was that simple.
<snip>

I've got about 70 feet by 4 feet by 2 to 5 shelves high of storage (plus the floor level) in just the three pics below. Or about the equivalent of 1,000 square feet of floor space but using only 300 square feet.

Most of my racking is set up for a convenient work surface height first level, then adjustable for the upper levels. The average cost was about $40 per upright and $30 per pair of beams. Then either use the wire racks ($20/shelf) or cut up 2x4's and put a piece of plywood over for a shelf. So the one in the pic above cost about $500, And it's easy to tear apart and move about. I've reconfigured many sections and it's like big tinkertoys or lincoln logs.

And I'm sure you will find a lot of "stuff" to store, just be sure to start a "filing" system. And sometimes you can find it cheap. I bought 10 sections (1 upright, 6 sets of beams and wire rack) for $10/section, but that is rare in DC.

 

[MacLawn]

I feel y'all boys' pain. This building mess is tough! Roofs. Man, don't we all need more roofs on our places! Big. Here's what, and how I say it: YOU WILL NEVER HAVE A BIG ENOUGH BARN. There. I need a daggone super Walmart sized barn!!!

 

[dhagood]

Thanks for the update

thanks for reading

GO VERTICAL!!

but, but, i did. i have. i am. while i don't have pallet racks i do have their little brother. my racks, bought at costco, are 6.5 feet long by 2 feet deep and have four shelves configurable over a seven foot range. i have 6 of these rascals which gives me 312 square feet of storage with a footprint of 78 square feet. and every one of them is full.



i have three other dissimilar racks of storage, one large tool box, and one small toolbox. my barn is 48 feet long with posts every 8 feet. the front section (between the first two posts) have the man door on the west side and the electrical junction box on the east side. all the other sections along both walls have racked storage, all of which are full.

i also have 3 skids built and populated with the frame built for the fourth. i'm probably going to have to build a fifth skid as well as there is still more stuff to be brought into the barn. this should be the last load though, as our house is almost empty (and almost on the market). i'm slowly gaining on it but i'm not going to be able to park most of my vehicles inside.

and just because:

 

[wmonroe]

Never enough storage. Sounds like your working well with the space you have.

Beautiful sunset!

 

[dhagood]

we plan to use the proceeds of selling our current house to fund the building of our new house. we've been working on moving out of the old house (hence all the sniveling i've done about where to put everything) and fixing up the place (we've lived there for 20 years and raised two kids in the process). the old house should be listed tomorrow. :dance1:

 

[dhagood]

the house is listed. pictures will be taken on monday and the listing will be available on the multiple listing service on wednesday.

 

[dhagood]

the house was listed on wednesday. we had three showings, which resulted in two offers, and the house is now under contract. gotta love a seller's market

 

[dhagood]

things are moving along if rather more slowly than i could wish. on the housing front, the prospective buyers have accepted our counter to their druthers as a result of the house inspection. we'll put on a new roof, do a little plumbing, and pay some of their closing costs to help defray some of the work they plan to do. the house also appraised high enough to meet the requirement levied by the selling contract. the scheduled closing date is march 23rd.

one fine day about three weeks ago i happened to be looking at my wife's volvo and noticed both front tires were badly worn on the inside. i started poking around and ended up rebuilding the front suspension. outside of the steering rack, the steering knuckles, the driveshafts, and the coil springs i replaced everything else. one thing i might have finally learned is not to cheap out when doing this kind of thing. i tried to reuse the upper spring seats for no good reason other than being cheap, and the rebuilt suspension squeaked like crazy due to the upper spring coil moving in the worn seat. so i had to order new spring seats and then take the whole front end apart again to replace them. i also didn't think the tie rod ends seemed that bad, so i didn't replace them. and of course, once the macpherson struts were rebuild it was very obvious the steering needed tightening up. if i'd just bought the parts that i knew would need replacing i only would have had to fix the car once.

i have to hand it to volvo, the car drove well until the very end without shuddering, vibrating, or anything else untoward. but once it needed fixing, i had to fix the whole shebang.

i'm also still futzing around with the loafing shed. i have the last column put together and just need to drill a hole in the ground and get the column in the ground and trued up and i can get started on the roof. one problem i have that i didn't suspect is how curious cows can be. i'll work away doing things on the shed and then the cows will come around, sniff everything, knock down all my braces and batter boards, and then poop all over everything. then they'll lay down, chew their cud, and then get up and poop some more. i'm starting to look forward to my revenge...