Winter: 2; Ash Bucket(s): 0

It's pretty universally agreed that the majority of the country is tired of winter right now. To say there has been a TON of snow, and that it has been crazy cold, is an understatement.

But nothing really brought the point home like killing two ash buckets in less than a month. We heat the house almost solely with wood, which is generally awesome, but when it's stupid cold and we're burning hard the ashes can pile up quickly, no matter how efficient we try to be.

When I went to pick up the first bucket from where I'd left it outside the front door, and bottom completely detached from the top, I wasn't really upset. It was inconvenient, but it had come with house. If everything else we've seen was any indication, it was probably cheap to begin with and God only knows how long the previous owners had had it. I figured it didn't owe us anything. 

Then I found out how expensive those things are! After I got over being appalled that someone would expect me to pay $70 for a bucket that I would use six months a year to dump fireplace ashes, I told myself it would probably last us forever. That would make the cost per use really low, and make it qualify as an investment...  Until it broke, two weeks later. 

Seriously?! Two ash buckets in less than a month?! *sigh*

Thankfully, I had filed the receipt so I can return it. I also discovered that such buckets can be bought cheaper... at Tractor Supply, of all places! So ultimately, it will work out to be a good thing, but I still take the demise of such utilitarian tools as a mark of nasty this winter has been.

We're on track to put the final nail in the coffin of our "indestructible" maul this year as well. No one said heating with firewood was easy on the tools! Still, I'm tremendously grateful that as our neighbors deal with high (electric/propane) heating bills and dump money into yet another pallet of pellets, we still have firewood from our own land laid up to see us through. We will definitely adjust our estimates of much to lay in every year based on this experience, though! And hopefully, the next ash bucket we buy will be the last...

Don't Buy It (The Bad Math or the House)

In a City not far from us, the municipal government in rolling out a new Walk to Work program. In theory, it sounds great: local employers team up with the government, Realtors, banks,and local service groups (schools, emergency services, etc.) to create the ideal home buying environment for potential homeowners. They target employees of big local employers and push to get them to move into empty or for-sale houses in the area, highlighting benefits such as being able to walk to work, knowing your neighbors, etc. The goals, of course, are to reduce the empty/ sub-standard housing in a low-income or derelict areas by enticing higher-income families to buy, invest in, and rehabilitate local housing stock, and to increase the tax base to support programming and benefits for low-income residents. I honestly think that most of the people involved believe they're doing something good.

But government math is flawed. If the targeted potential buyers aren't careful, they're going to pay the price in more ways than one.

Let's look at how the program works in practice, shall we?

If you're a renter, you're not paying property taxes. This is what makes you such a keen target for the government in the first place. You are paying plenty of income taxes, though, and if you have the kind of solid job they're targeting, your taxes have likely just gone up – a lot.

If you buy one of the target houses, you can expect to need to sink a bunch of money into it. The fact is that no matter how attractive the program terms and the subsidies the government will throw in for the initial purchase price, the property will need work and it will be expensive. Being in the City, there won't be any way around the mandatory permits and inspections, either. With Code Enforcement being one of the primary ways police forces are looking to keep the area crime rate in check, you can expect to sink a pretty penny into useless and aesthetic concerns as well just to avoid fines.

When you and your coworkers start to improve your properties, the taxes start to climb. Not only are you now paying property taxes and school taxes, but every improvement you make raises the price you're required to pay. With the value of your area increasing, thanks to an influx of invested new homeowners, taxes go up even more. If a good portion of you have families, expect school taxes to rise as well as the district expands programming to meet demand.

But the money you and your neighbors are pouring into the tax coffers aren't going into the kinds of programming and improvements you or your families will benefit from – they're being used to support the residents of public housing and the per-existing low-income population.

Fast forward a few years. Had you stayed a renter, you could have managed the income tax increases and still been able to put some money away for a rainy day. As a homeowner, enticed by the government program, you're broke and struggling. Even if your job stayed steady, the costs associated with buying your home have sky rocketed. Between the income tax hikes associated with Obamacare and the property tax hike cycle discussed above, you're going to be hard pressed to keep up with your payments. Meanwhile, your kids go to a school that is forced to spend most of its funding and energy managing the problem children of the neighborhood and your town has little money left after paying out its required support for low-income residents to fund the libraries, youth sports leagues, and municipal improvements that would apply to you.

How you will feel at tax time if you let
the government or the bank do math
for you!

I'm not bashing home-ownership, or suggesting nefarious intent on the part of the employers or community supporters of such programs. But I would caution anyone tempted to participate in a government-supported housing program of any kind to be very careful. They may have the best of intentions, but the reality is that they can only afford to support programming that increases the tax base – i.e. finds new ways to squeeze money out of the people working their butts off to make it so it can be “redistributed”.

You cannot count on bankers or the government to do math for you, or to give you a realistic portrait of what you can afford. They won't take into account necessities like food and clothing, and they certainly won't admit to the tax hikes they know are coming. Do your own math – and do it with an eye towards healthy skepticism and Murphy's Law. Because when it comes to the government, and particularly government supported housing programs caveat emptor is the rule of the day.

The Extreme Backwardness of Housing Policy

A recent run-in with our insurance company, coupled with my work on housing grants, has made me seriously question the craziness of America's current policies on housing.

For example, the current methods for establishing the value of a house:

• Don't reflect what the house can actually be sold for or what it would cost to restore the property in the event of a disaster
• Don't reflect the investments that went into a property to make it what it is
• Take no account of the intangibles that are an inextricable part of the value of a home
• Place undue weight on variables that often don't apply to homeowners at all

When you consider the deplorable state of America's infrastructure, and remember the truism that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, it seems that the government could get a lot more bang for it's buck with a few simple revisions to policy.

Currently we dump millions of dollars into government programs that rebuild (or replace) derelict housing for low income families. Though well intentioned, they cause problems to be left until they are at their most unsafe and most expensive before fixing. They give houses to people who will be no more capable of maintaining the new structure than they were the last one, and see hundreds of thousands of dollars get eaten up by administrative costs - fees, filings, etc. 

Meanwhile, in addition to no assistance in making unglamourous but absolutely vital repairs and upgrades, hard-working homeowners living within their means are often penalized with higher property taxes for their efforts!

It's mind-boggling to think what a few simple revisions to policy could accomplish.

• Reducing the administrative and filing fees involved in purchasing, maintaining or upgrading property would free up hundreds of thousands of dollars annually that could be applied directly to projects that increase the value and safety of existing housing stock. (And could be easily accomplished. Eliminate unnecessary restrictions, and track crucial information through a simple online processing tool.)
  
• Instead of trading iPods for guns, trade unsafe, outdated housing systems for new ones. An old water heater for an energy-efficient tank-less one. An electricity guzzling washer/dryer for a new energy star model. Bought in bulk or surplus, safer and more efficient appliances could be cheaply obtained. Increased efficiency will free up homeowner funds for other improvements, and the government will benefit from reductions in pressure on energy grids, pollution and public safety risks.
  
• Encourage homeowners' insurance providers to run their own incentive and reduced-cost upgrade programs. They will immediately benefit (safer homes are less likely to have catastrophic incidents forcing giant pay-outs), and see returns over the long term as improvements to general housing stock will raise real property values. 

That's the end of my rant for now. I have no action steps for how to replace the current boondoggle on policy nonsense with practical, forward-thinking legislation, so I'll just say this: keep your eyes open. As the Wizard's Second Rule warns us, the worst of consequences can come from the best of intentions. Cheer on every smart, practical program you can find to improve America's housing stock and don't get suckered into supporting bad programs just because they good intentions.

Windshield Surveys or Why You Need Trees

Recently, while reading about housing grants, I ran across the term Windshield Survey. As I had with so many other unfamiliar terms that morning, I googled it. What I found left me so incredulous that I ran it past someone I know who has been writing housing grants for years. She confirmed it: a Windshield Survey is when government representatives (usually County level or below) drive around, taking pictures and notes of what they see.

Typically they're looking for evidence of substandard or out-of-code buildings, gathering evidence to support their petitions for funding or for potential participants in rehabilitation programs. While I appreciate their good intentions, this idea seriously creeps me out... because the information rarely stops with them.

Once government (at any level) has information, it begins to travel. Reports on out-of-code housing work their way to the ears of code enforcement officials, leading to citations and demands for costly clean up or repair work. They reach social works in the school system who start paying attention to your kids, looking for other evidence that things may not be well and opening up entirely new cans of worms.

"Higher income" homeowners find their properties being reevaluated to make sure they're paying enough in taxes and that recent improvements to the property were properly cleared with the local government and inspected, sometimes leading to extensive fees, fines and even forced replacement of or changes to finished work for the most inane of things - unapproved fence styles, expansion of a deck a single foot further than allowed, etc.

The good news is that government officials of any kind are not allowed on your property unless you invite them. Which means that a simple privacy fence or hedge can dramatically reduce their visual access to your domain.

Because its summer, our property is almost entirely invisible from the road. When winter comes, however, the foliage will die back and we'll be much more visible. Although where we live is unlikely to experience windshield surveys, we're discussing the possibility of putting evergreens in along the roadway to eliminate the need to worry about such things altogether.

I know that not everyone is as possessive about their privacy as I am. I understand that extroverts often highly value visually open property and the possibilities it opens up for unplanned interaction and easy-flowing parties. But I believe everyone has the right to know that this kind of thing goes on and to protect themselves if they so desire.

Oh, and while you're at it, think about putting a gate across your driveway... Now that we've experienced having one, I'll never be without one again!

Efficiency

I think, sometimes, that if science had been taught differently when I was in school I would have been fascinated by it. Math, too, for that matter.

For example, have you seen one of these? Appropriately called Kill A Watt, it's a nifty little device you plug into the wall and then plug any electric device into to find out how much energy said appliance is pulling. If you leave it there for several hours, it will give you an average pull, allowing you to extrapolate how much it costs to run a given appliance per day, month, year, etc.

That information, of course, allows you to make smart choices about what to replace and when. For example, we plugged in the monstrous fridge that came with our house and found out that it would be in our best interest to replace it sooner rather than later! On the other hand, our equally ancient chest freezer is barely pulling anything so there's no point in replacing it until it dies a natural death.
 
When we were apartment dwellers, there was depressingly little we could do about our electric bills. The best we could hope for was to plastic the windows over in the winter and set the thermostat to the most restrained temperatures feasible.

Now that's we're homeowners, we're turning keen eyes to a push for efficiency in our home. Because really, who doesn't like efficiency? It's green, it's responsible, and in the long run it frees up time and money for other projects. Did you know that it's more cost effective and financially smart to put up to $100,000 into improvements on your property than to invest a penny in the stock market?

I'll be honest and say that number blew my mind. It also gave me fresh motivation to dig into an exploration of what is available to us and a good use of our efforts. Summer is an ideal time to evaluate and increase the energy-smartness of your home/property. The warm (and hopefully dry) weather allows outside projects and spillover space for messy indoor projects. It's a particularly good time to tackle winter preparations (like insulating walls or fireplace cleaning/ repairs) since most of the world won't start thinking about them until fall at which point the waiting lists abruptly get long and more expensive. 

If you don't already have some efficiency-improving projects on your summer list, might I encourage you to pick at least one to try for? Even simple steps can make a big difference!

Where you have seen the biggest bang for your buck in home efficiency improvements?

Homestead in the Misty Moutains

People have been asking for pictures of our new homestead in the misty mountains, and I finally found the camera and got it to cooperate. It's amazing here, though I can't stay and gush as my (very long) to-do list is sitting impatiently beside me. So here's a sneak peak...

It's a little blurry, but this is the awesome gate across our driveway - we are our very own gated community! Can I tell you how much the introvert in me loves that?

I love having a fireplace! The carpet, on the other hand, I don't understand. Who intentionally chooses a mottled, rusty brown carpet for their house? It's okay. My take-no-prisoners vacuum has whipped it into shape so it's clean and that's all that counts for now.

 I have never seen anything quite like my ovens here, but it's an excellent set up. Being smaller than standard size, each oven heats up in a fraction of the time. With two, I can bake bread and make dinner at the same time! (Yes, I know. I get excited over the most random things.)

Incidentally, the color on the wall that you can see a little bit of is Benjamin Moore Revere Pewter. It's a gorgeous, silvery shade that looks very clean and elegant. It works perfectly and I'm delighted with it. (It's also scrubbable, in case someone leaves muddy streaks from a wagging tail across it... not that we'd know anyone who might do that around here...)

It's technically part of the drainage on property, but if we'd wanted to incorporate a decorative "water feature" we couldn't have done any better than this. When it rains (which it has - a lot) overflow creates a little waterfall running over the shale and in a runnel along the driveway. It's beautiful.

Now that it's stopped frosting at night, several trees like this one are budding. I have no idea what they are, but I suspect they're going to be lovely.

Incidentally, pretty much every view out of our windows looks like this - all trees. It's gorgeous!

The house still needs plenty of love, but the scrubbing and elbow grease are starting to pay off. It's starting to look more like us, and already feels like home.

Sorry I'm not much of a photographer, but I hope you enjoyed the sneak peak!

Tips for Home Sellers

Hunting for a house to make a home is one of those activities than can quickly consume huge amounts of physical, mental and emotional energy. (It's no picnic for the sellers, either.)

As a house hunter, who's getting lots of exposure to real estate listings and agents, I'd like to offer a few quick tips to home sellers everywhere.

1. Digital Pictures Are Free - Take (and Post) Lots. Everybody is busy, and no one wants to waste their time or someone else's. Post lots of pictures so that whatever a given buyer's criteria, they have what they need to make an informed assessment about your property. All of it. You may consider your lovely yard a selling point, but I may care primarily about the kitchen - you can't know that, so do us both a favor and cover everything. Also, please keep in mind that if I don't see pictures of something, I'm probably going to assume you're hiding something and bump you to the bottom of my list.

2. Declutter. Please! Without fail, the first thing they do on the HGTV show Unsellables is declutter; there's a reason for that! I will gladly bring my imagination and elbow grease; I can revision worn floors and crazy paint colors. That said, I'd still really appreciate it if you took the dead turkeys and 18 sets of antlers off the walls. Also, too much junk or furniture cluttering up a space suggests to wary home buyers that maybe you're not much on cleaning and maintenance - not the message you want to send!

3. Taxes Matter. When pricing your house, take the tax figures into account. Factors like mortgage insurance and taxes drive up the actual cost of monthly mortgage payments; while this is not your fault, it can decidedly impact your ability to sell. Offer as much accurate tax information on your listing site as you can -it will save everyone time and pre-screen potential buyers so you only work with ones who can legitimately afford to buy your home.

4. A Lower Price is More Attractive Than Personalized Upgrades. Please don't sink money into wall to wall carpeting or granite counter tops and then expect top dollar in return. Some improvements (like a new roof or good windows) are universally attractive. But most buyers prefer a lower sale price and money left over in their budget to devote to their priorities than a higher price with upgrades that may or may not be to their taste or address their biggest concerns.

5. Double Check Your Listing for Errors.. and Be Honest. When I run into a listing where the house size is more square footage than the lot size, it's a pretty clear tip-off that something got mis-keyed. It happens. But it can hurt you! Buyers often use house or lot size as search criteria - if yours are listed wrong, they won't pop up for consideration! And please, be honest. It's okay to have a modestly sized deck or a basement that isn't readily transformable into another bedroom. Pretending that a space is bigger or other than it really is just hurts your credibility and makes me less likely to believe the other facts in your listing. Besides, it's not like we won't find out!

Construction Companies Need Pinterest

I was reading a post at The Inspired Room the other day and looking at all the gorgeous pictures Melissa had posted from Pinterest that she uses as style ideas.

It occurred to me, not for the first time, that it isn't really housewives, designers and DIY-ers who need to be browsing Pinterest - it's construction companies and property flippers! There are houses of every shape, size and style saved on Pinterest style boards but they all seem to share a few significant features. Ironically, none of those features are typically within the scope of DIY-ers and designers - they are all things that should be factored into a house from Day One.

Here are my pointers for construction companies (or anyone else) looking to build/ renovate properties that will get snapped up and held onto fiercely:

1. Big Windows - and lots of them!

You cannot miss the fact that nearly all the rooms drooled over and tacked up for inspiration have huge (and/or multiple) windows through which natural light floods into a room. Nothing you do ever really compensates for the cave-like gloom that results from a lack of natural light.

Modern technology has made available windows appropriate for every climate, location and style, so let's start paying attention to light patterns and weather trends. Sunlight has antiseptic and anti-depressive properties that are free for the taking - so let's see more windows!


2. Entry ways and mudrooms - they're not optional.

If you're ever lived in a house lacking a proper entryway, you know how seriously inconvenient it is to deal with every day. There's no excuse for houses anywhere to not have a functional entryway.

It doesn't have to be huge or glamorous, but main entries to a house need some kind of functional space for organizing shoes, purses, backpacks, dog leashes, umbrellas, keys - the paraphernalia of every day life. Opening directly into the living room? Postage stamp sized tile squares and tiny closets that end up behind the open front door? Unacceptable.

3. The era of wall to wall carpeting has passed. 
An overwhelming number of homeowners favor wood, tile and other durable, flexible surfaces for the main flooring in their homes. Between a rise in allergies to dust, pet dander and other debris easily trapped in carpets and the need for spaces to often pull double duty (a home office tucked into a family/ guest room, for example), families are looking for functional, easily updated options like bare floors and area rugs. Start with hard wood and real tile and you can't go wrong.

4. Storage solutions are a must.

Despite trends toward simplification and anti-consumerism, modern families have more STUFF than any previous generation. Even great, important stuff - bikes, sports equipment, healthy food, books - takes up space! Homeowners are endlessly creative when it comes to carving out spaces to store things, but a little forethought and provision in the building process for easy storage would go a long way. (I've never heard of anyone being disappointed by too much storage, have you?)


What would you like to see home designers/flippers take into account?

Thoughts of Summer

It's been a fairly mild winter here, even by the local standards (which I consider low to begin with compared to the lake-effect snow belt city in which I grew up). But even still, the ground alternates between a patchy snow- and- ice combo and complete submersion under a sloppy lake of slush.

It's not exactly a landscape that inspires anyone to voluntarily be outdoors. (The notable exception being bordie collies, who believe that snow is the best possible environment in which to play. Can there be any better flourish to highlight one's skill in snapping a frisbee from midair than the tidal wave of snowy crystals that erupts during a flawless, four-point slide landing?)

Winter is, however, one of the best times to start planning summer projects. Victorian gardeners spent their long, dark winters mapping out extensive garden plans for the coming summer, charting the blooms to ensure a continuous riot of blossoms from the first tentative days of spring until the last burnished leaves of fall.

While few of us are that detailed, many of us wish we could get more out of our outdoor spaces.  It's become abundantly clear to me, as we immerse ourselves in the process of searching for a house, that whatever we find will almost certainly need extensive landscaping.

Enter Home Outside, a gorgeously photographed landscaping book I stumbled upon at the library. Written in the vein of the Not So Big House books, Home Outside is accessible, practical and inspiring. Appreciating that large swathes of Americans start with unkept, uneven or entirely barren yards - and very tight budgets - the author breaks down the basics into accessible, bite-sized chunks.

Simple, effective diagrams show you how to determine what style of yard works for your personality, family and property. Discussions on how to determine what plants are appropriate for your location and how to connect your outdoor space to your indoor space are easy to understand but avoid becoming insultingly oversimplified.

Most importantly, perhaps, is the budget-friendliness of the book. Glossy photos of intimate, gravel-lined retreats nestle side-by-side with wide flag-stoned patios, providing attractive options for every space and budget. There's also a unique and helpful exploration of how to design a multi-year plan for spaces in need of extensive transformation that will be functional and beautiful at each step. It's rare to see such books deal upfront with limits on time and money, but this book does so adeptly. Tips on up-cycling found pieces and matching your yard to your preferred maintenance level are also featured.

I know that when we eventually have a house (and a yard) to sculpt into our private haven, I'll be coming back to this book to help me design a plan to get the most out of our space. If you're looking to beat the winter blahs or hoping to get more out of your outdoors this coming summer, this is a great place to start!

What You Don't See on HGTV

Note: this is a bit of a rant, based on the recent experiences of myself and several of my friends. You're welcome to skip reading it or to leave you opinion in the comments, but this was your fair warning.  :)

We don't watch much tv around here, but occasionally while I'm cleaning or quilting I'll catch an episode of something on HGTV as background noise. One of the shows I tend to enjoy is Unsellables, where a professional home stager goes in and helps people who have been unable to sell their homes figure out why and make changes for no more than a couple thousand dollars that will bring in buyers and get them sold.

Sometimes, changes are laughably simple: the first three steps are always clean, declutter and fix the stupid little things (oil squeaky doors, tighten loose knobs, or cut back the overgrown plants outside). Painting over insanely bright wall colors, getting rid of huge furniture crowding a space and putting up new house numbers so people can find the place to begin with are often sufficient to bring in crowds and rack up offers.

Unfortunately, the hardest part about watching is knowing what they aren't showing: all the houses rejected because they needed far more than a weekend and some elbow grease. It's become appallingly clear that there is a tragic disconnect between people's ideas about their houses and their actions towards them. 

To hear people talk, home is the precious command center from which we run our lives and the nest in which we nurture families and friendships.

Financial gurus call houses investments. They appreciate in value and can be strategically chosen and improved to bring a great return on investment when you're ready to move on to the next one.

Taking care of a house should, therefore, be a win-win.

The current reality is a far, sad cry from that ideal. Home sellers blithely check "no water damage" on paper when a simple glance at the poor paint-over job proves the lie. They boast of their new roof, unconcerned about the mis-installed insulation causing the base of the roof to rot out underneath. Sellers install shiny synthetic floors expecting a top dollar return, despite structural or functional issues that will take time, energy and big funding to repair.

Is this part of why the housing market continues to slump? Because buying a house right now is a Catch-22?

Buyers are expected to somehow pay good price for a house and either continue ignoring the core issues themselves until they reach a crisis point, or to find the money to fix it on top of the sale price and hefty taxes, closing fees and moving costs.

I completely empathize with people who don't want to dump tons of money into a home they don't intend to stay in or who counted on the money from their house to pay off the mortgage and fund their next place. But with budgets stretched all around, where is the give here?

Do we assume that every person/ family who has been working hard and saving for years to earn the right to own a home will further cut their standard of living, buy a derelict house and slowly restore?

Do we expect sellers to suck it up and lose money in the sale as payment for their ignorance or carelessness?

I don't know how to fix the current mess, but I would like to offer a simple suggestion to everyone intending to buy, sell or build a home in the future: educate yourself about what really matters and make good choices. 

- Make sure all work is up to code and done right every time. Have the dignity to do things right the first time around, even if it means delaying projects or sacrificing luxury extras somewhere.

- Don't assume contractors will do a good job (or that they have done one just because it looks nice). They cut corners like everyone else. We've had real estate agents flat out tell us they see new construction fail code inspections! Be smart, hold your ground and follow up.

- Learn what to look for and bring someone you trust to help assess if you're not sure. A house's suitability for you doesn't really lie in whether or not it has granite counter tops and two sinks in the master bathroom (my pet peeves from other HGTV shows... lol): what matters is whether or not it is safe and structurally sound for the long haul!

- Don't buy someone else's problem. Make people responsible for what they are trying to sell and their headaches will give other sellers serious motivation to make sure their house isn't a problem to sell.

- If at all possible, start planning to sell your house early (like from the day you buy it) so you have time to invest wisely. You're much better off doing the hard, boring stuff while you're still in the house and can benefit from it than doing a spit and polish routine you'll end up paying for later.

- Finally, take advantage of outside funding! There are many local and state grant programs that help homeowners make upgrades/ do repairs that qualify as environmental or safety improvements. Insurance companies may also offer funds for improving your land or property, especially if it not recently built and therefore not up to current code.


If we each pitch in, wherever we are in the cycle, we can slowly fix this mess our national carelessness had made. What do you think?