Cool Photos

I'm posting some of my photos that are from the last two trips to Italy. Have fun looking! I hope to go back again sometime in the next five years or so.



Beautiful Italy

I Know....

I know it's been a very long time since I've said a word. What can I say? Sorry.

Well, we decided to keep the house and rent it out. The new Narrows Bridge will be complete in the next year or so and we're banking on the fact that better traffic flow could help prices in that area.

When we went to refinance the house (the loan we took over from the buyers was at a very high interest rate) we found out that there was a hidden feature that took us by surprise. Turns out the original loan the couple had negotiated included a pre-payment penalty! The amount was almost $5,000! Aww shucks! Now, even if we had decided to sell it, we probably would have made only a couple of thousand dollars. Not much considering all the work. Not a good deal in my book. So we bit the bullet, paid the penalty and refinanced the house. The savings in the house payment ends up making the decision a good one in the long term. We hope to keep it for a few years and then sell it.

We got it rented this last week and all is good to go. The house looks beautiful and the new renters are very happy with how it looks.

Thanks for sticking close during the renovation process. It was a wild 12 weeks of rehabbing! The big question for me is: would I do this again? I've mulled it around for a while and determined that I would, but only with a few stipulations. 1) I would not do it while I was working; I'd have to take at least a month off. 2) I would try to stick to the project management portion of the job and leave more of the actual work to others. (I'm getting too old for this). However, maybe if I weren't working a 40+ hour week job, this wouldn't be such a big deal.

Now I can turn my blog back into other issues to write about: life, kids, travel, cool photos I've taken, and other nice and fun things that occupy my time.

See you all soon!