Sometime later this year we’d like to start finishing our basement.  For now, it’s just a huge storage area, but we have big plans for it.  Our first financial priority this year is our HSA and our IRAs, but after that, we’re planning to start putting some money into the basement.  We’d like to use as much recycled, reclaimed, and salvaged material as we can for the project.  There are two Habitat for Humanity ReStores in the area, as well as at least two other construction material yards that sell salvaged materials.  In addition, I’ve been watching the free section on Craigs List.

Tonight, I hit the jackpot.

One of our plans for the basement is a workout room.  For now, my husband and I both do our workouts in our bedroom, and our weights are stored under our bed.  It works, but since we have all that space downstairs, a workout room makes sense.  One of the things I wanted for it was big mirrors, as we both feel that mirrors help us maintain our form when we exercise.  But mirrors – especially big ones – are not cheap.  Tonight I found a free listing on Craigs List for two wall mirrors; each one is 3 feet by 8 feet.  I have no idea how much those would cost if we were to buy them new, but I’m sure the price tag would give me shivers.  Happily, all we have to do to get these is drive ten miles into town.  I was the first response the lady had, so they’re ours.

For the last few days, I’ve kept the local Craigs List free page open as a tab on my computer, and I just refresh it every few hours.  As long as you can resist a whole lot of stuff that you might like but don’t really need (since that equals clutter!), it’s a great way to find awesome deals as soon as they get listed.

I don’t particularly like cleaning.  I love to cook, do laundry, work in the garden… but cleaning is pretty far down on my list.  But I love living in a clean house, and having lots of wide open, clean space around me.  And therein lies the conundrum.  Lately I’ve been on a mission to purge stuff from our house, so that it’s easier to clean and less likely to get messed up ( if you don’t have it, you can’t mess it up, right?)  I’ve pretty much stopped going to thrift stores, as there really isn’t anything we need, and thrift stores tend to entice me to buy stuff just because it’s there and it’s a screamin’ deal.  So at least no new stuff is coming into the house.

In addition, I’ve been going through the house and really looking at our stuff.  Asking myself if we’ve used it lately, or if we could do without it.  The back of my car is full again with stuff to drop off at the thrift store next time I go to town, and it feels great.

Yesterday, I tackled a set of kitchen cabinets.  The cabinets where we store tea, coffee, some spices, baking stuff, random kitchen gadgets that rarely get used… sort of the catch-all cabinets.  I took everything out, and tossed the stuff that I never use.  There were spices that were more preservatives than spice – and that I knew I would never use again – but were somehow still lurking in the back of my cabinet.  There was a beautiful glass pitcher that we got as a wedding gift from friends of my in-laws and have used one time.  One time, and we’ve been married since 2003.  Regardless of how pretty the pitcher was, in our kitchen, it was taking up space.  Now it’s in my car to donate, and will hopefully end up in a home where it gets used often.  By the time I had finished, I had a large stack for the thrift store, and an equally large stack for the trash.  And my cabinet looks and feels SO much better.  I can find everything.  I know that everything in there is stuff that we regularly use.

A while ago, I started saving plain glass jars when they were empty, instead of putting them in the recycle bin.  Yesterday I cleaned off all of the labels, and transferred all of the stuff that was in plastic bags in my cabinet to the jars.  Cocoa, dried coconut, spices… all of the stuff that our health food store sells in bulk bags.  Now it’s all in pretty jars instead.  I made labels out of scrap paper and black ink and glued them to the jars.  I love how it looks with all the different jars, and it’s easy to tell if I’m running low on something.  And with the cabinet all cleaned out, I can see all of the jars at a glance.

Ah, kitchen decluttering.  Perfect activity for a cold, snowy weekend.  And it’s free, which is always a bonus in my book.

I got a blog award last week, and in the process I discovered a new blog.  Kristina writes at Growing A Better Me, and has all sorts of interesting things to share.  Thanks for the award Kristina!  As far as passing it on goes, the blogs on my blogroll are my favorites, and I highly recommend them all!

While I was browsing Kristina’s blog, I found this recipe that she shared for spinach burgers.  I didn’t have any cheese (we’re mostly vegan these days) so I made cashew cheese by blending cashews, water, garlic salt, apple cider vinegar, and some spices.  It turned out creamy and wonderful, and I added it to the spinach mixture in place of cheese.  The dish was fantastic, and smelled great while it was baking.  I didn’t have bread either, so I whipped up a batch of tortillas, and we had spinach burritos.  Very yummy – thanks for the inspiration Kristina!

I also came across this article last week, with 100 ways to recycle a t-shirt.  My favorite?  The diaper, of course!

My husband is hard at work in the backyard right now, building two more mini-greenhouses to put over our other garden beds.  We’ve had to cover them with tarps for the last couple nights, as it’s been below freezing.  So it will be nice to have them covered now as we head into the cold season.  He’s using a lot of scrap lumber that we got for free from a lumber yard (check around, if there’s one in your area, they might let you come in and pick up offcuts).  We had to buy several long 2×4s, but all of the shorter pieces were free.

We’re starting to wrap up our list of outdoor chores.  I’ve been moving gravel in the front yard for the last few weeks, and finally finished this week.  We have a huge front yard, and it was all grass when we got here (well, sort of – it hadn’t been watered or mowed in a very long time… but it was supposed to be grass).  We didn’t want to be watering and maintaining all of that grass, and decided to xeriscape a chunk of the yard instead.  The previous owners had purchased gravel to go along the driveway and between the street and the sidewalk.  They had also put gravel back by the fence, and had apparently over-ordered.  The excess was in the area by the fence, which was over a foot deep in places.  So I got out the wheelbarrow and shovel, and started moving gravel.  We bought weedblocker to put down under the gravel, and I’ve filled in roughly 400 square feet of yard with xeriscaping.  We planted a few low-water plants and grasses, and I put in a wavy edge along the gravel using some old bricks that the previous owners left.  Even the plants were mostly free – a neighbor didn’t want them any more, and offered them to us if we’d come over and dig them out of her yard.  I love our new front yard.  It’s still mostly grass, but not as much as it was before, and we paid almost nothing for the new landscaping.  I also got lots of good workouts by shoveling gravel, which was an extra bonus.

Hope you’re all having a good weekend!

When we moved into this house, there was no blind on the window in our kitchen.  The rest of the house has basic plastic blinds – which are fine with us – but the kitchen window was bare.  It only looks out onto our side yard, and beyond that is our neighbor’s garage, so there isn’t really anybody looking in our kitchen window.  Still, it’s nice to be able to close the blinds at night, so we had planned to get something for that window. 

A couple weeks after we moved in, a neighbor mentioned that she and her husband were remodeling their whole house, and were replacing all of their blinds with plantation shutters.  She asked if we needed any, and we told her about our kitchen window.  She offered us the entire stack of blinds, most of which we’ve since given to my parents for a house they are remodeling.  But one of the blinds was a perfect fit for our kitchen window.  It even matches the paint on the walls.  And it was free. 

My husband finished a window well cover earlier this week, and is nearly finished with the second one.  I’m pretty darn impressed, especially given that this is his first real welding project (he considered the umbrella stand practice, since it just involved attaching a piece of pipe to a piece of I-beam).  Here’s a picture of the finished window well cover:

He spent $58 on the grating (enough to make covers for both windows), and about $10 on the angle iron.  He ran out of angle iron on the second cover, so he’s been using scrap metal that we found in a dumpster behind a welding shop here in town.  He talked with the owners a few weeks ago, and they said that he’s welcome to dig through their scrap metal dumpster any time he wants.  So for the last couple weeks, he’s taken me over there on Friday nights, for a “dumpster date.”  He gets in and pulls out the good metal, and hands it out to me so that I can load it up in our wagon.  And he gets a kick out of telling all the neighbors what a romantic guy he is, taking his wife dumpster diving on Friday nights

My husband is teaching himself to weld (with a little help from YouTube and Google).  It’s something he’s wanted to do for a long time, but now that we’ve moved, he has more space to do it, and lots of things to weld.  He found a welder on Craigs List, and a welding mask on eBay.  He got all of the other supplies at various places around town, and found some metal shops that let him take their scraps for free.  There’s one place just a half mile or so from our house that has a dumpster out back where they toss their scrap metal, and they told him he can dumpster-dive anytime he wants.  It’s all mostly small stuff, but it’s been perfect for practicing.

He made his first project last week.  We had bought an umbrella for our patio, but had skipped the $50 umbrella stand, because my husband decided that would be a good place to try out his welding skills.  He welded together a chunk of old I-beam and a metal pipe, and they make a great umbrella stand:

I love it.  It’s unique, very effective, a great example of recycling, and very frugal.

The next project is window well covers.  Our basement windows don’t have well covers, and with a toddler, those are a must.  We were shocked to discover how expensive they are if you hire someone else to weld them for you.  We were finding prices of $300 – $400 per window (we have two).  My husband went to a metal supply shop last week and got all the supplies he needs to make both well covers for about $70 (angle iron and heavy duty grating).  By the time he’s finished with the window well covers, the welder and all its accessories will have more than paid for themselves.  And there are many more projects to come…

It has been a busy three weeks around here, but we’re making progress.  We finished building a gate in our fence that will allow us to move large things in an out of the backyard.  The previous owner had tried to construct a 15 foot gate.  He bought a bunch of expensive hardware that would have allowed the gate to slide from side to side, but he didn’t install all of it, and didn’t build the gate well at all.  The neighbors tell us that it was forever blowing down – he had it propped up with 2×4s when we got here, and it wasn’t usable as a gate.  It was so heavy that my husband and I could barely lift it.  We took it apart and were able to salvage a lot of fence pickets from it to use in making a better gate.  We spent about $150 on supplies, and now have two six foot gates that swing inward, giving us a 12 foot gate opening.  We had to build a three foot section of fence to finish closing the gap that was there from the old fence.  It took a few days, but we now have a solid, sturdy, functioning gate and fence.  From the street you can’t even see that there is a gate at all – it just looks like fence.  So we’re happy with that project.  

We also built new compost bins from recycled pallets and wood.  My husband found a place where they were giving away all sorts of good quality pallets, and he snagged a bunch.  He built two good sized compost bins, and we’re working away at building up a supply of compost again.  It will take a while to get back to what we had before we moved, but we’re on our way.

I’ve been scrubbing the basement floor, and have pretty much rid the house of the cat smell that was here when we arrived.  Luckily the cat smell was really only in the basement, and the floors down there are all concrete, which is easy to clean.  The stairs leading to the basement are carpeted, and the cat smell had made its way into the stairwell a bit.  For several days, I used a spray bottle to spray white vinegar onto the stairs, and then just let it dry.  This weekend we had a friend over and she said that she couldn’t smell anything at all (and she doesn’t have cats, so she’s a good judge).  Is there anything vinegar can’t do? 

I’ll leave you with a picture of our garden at the moment.  It’s a bit on the small side for mid-July.  We have cucumbers, watermelon, cilantro and lettuce in this tray, and we have another tray with equally small swiss chard.  They better do some growing to make up for our late start!  I worked the soil in two garden bed areas this weekend, and we’ll be adding compost (purchased, unfortunately) and getting our seedlings in the ground this week.  We still have about three months left in the regular growing season, and by fall we should have a greenhouse set up so that we can extend the season. 

We had our inspection today on our house today, and the results are pretty sweet. The only things the buyer is asking us to do is add GFCIs to the kitchen, bathrooms, and laundry room (the new section of the kitchen that we remodeled last year has GFCIs, but the rest of the house was wired in the 80s), and fix a leak that was found under our kitchen sink. We had never noticed a leak under the sink, and there’s no evidence of one when we look under there. But our realtor said that inspectors will sometimes fill the sink with water and then let it all out at once to check for leaks. So we’ll do that ourselves to find it, and it should be an easy fix. The GFICs are easy too, and cheap. One for each circuit should be about $60 total, and the whole project can be done in an afternoon (with a little supervision from my parents, who were planning to visit next week anyway).
So things are moving along very well this time around. Now that the inspection objection deadline has passed, the buyer would lose her earnest money if she backs out, unless it’s due to an appraisal or financing issue. If the house doesn’t appraise for at least the current sale price, we’d probably just have to drop our price. Our buyer is getting an FHA loan, so it will be an FHA appraisal. Our realtor said that those stick with a house for six months, and that the vast majority of loans that are being done in this region right now are FHA. So we’re somewhat at the mercy of the appraiser. But we’re hopeful that it will work out. As far as financing, our buyer is supposedly pretty far along in the mortgage approval process, and everything looks good.
We’re thrilled that the inspection turned up such small things, and things that will be easy and cheap to fix. Now if we could just figure out when to lock in an interest rate on our new mortgage…

It’s been a whirlwind few days around here, between all the house buying and selling, and then a visit from my husband’s parents.  But I thought I’d post an update on what is going on with our housing situation.

Everything is still looking good with the sale of our current house.  The inspection was last week, and we’re still waiting to hear what requests the buyer has based on the inspection results.  Right now the contract is for full asking price ($214,900), with no concessions on our part.  I’m sure that will change a bit once everything shakes out from the inspection, but hopefully there won’t be any major issues that come up.  The closing date is June 16th, and we have to be out of here by June 17th.

And… we found a new house!  We had been browsing houses online ever since January.  So we had a good idea of what was available and at what price.  We had found a house that stood out head and shoulders above the rest, but we had assumed that it would no longer be on the market by the time ours got under contract.  But our house was under contract three days after we put it on the market, and the house we were most interested in was still available.  Turns out, it had been on the market for nearly a year.  It’s a wonderful house, exactly what we were looking for.  The lot is more than 3/4 of an acre, and we think that’s probably why it’s been on the market for so long.  The house has been well taken care of, but the yard is mostly just weeds.  And it’s huge.  For most people, that probably just looks like WAY too much yard work.  And there are tons of other houses available that are just as nice, with much more manageable yards.  But for us, this one fit our needs exactly.  It backs to a park, and the elementary school is only about a 5 minute walk from the house.  The house is the exact same size as our current one, but it also has a full (unfinished) basement that will eventually double our living space.

The house was priced at $214,900 – exactly the same price as our current house and 0.08 acre lot!  Amazing what moving a few miles outside the city can do as far as house prices.  We offered $200,000 and expected a counter offer.  But they just rejected our offer outright.  In a year on the market, they had only dropped the price by $5000, and are apparently very un-motivated sellers.  So we offered full price, and they accepted.

Now we’re under contract to buy the new house, with a closing date of June 26th.  My brother has offered to let us stay with him for the 10 days that we’ll be homeless (Thanks bro!)  We’ll be paying about $16,000 in realtor fees, closing costs, and other fees.  But other than that, we’re trading our house for the new one, dollar for dollar.  We’re selling a 1320 square foot house with a back fence that is six feet from our house.  We’re buying a 2650 square foot house (including the unfinished basement) and 3/4 of an acre.  Both homes back to parks, and both have great elementary schools just a few minutes walk from the house.  We are thrilled with our find – this is definitely the best house we saw in all our months of looking online.  And the back yard – which likely kept the price down because it’s a negative for most buyers – is exactly what we want for our farming plans.

We are getting an inspection done next week on the new house, but it’s only 10 years old and we don’t anticipate any major problems.  We’ve got all sorts of plans for our new yard.  The hope is that within a few years we’ll be nearly self-sufficient as far as food.  We plan to put in an orchard of fruit trees, berry bushes, and lots of vegetable plots.  We’ll set up greenhouses for our hydroponics, and perhaps even get a few chickens.  (Only for eggs!  They will have names, and be treated as pets – no neck wringing will go on in the Frugal Babe household!)

We’ve made a few trips in the last couple weeks to the area where we’ll be moving.  It’s about an hour north of the city where we live now, and only about ten minutes outside of another city.  But it’s got a wonderful small-town feel that we both love.  Things seem slower and more relaxed there.  There’s no smog or pollution.  It’s perfect for the self-sufficient, laid back lifestyle that we’re seeking.  This whole moving thing has been quite the process, and I feel like I’ve done little else this year other than get our house ready for the market.  But when we visit our new town, and imagine the possibilities in our new back yard,  it all seems worth it.

I’ll keep you posted about how this whole process goes.  So far so good – hopefully by July I’ll be updating from the new Frugal Babe Farm!

And they offered our full asking price!  Doing a little happy dance…. Ok, I’m back.  We had three more showings today (that made nine total), including a second showing for a buyer who was here on Thursday.  That showing ended at 6:30 this evening, and by 7:45 they had made an offer.  Our realtor said that another buyer who looked at the house today was ready to make an offer too, and might come in with a backup offer.

Obviously, we are thrilled.  A full price offer after 72 hours on the market is awesome.  And it makes the last four months of working pretty much non-stop on the house seem very much worth it.  But now there are lot of hoops to jump through.

First, there is some concern that the buyer’s lender’s appraisal might not agree with the asking price, just because there are some low-value homes in our neighborhood that drag down the comparable home values.  Bummer, but our realtor said that there is a good chance that the appraisal will go through without any problems – she just mentioned that this might be a bump in the road.

Then there’s the inspection.  We’ll just have to wait and see what comes of that.  The big stuff should be ok – new roof, the furnace is only 6 years old, there are no leaks or pipe issues, etc.  But everyone we know who has sold a house (including the people who sold this place to us) has had to make some concessions after the inspection, so we’re bracing ourselves for that.  Hopefully it will work out ok.

And of course there’s financing.  It’s not always easy to get a loan these days, and we’re hoping that the people who made an offer will be able to get their financing together so that this will indeed go through.  I’m sure that we’ll be learning a lot about the ins and outs of selling a house over the next few weeks.  We know that there will be some bumps, but we’re hoping that they won’t be too big.  The offer that we got today comes with a closing date of June 16.  I just looked around this place and thought of everything we have to do in the next month.  Yikes!  Makes me tired just thinking about it.  But I suppose it’s a lot less than we’ve already done over the last few months.