Progress

Yes, another capital letter: Progress!  It has been a long dark dank tunnel to get here but I see the light.  Like Tunnel Hill.  Scary.

Oh the dilemma: Louis needs to get into whatever public school, we need to sell the house, we need to build the new house in the meantime, while somehow managing to afford it all...Do we just buy a house in Goreville and do that, or put Louis in Unity Point until we move? Give up the Oasis idea and enjoy a nice close-knit rural neighborhood? I don't want Louis to have to shift schools more than once, he's already having to deal with a new house and a new school.  And how do we  make it work financially?  Everything we look at will require another loan.  Very unattractive when that's what we're trying to escape. Building the house will take x amount of time. After everything else that's going on in our lives this past year, it has been extremely crazy figuring this out.

So my best idea is find a cheap temporary housing alternative to put on the land so that we can get Louis into the school that he needs to be in, the one that's corresponding to the land we own, right down the road from his Papa, where we plan to live from now on, we move out there and then it's easier to sell the Carbondale house, because that's been very unpleasant on all measures, 'nother story.  Easier said than done!  A single-wide trailer, all electricity appliances etc. ready to go, or manufactured home or whatever you want to name it, there's an alternative.  We found one for 15k. Not optimal but livable, hideous on the outside but I like the pricetag.  No loan required.  And I left a deposit but they never got it!  So we're back at the starting line.

Like weeks to go, I'm looking on Craigslist every day, visiting manufactured home places, kind of ruling out the house in Goreville option, 70k for a new single wide.  Drive up to Mt. Vernon, 28k for a refurbished old single wide, 50k for just OK double wide. I'm becoming an expert!  Looking up Amish cabins, yuurts, pole barns, whatever. Then I follow up a lead from Dorothy, I had texted the guy but never heard back, then called him at work one day.  Yep, still available, we can come look at it Saturday at 1pm.  The whole fandamily is in attendance.

It's a big box with all kinds of space, in good condition, and only 20k!  We are on it like ticks on a dog's ear, as Steven would say. He already says we're going to buy it to the guy (Gary) while we're still there, very unusual for him.  Steven and him are chatting it up, he's a local guy, not a realtor, 'makes' guns on the side, whatever that means.  Owns a wildly successful bed and breakfast in Anna and just wants to clear off the house and build a workshop.  The kids are running around picking out their rooms, or at least Louis is; they have seen the alternatives. High fives all around.

So today I signed a little makeshift agreement and give a $500 deposit, and it's done. There is much more to do: we have to actually move the house to our property now.  Cheapest quote so far is $8000 and he can't manage it until after Labor day, but Gary says that's highway robbery. So I'll be making some phone calls.  I told Gary, after a long discussion about the potential for a big cabin business out our way, that we're having him and his family and Dorothy and hers over for dinner to celebrate soon.

Other stuff needs to be done, assuming we get the house moved in one piece.  New carpet, major cleaning and extermination of the resident rodents, and somehow ridding the place of the hideous wallpaper in a few of the rooms.  Manageable!  I am so relieved.  We went out to the property yesterday to start to measure and figure out where it would go, which way it would face, etc.  I think I will have the kitchen windows face the view, kind of uncertain but fairly sure.  We are thinking now, if this house is not a totally awful hidden disease, we will just shift it over to the basement whenever we get it built.  How can we complain if we have a fine house for 20k??

I mean I trust the guy who sold it to us but you never know.  I wouldn't mind not having to worry about the house itself, but possibly other things we want or want to do like vacations, endless pools, etc.!