The Friday Gathering – More houses Edition
By glblguy
The roofers should finish up installing the new roof on our current home today. It’s made a huge improvement to the look of our home. I didn’t realize how bad our roof was until I came home from work and saw the new one. Wow!
Which reminds me. We ended up hiring a painting company to repair the chimney, fix all of the rotten wood, and paint the house. I shopped around, received several bids and then selected the company I was comfortable with doing the work. I challenged their offer and practiced some negotiating tactics. I saved $1000.00 off the initial bid. Here’s the best part…the bid was low enough that we didn’t need to borrow any money! We were able to pay off the entire repair with our emergency fund!
This weekend, we’ll be traveling back up the mountains to look at some more homes. Our buyer’s broker has about 5 homes lined up for us and from the pictures we’ve seen, they are just beautiful and all have awesome mountain views. I can’t wait to see them!
Now I just pray that the timing of all of this works out or that the seller of whichever home we decide on will take a contingency contract. Another option we are also considering is just buying some land and either having a home built, or having an upscale modular home installed. Anybody familiar with the pros/cons of modular housing? I’m not referring to double wides, but to homes that actually look like stick built homes. Would appreciate any insights you may have.
Important Stuff
- Pinyo from Moolanomy updated his blog theme to a really different but slick looking layout. Head over and check it out!
- Lynnae from Being Frugal published another video and it’s better than the first. She’s really good at the video thing! It’s even on one of my favorite hobbies, camping.
- PT from PTMoney, won a video contest with this PT Raps video. I cannot even express how awesome of a job he did on this. I think he’s a natural! I have no doubt’s he’ll win.
- I lost yet another round in the Personal Finance Challange game on Facebook. While you’re over there, friend me on Facebook! You can also become a fan of Gather Little by Little too!
- Blog Action Day has kicked off for 2008. I participated in the 2007 event, and it was a huge success and I’m sure this year will be even better. Just checking as I signed up and already more than 445 sites have registered reaching more than 1.3 million readers! If you are a blogger, head over and register for this worthy cause.
The Gathering
Here are my favorite article picks from this week:
- Are You Rich? @ That One Caveman
- time budgets @ Plonkee Money
- Cheapest Fuel Efficient Cars: Fit Is Go! @ Bargaineering
- SportsClips Does it Right @ Cash Money Life
- How to Live More Simply, and Why It Is So Important @ Frugal Dad
- Tightwad Tuesday: Bartering – A Lost Art@ Being Frugal
- How I Deal With My Financial Fears @ The Simple Dollar
- Home Gardening: What, How, And When To Plant In Your Growing Region. @ My Two Dollars
- You can’t take it with you @ ChristianP
- 10 Tips For College Bound Students @ Moolanomy
- 10 Home Maintenance Tasks You Typically Put Off or Ignore @ The Wisdom Journal
August 15th, 2008 at 7:20 am
Wow, you are quick. I just got email about blog action day this morning. Good luck with the house hunting and thank you for showing off my new site design to your readers!
August 15th, 2008 at 7:51 am
Exciting times, man! Good luck with those mountain homes. (Are they near Boone or Asheville, NC?)
August 15th, 2008 at 8:05 am
Good deal negotiating! I’ll be sure to participate in Blog Action Day again this year. I think it’s a wonderful thing to be able to bring attention to a cause that has worldwide effects.
August 15th, 2008 at 8:28 am
Thanks for the link to my article. Hope this house hunting trip yields some results. Oh, and thanks for the heads up on Blog Action Day–off to check it out now.
August 15th, 2008 at 9:39 am
My husband and I considered purchasing land also, and we had planned on doing a “panel built home”. It is basically something that comes in a sort of kit and can be installed by your or a contractor. They are fairly inexpensive (as homes go) and come in a variety of styles. This is the site we looked at http://www.ameripanel.com/. I also came across this site in my search, though I haven’t checked them out much, http://www.valubuild.com/. Good luck!
August 15th, 2008 at 9:44 am
Good luck on the house hunting. It’s gotta be exciting to be chasing a dream like that! Thanks for linking to my article and thanks for mentioning Blog Action Day; I hadn’t heard of it before.
August 15th, 2008 at 10:19 am
I cannot wait to hear about your new mountain home, we are on such similar paths right now. Good luck, and thanks for the mention!
August 15th, 2008 at 10:20 am
Hey GLBL, thanks for heads up on Blog Action Day. That’s a perfect theme for the money blog community to get involved in.
August 15th, 2008 at 11:08 am
The Blog Action Day looks pretty interesting. Thanks for posting this here. Now I can check it out!
August 15th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Gibble,
thanks for the mention – oh and BTW, I made the top 20 with PT too!! I am hoping to make it to the top 5!! We shall see…
August 18th, 2008 at 9:37 pm
My ex-husband and I had a modular home built about 15 years ago, and I just loved it. We went through Unibuilt and couldn’t have been happier. Their houses are stick built homes, just built in a factory, so the interior studs and such are never exposed to the elements. They are also constructed much quicker than on-site homes; we were in our completed home in about 4 months. While we chose a standard plan, they were more than willing to work with us should we have wanted to change any layouts. Our contractor also was very good in advising us on things we could change to lower the cost without sacrificing quality, i.e., 3″ door and window frame moldings versus 4″, local supplier for carpet instead of from the factory and so on, and there were many options available to choose from. Should I ever be fortunate enough to build again, I would definitely go with Unibuilt. (No affiliation, just a happy customer.) Email me if you have any specific questions.