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Why I Only Install IKEA Kitchens
(Note: This is not a sponsored post and contains no affiliate links. I just honestly love IKEA kitchens, for reasons detailed below. I hope you find this helpful if you are considering an IKEA kitchen renovation) After our third flip, we were fed up with our cabinet supplier. Something was always wrong with the design, the measurements not quite exact, or something lost in communication. And the cabinets took FOREVER to arrive. Weeks. As investors, time is money. A month of delays can cost us $3000. Which is why we were irate every time we had to order some more missing parts, which would take another 2 weeks to arrive.…
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7 Rocky Mountain Towns Worth Exploring
We spent this entire summer exploring the Rocky Mountains. It was awesome. We began in the foothills of New Mexico, spent a couple months in Colorado, and finished the summer exploring Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. We enjoyed exploring the local scene, both natural and urban. Here are some of our favorite Rocky Mountain towns and cities. 1. Santa Fe, NM – pop 83,875 Starting at the southern end we have Santa Fe, capital of New Mexico and artist hub. Santa Fe is primarily on this list because of Meow Wolf. A unique art installation unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before. You just have to experience it. I’m a little obsessed.…
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Investing with Anxiety
I have lived with anxiety for much of my life. As a teenager, I had crippling social anxiety. I was bullied as a child and I felt that any social interaction could lead to my being victimized again. When you’re bullied at seemingly random times and after random actions, you start to look for patterns. When you don’t find a pattern, you develop the anxiety that at any given point, something terrible will happen to you. That’s a scary way to live your life and a very unpleasant one. It leads to avoidance and fear of many situations which are involved in having a simple quality of life. My social…
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How to glue your Winnebago roof back down
As I previously mentioned, the roof on our 12 year old Itasca Sunrise almost blew off. We’ve owned this rv for a year. We did have it inspected before we bought it from a private seller, but clearly this was missed. I do distinctly remember our inspector telling us that the roof was extremely well sealed, that “typically, you see this dinky amount of caulk, but there was just– so much of it up there. Gobs.” There ARE gobs of caulk over all the rooftop fittings, but it is almost completely worn away along the sidewall seam, where the thin fiberglass roof is glued to the gutters. Which explains why…
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That time our roof almost blew off
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5 SuperHost Tips for Staying at Your First Airbnb
My very first Airbnb experience was five years ago, in 2013, when I stayed at this amazing mid-century modern house on a lake with the most charming and welcoming host, Chuck Taylor. We booked the house for a weekend getaway from DC. It was a unique house, architecturally. Dog-friendly. And it had a hot tub! One of our favorite parts, however, was just getting to know Chuck. We watched his HGTV episode together. He even hung out with our dog while we went whale-watching. I was hooked on Airbnb. I was a big fan of staying at AirBnb listings before I ever became a host. There are so many reasons…
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That time our roof almost blew off
We woke up on a wind farm in West Texas. We were finally heading into the Southwest, after spending all winter and early spring in the Southeast. Spirits were high. We hit the road. Shortly thereafter, our TPMS went off. Nosediving pressure in the tow dolly tire. We pulled over on the side of the two lane highway. Almost out of Texas. Almost. “Yep, it’s a flat,” I told Eugene. “Oh, so it’s going to be one of THOSE days,” he said. Without too much drama, we unloaded the Bug, chased to the nearest gas station about 20 miles away, and changed the tire. “That could’ve been a LOT worse,”…
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How to glue your Winnebago roof back down
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“Did you just spend $100,000 on an education to get a $40,000 a year job?”
So this meme/ad is currently making the rounds. The idea is that a college education is a terrible investment. That we’ll justify spending absurd amounts of money on college even if we know that the promised land of high-paying entry-level jobs is gone. The Value of an Education The ad revolves around a simple assumption. We should be able to measure the value of an education, specifically a college education by measuring what we put into it financially and then measuring what we pulled out of it financially. It should add up in dollars and cents. Not just that. We should be able to measure dollars to dollars, inputs versus starting…
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Selling Our Condo
We buy and sell lots of properties. We do so much volume selling our own properties that as a real estate agent, I often rank in the top 10% of agents worldwide (that says more about the industry than it does about me). And that’s without representing anyone but our own family! Most of these home sales are unemotional on our part. We do the work. We get paid and we pay our taxes. We move on to the next project. Today, we closed up on a different type of transaction. As part of our plan to hit the road, we sold our primary residence…a condo in Northern Virginia. The…
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Presley’s Outing
Presley’s Outing has been our favorite RV Park that we have stayed as so far. From the moment you call Mr. Presley to make your reservation, you know you are coming somewhere special. The property is a family legacy and it is run as such. We were guided into our site and Mr. Presley even disconnected and moved our Tow Dolly for us. Our site was beautiful with full views of the beach and river. He had kayaks available for use and he didn’t mind that our dog “Bart” ran amok. This was the first place where we began to understand “Southern Hospitality.” Within minutes of arrival, we were invited…
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Hiring Contractors Correctly
This is a task that we have perhaps failed at more often than we have succeeded. In this blog post, I’ll go through the mistakes we’ve made, how they’ve cost us, and our processes moving forward. Most people would rather go to the Dentist than hire a contractor to repair their home. These common mistakes are the most usual culprit when it comes to a contract that is stressful and costly. 1. Defining the Scope of Work When we were starting out, our scope of work was simple. It basically didn’t exist. Our contract would say things like “install new cabinets” or “replace windows.” There was no mention of which…
