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Busy, busy weekend

May 18th, 2015 at 03:43 am

The garage sale finally happened. Not a ton of traffic, so we didn't make much. We spent $45 on supplies, snacks and sodas for the sale. We didn't sell many snacks or sodas, so a lot of that wasn't helpful money to spend. Sometimes drinks and snacks go over really big at sales, but not this one. We made a little over $100, which means we netted about $60.

Then we spent the rest of Saturday in a gardening flurry. Our backyard is (was) completely paved over with bricks, and we wanted at least a little patch of green out there. So we pulled up the bricks on about a third of the yard, tilled the sandy ground underneath, bought a ton of topsoil and tilled that in, and bought several rolls of sod and placed that. Now we have a small patch of grass that's going to look so nice! We used some of the pavers to build a raised border around the area we're going to use to plant fruits and veggies, and the rest we stuck in the garage for now. Then I weeded like a madwoman and pulled up a ton of deep-seated roots in the fruit/veggie bed. I believe our downstairs neighbors planted some stuff there today, but it's been raining off and on and I haven't had time to ask, so I'm not sure.

Sunday morning I hired a carshare and took the rest of the garage sale items that would fit (everything except a mattress, a table and a chair) to a donation drop site.

Then from about 2:30 to 7:30pm (counting travel to and from the campus), I was at NT's official graduation. Over a thousand grads in the ceremony, so it took ages! Kind of an anticlimax since he graduated in December, but fun at the same time. I took some nice pics of him in cap and gown on campus, to please his parents. That was the important part anyway.

AS got another check yesterday, for $525. We're thinking our next purchase will be a new fridge, since the one we have doesn't stay shut unless you really slam it or use the child-proofing latches that NT installed. But we have a ton of items on our wish list, so we should probably go through and vote again.

We also want a couple of date nights and minor personal items (clothing, shoes), so we'll use some of AS's money for that. And we still have to figure out what to do with the basement area that the city wants us to make un-rentable, and how much that will cost.

Feeling unstuck is such a wonderful feeling that we really don't care how long it takes to have all the wants we've withheld for so long. We're happy to take it slow. Smile

4 Responses to “Busy, busy weekend”

  1. CB in the City Says:
    1431952100

    New fridge seems like a good bet; a door that doesn't close properly could be costly and dangerous!

  2. ThriftoRama Says:
    1431957215

    Wow. Busy weekend!
    Yard sales are hit or miss. I've only had two in my life and I made in the $100 range, It's a lot of work too. My son talked me into having another one this year, because he wants to sell hot dogs and chips to make money and sell some of his toys. I want to encourage him to be entrepreneurial and show him how much work it is, so we're teaming up with some of our friends to have a sale.

    It's rough because we automatically donate everything to Goodwill, but I'm looking at this as an excuse to seriously purge even more stuff that's sitting around.

    I'm excited about your backyard, too. You got a lot done. I think this was the big weekend for gardening. Everyone here got all of their summer edibles in. Next up, weedwacker!

  3. FrugalTexan75 Says:
    1431996844

    Why does the city want you to make the basement unrentable??

  4. ceejay74 Says:
    1431997565

    Oh, it's so annoying. So at one point the previous owner had part of it fitted out as a separate little studio apartment and rented it out. Trouble was, he never applied to have the place zoned as a triplex, only a duplex, so he had to stop. He took out all the appliances but left the bathroom in, and that was that.

    Now we had to have it inspected because we're officially landlords to our friends. We'd added a fridge and stove and air mattress down there for when we have friends and family stay over. To me, it's clearly not inhabited; there's hardly any decor and no clothes or other normal stuff that people would have in a home. But the inspector said that it's too much like a third unit, so we either have to rezone our place as a triplex, or take out the stove and take the door off the hinges. For now we're going to get rid of the stove and take the door off the hinges. I think we'll keep the door but have the stove hauled away (it's nothing special, just the old one from our neighbors' unit.)

    Oh, and whichever we decide, he said the bathroom isn't up to code, so we either have to take out all the appliances and cap the pipes, or we have to hire someone to get it up to code. Well, we do want that area to be a guest suite, so we're going to have to get the bathroom up to code. (We're not sure what that means; it's perfectly functional and fairly new-looking.)

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