We bought a dump

On August 1, 2022, Sara and I gained possession 2.88 acres of land (a 1.44 acre plot where our current home resides and the 1.44 acre plot next door), a house, and a 24’x40′ pole barn. While not exactly what we had planned for our forever home but it is what the Lord provided and we accepted the blessing. You see, we’ve always wanted to buy acreage (5+ acres) with either an old farmhouse or old barn that we could make our own.

This property, however, contains a 50 year old modular home in some state of disrepair, a 24’x40′ pole barn also suffering from years of neglect, a partially filled in old pond and of course our current home. The 1.44 acres where our current home resides was meticulously maintained with a manicured lawn, new (younger than 15 years) trees, two small sheds, an outhouse (ya, we have an outhouse!) for garden tools, and our 18’x80′ mobile home that also is well maintained. The other half of the property was NOT maintained.

During the first part of the project, we affectionally called the home “The House Over Yonder”, but as the project progressed, we started calling it “The Dump” as you’ll learn through this blog series.

The original plan for the property was to invest $5,000 – $10,000 into the modular next door, rent the property for 10 years and then build a new forever home in the style we desired. After that, we’d remove both the modular, the mobile home, and extra out buildings. Unfortunately, that plan changed when our contractor estimated $30,000 damage to the home. (That number eventually rose to nearly $100,000 with us performing half the work) So, we altered our plan to repair the modular, add on, and make that our forever home.

As of April 18, 2024, we are still not living in the remodeled home and are about 6-weeks away from moving in. This has NOT been a fun nor easy project (though some of it has been exciting as we design OUR home), which is why we’ve started this blog.