Chicken Coop... The Build, Foundation

I've never done this before.  I can sit and plan for years and tinker with the concept forever and never actually build the structure.  With the looming deadline from the wife (not to mention egg delivery, incubation and the eventual hatching of chickens...in our living room), and the hole in the back yard, it's now time to make this work.   I ventured over to my nearest big box store to start pricing things out.  I knew that...

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Chicken Coop... The Design/Breaking Ground

So it's been a few weeks now and progress has been slow.  Being a "weekend warrior" means that I only have 24 hours at most over a weekend to work on the coop design and construction.  As the weather improved slightly, the ground thawed just enough to start digging out a foundation on February 28, 2016.  My plans are not yet complete, but I knew that I needed to dig down for stability and security. My property is on a slope, roughly...

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Chicken Coop... the Beginning

It's been my wife's ambition over the last few years to have a chicken coop installed in our back yard.  After the birth of our son, the idea had started to percolate.  When she was diagnosed with Lupus, our priorities changed drastically.  After her health stabilized, our second child was born.  Things have been rolling along smoothly (well, as smoothly as possible with a 3 year old and baby), when one of my wife's...

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Lead Abatement and Remediation

December, 2014... After numerous blood tests, a few scares and bouts of depression, I've finally succumbed to the realization that an abatement/remediation is necessary for continued residence within our home.  As I write this, the process has been somewhat completed and our bank accounts as well as our emergency savings have been completely drained of whatever funds we had left.  We're now trying to recover financially.... ...

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Refinancing...

When we purchased our home, the mortgage that we locked into had a rate of 4.375%, a conventional loan lasting 30 years.  Since we did not put down 20%, the dreaded PMI was tacked on.  Our mortgage broker told us that in two years we can get rid of it.  What a fat lie. Private mortgage insurance is an insurance that the bank takes out against you because you failed to put down 20% of the purchase price as a down payment.  If...

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