It’s been about a month since the last installment of my ongoing journey through this thing we call life.
The fencing down south happened a month quicker, and a thousand dollars more expensive, than projected — but it’s done. So everything is cleaned up (there was a dilapidated shack in the east 40 that I had buried) and fenced up now.
I had to drive down there on the 3rd to talk to the attorney and go over the stipulations on the purchase; the fellow I’m buying the land from wants right of first refusal if I sell it, and there was some verbiage for the easement through the neighboring property… My gate comes off the side of their driveway, so it’s not a complicated situation fortunately.
The attorney is an interesting fellow; he’s in his 70’s and once upon a time worked at NASA Houston.
Anyway, the adjustments to the language for the deed required some re-writing, but that should be done by next week and then the deed will get re-signed, filed, and I’ll finally own what I agreed to purchase about a year ago.
Huzzah for governmental efficiency!
Once the ink is dry and the paper filed in whatever antique cabinet they use down there in Walsenburg, then I have to start on foundation work…
As I’m only planning on a ‘manufactured home’ (aka; trailer), the foundation should be pretty easy — like concrete slab easy… But once again the governmental machine is involved and I have to get an engineer to do a soil compression and irrigation study, have an engineer bless the location, get another engineer to design the foundation, yet another engineer to doodle out the utility connections, and get it all rubber stamped by Walsenburg before I can actually do anything.
You know; spend thousands to get permission to spend thousands.
I’m not holding my breath, but if I can get all of the above engineering and rubber stamping done before winter then next year I might be able to pour concrete. Once there is a foundation on the property that’s enough to generate an address, and then I can transfer things to that address where stuff is far, far less expensive.
For example; moving my car from “Denver Tech Center” to “20 Miles West of Nowhere” reduces my insurance cost by about 30%, and my tax/title costs by roughly 50%.
Granted, this cost reduction is minuscule compared to the costs of getting the address to get the cost reduction — but I’ll take what I can get.