The Slow Motion Retirement Plan

[newbury]

Thanks for the update!

so i finally have the vw running again. what i basically did is to replace two gaskets on the back of the cylinder head. the total cost for parts was under 20 bucks with shipping. but with one thing after another of changing priorities, changing schedules, and rainy weather it took me something like 10 working hours spread over two full months to complete the task. bah.

no question as to why it leaked...

That's the way it is. Work for 15 minutes, hit a snag, and if it's not high priority go to another project.

i've been meaning to update this thread for quite awhile now, but bad weather, the holidays, and laziness have taken their toll. and thanks for your interest green power, your post helped get me off the dime.

so its been six months or so since my last update. when i seriously started to think about what i could report what i've accomplished i was pretty bummed out at how little i'd gotten done. what this has mostly been is a juggling act, and i can't juggle worth beans.

if you'll remember, i was working on the ranch, our old house in the denver metropolitan area, and my son's condo. one of the things that was not helping my productivity was the amount of driving i was doing. if i worked at the ranch, i'd spend 2.5 hours driving back and forth between the house and the ranch. that certainly isn't terrible, but i drove over 40,000 miles during the past year and never left the state.

another thing that didn't help was tools. i drove my passat whenever i could because it averages 40.9 mpg. the downside of that is there is very limited room for tools. i tried toolboxes. i tried tool buckets. i scoured the internet for ideas. but i never got to the point where i could drive up to any one of my work sites and have all the tools or materials that i needed. i couldn't take everything with me and i couldn't list every tool or material i would need. if i was in town, i could easily buy additional materials. but out at the ranch, the nearest store with any kind of building supplies or tools was 24 miles one way and the nearest home depot is 40 miles one way. doing that once was plenty bad enough, but i had more than one day when i had to make multiple trips like that. i alternated being angry with feeling really stupid when that happened.

so i finally gave up working on the house and the condo. my wife and i hired a contractor to finish our son's condo. there was the standard battle with getting the work you think you are paying for done to a reasonable level of competence, but the condo has a working kitchen now and the carpet should be installed this week. we also hired several contractors to work on the house and that is getting wrapped up as well.
<snip>

Reads a lot like my situation, I'm following your problems.
Similarities - three main sites
upgrading a residence for a son
pulling out of an area
building up a retirement place
Hardware stores etc. 40 miles away

I'm trying to retire to Mississippi and I've got 2 houses in Alexandria, Virginia - SWMBO and I live in one, my son and his family live in another. We were trying to upgrade the house where my son lives but finally hired a contractor to put on an addition when they decided to have a second child. Meanwhile I'm hauling tools all around in my VW Jetta TDI Sportwagen (up to 45 mpg). When I'm in Mississippi the nearest HD, Lowes, and HF is 40+ mile 1 way and there is only 2 small family hardware stores within 15 miles.
I've built up a significant investment in dual copies of most tools. Thank heavens for Harbor Freight. I figure my offspring will inherit the tools.
As we gradually clear out the house in Virginia I'm trying to do repairs my self, but can see the need for many expensive paid contractors before we leave.

Most the houses in my suburb are selling for about $500 thousand, so sloppy work will cost me thousands.

And now I order a lot of my hardware requirements through Amazon and avoid the long drives.

I'm really looking forward to being able to spend months in Mississippi and tackle some long term projects.

Please keep updating this thread because I am sure you have many followers.

 

[dhagood]

i meant to post another update a couple of weeks ago, but the forum ate the post a couple of times. so i’m going to create the post in a local editor and then cut and paste into the forum. it’s enough work to get a decent post put together once than i don’t feel the need to repeat the process multiple times. ok, enough sniveling.

so, in my last post, i mentioned the barn. like most everybody else, i built the biggest barn i could afford at the time. and like most everybody else, my barn isn’t big enough. i’ve been cramming stuff into it for seemingly endless months and i’m running out of space in which to cram still more stuff.



so this is a snapshot of what it looked like after i spent half a day organizing the barn (again). it had gotten to the point that i was a little nervous moving about. there were things on top of stuff that were more than a little rickety. if you wanted to go somewhere within the barn, it was often easier to traverse the length of the barn, go out one of the doors, and then traverse back down again. i say traverse because walking kind of implies a more or less straight line, and there wasn’t anywhere in the barn where it was that simple.

one of the things i did before the electricians came out again was to build what i call a skid for a freezer and refrigerator that we stuck in the barn. a skid is just a sheet of 1/2” osb on a pressure treated 2 x 4 frame. the frame is leveled on the uneven dirt floor (i’ll add some gravel here and there if necessary to speed up the process) so i end up with a level, stable platform. this is necessary for fridges and freezers.



i realized that part of what made the barn such a mess was that with the uneven dirt floor, it was pretty hard to stack things securely so stuff was spread out everywhere. so if i made another skid and stacked stuff on it, i could a) get things up of the dirt floor and b) consolidate things by stacking them on an even, level surface.



so i made another skid. and then another. and now i’m working on the third. it has helped quite a bit.

i got my wife’s bed done. it’s pretty tall, but that was done on purpose. the big section underneath will hold 6 double stacked large plastic bins where we will store food and kitchen ware. the small section underneath is for the dog.



i also made a skid for the flushless toilet we've been using. i added a wall for a little privacy, and voila! a bathroom.



i’m working on the passat again. a year and a half ago i hit a curb hard enough to destroy the wheel and tire, and the wheel bearing started to make noise. while i was in there, i replaced the driveshaft and the front lower control arm.



next up on the construction front is finishing one section of the loafing shed. on the maintenance front i’m going to have to replace or rebuilt the e4od automatic transmission in my f250.

and hopefully, in the not to distant future, we’ll start building a house.

 

[newbury]

Thanks for the update

thanks, i'm rather fond of the view.

another thing i've been up to is organizing the barn. originally i had almost everything laid out horizontally (ie, on the dirt floor). recently i've been working on going vertical.

and i'm getting a lot of the floor space emptied. this is good, because i've got another car i need to stuff into the barn.

GO VERTICAL!!
I wrote before about your need for pallet rack. If you lined the back wall with 12' tall pallet rack and the side wall with 10' tall rack you could get EVERYTHING off the floor and work in a lot of table space.

i meant to post another update a couple of weeks ago, but the forum ate the post a couple of times. so i知 going to create the post in a local editor and then cut and paste into the forum. it痴 enough work to get a decent post put together once than i don稚 feel the need to repeat the process multiple times. ok, enough sniveling.

so, in my last post, i mentioned the barn. like most everybody else, i built the biggest barn i could afford at the time. and like most everybody else, my barn isn稚 big enough. i致e been cramming stuff into it for seemingly endless months and i知 running out of space in which to cram still more stuff.

so this is a snapshot of what it looked like after i spent half a day organizing the barn (again). it had gotten to the point that i was a little nervous moving about. there were things on top of stuff that were more than a little rickety. if you wanted to go somewhere within the barn, it was often easier to traverse the length of the barn, go out one of the doors, and then traverse back down again. i say traverse because walking kind of implies a more or less straight line, and there wasn稚 anywhere in the barn where it was that simple.
<snip>

I've got about 70 feet by 4 feet by 2 to 5 shelves high of storage (plus the floor level) in just the three pics below. Or about the equivalent of 1,000 square feet of floor space but using only 300 square feet.

Most of my racking is set up for a convenient work surface height first level, then adjustable for the upper levels. The average cost was about $40 per upright and $30 per pair of beams. Then either use the wire racks ($20/shelf) or cut up 2x4's and put a piece of plywood over for a shelf. So the one in the pic above cost about $500, And it's easy to tear apart and move about. I've reconfigured many sections and it's like big tinkertoys or lincoln logs.

And I'm sure you will find a lot of "stuff" to store, just be sure to start a "filing" system. And sometimes you can find it cheap. I bought 10 sections (1 upright, 6 sets of beams and wire rack) for $10/section, but that is rare in DC.

 

[MacLawn]

I feel y'all boys' pain. This building mess is tough! Roofs. Man, don't we all need more roofs on our places! Big. Here's what, and how I say it: YOU WILL NEVER HAVE A BIG ENOUGH BARN. There. I need a daggone super Walmart sized barn!!!

 

[dhagood]

Thanks for the update

thanks for reading

GO VERTICAL!!

but, but, i did. i have. i am. while i don't have pallet racks i do have their little brother. my racks, bought at costco, are 6.5 feet long by 2 feet deep and have four shelves configurable over a seven foot range. i have 6 of these rascals which gives me 312 square feet of storage with a footprint of 78 square feet. and every one of them is full.



i have three other dissimilar racks of storage, one large tool box, and one small toolbox. my barn is 48 feet long with posts every 8 feet. the front section (between the first two posts) have the man door on the west side and the electrical junction box on the east side. all the other sections along both walls have racked storage, all of which are full.

i also have 3 skids built and populated with the frame built for the fourth. i'm probably going to have to build a fifth skid as well as there is still more stuff to be brought into the barn. this should be the last load though, as our house is almost empty (and almost on the market). i'm slowly gaining on it but i'm not going to be able to park most of my vehicles inside.

and just because:

 

[wmonroe]

Never enough storage. Sounds like your working well with the space you have.

Beautiful sunset!

 

[dhagood]

we plan to use the proceeds of selling our current house to fund the building of our new house. we've been working on moving out of the old house (hence all the sniveling i've done about where to put everything) and fixing up the place (we've lived there for 20 years and raised two kids in the process). the old house should be listed tomorrow. :dance1:

 

[dhagood]

the house is listed. pictures will be taken on monday and the listing will be available on the multiple listing service on wednesday.

 

[dhagood]

the house was listed on wednesday. we had three showings, which resulted in two offers, and the house is now under contract. gotta love a seller's market

 

[dhagood]

things are moving along if rather more slowly than i could wish. on the housing front, the prospective buyers have accepted our counter to their druthers as a result of the house inspection. we'll put on a new roof, do a little plumbing, and pay some of their closing costs to help defray some of the work they plan to do. the house also appraised high enough to meet the requirement levied by the selling contract. the scheduled closing date is march 23rd.

one fine day about three weeks ago i happened to be looking at my wife's volvo and noticed both front tires were badly worn on the inside. i started poking around and ended up rebuilding the front suspension. outside of the steering rack, the steering knuckles, the driveshafts, and the coil springs i replaced everything else. one thing i might have finally learned is not to cheap out when doing this kind of thing. i tried to reuse the upper spring seats for no good reason other than being cheap, and the rebuilt suspension squeaked like crazy due to the upper spring coil moving in the worn seat. so i had to order new spring seats and then take the whole front end apart again to replace them. i also didn't think the tie rod ends seemed that bad, so i didn't replace them. and of course, once the macpherson struts were rebuild it was very obvious the steering needed tightening up. if i'd just bought the parts that i knew would need replacing i only would have had to fix the car once.

i have to hand it to volvo, the car drove well until the very end without shuddering, vibrating, or anything else untoward. but once it needed fixing, i had to fix the whole shebang.

i'm also still futzing around with the loafing shed. i have the last column put together and just need to drill a hole in the ground and get the column in the ground and trued up and i can get started on the roof. one problem i have that i didn't suspect is how curious cows can be. i'll work away doing things on the shed and then the cows will come around, sniff everything, knock down all my braces and batter boards, and then poop all over everything. then they'll lay down, chew their cud, and then get up and poop some more. i'm starting to look forward to my revenge...

 

[GLyford]

The real problems start when they are done being curious (my Dad always said "if curiosity killed the cat, it killed the cow nine times").

That's when they start to just use it as a scratching post. There's a reason a lot of old livestock barns lean.

 

[TomSeller]

The real problems start when they are done being curious (my Dad always said "if curiosity killed the cat, it killed the cow nine times").

That's when they start to just use it as a scratching post. There's a reason a lot of old livestock barns lean.

And why all water tank floats leak. They have to fiddle with everything unless it has a hot wire on it.

Speaking of that, the girls were bellowing like crazy one day standing by the fiberglass watering tank. I thought the water had stopped but the tank was full so I went on about my business. By the end of the day they were still bellowing by the tank. As it turned out the hot-wire, which usually goes up on high rails over the tank, had been knocked off and it fell into the tank. Since the tank was fiberglass and it was summer when the ground was dry, the water had a special "spark" to it.

 

[dhagood]

we sold the house yesterday. we'll need a couple of weeks to get access to the funds, submit the building permit, and then wait for the permit to be granted. then we'll just have to build the new house.

 

[civilian]

we sold the house yesterday. we'll need a couple of weeks to get access to the funds, submit the building permit, and then wait for the permit to be granted. then we'll just have to build the new house.

Congrats! Jon

 

[Grouse09]

That is great news! Been following your story. Admirer.

 

[Kentuckyfarmer]

I purchased 40 acres in crook co wyoming in 1999 with the same ideas as you when I retired. Me and the wife now X as of 2002. I got the property as part of the divorce settlement. In 2010 I retired and took a trip and met a driller for the well, plumber for the septic system, power river electric for my electric needs, the county for road repair ( was a unmanintained county road, and received prices on all except the road part. County was going to grade road and haul some shale on about 1/2 mile of road. Electric was going to be small because I gave them an easement to run power lines across the corner of the property a few years before with a verbal agreement that when I need it cost would be minimum. (Verbal part was a big mistake). Well driller gave me a quote of 6 to 12 thousand depending on how deep. Search for about 7 years for the right piece of property and finally found that piece with a view of Devils tower and the Missouri buttes and in the black hills. Closest neighbor was about a mile or so away and couldn't see anyone. Peaceful as could be. Well got a older fifth wheel camper and fixed it up (38 footer) and a 38 ft enclosed gn to haul house hold goods, and a 20 gn utility trailer to haul tools, tractor, mower and misc stuff. Made three trips getting things up there three years after meeting the folks mentioned above, took that long finishing remodel of house is was in here in ky, and getting things loaded and ready for the trip. The last trailer trip, a few hundred miles from the property I was on the phone with the driller. Had permits and all paper work in the cab of the truck and told him as soon as he had time come and poke me a hole. Arrived and set up camper, got water in a two hundred gallon tank, and food for a few weeks, gas for generator, set up king dome to watch tv once and a while. Then called elec company said ready to set pole and get elec. they sent engineer out he drove a stake where pole was going to be set and all was good. He said office in sundance would call and I would have to go there and sign agreement in about a week. After two weeks nothing from driller so called. No answer. Call every day for two more weeks no answer. Call two other drillers. Well both them showed up (different times) and gave me price. 25 to 40 thousand depending on depth and would not garantee water. Both said the original driller was undependable and in trouble with several states. Elec co called so I went to sign paper work. Got there and the lady slid the paper across the counter and said it was a little over 10 thousand for them to set the pole and transformer. I said hey hey,,,, what's the deal and she said I have to buy some of the primary that feeds there. In the mean time I was on the phone to the county about getting the road fixed so I could get in and out when it rained and was bad weather. Really the road was bad. Well the county had a meeting and the repair was brought up and was denied. So I would have to repair myself. Another quote-----yup a guy down the road had equipment, old but usable and gave me a price. 15 thousand and then another 5 to 7 thousand for the drive. Well I had 35 thousand and was waiting on the sale of the house in ky I owned and would hopefully get about 90 thousand for it. So total every thing up my luck 40 for the well, 22 for the road and drive, 10 for the elec and another 7 for septic and lateral field. Plumber was still set on his price no matter how the ground perked. He lived just down the road and was pretty sure it would all work out for that price. So that a total of almost 80 thousand and I haven't drove the first nail for a house or barn any type,of building. And what I would have left wouldn't be much. Thought about things for a couple more weeks and said to my self everything is still on wheels and I have a house yet so I came back to ky. Sold the property in wy and the house in ky and bought a 22 acre farm with house built in 2002, barn, and shop on a dead end paved road. Although it wasnt where I wanted to live the last years of my life, loved the place and wanted it more than anything to work out I guess it wasnt meant to be. I thought it was getting expensive to live in this state and permits and cost to get things done was high, it is a real pain in the rear out west and getting worse when it comes to water and electric, and septic.

Just a little of my retirement story and what I went thru. Im happy where I am now but really would have loved being there. Hope everything works for you and hope your pockets are deeper than mine was.

 

[dhagood]

yesterday was a perfect microcosm of colorado spring weather. the late afternoon was very pleasant with temperatures in the middle 40s, a light breeze, and clear skies. the morning was a full on blizzard that dropped about 11 inches of wet snow, complete with a white out ground blizzard and high winds. we lost power for about 6 hours during the night, and there wasn't much sleep to be had with the rv rocking in the gusts and the general tumult of the wind flapping anything that could possibly flap. and then the wind dropped, the snow stopped, the sun came out, and the birds were singing in the meadow.

the storm started out as rain, which quickly changed to sleet, and then turned to snow. the temperature dropped to the high 20s but the wind chill was down in the single digits. our cows have no shelter since i'm still building the loafing shed. wet cows and cold temperatures is a recipe for unhappy cows (at the very least). i went out to find the cows in order to feed them, and.... got lost.

i was on my tractor with a bale of hay in the loader bucket. i had expected the wind blowing snow in my eyes, and the snow melting on my glasses, but what i hadn't expected was how bright the ground blizzard was. the ground was fully covered with snow and there blowing snow and fog so the light was reflecting from everything. i hadn't thought to bring sunglasses and i could just barely open my eyes against the glare. everything had a purple tinge and i had absolutely no depth perception. i started out in the right direction and went a couple of hundred yards in decent style but then the ground blizzard kicked it up a notch and i lost all references. i couldn't tell uphill from downhill or even the attitude of the tractor. i ended up curving to the left, slowly at first but then increasing the rate of turn. i eventually ended up turning through 90 degrees and ended up in the southeast corner of our land instead of the southwest corner i had been aiming for.

i was able to reorient myself once the power poles came into view and found the thoroughly miserable cattle. they perked up a bit with something to eat and off i went to return to the rv. the return was into the wind but that wasn't any harder than downwind had been. the problem was the glare.

i've long been cognizant of stories of how farmers or ranchers would leave their house in a blizzard and head towards a barn a short distance away only to first lose their bearings in the storm and then their life as they wander out into oblivion. when i left the rv i could see a hundred yards or so. when i lost my bearings i could see maybe 10 yards.

i'm going to get some ski goggle to shield my eyes from both wind and glare, and i'm going to investigate a hand-held gps unit to keep me on track. we don't own that much property but it's plenty big enough to get completely turned around in.

 

[dhagood]

kentuckyfarmer, i was sorry to read about your problems in wyoming. your story thankfully had a happy ending and i would love to see pictures of your place in kentucky.

building things in a remote area has its own special set of problems. your selection of vendors or tradesmen is limited, transportation costs are a significant cost burden, and there is usually mud lurking somewhere. when my wife and i were looking for property, the second parcel in which we became seriously interested was about a half mile up a steep, rutted road. one of the things i did when we got serious with a piece of property was to estimate what i called the infrastructure costs: power, water, and road.

water is obviously important, since with no water there is no life. in my part of colorado, there are no year round rivers, streams, brooks, or trickles. you drill a well and you pray there is water down there somewhere. the wells are hundreds of feet deep at a minimum, and it takes power to operate the pump to lift the water to where you can use it. the road component is important because you need access for the people who are going to drive their big, heavy, and expensive machinery onto your land to provide you with water and power. once you have the infrastructure in place, you can think about building a house, barn, or whatever. so your basic land cost is not enough; in order to build a home you need the land and the infrastructure, and an otherwise suitable piece of land can be come useless if the infrastructure cost is high enough.

on this particular piece of property, the well estimate was about $30,000. the wells in that area were between 800 to 1000 feet, you needed steel casement all the way down due to the depth, and you also needed a huge pump at the bottom of the well to lift the water up to the surface. the power estimate was also about $30,000. the local power coop charges $10 per foot for new power lines, so a half mile of virgin ground would be $25,000 or so plus the cost of the transformer, etc. but the real kicker was the road. i couldn't get anybody to tell me who was responsible for the road much less how much it would cost to be improved or maintained. the price for the property was $65,000 which was low in comparison to other lots, but you would have to spend at least that amount again to get basic services installed. that lot was nice, but it wasn't nearly nice enough.

 

[dhagood]

we've had a wet spring snow storm followed by some rain a couple of days later and then another bout of rain/snow several days after that. now that we live here, we had to keep driving up and down our sopping wet driveway every time we left for one reason or another. this obviously gave us some pretty decent ruts in the road.

this last storm didn't actually produce all the much moisture, so i couldn't understand we why had so much standing water on the driveway, the parking lot, and the approach to the barn. i finally noticed that the ruts in the road had overwhelmed the drainage for the water coming onto our property from the county road and that water was running down our driveway and pooling right by the steps into our trailer. once i realized this i went out and fixed the drainage but there is little to be done with all the mud right where we have to walk every time we do anything outside. what a mess

i've been getting some work done on the loafing shed.

while i've tried to be selective in choosing the lumber i've bought at the big box stores, i have had a number of pieces of 2x lumber warp once i get it home and it sits for a bit. one thing i've learned to do recently is how to deal with warped lumber.

i take an 18" monkey wrench, tighten it down against the lumber, turn the wrench until the warp is removed, and then nail the end of the wrench to maintain the twist.

i then screw the lumber in position (nails usually don't cut it) and drive on.

yes, i know this isn't a world shaking construction tip, but it might help somebody at some point.

 

[CADplans]

yes, i know this isn't a world shaking construction tip, but it might help somebody at some point.

Back in the early 1980's we purchased a partially completed home,, and we worked on it almost EVERY weekend.

I soon learned, "DO NOT buy more material than you can use in a weekend"

and,, it turned out, that,, no matter what we were doing,,
the magic number was $100,,, if we spent more than $100,,, there would be material left over.
Under $100,, we would run out of material.
2x4's, drywall,,, paint,, it did not matter,, only buy $100 worth.

Now that I am 35 years older,,, I probably can not use more than $100 in material in a weekend,,
I am a LOT slower now,,, :laughing: