My Dad's Wife
myfampg
12 years ago
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justmetoo
12 years agolast modified: 9 years agomyfampg
12 years agolast modified: 9 years agoRelated Discussions
Journal 12 August 2010
Comments (4)You've done very, very well! I've always preferred packing to UNpacking, so I really admire your speed in getting things out and usable. Giggles about the boxes from years ago. I too moved, and moved, and moved (without ever opening) boxes. Then a pal reminded me of the three-year rule (If you haven't used/worn it within three years, give to someone who will!) and zip! about a dozen boxes got a fast once-through and taken to Goodwill. Didn't find any photos, but did find $20 in a coat pocket. I guess that was a reward for finally moving things on and out of my life. You're raising LF right, so he's got good sense and knows to use it. Have a cup of chamomile tea and accept the fact that he's a big boy now :)...See Moreto young to build a home? ideas please!
Comments (23)howiroll I think the younger the better, for a number of reasons. I am 47 and just finished a custom build in the mountains of VA. My dream. I grew up on the streets of Jersey - loud trucks and stenches that will singe your nostrils. I vacationed as a kid in upper NY state - loved to fish & camp. And I really enjoy nature. Going through a custom build is stressing and takes a lot of your time and energy. I did a lot of work on my home (not the original plan) to save our bacon when we started running over budget. Dear Wife poured in many many hours on the interior design and selections - it takes a ton of time. My hero is Jack LaLane - so I know what seniors can do. But I think if I were even 10 years older, I would have been unable to do a lot of the projects I took on myself. I suggest you follow the method that George Washington used when he built Mt. Vernon (my favorite house on the planet). He started with a main structure that was small - then added over the years. If you do that - you can finish the main structure and get in for as low a cost as possible - but have thought through the enitre long term plan roughing in for the expansions. As a youngster you might not have a large budget - I don't know your financial situation. And land prices keep escalating, so it's hard to keep up. If you can find the nice piece of land and get a structure on it to live in, then you have a great base and can add over time. Here are my answers to your questions. 1) From your experiences, if you were going to build a house what are the "must haves" or things you would without a doubt do? - energy efficient building is a must. - first floor master (love it!) - screened in and covered decks integrated into the house design. Our pergola with witch hat ceiling and wood burning fireplace is by far my favorite room in the house. - a great kitchen that the wife loves. - covered porch (we call it the dog room) with pebbled floor so that doggies can take care of business when it rains or snows. This is my second favorite room in the house - because the dogs love it and I don't have to shovel a path for them. 2) More importantly what was a waste of money? - we did not watse any money - we were very careful on what we put into the house. But we sure got charged more than we needed to on a few items (like excavation). Make sure you know your subs and make sure your aren't getting ripped by getting multiple bids. 3) My wife and I, along with both our families, are pretty handy. Given that how much would you have done when building a house and what is not worth the time/money savings to do yourself? I did a lot of the electrical, A/V , voice/data, security and I am glad I did. If I had the time, I would have done all of the electrical myslef because I did not like how the sub worked and what they charged (but this is just me - and I love doing this type of work). The master electrician was great - but his workers weren't. 4) Anything unique that you'd do/install if you were building a house? I planned out ahead of time what our backup approach would be for winter power outages and summer power outages. I did install a small standby generator to make sure the absolute essentials have backup power. When you live in the sticks, you need to think about being stranded for a few days and just make sure you have a plan. 5) Were any of you ever the general contractor for your house build? Nope. But the wife and I spend a ton of time going over the work the subs were doing. The builder should have paid us a management fee - we found a lot of things that needed to be addressed. 6) What are some money saving tips? Use the internet to check & verify pricies. When you do - make sure you are comparing apples to apples. Any commodities can ususally be found on-line cheaper - but you need to think about returns. Sometimes it might be worth paying a little more if service/returns could be an issue. Use the GW forums to check pricing too. 7) Since we will hopefully be living at this place for the rest of our life, energy saving ideas will definitely benefit us in the long run. Which ones do you suggest? Prices? Which ones are a waste? Tax breaks on using green materials? The tax breaks for energy efficient building are a joke (but that doesn't mean you should build an EE house). Look on the Renewable Energy Forum and search on "Energy Efficient Building". Loads of good info on that forum. 8) How many square feet? (We plan on having 2 kids and don't need a mansion) Just plan on the kids growing up and needing more space. This one is so subjective. One thing for sure - make your garages and storage space are bigger than what they normally show on internet house plans. I have two 2 car garages and love em. The main garage is 25 x 25. The other one (where all of my toys are) has an extra 3 feet or so in width so I can have a work shop in there (I have 2 workshops - another idea I love. One inside in the basement and one outside in the Man Toy Garage). 9) Since it is in the country and it is not uncommon to lose power for a few hours to a few days, anyone have pictures or ideas on a generator shed/hook up and how they disconnected from the grid? Look on the Electrical Forum - tons of posts on this. I decided that it was too costly to backup my entire house. I just did not want to have a 30 kilowatt generator (I have electric heat pumps - lot's of amperage needed to start compressors). So - I layed out that backup plan. Decided that in a winter outage, I would use fireplaces as the backup heat. I upgraded the fireplaces to direct vent inserts (2 gas, one wood burning) that are rated as heaters. I supply back power to the conrols (low voltage) and fireplace blower fans. I also backed up water, hot water, 2 refrig's, SATV, Sat Internet, and some lights. Much smaller genny - but all the comforts we need to ride out a 2 or 3 day outage. When you do the electrical in your home, plan for the gennny. Have the electrician put in a sub-panel and run all backup circuits from there. Make sure sub panel is on the side of house nearest weher genny will be and try to keep the LP gas tank near there too - this minimizes trenching and there are limits on the length of gas line runs. Use propane as you cooking source and then run genny off that tank. You can run for days without ever needing to fill a tank. 10) I plan on building a shop on the property eventually as well. Any considerations I need to make when building the house that will later effect the building of a shop? Electrical, plumbing etc? Get the biggest electrical service you can. I have a 600 amp main service run (3 x 200 amp service panels) - and that cost me nothing extra to get that to the house. Power company ran the line 700 feet from the main road, they just needed a bigger wire gauage to carry 600 amps. With that kind of power you can add on just about whatever you need for the shop later. 11) Any good way to calculate the costs? My wife and I have found some plans on eplans and houseplans.com. We were really just looking at the styles and layouts to find what we want. Should buy something like that or how do we move forward once we have an idea of what we want? It is hard to ball park costs. So many variables. Do a search on "How to Estimate Building Costs" on this forum - tons of posts on that subject. I do suggest looking on line for floor plans you like (and plan to look and look and look). You can always change the exterior of a house plan to get the look you want - focus on floorplan. If you find something you like, you can typically buy review copies for a smaller fee before you make the purchase of the copiable plans. Make little cut outs of your furniture to the same scale as the plans and lay them onto the review copy of the plans - just to get a better idea of the space and how things fit (or don't). It is very hard to visualize how a room will look from a 2D piece of paper drawn to a small scale. Last suggestion. Don't forget about including in the budget all of the toys you will need to maintain that property. Since Jan - I have purchased: a 4x4 SUV, utility trailer, snow blower, garden tractor with 50 inch mower plus attachments, heavy duty chainsaw ..... If you don't plan on this, then you will be forced to outsource it. It is great having land - but there are a lot of extra chores and you need the right type of toys to handle them. The first time I tried to cut a tree that fell on my property with a 14 inch chainsaw - the tree laughed at me. Watch out for the larger scale on house chores - when you go from a small lot in the burbs to acreage in the sticks, it is a very different world. Have fun!...See MoreMy wife says she's NOT my wife?!!!
Comments (18)I am a lawyer in California and the reason nobody can help you so far is that you have left out information that is important. If you were divorced in California go down to the courthouse and pull the file. Look at the entry of judgment--what is the date of the divorce? Whats the date of the new marriage? If you were divorced in another state, get the record, its not difficult. Bring that info to a family law attorney and they can tell you what your rights are. There is no common law marriage in this state but there may be some help anyway. If it was an error in the record, maybe it could be corrected. You are not a domestic partner unless you register as one in this state and there are restrictions. You may need to approach this from a real estate legal standpoint, if its not a valid marriage. The name on the deed probably was changed during refinance, it could happen. You probably signed a bunch of papers you didn't read, but the next time you sign anything that gets notarized and you have to put your thumbprint in the notary book in California I suggest you go out for coffee instead. If you have a realtor friend, have them pull all of the deeds back to when the property was purchased. Take all of this stuff to a family law attorney who also knows something about real estate. All of these documents are important, no attorney can give you any advice until they see them. By the way, its not so easy to throw you out of the house. I would want to know why your credit was bad and hers wasn't. Don't you file joint tax returns? I suspect there is a lot of paperwork that you never look at. Start now. Pick an attorney near where you live, this is an involved problem and you need to solve it now....See MoreStepmom's storytelling
Comments (17)I can relate totally to this: "She's tricky. She always has been, she knows exactly how far she can push things and how much people will put up with." And like you, I've always been afraid to speak up in front of others, for fear of looking like *I'm* just too sensitive, have a "chip on my shoulder" or some sort of "problem"... I'll share a few thoughts with you on this predicament because I myself have dealt with it a lot with my Dad's wife, felt extremely alone in those situations, and struggled to find ways to explain to myself that I am not insane! Because, like it or not, it's natural for us to look to the reactions of other people to get a sense of how correct or incorrect we may be in our perspectives & feelings. That's part of why the "public humiliation" experience is so painful: other people *are there*, hearing this cr*p... what are they making of it? Do they see how manipulative it is? For my part, I've never been able to REALLY read what other people think when my Dad's wife comes out with some of the doozies she comes out with... some of which I've witnessed first-hand and surely plenty of things she says about me with her spin on them when I am not around. Of course I want to think "my goodness! she's so transparent, so obvious... how could people NOT see the pettiness and her self-serving attitude?" But many people just look at superficialities and take people at face value (i.e. my Dad's wife should run a "Charm School"). If it's a person SHE spends a lot more time around, often that is enough for people to be automatically "on her side" because it's easier and because of a familiarity factor. If she's nice to THEM, that's all that matters to many people... Conversely, even if they "smell a rat" of any kind, most people are not likely to pull YOU aside and tell you what they think of her, unless they're someone you're EXTREMELY close with and/or they feel like it's something so dire that you MUST be told right then & there how stinky she is. Most casual acquaintances, especially, are just too polite to even go there. Regardless of the opinions they form, they usually don't want to get involved (*especially* if there's business involved!). Further, they might either presume you already know how vexing she is, or decide that if you *don't* know, they don't want to rain on your parade... Hence in these situations you can easily wind up with that "out-numbered", "I must be crazy because no one else seems to see her for what she is" feeling. And it's such an awful feeling. But I think people observing this kind of interaction tend to be smarter than they may appear or let on, and I bet several have noticed her behavior....See Morejustmetoo
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12 years agolast modified: 9 years agojustmetoo
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12 years agolast modified: 9 years agojustmetoo
12 years agolast modified: 9 years agomyfampg
12 years agolast modified: 9 years agosilversword
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12 years agolast modified: 9 years agomyfampg
12 years agolast modified: 9 years ago
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