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
Blueberry Variety Trial For Houston Tx
Comments (34)Thanks for your suggestions, bamboo and fruitnut. Given the accolades, I'm very, very anxious to try Sweetcrisp. I should have bought one last year, but better late than never. I've seen a lot of praise for Jewel's flavor, but, based on your description, fruitnut, I might be happier with another variety. I had my eye on Star and Windsor, so I might go with one or both of those. Have either of you (or anyone else) tried Palmetto? From what I can read, it gets very high marks for flavor. As for your question, rayrose, I do have a couple of potted SHB (O'Neal and Southmoon). The lower chill varieties like Sweetcrisp worry me a little bit because of early bloom times, but I can't resist trying them. I already have to protect some of my early bloomers (mostly rabbiteyes), though, so it shouldn't be too much trouble. I used a heavy weight frost blanket over a small greenhouse frame last winter, and that worked very well. This post was edited by shazaam on Tue, May 21, 13 at 21:26...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 Morenew baby
Comments (38)This will be a bit off-topic because it's about college education and how kids get the most out of it. Honestly, I think THE major factor affecting how much a kid values/gets from a college education is whether the kid is READY for one. I first went off to college at 18, by the book, like I was supposed to, in a situation that was an "in-between", money-wise. My mom & stepfather, my dad (but not his GF) and I all split the cost of my college expenses 3 ways, which seems very fair to me (and btw it never occured to me to resent GF not chipping in, but of course it did occur to her to resent my dad helping me). I always had a part-time job throughout school of at least 20 hrs a week. All in all, I think this arrangement was fair and ideal, because a kid DOES need to start learning how to chip in and take on work responsibilities, juggle tasks, etc. And parents *who can afford* to help with college absolutely should because there was no way I could have done all of it on my own. No way, and this was over a decade ago, before the standard-of-living/consumption reached the levels of over-the-top luxury for kids that it's at now (I work at a major university, so I see a vast difference between then and now: 18-yr-olds driving brand new expensive cars, getting plastic surgery for graduation, highest-end laptops & ipods, absurdly well-apointed GATED collegiate apartments, you name it... outrageous). But I'm just talking about BASIC, decent levels of safe & comfortable living. I got plenty of help from my parents, AND consistently worked at least 20 hours a week and scraped by both financially and educationally. Wasn't so smart about finances, had no sense of long-term future consequences for certain youthful mistakes, etc... many 18-year-olds don't. I did pretty poorly in college at that point... but I can't really say it was because of either TOO MUCH nor TOO LITTLE help from my parents. As I said, the arrangement we had was in my opinion about as ideal as it could have been in terms of fairness, realistic expense considerations and me taking on a *healthy* (reasonable) amount of financial responsibility. I dropped out after a few years. Then went to work full-time for a few years, working hard, scraping by but not exactly climbing the golden ladder. I woke up one day and decided to go back to school, decided on a major based on what I now knew I liked after living a bit longer, having more experiences, etc. and got virtually straight A's. Main difference was instead of doing school full-time and working part-time, it was reversed. And I'm lucky that my university offers free tuition for its employees, which I naturally have taken advantage of. Many of you might say that now that I was funding it all myself I was more motivated to do better. But I don't think that's REALLY it. I feel bad that I initially wasted the money my parents helped me with, first go-round with college. But they are all now extremely proud of me for going back and doing so well and neither has any regrets or disappointment about the money (well, except Dad's GF, of course, even though none of it was hers...) I really think the main factor is being ready for college, and with some kids that's right away and for some they may take more time deciding on something that they care enough about to give the necessary devotion. So I guess my point is, step or bio, the kid should really be ready. It's not *impossible* for them to find their own way to succeed if it's important enough to them, given enough years of sacrifice and toil, but if they're really ready for college and especially if they show it by doing well, then if a parent can afford to help, it's a worthwhile investment that helps kids tremendously. If the kid doesn't want to go, or is conflicted, or has no idea what they want to do, and then goes to college and does poorly... then if I was a parent I would say, not punishingly or angrily: "maybe now's not the time for you and college... But if/when you demonstrate that you're really ready for it, I am more than willing to help you." In general, whatever it is (college or trade or their own small business), if they know what they want and demonstrate ability & responsibility to do it, they ought to be helped with those extra funds that it seems to always take, here and there, to fully succeed....See MoreIntroducing a Stepmom or Stepdad
Comments (105)ummm let us back up here. First, I did say that I hate the word stepmom or step whatever... but I DID NOT say that I told the kids that they couldnt call me step mom. FYI They call me L_. And, if you reread my post I am the one that told the kids not to call me mom and to respect BM's feelings. My point, obviously completely missed by you, was that I dislike the word because of how people view steps in general.... I thought the reference to Cinderella made that quite clear. BM and myself are from the same area... south but not THE south. The whole Ms. thing was just a way for her to create a seperation between myself and the kids... like when the kids were asking how my aunts and uncles became my aunts and uncles. I told them that they were brothers and sisters of my dad. They were confused because BM and DH had a family friend that the kids called Aunt and Uncle. I told them that they werent really their Aunt and Unlce that they were a really close family friend and so they called them Aunt and Uncle. Bm chose to tell the kids that I have no idea what I was talking about and knew nothing about her family. Not her family, infact friends with DH before he even met BM...but whatever... those were rocky years. She would get angry with the kids and demand that they say Ms._ It got to be ridiculous after a while... especially when she was making this demand the one or two times a month she was seeing the kids at the time. The kids would get confused and not know what to say. So, it was time to squash it. The Ms. before addressing an adult was always DH's rule for the kids when talking to someone outside of family, it was a way of her digging in a thorn....See Morejustmetoo
12 years agolast modified: 9 years agomyfampg
12 years agolast modified: 9 years agojustmetoo
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12 years agolast modified: 9 years agojustmetoo
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12 years agolast modified: 9 years agojustmetoo
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