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Monthly Archives: September 2018

An Update on Mandi and Moving!

Hello again family, friends, and fans! Here is an update from the desk of Mandi about what all is happening between my health and the big move to Rattlesnake!

Thank you Mama Suna for my awesome ball! I’m not scared of it anymore!

First, the health!

I have been diagnosed with a cholesteotoma and an abscess in my right ear. Cholesteotoma is a nasty little cyst like thing that presses on the nerves and can cause all the symptoms I have had. Such as:

  • Vertigo
  • Nausea
  • Migraines
  • Vision Loss
  • Hearing Loss
  • Ringing in the ears
  • Numbness and Paralysis of the side of the face that it is on
  • Severe Ear Pain
  • Trouble with Speaking
  • Sometimes even fine motor skill issues.

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Parkwood Progress

Honest, there’s less of this now! Parkwood will return to being a good family home, and soon!

One of the things you have to do to get a bank loan on a house you plan to renovate is to get an inspection, so that the house can be appraised and the loan amount determined. That’s a big reason why many rehabbers rely on other types of funding: we often work on houses that have so many defects it’s hard to list them all. Also, you don’t get to pick the inspector; the bank does. That means you can come up with some unhelpful appraisals, like we did with the big house in Lago Vista.

We have a good relationship with our small-town banker near Cameron, though, so we decided to go ahead with a bank loan for the Parkwood property in Round Rock, since the interest is way better than with a “hard money” loan. So, last week we had an appraisal scheduled.

Carol went over there, arriving a little before the scheduled time, only to find the appraiser had already left. The wholesaler we are getting the house from and the heir to the house were standing around looking shocked. Apparently, the appraiser had hoarder family members and the look of this house was too much for him, perhaps too close for comfort. He was inclined to suggest the house be torn down, and made that decision as soon as he took a look at it. Hmm. That was not our plan. Now what?

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First Occupant at Rattlesnake Is…

Well, this is new and different!

…Patsy Catsy! She is now Queen of Mandi’s bedroom. We are really surprised at how well she took to indoor living. We have reports that she has been using the litterbox like a champ. Now, she’d nver SEEN one before, but she apparently has some innate feline knowledge of what to do with one. Or maybe it has a good scent, for that purpose.

Why Move Patsy the Office Baby?

Shadow, Patsy’s mom, let her nurse a long time, very patiently. But a week or two ago, she decided Patsy’s time was up. Every time Patsy came up to Shadow, would swat the heck out of her. We started having to feed them separately. Poor little Patsy had no one to play with anymore, and would get chased off by her mom when she tried to come see us.

There’s a whole new world out there. Ooh, and an intact male cat!

So, Mandi decided they needed to be separated, and she happened to have a spare house, sorta. Patsy is going to be a house cat, with Joe remaining as the killer of yard vermin.

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It’s Already Color of the Year Time!

Time flies, doesn’t it? It became abundantly clear to me earlier this week when my inbox informed me that Sherwin-Williams was announcing the 2019 Color of the Year. 2019? Wasn’t is just 1987 last week? And didn’t I just write about the color of the year a month or two ago? No, it was actually February, when I talked about Ultra Violet (Now, THAT’S a color).

Anyway, this year it’s not a flashy one, it’s a blendy one, Cavern Clay. Rather than try to describe it, you can enjoy it on YouTube. I hope they appreciate their free ad:


That’s probably the color I should have painted the walls in the great room at the ranch, rather than the incredibly Caucasian Skin Tone shade I did use. It’s not brown; it’s not orange; it’s desert rock color. They are right that it can be used in a lot of settings and with a lot of styles. I like the idea of using it with natural leather and an unbleached linen kind of color. So, everyone run out and paint your rooms so you’ll be au courant!

Image from PPG website.

What Else Is Out There?

Sherwin-Williams is not the only company out there promoting a color for 2019. PPG also has one, and it’s more “exciting” (or in other words, mainly an accent color). Night Watch is a very dark green, and PPG says it’s the Power of Nature. It’s sort of spooky, but on the other hand, I’m fond of green, so I would not mind it one big lining the backs of shelves, or in a cozy library or office area.

It’s a bluish green, so perhaps that makes it more trendy than an avocado shade that’s more yellowish. It sure looks pretty against white.

from the Ace Hardware website.

Ace Hardware’s Clark + Kensington line had a contest to where customers designed colors, and the winner came out to be a fairly perky creamy light tan called Pineapple Cream Granita. Nothing wrong with this color at all. At least it’s not so pale you can’t tell it’s a color, but still it’s pretty neutral.

From the Behr website

Not to be forgotten is Behr. I read an article last week calling their Blueprint color a true blue. It seems to me to be a little muted for that, but it’s not an awful cloying blue like so many are (to me, not the biggest fan of blue). It will make a nice accent that’s not screaming at you, like the doors in the picture at right.

Inspired? I am. I pretty much want to pair that Pineapple Cream Granita color with everything!

The best thing about all these colors is that they don’t look like they’ll age quickly. For example, I think I’d still enjoy a room in the clay color in a decade, since it’s drawn so closely from nature.

Tell me, what’s your favorite?

 

 

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First -time Home Buyers, and Rebuilding Bad Credit

You gotta take care of these little darlings. They can help or hurt you.

I want to follow up on Lee’s last blog about first-time home buyers. He mentions that credit is the most important thing that you can have! He is absolutely right!

I ruined my own when I got my first credit card at 18. I was so dumb! I got the bill in the mail and my minimum payment due was $25.00. I bought the money order, filled it out, put a stamp on it, and just stayed too busy to mail it. That’s stupid. There’s no way to make myself feel better; it was dumb. So when the next bill came in, I just didn’t bother.

Actually, I applied for two more cards, and just let them go too. I had no idea what I was doing in the real world of paying bills, or how I would affect my future self who wanted to buy a house.

What happened was that my credit bottomed out, and I ended up with negative remarks on my credit. Everything was turned over to collections, and I paid them that way. That doesn’t really help. Your credit report still shows that you were turned over to collections.

Sure enough an emergency arose. Had I taken care of business, I would have been able to cover it. Instead, I had to rely on others for help. Enough about me.*

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