Ready or not...rent!

Well, there's good news and bad news.  Make that - several pieces of good news, one piece of bad news, and one piece of terrible news.  But let's start with the good!

Good news #1:  The House of Goodwill is officially ready to rent.  It is 99.5% complete.  

After over two years of mostly living there, my family has vacated the premises in order to rent it.  From now on, we will be occasional visitors.  In order to get out in time, we worked feverishly setting up the final details: security system, installing interior doors with locks (for housekeeping and owner's closets, as well as blocking access to garage), labeling light switches, creating a guest book, replacing steps on outdoor stairs, etc., as well as deep cleaning and moving ourselves out.  It was an intense last week!

I say it is 99.5% complete because there are few small things we didn't get done: mostly hanging pictures on walls, etc.  Things that can wait a few months till our return.

Good news #2:  The House of Goodwill is expecting it's first guests July 4th weekend!

The bad news?  Well, we don't live there anymore, and the longer we were there, the more we loved being there.  As we got to know neighbors, and spent more time on the water, we got really used to it.  It is such a peaceful place, and so beautiful.  So leaving was hard.  I'm already looking forward to returning.

And finally, the terrible news: while the house is ready to rent (good!) the property is not!  If you recall, we began a massive shoreline project at the end of April.  The plan was to create a shoreline made from PVC material, with an area for a sandy beach, and a carved out portion for a future covered floating boat dock.  The project was supposed to be complete by Memorial Day.

The problem: after the PVC-walled shoreline was almost completely finished, there was a landslide, and the just-completed shoreline was breached and broken.  The reason?  Apparently, the backyard slope is full of underground springs (an unknown x-factor) that cause water to constantly flow upward and push the earth downhill.  Combined with two long days of constant rain, the pressure of earth moving downward breached the wall.

At Memorial Day, when the project was supposed to be completed, the waterfront was a disaster.

So it was back to the drawing board for our contractor to come up with Plan B.  That took a while, but when we finally heard back from him, his new plan was to dig massive ditches at the bottom of the hill to fill with rocks for drainage, add drainage pipes, and add a long steel beam underground along the shoreline, which will connect to three cement pilons to hold it in place.

It is June 25th, and our contractor has been onsite two days since Memorial Day.  We know he's managing another project, and he said he had to order some supplies he's waiting on.  But once he pours the cement pilons (which has not happened yet), he has to wait two weeks for them to dry before we can attach the steel beam.  Translation: this will not be rectified quickly.

When my husband last spoke with him, he said he plans on having the project done by the end of July.

Fingers crossed!

So, not only has the cost of the shoreline skyrocketed (I honestly can't think about it), but it has also cost us weeks of prime rental time.

The one good thing that came out from this?  The first renters (I prefer to say guests) are the family members of one of our neighbors at the house.  They sound like wonderful people.  Also, importantly, they do not need lakefront access, since as family of our neighbor, they can just cross the street to her house and access the water there.  I can't imagine anyone else could rent at this time, because access to the water is completely blocked on our property, not to mention the huge mess that is the bottom of the hill.

So after this first group, there will be no more guests until the shoreline is complete and water access has returned, which, God willing, will be at the beginning of August.  I had begun to post the house online, but I paused until it's completely ready.  I really can't rent a lakefront property with no lake front.  Even if the bottom of the hill is still mostly a dirty or muddy mess at the end of the project, the sand beach will be there to access the water for boating.

Whew, that was a long update!  So that's where we're at.  So you can see for yourself the current state of the shoreline, here are some pics:

Here is a view of the shoreline from the top of the hill.

That's a pile of rocks that will go underground to help with water drainage.

The boathouse on the left (and the edge of a roof of one on the right) belong to neighbors.

The A-frame "beach house" is on our property.

Another view of our beach house, and the boat house of of our neighbor.

The shoreline is currently a big slope of dirt!

Here is the carved out area that will be the sandy beach at the end.

We have two massive piles of pristine white sand in our side yard.

I look forward to coming back in the fall and sitting down here with my coffee under an umbrella.

My husband wants to move the firepit down here.

Here is the current shoreline after the collapse.

This sea wall used to be a straight line!

The rocks have been added since the breach, they are to add drainage for all the water in the hillside.

Here is the beach house, looking from the water.

It's a neat building; there is a door on the back that opens to a small room that has already been plumbed.  There is a shower and toilet in there still in the boxes; apparently they were never installed.

So the little room could easily be a bathroom for the beach area, and a bed could be put in too.

The front part is screened-in and had an old, rotted-out kitchen.

Here are my husband and son inside the beach house with the old, rotten wood kitchen, before they demo-d it.

Here is the current state of the beach house with the old kitchen gone.

We had planned to leave it clean and pressure-washed with seating when we left.

But our contractor is storing his tools inside (see below) and it's going to get dirty again when he begins work anew.  So we left it like this; our property manager will pressure wash it for us (and put cushions on the seats) once he's finished and done with the project.

A future project is to rebuild this small kitchen in stainless steel, so it will only need to be cleaned, but it won't be able to get destroyed by the elements (like the former wooden kitchen).

We'll keep seating in there, and we have a deck box we'll build to hold life jackets for future guests.

(I pick them up cheap whenever I find them at estate sales.)

In our heads, we imagine a really great waterside entertaining area in the future, with a big, covered boat dock (with swing chairs), a sandy beach, and a table for eating outside and in.  Also a little apartment in the beach house with a bed and bathroom.

It would be so great to get some rental income coming in to help cover the cost!

It's been a slow but steady journey from the beginning.  When I consider all we've done, and all the progress we've made in the two years and three months that we've owned the house, I'm amazed.

God willing, we'll get there yet!