Silicon Valley Redneck

More schedule slip

Operation Bug Out is delayed.  Yes, again.

My long-time plan was to sell the house before the election - but, what with the scouting trip having been delayed, and work for clients having resumed on return... well, sifting through the 28-year clutter accumulation ain't something that happens in a week.  And then there'll be repair & remodel work to be done, and, well, putting the place on the market in a month is not the least bit realistic.

After the election, not only will there be the inevitable short-term chaos (before Trump settles down to business-as-usual, and the public figures out that he's done so), but it'll be late fall, and then winter, and Not Really Selling Season.

And so it comes to pass that the Latest Revised Plan calls for getting the place ready at a sensible pace: getting the decluttering done in what remains of this year, then borrowing a pile of money around January / February to get the house and yard fixed up all nice for sale, listing it for sale probably in March, and paying everything off and departing before Spring is too far along.

Anyway, a bit of decluttering did happen yesterday.  Joy went through the closets looking for clothing that was no longer needed.  There was a raincoat I couldn't identify: forgotten ages ago by some former girlfriend?  And plenty of coats that are rather too tight in the waist, with a flavour of will-o'-the-wisp around the shoulders, where I have no intention of slimming down.

I really need to tackle the lab (again).  There's a large amorphous pile of Stuff on the floor, including some things I need to keep and a lot that I don't.  And then there are the sheds.  And the boxes and boxes of once-important papers, wherefrom I must extricate a few things such as brokerage statements before sending the bulk of the material off to recycling.

Tennessee 2016: Fit the Sixth

30-31 Aug 2016: Isn't the water supposed to be on the outside?

Busy Tuesday!

We had a look at three properties, in Powell, Far North Knoxville, and Corryton.  The first two were disappointing - much work needed to get the houses even vaguely habitable.  The one in Corryton was a surprise; the listing on the 'Net was somewhat unprepossessing, but in person the house was very nice indeed, even if it does have vinyl siding.  The land, hm.  It wasn't at all clear exactly how much and which land is included (and the Knox County on-line public-records system is much less helpful than the state's version, used for counties that don't have their own), but it was certainly very pretty.  So, between that and the one in Sweetwater, we've now seen two examples of quite plausible house-and-land options that fit the projected budget.

[Update: The boundaries of the Corryton property get even more confusing if one looks at Google maps; according to Google, House Mountain State Natural Area starts just back of the detached carport, making the listing's claim of 15 acres more than a little suspect.  But... the county's map shows the House Mountain park-or-whatever being a totally different shape from what Google has, without actually being actually useful for seeing how the boundaries line up with the various private property lines.]

[Update 2: I later found a higher-res (i.e., somewhat legible) version of the boundary drawing included in the listing; it is indeed 15 acres, including the old barn, and mostly extending back into the forest.]

Then a late lunch, a short rest break, and off to meet up with Cat Faber, whom I know from USENET and a con or two (Consonance, and maybe Baycon, back in the day).  She took us canoeing on a quiet little bay of Cherokee Lake, in a trio of beautifully-crafted wooden canoes.  Which she'd made herself.  From scratch.

Well, it took a while to get everything together (including affixing one canoe to the roof of the rental car without damaging anything) and get to the lake (above 27 MPH, the straps made a thrum-thrumm-thrummm-wub-wub-wub sound on the way out; on the way back, they sounded like a Flash Gordon rocket-ship, so I kept looking around for Ming ships, just in case).  Then get the canoes off the cars, and into the water, and people into the canoes, and... hey, these things do handle nicely!  And: oh, wow!  A double rainbow!  Wait, didn't we see one of those back in Indiana, just before that huge storm hit us?  And: is that rain we're feeling?

We didn't get a fierce thunderstorm, but it did rain fairly heavily for a few minutes as we sheltered from the wind.  Then, soggy, we had a nice paddle around, admiring the scenery and various birds.  As the sun set, 'twas time to return to shore and pack everything up.  (The rental car has a back-up camera, which turns out to be handy for parking spaces and also boat ramps!)

The little fishies in the shallows of Cherokee Lake like to nibble on feet.  My feet, anyway.  It tickles considerably.

It did get a mite late, and they roll up the sidewalks early 'round these parts, so finding dinner turned out to be a challenge, but we did find an open eatery (Cardin's Drive-In) on the way back to the motel.

Then, Wednesday.  Out to Kingston to look at another property that's kind of out of the projected price range, but might be of interest, especially if there's room to haggle.  Apparently it's for sale due to a divorce.  The house is glorious, with some oddities; the land (just under 20 acres) is nice, though the pond is rather small and murky.  Oddities?  Well... it seems to have been partially fixed up, before the process was interrupted (bonus room over garage partially drywalled; one of the upstairs bedrooms partially repainted).  The partially-repainted bedroom has three closets; the door of one appears to have been smashed open from the inside after someone was locked in that closet - yes, the door can be locked from the outside.  Something to do with the divorce?  Or... well, that sort of lock (and why was there a lockable knob on a closet door anyway, never mind being installed wrong-way-out?) can be inadvertently locked, and the door closed, and then one is locked on the wrong side of it, so it could have been a solo mishap.

Anyway... glorious, as I noted, but the price is out of bounds.  Seems it's been on the market for 2 years now, with no takers at that price; the agent who showed it to us suggests that if it doesn't sell soon, it'll likely go to foreclosure, and I speculate that the mortgage sets a price floor.  Oops!  Probably go much cheaper at foreclosure auction.

But, well... there's a fair bit of opportunity for haggling the price down on the mansionette we looked at first, and that could be made glorious at not too great an expense, so the total cost of acquisition and improvement on that one would be considerably lower, leaving money in the budget for a detached workshop and some industrial-strength landscaping.

Then we took a look at a couple of senior-living places.  Much more spacious and luxurious than the ones in the Bay Area!  Also, much less institutional-feeling.  Dunno if my parents could really be persuaded to relocate, but the existence of a senior-resort-type place with apartments nearly the size of their house, and set up for a range of lifestyle options from mostly-independent to total care, is a useful datum.

Wednesday afternoon, laundry.  Pesky chores!

Dinner was the IHOP "Split Decision": pancakes and French toast and eggs and bacon and sausage.  If you're having breakfast for dinner, might as well overdo it.

Tennessee 2016: Fit the Fourth

24-27 Aug 2016: Dandridge and Vicinity

We'd passed through Dandridge in the previous Fit, and (especially what with the lake and all) it seemed worth a closer look, including actual official Looks at some properties.

The people who live here do seem to like it, but prices for the sort of property I have in mind are a tad rich for my budget.  Still, we got in touch with a Real-a-tor^©, and set out to look at three places.

First up: a tad small, but OK-ish in general terms.  Needs a bunch of updating, and some minor repairs, etc.  It's an estate sale, and there's a lot of Stuff there, including, e.g., some old partially-dismantled car in the basement.

Next: a bigger house, with a decrepit old barn and a big brick 2-bay RV garage with an apartment upstairs.   Turns out to be a foreclosure.  Whoever changed the locks apparently didn't coordinate with the selling agent, or maybe just botched the job: the key in the lock box doesn't work on the deadbolt on the front door, which in any event is not properly installed and wibbles around loosely (but not loosely enough to "persuade" with any implements we have handy, and I left my lock-fiddling tools at home).  We do, however, find our way into the detached garage, which is full of cobwebs and in dire need of cleaning, but it has two garage bays, a room of some sort, and a half-bath downstairs, and two bedrooms, a full bath, and a kitchen upstairs.  Yeah, could be a fine upstairs office & lab / downstairs machine shop.  But we can't get much idea of the state of the actual house.

Last: that one we'd driven by earlier.  Land looks plausible.  Workshop-with-apartment looks plausible, though we can only get into the apartment, and that only because the tenant is home.  The key in the lock box doesn't work on the house doors, and the house tenant is out.  On closer examination, part of the back wall of the house has a discontinuity; apparently that wing used to be the garage, and has been converted to a laundry / mud room  by bricking up where the garage door used to be.

So... in terms of properties that fit my current search parameters, Dandridge isn't looking quite so promising.

Also in these days: look around a very little bit of Great Smoky Mountains National Park (no entrance fee, so stopping by for a little hike is no big deal); check out a couple of farmers' markets (the one in Newport doesn't appear to be alive, having a banner displayed but no booths, cars, nor other signs of activity [Added: it's open on Wednesdays, and we weren't there on Wednesday]; the one in Dandridge is alive but occupies an awfully small parking lot); and have a look around the Sweetwater flea market (that one's worth remembering; there's some decent merchandise on display, and the prices are mostly reasonable).

Somewhere along the line, I notice that black people 'round these parts don't seem to be very well integrated; I see them (well, some of them) acting like Aliens Among Us, trying to look harmless and inoffensive.  This is vaguely worrisome.

Sometimes we use Joy's iPhone for navigation.  The nav chap pronounces some place names oddly; while I know the K in Knoxville is supposed to be silent, I didn't think the N was too.  "Oxville"?

Rumor: It is reported that trendy exercise classes in the upmarket suburbs of Knoxville may be followed by social cannabis sessions in the parking lot, and that none of the locals consider this the least bit unusual.  I have no first-hand information on this matter.

Tennessee 2016: Fit the Third

22-23 Aug 2016: Sweetwater

In fact, we arrived here yesterday, by way of Asheville and Dandridge.  In Dandridge, we happened across the visitor center, where a friendly guy who'd long since lost his Berkeley (.ca.us) accent plied us with informational brochures and historical tales... including the 1943 (?) German plan to blow up the dams at Douglas and Cherokee lakes.

The town seemed nice, and that big lake sure looks inviting.  We drove past one potentially interesting property (nice brick house, plausible outbuildings, 11 acres, kind of hilly).  Might want to take an official Look at it later on.

Arriving in Sweetwater in late afternoon, we checked into the motel and took a cruise around the edges of town.

This morning, we took a stroll through downtown (such as it is) and the edge of a residential area.  Felt like Middle America - not quite like the neighborhood in Fargo where my father grew up, but generally low-key and safe.

Then, a drive past a property we'd both, independently, noticed on-line.  Fair-sized brick mansionette on a bit over 12 acres, set well back from the road, with a vast expanse of front lawn / hayfield and a patch of woods at the back.  Based on the view from the road, Joy got all excited and insisted on calling an agent and arranging to see the place properly.

In person, it's not as daunting as it seemed from the listing; there's a lot of space, but it's divided into three levels (main, upstairs, and basement).  Three bedrooms and two full bathrooms upstairs; kitchen, dining room, two den / family room type things, and a half bath on the main level (also laundry / mud room); carpeted rec room and uncarpeted unspecified space in the dungeon.  Also, an un-cooled room above the garage, reachable via a secret passage from one of the upstairs bedrooms.

With the space all broken up like that, there's no sense that I'd have to hire a butler, put on a tie for breakfast, have snooty rich friends over for cocktail parties, or any of that nonsense associated with big fancy houses.  And the 2-room basement would probably work well as office and electronics lab - the clean workspace.

What it lacks is a dirty workspace; the garage would do initially, but stuff like welding and painting should really happen in a detached building.  Also, it would be nice to have the garage available for parking cars, instead of being full of machine tools and contraptions under construction.  Have to see what the budget looks like, and have a chat with a contractor.

The property is owned by some sort of real-estate LLC that apparently bought it cheap almost a year ago and fixed it up for sale.  The fixery-uppery is... odd.  Some current issues are to be expected when it's been vacant for a while (e.g., paper-wasp nests).  But, some of the sliding windows don't open (with a reasonable amount of force) on account of the frames having been sloppily painted, while other, similar window frames haven't been painted recently.  The banister of the upstairs staircase is wobbly.  The door to the HVAC closet doesn't close properly.  So many fiddly details!  It has a vintage intercom, possibly original equipment.  I don't know if it works, but perhaps the wiring could be used for a modern replacement (if only to carry power to spiffy shiny comm panels with Wi-Fi for communication).

And I really would like to have one full bathroom and one room usable as a guest bedroom on the main level.  Equipping the media room with a convertible sofabed would address the latter requirement, but having only a half-bath would be problematic for any non-stair-capable houseguests, or for me should I come down with a case of Horrible Leg Pain again (or a broken leg, etc.).

Afterward, we went to look at another property, with over 17 acres, mostly wooded.  That one, hm.  Joy wasn't thrilled with the layout of the house.  The basement smells like a place where someone's been working on cars, and indeed is full of motorcycles, ATV, old VW bug, and so on.  The fields (and driveway!) haven't been  mowed in a long time.  There's a largish pond, but it's murky - could be from the recent storm, or maybe there's a problem.  Apparently the owner(s) moved out in a hurry and didn't clear out all the stuff, so... well, it'd be a possibility, but there'd have to be quite a bit of negotiation, haggling the price down and establishing either disposal or ownership of all that Stuff.  (What would I do with three racing motorcycles, anyway?)

In any event, I won't be making an offer on any properties during this trip - or, rather, it would take a combination of a really incredible deal and some highly creative financing.  But that mansionette sure is tempting.  I'd have to refrain from putting a sign out front naming it Epic Neener Factor.

We still need to check out Dandridge in more detail; also Powell, Clinton, some areas with Knoxville addresses, and so on.  And maybe take a drive through Ten Mile, which might be regarded as an outlying area of Sweetwater.  Then there's the area roughly between Cookeville and Lebanon, and not too far off the Interstate; gotta explore that too.  And there are people to visit in Nashville.

 

Bugs.  Bugs!  There are bugs here.  Noisy cicadas in the trees: zillions of them.  Weird big things that I don't have a clue about (multiple species).  Giant Leaping Banana Spiders in the grass, or whatever that ground cover was downhill of the second house.  (These were banana spiders in the sense of being yellow and vaguely cylindrical, not in the sense of arriving in shipments of actual bananas.)  Paper wasps, bigger than the ones in Sunnyvale.  Eek!  But I'm sure the cats would have a blast chasing them.  Especially the ones that light up.

 

There's a business here called Sweetwater Scrubs.  Sells medical clothing, apparently.  No relation to Wormwood Scrubs.

 

Also down the road, where we keep passing it, is a mobile-home dealership with a banner advertising something for $24,900.  So I look it up.  That's for (as one might expect) a single-wide, 2 bedroom, 1 bath, 765 square feet.  With all kitchen appliances, central heat & air, delivered (within 80 miles) and set up.  Egad?  A piece of land to plunk it down on will run ya another coupla grand, I suppose, unless you're just looking to add a guest-house, office, or low-end rental to property you already own.  Then there's site prep, utility hookups, all them details.  Doublewides run more, but it's amazing what's on offer in the $50K~$70K range.

Though, actually, I need to be asking what a 30x50 insulated workshop building on a reinforced concrete slab would cost....

 

Pondering: Methinks the county records for that mansionette may be misleading; either that, or I've misperceived or misremembered some details.  I was under the impression that it was a 1-story house with an attic and basement, recently converted to having upstairs bedrooms and a basement rec room.  But!  The geometry of the main-floor rooms, and the absence of a full bath on the main floor, point to the upstairs having been the main living space all along.  So in fact the LLC that currently owns it hasn't done all that much work; probably just a kitchen & bath remodel, some floor refinishing, and new carpet, leaving the banister wobbly, the basement fireplace fans looking peculiar, and so forth.  Probably some leverage for negotiation there, knowing what they paid for it last year.