Day 684 - Did We Mess Up? Apartment Build | Part 7

PPO3 is supported by Timber King sawmills. For more information on my 1220 CRZ mill or one of many Foley hydraulic options, go to TimberKing.com. We nearly emptied our emergency fund building this apartment that I'm standing on and was it worth it? How much did we spend? I'll get into all of that in just a little bit, but first I want to get you caught up to present day because I love what I do for a living. I make videos for a living, but every now and then you just got to put the camera down and get some stuff done. The whole camera situation slows things down considerably. Not only as you're actually doing the thing, right? It takes time to set up the shots and think about what's next and all that stuff. But more so than that, me personally, I get the biggest wind taken out of my sails when I sit down and edit. I'm very momentum based and if I keep rocking and rolling and doing stuff outside, I just keep getting stuff done. And then I sit in front of the computer and edit and my momentum just crashes. So for that reason, we were in another crazy living situation in between the camper and this apartment and back and forth and not having a bath on this property for almost three months now. So I had to put the camera down and get a bunch of stuff done. So that's what I want to do in this video is catch you up to speed on what all we have done and why we've done it in this particular order and the roadblocks associated with doing all this out of the emergency fund versus getting a loan and actually getting it done. So yeah, let me spin you around. There's a reason why I'm up here on top of the apartment and that's because I want to you our outdoor indoor indoor outdoor living room slash dining room slash laundry room slash kitchen. Every time I lean over this edge, I'm not actually leaning over the camera is people think that, hey, you better be careful up there. Well, trust me, I don't want to fall off just as much as you don't want me to fall off. So anyway, I call this all out indoor outdoor space because it's not climate controlled. And when it's weather appropriate, every one of our doors and windows stays open mainly through the summer. So anyway, here we are. This is I wanted to show you a top down view because I moved quite a few things. This dust collector was over there on that wall. And that was for two reasons. Number one, I wanted to pipe the fine dust and exhaust outside. That's no longer a reality. And then also I wanted it over there. That way, once the pipe got to let's say the pipe would be up here. Once the pipe got to right before this I beam, I can come off 90 degrees to this front side of the shop over here and put a big CNC machine in here. That is still something that I want to do, but financially speaking, it's nowhere near appropriate timing wise. So kicking that can down the road and also with the dust collector right there, I can still come off of this bend right here and come back to this direction. So it's not not really a deal breaker. But what that does is it pushes all the shop stuff this way so that this I beam this way is this one third of the shop is basically living space. So this is a 60 foot by 40 foot shop with 14 foot walls, right? And when we initially designed this space, we always knew that this one third we could essentially just say that is living space. We'll figure it out as we go, but that is living space. And that gives me a 40 by 40 shop to work in. Now, as you can see, it's horribly messy and cluttered and crap is everywhere. That's because our focus hasn't been here. Our focus has been on this side. So move the dust collector over there. We have a fridge, little storage situation, my camp cook stove, more cooking stuff, dishes, sink, utility sink. I'm not leaning over, but the camera is washer and dryer, dog cages, dining table and another coffee table that I made that I need to find a new home for. Anyway, this is a nice working out really, really nice space. And I think it kind of see it better from above. All I have to do to the dust collector is hook up the electricity, which should be really easy because I want to tie into that secondary panel right there. And I have all the wire. Everything's good. No problem at all. I just have to get that done and I have to get that done so I can make the next project inside the shop. I want to do an actual woodworking project and pause the homestead stuff for just a second to knock something out. So that's upcoming. And this space, like I said from above, is our outdoor living space, indoor outdoor living space. And it's working out quite well. It's finally to a spot where everything is functional and not really too crazy cluttered. And we can actually move in here. So yay for that. What I really wanted to catch you up on is inside. So last I checked in, we just did the ceiling spray foam. Now I have OSB put up on just as a divider. We still want to figure out some type of way to sound deaden all the interior walls. So we're probably going to put some type of insulation in here before we do the wall siding. Still have to build a set of stairs in this side as well as that side. Still have to hang the doors and I still have to hook the exhaust fan. Everything else is in a better living situation than what it was in the camper. We really wanted to get the bathroom functional. That's the main reason why I put the camera down and just got it done temporarily. I'll tell you why in just a second. But not having a bathtub or a shower to take a bath or a shower for almost three months has, it's just, it's very inconvenient. My wife's mom is six minutes down the road so it's not far at all. But then you have to gather your clothes, you have to put the dogs up, you have to do the whole spiel of getting out of here to go get showers and then come back here. It's just not convenient. So that was the biggest motivating factor. Get the tub working. Now all of this stuff is temporary in the bathroom and let me tell you why. As you can see the floor is not done. As you can see the walls aren't done. This has been a order of operations thing because we're paying for this as we go. We didn't take out a big loan although we wanted to. We decided at the very last minute to not take out a loan and get this done immediately and instead just go as we can. So before I hooked up all this stuff I wanted to put a linoleum floor in here. Just a very inexpensive, a dollar or less per square foot roll of linoleum. Super inexpensive. Get the job done. That's all I wanted to do. But the more I thought about that I thought well if I do the floor so that way I could do the tub. Well at that point I'm gonna tear up the floor probably when I do all of the walls and the ceiling and any other type of movement that I had to do around in here. It's like ah I really should do the floor last now because I don't want to tear up that linoleum. Yes it is inexpensive but when you glue something down and then right in the middle of the floor you get a rip. You know what I'm saying? So order of operations. We know we wanted to do like v-groove tongue and groove wall panels here and whether we do that ourselves. Whether we take the trees down, dry the lumber, cut the stuff ourselves. If we do that we're looking at like two or three months in order to be able to get that done. Or we take down the material and sell and raise enough money to buy already made tongue and groove which is like a dollar and 13 cents per square foot where I'm at. Regardless it's gonna take a little while so I can't just delay hooking up everything until the walls are done because the walls are gonna take a while. So at that point with those two things in mind I thought you know what let's just rush and get a temporary setup and let's get this done. So this bathroom is eight foot by 12 foot minus the thickness of the wall so minus about half foot and about a half foot this way. This tub we got off Facebook marketplace for 125 dollars with that faucet which is pretty cool. Super super cheap. The whole theme of this is like a budget build right? Got that off the Facebook marketplace and then this is all roughed in just rough stuff because once we do the walls and I figure out the visual theme that this bathroom is going to have well those pieces are my template that I can use to make this out of the nice visually themed material. So it works. Works very well by the way. It's not set up for a shower just yet but all I have to do is get a hook up here for that wand and then make a shower figure out a way to do a shower curtain. And then this vanity is a cheap particle board. It's the cheapest one 24 inch that Lowe's had and of course we got the toilet over there and temporary divider temporary because I got to set the doors. I've got to do that and then I also have to set this exhaust fan right out of that wall and then also right out of the perimeter wall right there. But we are at a point where we can actually bathe in here which is fantastic and we have enough privacy for the three of us. Temporarily speaking obviously yes I do have to hang the doors and all that stuff but we have barricades blocking out for privacy and when someone needs the room we all you know show respect and get out of the way kind of a thing. So there's that. All the plumbing down below is done finally. I still have to spray foam the bottom of this floor but that's that's going to be down down the road just a little bit because I want to insulate this floor a little bit better than what it is which is not insulated at all. But also we have my daughter's room coming along. That's the other side of that OSB wall obviously and then she's got OSB on this side as well and we are contemplating several different ideas for how to use this space to maximize the volume of space. This is a pretty cool canvas to start with. It is essentially minus a few inches here and there. It's essentially a 10 foot by 10 foot by 10 foot cube and we want to utilize the vertical space too. So the first plan was to have a loft bed up here with a basically a closet down below for clothing that's still in the cards but also so is a loft just a loft maybe or maybe not with a bed from the top of this header all the way across. That'll be pretty cool. Maybe that doesn't work out. Maybe we just do a rock wall right over there with a crash pad down below and some gymnastics rings above. Maybe. I don't know but that sounds pretty cool. Regardless, Tyler loves her room and I love that she loves her room. This will be the first room in this apartment that gets like completely finished. Walls up and everything because she's seven and she doesn't understand the complexities involved with all of this major life change and moving things and all this stuff. So I want her to have the first completed bedroom. So during her youth she has all of this experience of moving but she also gets to enjoy her very own private room set up with a lot of fun activities and set up the way she kind of sort of wants it. I joke that this big bedroom for me and Jamie is kind of like it's like man's space. Bed, sleep, table, eat, computer, work, chair, relax, gun safe, protection and recreational entertainment and weather protection. Man's space. Just the essentials, right? I could live like this the rest of my life. I could live in the camper for the rest of my life. Jamie likes the space too though. I'd say that jokingly. This gives us way more space. Way more space than what we had in the camper. We stayed in the camper for 22 months if I'm not mistaken and this checks all of our boxes, all of our needs for the stepping stone before we get into the house where we can actually work on a little bit incorporating a little bit more wants versus just needs. This is just needs, right? And one of the biggest needs that we found in the in-between space of this apartment not quite being done and then the camper being outside where it wasn't quite fully set up. We were trying to get in here fast. One of the things that we really realized is we miss our dining table. We are a very dining table oriented family. I grew up in Michigan in a household of six people, two adults and four kids and maybe that had something to do with the fact that our dining room wasn't that large and our dining table wasn't that large. Although now that I think about it, six people could have sat there just fine. So anyway, growing up, all the kids ate at the dining table and the parents ate on the couches in the living room glued to the television. And then my wife's side of my wife's family when she was growing up, the same situation, nobody ate together as a family only on like, you know, Thanksgiving and stuff like that, that the family actually ate together. And both Jamie and I do not like that as adults. Now as a kids, kids, we didn't care as adults. I don't like that. The dining table for us is a very special place. It's a place where all three of us, our entire family, the three of us, we eat together as at least one meal every single day together, at least most of the time it's two or three. We stop what we're doing and we eat together as a family. We don't have our phones out. We don't have the computer going in the background. We eat our food and we talk to each other. And that is, that's powerful. That's really powerful in my opinion. And it's something that we've really realized, like something is massively missing in that little in-between stage between the apartment and the camper. Something is massively missing. Well, we gave this particular dining table to our uncle George, um, when we first moved over here and he was, uh, it was really cool. He was proud of this dining table that I made and he was shown it. A couple people told me that he showed it off to them. And, um, it's, it's very, very cool. Well, he passed away in December on like day two or three of this apartment build. And two of the things that we were able to get back from, from his estate is, is the dining table that we gifted him. And then my coffee table that we gifted him. And, uh, once we realized, Hey, let's, let's put the dining table here in this room. And it's, I mean, it's just the same setup as the camper, you know, the camper front half of the camper was a queen bed, a dinette and the kitchen. That was the whole front half of the camper. So there was a bathroom that separated the front from the back. And then the back, the garage room, which was still heated and cool, but they call it a garage because the whole back wall came down. That was Tyler K's room. So we had some separation there, but really we slept in the dining room and kitchen essentially. So putting this dining table in this room where we have a climate controlled place to eat as a family is nice. I really, really like it. So that's it for update on the actual work. I may or may not record. Actually, I know I'm probably not going to record, uh, putting the doors up. That's super simple. And I just got to get that done. I do think I want to record putting that exhaust fan in because we're going to puncture not only the envelope of this apartment, but the envelope of the shop to go outside, which leads me to another talking point really quick. Um, this is insulated with spray foam insulation because there's, there's gaps all over this thing and spray foam, closed cell spray foam will stop any type of drafts. That's going to stop any of the airflow. For example, you can see one right up here on this corner air that, uh, um, spray foam sticking to that crack. And of course, all the way along that line, anyway, this thing was like a block of Swiss cheese spray foam worked out in that regard. However, what are we going to do with stale air? You got to have some type of airflow. It's going to get gross in there. Don't aren't you going to open a window? That was one of the comments. Aren't you going to open a window? Well, yeah, open a window. That's literally solving the question, answering your own question there. Um, I want with the, with the insulation, I want the drafts and the airflow to be on my terms. That way, when I don't want a draft and I want to, you know, the heat to stay in and the cool to stay in, uh, it stays in right. But you know, even on our last home in the winter time, uh, I'd open the doors 10, 15, 20 minutes, the front door, the back door, open up a window, get all this air just blowing through the house. And it just, it's just a breath of fresh air. Right. And then you shut the windows and doors and you let the HVAC catch back up and get the temperature under control. That's the same situation with this. Uh, once that exhaust fan is running it, we will have the exact same strategy as we had in the camper and the camper when things, when, when, you know, you know, you know, feel stale air, like, Oh, I just need some fresh air in here. Right. Well, you open up the bathroom fan, open up the bathroom vent, turn the fan on, and then strategically open up a window where you want that, that airflow to be. And it's just a nice, nice blast of fresh air right where you want it. It's going to be the same situation with this. Once that exhaust fan is hooked up, then I can crack this window to get some nice fresh air going through our bedroom. Uh, Tyler can crack her window over, I guess I was in the wrong position to show both of them window over there to get fresh air to blow through her bedroom. So yeah, we will have fresh air. It's just on our terms. So was it worth kind of sort of depleting our emergency fund versus getting a loan? And you probably know, already know my answer with this whole big adventure thing we've got going on. Absolutely. It was worth it. Absolutely. That was the better decision at the end of the day. And I'm so glad we decided to not get a loan to do this. And we're not talking about a major loan or a huge monster loan. It would have been $10,000. $10,000 would allow us to get all of the apartment done within two weeks. That was, that was the game plan. That was the objective, get a lump sum of money to buy everything we need, and then just bust our butt for two weeks straight to get it done, record as much as possible, but not touch it, excuse me, not touch a computer until it was all done. Cause that's really what slows me down. And, uh, that didn't work out. So we are almost three months later and we're still not done, but we appreciated a heck of a lot more. This is a big reality check. You know, life, life isn't Pinterest and Instagram filters. That's a good thing. Life isn't Pinterest and Instagram filters. Uh, the reality is life is dirtier than that, right? You see these homesteads that are the Pinterest homesteads where the chicken coop looks like you could eat off of the floor or something crazy like that. You're like, well, that looks great, but that's not how life is. Or you see these 6,000 square foot barn dominiums and it's like, how do you afford to heat and cool that? You may have a fantastic career and I'm all for that, but I just don't see that as being practical. I do not want a huge house like that because then you're stuck inside. You have to, the way I think is if I'm building a 6,000 square foot house, I better get my money's worth. So I'm going to be inside it all of the time. And if you're inside of it, then you lose, you lose vision and you lose sight of, of the beauty that is this world. If you know, there you go. Um, but anyway, uh, where's I even going with that? Oh yeah. Reality check life isn't Pinterest or Instagram filters. So oftentimes we get caught up with what I call the Michael Jordan effect. You know, the Michael Jordan, arguably the greatest of all time basketball player. I don't care about the Michael Jordan versus versus, um, the other guy, LeBron James. Uh, that's not the topic of this point here. Uh, the point is comparing yourselves to the greatest of all time, right? A lot of people do that. I was reading an article about some basketball player. I didn't even remember the guy's name. This kind of made me make this, this, uh, correlation here of the greatest of all time comparison. And somebody was trashing him in the comments of this person not being good. He's on his like 13th different NBA team and he never was a starter and he was a backup this whole time. And he's trash and all this. And it's the Michael Jordan effect. If you compare everybody or everything to the greatest that there ever was and whatever it is, then of course you're going to be a failure because you're not the greatest of all time. And you can't have that mentality. You can't compare like that guy, right? He's trashed because he's on his 13th team dudes in the NBA. If you're in the NBA, you're good at basketball. End of story. You can't say he's trash. Same with all these other monster properties and barndominiums and mansions and all these mega YouTube success and all this stuff. That's not the reality for the majority of, of life. And if you simply compare yourself to that reality, you're always going to be a failure. So this is a very humbling experience and it kind of keeps us focused on the things that matter most. You can spend a lot of money on stuff that really doesn't matter. You can buy, you can spend a lot of money on a car that really doesn't matter. Or you can spend a lot of time with family doing things that you love to do and building a life that you want to build. And that matters a whole lot more. So man, this conversation is all over the place. Yeah. Disciplined spending to get what you want will oftentimes, most of the time lead to you being more grateful for what you have. Our daughter is seven and she is wise beyond her years. She is very grateful of the things that matter. And I, I very much appreciate that when she was growing up and, and you know, that the age of where she can figure out that she can ask for things and then not getting what she wants, getting a little bit upset. I was used to tell her, let's, let's not be upset about what we don't have and be thankful for what we do have. And just that one little sentence I've said over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. And it sunk in because the toilet of all things, when we got the toilet installed, she was very thankful that we had a toilet and acknowledged the fact that other kids take things for granted. And here we are excited that we have a toilet. And I was like, you're seven years old and you made that correlation. It's fantastic of all things that mentioned there a toilet, but it's fantastic. Uh, I think that's it. I'm rambling on here. Um, next up what's coming up next. Uh, there's a couple more things that I want to do in there off camera. I may or may not show, uh, but I've got to get the dust collection hooked up here. Like I said, so I can get a woodworking project built and the next big project, because this is no longer on life support. This is in stable condition and I can walk away from this for right now. The next big adventure, big thing outside is a big garden with an attached chicken coop and chicken run and compost station. I've got it all sketched up out and I'm not going to show you that sketch up because, uh, things change, things change, but I've got a plan at the very least. I got a plan and, uh, we're walking through the process of, uh, of, of figuring out what's next with that plan. We got to acquire some materials and mill a bunch of lumber and, uh, we're starting to get excited about this spring. Spring has almost sprung here in Mississippi and it's going to be really nice to get away from the indoor work and get outside and get some sun on the skin and just feel great outside. I love being outside if you haven't noticed. All right, you guys take care and I'll ramble on and talk to you in the next one.