It’s been quiet on the blog for more than 3 months now. Which means I’ve missed a couple of monthly updates.

I’ve stopped following my visitor numbers long time ago, so I don’t actually know if you guys are still here?

Anyway, writers drought seems to happen to the most of us eventually. I think the monthly updates have run their course, and I no longer have the desire to do them. Nor have I had the time these past couple of months.

I still feel like I owe you guys an update on the project though. The current project being: Our house renovation.

The FIRE project is currently on hold (still), as our savings are currently being funneled into the ever-growing pit that is the house renovation! HAHA

Status on the project

On a normal month I’d be able to put aside somewhere between 35-40% of my salary for “future spending”. Most of which I’d normally add to my Total Balance (my FIRE pot). Since May we’ve not added any money to our FIRE pot, and actually the cash that was there is now GONE. It has been turned into “physical assets” such as:

1. A new driveway (€10,000)
2. A new outhouse for storage of tools, “seasonal trinkets” and other knickknacks (€8,100)
3. A new fence surrounding the driveway (€3,500)
4. A new(ish) car (€11,500)
5. Tiny house accommodation & furniture storage (€2,500) (2 months “rent”)
6. New kitchen appliances (bought on sale – now in storage) ($4,200)
7. Various building materials & tools and asbestos tests ($4,890)
8. New air-to-air heat pump (€1,850)
9. Down payment for our new kitchen (€750)

Our temporary accommodation (the “tiny house” installed in our garden) is €1,200/month – but because it’s winter time, the water and the sewer line is heated. These special hoses are quite expensive to rent (about €150/month), but the worst part is that they are also quite expensive to use in terms of electricity. Our tiny home has underfloor heating (also electrical), and for the past couple of weeks we’ve had workers inside the house, working on removing asbestos in the floors (yeah that was another unpleasant surprise). The price tag on such an endeavor is €8,160…And they required a lot of power too, so our electricity bill has gone through the roof.

Before we moved into our “garden home” (we moved in on November 28th), we had an average power consumption of 6.5kWh per day. At the peak a couple of weeks ago we averaged 105kWh per day! This would translate to a monthly electricity bill around €800! (a normal month pre-renovation would be <€100). It’s expensive to use electricity for heating!

Our central heating system in the house is disconnected, because we can’t have water running under the floors while they are being removed. The old heating system will eventually be replaced with brand new underfloor heating, but this won’t happen for another couple of months. Meanwhile we’ve tried to keep the house from freezing over with electrical heaters. This lasted for about a week, until I had to pull the plug on that and instead purchased a much more efficient air-to-air heat pump. This cost us about €1,850, but it has a dual purpose, as it will also be able to provide cooling in the summertime (which has been needed during these last couple of indian summers we’ve been having – I can’t sleep if it’s above 26c in my bedroom! haha).

Anyway, we’re currently busy planning new plumbing and electricals. We’ll be keeping the original electricals, but will be adding about 35 new outlets to the house (you can’t have enough of those, right?).

Here is the plan for the new electrical additions (purple are the new ones, green is the original ones):

Making the plan was the easy part – installing the actual wiring is the hard part. I’ve been trying to figure out the most optimal routing for the cabling. I’m currently at 10 new cables from the switchboard (placed in the room with the yellow “32” dot), and I’ve bought the cables (€700!). Now I just need to have our electrician install it. All I need now is thus time and money! (don’t we all?).

The new plumbing should start installation in week 3 next year. It’s really great that we’ve begun the process of looking ahead and started to actually build/add new stuff, rather than just tear stuff down (which is what we’ve been doing for the past couple of months).

Here are some “scenes” from inside the house:

Status on the finances

We’ve started withdrawing funds from the “war chest”, and it has become quite evident that we don’t have enough money to complete the project with the materials that we’d like to use in the house. It’s not a big surprise, so obviously I’ve been planning how to “get more money” for the past couple of months. I don’t have the option to make more money at work, so the only way we can expand the budget is to cash in some of our investments. It’s not the perfect timing for that of course, so the other option is of course to borrow some more from the bank. I’m currently still undecided, so I’ve decided to leave that worry for future me! I’ll be sure to keep you posted 🙂

I’m very cognizant of the fact that this house build ideally should make us money in the long run! It’s no good if we use too expensive materials or buy too expensive labor, so that we end up spending more than the house would sell for. In the current market, it’s really tough to say what a realistic sales price would be (post renovation), so there is of course a chance that we end up putting too much money into the house (short term at least). Fortunately we’re not planning to sell it anytime soon (we plan to stay here for at least 10-12 years), so I’m confident that we should be able to regain every € that we put in – eventually. If I was building a rental unit, I would probably use cheaper materials – but since this is our own house, we like to use quality materials (quality – not premium 😉 ).

While we wait, our cash stash (which is now rapidly depleting) is still yielding a respectable 3.05% return in Saxo Bank. Unfortunately, this tiny passive income is a drop in the ocean.

All of our reserves (monthly cash flow) is currently being eaten by our temporary housing. I can’t wait to be able to live inside of my house again. I’m ready to move in as soon as the new floors are dried (Week 9-10ish) – I don’t even care if there’s no bathroom or kitchen! We need to get the “tiny house” out of our yard as soon as possible, as it’s simply eating up way too much of our free cash flow. I’m trying not to stress too much about it, as the only thing I can do is to keep things moving along. The faster we complete the house, the faster we’ll return to a normal cashflow burn rate! 😛

Status on my well-being

I was very anxious and nervous about moving out of the house to begin with. My wife was adamant about moving most of our stuff into a 20″ container in our driveway as quickly as possible. I refused to believe that everything would fit – but it did! Kudos to my wife for her Tetris skills 😉 (we have around 60 boxes and some furniture – including some new appliances for the kitchen in the container).

I guess I kind of have a fear of the unknown. It takes a lot of time for me to “get started”, but once I start I try to keep the momentum going. I’ve been listening to a new podcast called “Mental Success” recently, and it has helped me tremendously with my mindset about all this uncertainty. I’ve learned to let go of the negative/anxious/stressful thoughts, and instead focus on the positive. I’ve always had a tendency to worry a lot about stuff that never actually materialized. There is a fine line between overthinking and ruminating. I know that rumination is not good for me, and I thus try to allow myself to “stress” over details that MATTER. Sometimes you need to think thoroughly about something, in order to make an informed decision. But it quickly spills over into overthinking. I try to avoid this now, but it still happens occasionally.

I’ve learned that it’s ok to “stress” about exterior stuff (like where to place a light fixture or how to route water from the mainline to the bathroom) – it’s once you start stressing about the “internal stuff” that you should beware.

I work best if I have a fixed set of tasks (physical tasks) that I need to achieve when I wake up. When I know what to do/achieve when I get up, it makes my day easier. Sometimes I don’t manage to complete all the tasks on my to-do list, but that’s ok – as long as I’ve seen some progress, then I know (in my mind) that I’ve moved in the right direction.

All in all we’re quite content in our tiny living situation. I don’t think I could do it full time, but because we all know that it’s temporary, I think we’re quite ok with it. It’ll be a fun time to look back on in a couple of years. “Remember that time we lived in a tiny house in the yard for months?”. “Good times” 😛

Merry X-mas and a Happy New Year to you all 🙂