All Forum Posts by: David C.

final idea:

take room from the living room to make the 'appliance wall' longer. Put the fridge to the left of the dishwasher, so you have: range, sink, dishwasher, fridge.

If you are blowing out the wall anyway, who's to say where the kitchen ends and the living room begins? use the same flooring and its all good.

Here's an island kitchen idea, I put a 'wall' at the end of the island to run wire/gas down to the island from the ceiling. Put some fancy trim on it and call it a column. Maybe even put one at each end or have them come up through the countertop?

http://www.homestyler.com/designprofile/0f2c3f9d-4bb4-4f03-91fe-d03b09a0effd

I'd make the island wide with an overhang to allow seating.

See if this link works?

http://www.homestyler.com/designprofile/68a529db-f7f9-4ae3-beb5-9ea4074c3c78

I have the dishwasher on the other side of the sink by the door, so it does not interfere with any corner cabinet.

I'm assuming moving the range is possible.

You get better counter space, and a fairly wide opening(I think you can get almost 5 feet) and you keep all that light from your windows.

on the bottom of the picture, if you move that doorway to the other side of the room, then you can do an L shaped kitchen using the left side(as current) plus the left 30% or 40% of the bottom of the picture.

Maybe someone already said that?

Have you used the link @Karen Margrave

provided? that looks like a great tool, and you could share the link here for us to look at it with proper dimensions and stuff. I think this is fun.

on the top of the picture - does that face the front of the house? How large is that whole side of the house? as long as one side matches, and is close to the other sides you are probably OK.

You could also harvest siding from the back of the house and use it out front, then use the new non-matching to patch up the back - you might get a closer match.

Could you stone-face or brick face that area?

What's to the left of the kitchen?

Is it a gas stove? if its electric you should be able to move that as well - you could have the stove and fridge on the bottom wall and forget about opening it up.

Where does the door go on the left side?

The most useful way I've found to think about it is this: "You are consuming the rental value of your primary residence".

So the bigger and fancier it is, the more it costs to heat, the more you are consuming. As humans, we must consume some 'housing'.

I consider my 'paid off' house the 'fixed income' portion of my portfolio. Its like having a bond that I bought for $250,000 with a coupon that rises with inflation paying enough to rent my 2,500 square foot home. Obviously, there's real estate taxes and maintenance, so maybe its a bond that pays half my rent.

I consider my home improvements to my primary residence 'consumption' as well.

I've heard of inspecting your room before, but never really paid attention. Our 'post-bug' inspection found only a perfect room, zero evidence of bed bugs. In my reading there are apparently other bugs that look quite close to bedbugs, including baby cockroaches. So it feels funny to root for cockroaches, but I'm sure hoping it was a baby cockroach I killed!

So far so good on the homefront, none of us show any bites and we've not seen any of them, our luggage and shoes are still in the freezer(along with the kids sleepy friends and a brand new stuffed Santa!). All our clothes have been laundered. I should do some research to find out when we're 'in the clear'.

Funnily enough, the hotel offered to move us within the hotel to a different room, or to a different property they own in the area. I guess they were not concerned that we might bring their bedbug problem from one property to another?

Have those tenants turned over yet? Do you feel responsible to test or exterminate on your next change-over? If a multifamily would have responsibility between units, would you have responsibility between tenants? especially since you were notified?

I'm not sure what commercial art is - advertising? drawing logos?

can you sign up on elance or odesk - start doing it cheap, then if you get a good reputation and get busy, raise your prices. If you are good at it, start doing it for free until you create demand. Do it constantly when you are not at your wal-mart job. I think of 'art' as a line of work that should afford a flexible schedule - and one that you can't possibly be 'locked out' of because you have not finished the education.

Often times the same job pays wildly differently based on your reputation. You can get an inexperienced offshore resource to do 'sap programming' for $10.00/hour - or maybe less. Or you can pay me $130.00/hour. Or you can pay Accenture or IBM $200/hour or more. I have more work than I can handle. If you saw the job listings for 'sap programmer' and $10/hour - you might think 'this job does not pay enough'.

@Bryan L. I stopped my explanation before I got to bankruptcy for the same reason, I don't know how that all shakes out.

How 'unsecured' is 'unsecured'? If you'd have to declare bankruptcy, chances are you'd avoid that by taking out a HELOC or selling your house to avoid it, right?

So... once you have some assets, you may as well use them as collateral, because they will come after them anyway?

I'm sure someone here can explain - but NOT PROVIDE LEGAL ADVICE.

Q: What if you have assets and unsecured credit that you do not have the cash flow to pay? can you be compelled to sell assets to satisfy the unsecured debt?