Well, it's time to be moving again. James and I decided to head back to MA to be with our family for a little while. This has been our first time living away from home and we miss everyone a lot more than we thought we would.
Plus, they all know how to work on houses, and we're clueless. We're hoping with their motivating us, and their knowledge, that we'll be able to get the li'l house finished and to a more livable condition.
We moved into it in a rush, and there was a lot left to be finished. There is no furniture built into it, yet, and we've been making due with what we have. But it's not ideal. We've also learned that we're not the best self-motivators when it comes to working on the house—especially since we are clueless as to where to begin, and it's challenging enough living in the small space, never mind doing construction inside while living in it.
So, our plan is to move into Jim's mom's house, so we will not be living in the little house while we try to finish it up.
Our goals are to change the electrical system to a 30 amp system. It's currently only at 15 amps. While it's been nice having only a $22 electric bill the past few months, we think that having the opportunity to run a few more appliances if necessary might not be a bad idea. During the winter, we had to turn the heat off to use the blender, or the cook top, or to turn the water heater on… The spring hasn't been so challenging, but if we decided to stay in TX, we would most definitely need some kind of air conditioner, and our system couldn't handle that, as-is.
We still haven't built a ladder. We've been climbing up our cat towers to get in and out of the loft. The top *step* of the concoction is becoming a little wiggly, since it was not made for this. I've been building up some arm strength pulling myself up without using the top step. A ladder would be nice.
We're also thinking, that if we're planning on continuing to stay at RV parks, that it might be ideal if we had a typical RV toilet.
Hopefully we'll be leaving TX tomorrow. Today we're securing everything inside, emptying the shed and getting everything ready to go. There seems to be thunderstorms everywhere around the country right now. Hopefully we can avoid most of them, and there won't be any tornadoes. Keep your fingers crossed for us!
We'll post pictures of our journey, once we're settled back in MA.
Have a safe trip back to MA.
ReplyDeleteIndead, I'm sorry Texas didn't work out for you.
ReplyDeleteAs a side note, if you wanted to stay in a hot dry place like Texas, a "Swamp Cooler" could be a good option for you, and generally much cheaper and energy effecient than a true air conditioner. They only work in really dry places though.
As long as you're upgrading your electrical, you should strongly consider 50 amps if you're planning on an A/C. We live in a 30 amp fifth-wheel, and we still have to do the appliance shuffle to use the microwave, or a hair dryer, or vacuum, or really anything over about 8 amps. The A/C by itself draws almost 15 amps when running, then there's the base load of water heater, lights, plus whatever else is plugged in. This seems to be 4-8 amps generally. Whenever we forget... pop goes the breaker. Best of luck!
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