cmonkey's journal

[cmonkey]

Since then I've been climbing the end of a sigmoid which feels like climbing a false hill. The ROI is getting lower and lower.

No that is a sufficiently nerdy way of saying exactly what I am saying. Although, I think I will have no issue getting all the trim up since we need it up to move all of our stuff out of our bedroom.

It will take a LOT of motivation to get our bedroom into working order though (redoing floor). The temptation to just sleep in the other room for the next year will be very high. I am extremely lazy by nature. This year has been a very irregular anomaly....

[George the original one]

Since the beginning I figured I'd rebuild the kitchen, but after fixing the most important stuff (fridge, stove, working sink), the kitchen is sufficiently useful already and I feel no need to improve it by an additional epsilon.

LOL, yeah that's what we said about our kitchen when we bought the house 12 years ago. Now selling it and the kitchen never did get redone. Buyers, bless their heart, inquired about the missing cabinet door so they could spruce it up without buying new cabinets... and I managed to find the door still hiding in the garage despite my best efforts at tossing it's broken ass out of there!

[George the original one]

@cmonkey - you seriously need to finish the house construction stuff so you're back in the garden.

[cmonkey]

WRT the stack of magazines and fixing up old houses, I agree on not feeling a need to improve anything that isn't worth it. Originally I was enjoying myself doing all this, but as I progressed up the sigmoid*, I am just not enjoying it like I was. At this point I'm doing the work because we can only use 1/3 of our house and its not fun walking around on OSB.

If anything, this whole experience has been a lesson in finding the right balance between sloth and machine.

@cmonkey - you seriously need to finish the house construction stuff so you're back in the garden.

Yes! Ugh!! Looking back at the photos I posted last summer, you wouldn't even recognize it now. This year has proven I am the muscle behind keeping everything 'neat and weed free'. I hope to get this project wrapped up in time to do a nice cleanup in late October/early November. Cold weather doesn't bother me and if the ground isn't frozen I'll be out there.

Despite the mess, we have harvested a LOT. Half a dozen melons, over a dozen pumpkins and squash (we've been making homemade pumpkin spice lattes!**) a nice watermelon, 40 lbs of potatoes, lots of tomatoes, hundreds of peppers. The chickens are feasting on the stuff we can't eat.

* I really love that my mood about this can be summed up with mathematical constructs.

**Not that overpriced sugary crap from certain popular coffee shops/restaurants. DW made a pumpkin syrup with 2 tablespoons of roasted pumpkin and variety of spices.

[cmonkey]

We have 3 weeks to go until our relative arrives and as of today I only have 1 room left to work on before we get everything carpeted. Speaking of which, we have our carpet picked out and are getting really excited. I am really confident that we will be either painting, or about to paint the last room when she arrives. The plan is to have the carpeters come the week of the 16th.

I spent yesterday and today doing the final drywall finishing in our hallway and dining room and today DW put primer on them. Everything turned out great. 3 weeks from gutted to painted.

Also, this week I'll be posting quite a few updates. I have photos of bedroom 2 and the bathroom to share and also the dining room and hallway this week.

First off though, last weekend I worked on building the framing for our new 8 foot picture/casement window and also for our sliding door. Monday and Tuesday I installed them. The sliding door came from what is now our bedroom. It has been stored on the deck for 2 months and so it's nice to get our deck back.








I have also gotten a start on the framing I'm doing in the ceiling. I removed all the blocking and added 2x4s running across the trusses. I attached those 2x4s to the main house so now these trusses are a LOT stronger. Before doing this I could shake the entire structure just by shaking one board. I only did that once. I also attached those 2x4s to the far wall with the window in it, so it is much stronger now. Effectively the entire room (which was an addition) is now tied to the main house.



Tonight I got a start on leveling the ceiling as well. It should be completed in the next couple days.


My next update will be photos of bedroom 2 and it's closet.

[cmonkey]

Bedroom 2 & Closet

Here are some photos of our finished bedroom 2. Final touches like trim and the ceiling fan will be put on in the weeks after carpeting. This is going to be our little girl's room.... ...

Pay no attention to my bad photography, it looks really good in person.









Tonight I got the entire south side of my living room ceiling leveled. Tomorrow night / Wednesday I'll do the other half.

My next update will be the dining room and hallway, which DW is finishing painting tomorrow. Excited.

[cmonkey]

Dining Room & Hallway

Some before and after shots of our new dining room. Before shots were from Sept 1. We have really renovated this room quickly because we didn't have to do much insulation, no windows and minimal framing. That and we just want it done. I think I could have done it in 2 weeks but I had other work to do as well.

Before




After



Before



After









With that, I have just one more update this week....my next post will be revealing our bathroom.

[Dave]

As always, the work on your home looks amazing cmonkey.

[cmonkey]

Master Bathroom

As always, the work on your home looks amazing cmonkey.

Thanks Dave!

As promised, here are some photos of our finished main floor bathroom. It has been 'finished' for about a month, but we have been putting final touches on here and there. I still have 2 pieces of trim to put on. Can you find them?

Our design was 'beach/ocean'. The floor looks like a boardwalk, but is actually porcelain tiling. The shower was designed to give the feel of showering in a waterfall. The bottom of the vanity matches the shelf I built for the dryer (boardwalky look).

All in all we are super thrilled with how it turned out. I will show some photos of our old bathroom in my final update where I show before and after for everything.

I present these in 'before' and 'after' again.


















We got this dryer on craigslist for $150. The guy told us it was bought for over $900 4 years ago and that it still worked. It actually had a couple problems which rendered it broken ! The power button was broken so I glued it back in place with plastaid. It also needed a new belt and slides. So I know the inside and out of this dryer. It works a lot better than our old one!

The dent in the washer was there when we bought it. That's how we got it for over 50% off.




I built the shelf for the dryer out of scrap 2x4 and we just painted it white to match everything. I attached 2 boards running along each wall, and have just one leg in the front. Then just attached the boards running across. Simple, elegant design and we like it a lot.







DW made all the hoop decorations. A jellyfish, a seahorse, a clam and a starfish. The yellow fish are vintage 1960's from a relative.



I am finally finished with all the structural work in the ceiling of our living room so now I can begin putting up lights and then will be insulating this weekend. Monday and Tuesday I'm off work again to put in 2 more windows on the south side of the room. Then it's just electrical, insulation, vapor barrier, drywall, paint and we are done!!

I'll put up a photo once we are painted and then show everyone once we have carpet in all the rooms. Just a few more weeks.

[cmonkey]

We are to the point where we just have drywalling and painting left. Insulation, electrical, framing and windows are all done! Yay! All this was done over the last 3 days. Yesterday I put in 12 hours. *whew*

Also, today we had our house measured for carpet. Tomorrow or Friday we can go in and finalize our order.

We should have everything drywalled by the end of the week/weekend and I can spend all next week finishing up the drywall mudding. Then DW paints and we are all set for carpet.

[jennypenny]

What a great room. I love the fireplace.

You do more work on your house in a week than I do in a year. It's embarrassing. I wish you'd slow down and stop making us all look bad.

[cmonkey]

What a great room. I love the fireplace.

You do more work on your house in a week than I do in a year. It's embarrassing. I wish you'd slow down and stop making us all look bad.

Thanks jp, we love the room too, it is about 400 square feet (20x20) and now that we have the double doors to the rest of the house it feels incredibly spacious inside. Compared to before....it's just amazing. We can now see from one side of the house (living room window) to the other side (hallway window) and its about 40-50 feet across.

WRT my speed.....it's mostly because I have nothing better to do....I'll be slowing down in about 2 weeks since all I will have to do is put trim on and put up ceiling fans and such. I'll probably start spending my evening laying on the carpet. No motivation to get up and work then.

Just to add to the pics above...we now have the entire ceiling drywalled today. 400 sq feet of drywall in about 6 hours I think with a small break. I built a brace out of 2x4 and attached handles. All she had to do was hold the brace/drywall in place while I screwed it up. I should have done that from the start....

[Dragline]

cmonkey rules. Score another one for the Iowa public schools (since I also attended them ).

Going to put you on a plane when I need a renovation job. And I'm only half joking.

[cmonkey]

cmonkey rules. Score another one for the Iowa public schools (since I also attended them ).

Going to put you on a plane when I need a renovation job. And I'm only half joking.

Yes, Iowa for the win. Although, I enjoy rural Iowa a lot more than suburban or urban. I grew up 3 miles from the nearest 'town' and only about 75 people lived there. School was 20 miles away.

[cmonkey]

One Year of Renovation Photos

Every so often I look back at my posts in this journal to see what I was doing X months ago, or last year at this time. Yesterday marked exactly one year since I put up the very first photo of the work we are doing to our home!

Here it is....we had just finished putting down the subfloor in our basement.




All of October last year was spent building the framing for the 3 rooms that we now live in full time. At least for the next 2 weeks.


It has been one hell of a (long/short) 12 months. It has absolutely flown by yet just dragged on and on and on. Very strange feeling.

Lending Club Returns

In other news, I am not doing a financial update this month (we spent everything again) other than posting this photo of our Lending Club returns compared to the aggregate. The top photo shows our 'site return' and the bottom photo shows our 'adjusted' return if all of our late loans were to get charged off today. You can see we are trending toward the top of the return line, so I am really happy with how our strategy is going.

These charts are zeroed in on accounts within 0.5% of our interest rate, accounts with more than 500 notes, and no note larger than 0.25% of total account value.







I will probably post a financial update for Sept and Oct next month. October paychecks are going to carpet. November we start saving again.

[cmonkey]

Big Changes At Work & Catastrophic Thinking

I'll preface this by saying that I hate change, and I know it's a liability. It's probably good to have change forced on you because it makes you grow, but it seems my natural way of going through life is to find good routines, one's that serve me and make me a better person, and sticking with them. Resist anything else.

Anyway, we have some large changes coming in our organization. A separation program has started, which is designed to push folks who are 1-2 years away from retiring out the door. Folks who have over 30 years of experience are being offered 1.5 years of pay as a lump sum payout if they quit at the end of the month. Needless to say, many people are biting! This include the 2 senior members of our team, the muscle, brains and planning behind everything. One of them is absolutely retiring. The other is flip flopping back and forth.

A separate position elimination program has also been started and while it's not affecting our area (our work is deemed "company critical"), we may get some 'eliminated people' shuffled in to fill the 2 spots which may open up. That's what happens here...you aren't technically 'eliminated' right away. You have 90 days to move elsewhere in the company.

The best case scenario is that 1 or both positions are filled and we continue on with just some hiccups.

The moderate case scenario is that neither position is filled and work responsibilities will be pushed onto the remaining 4 members of our team. This is what I am predicting due to budget constraints.

The worst case scenario (and the one I automatically default to) is that since the business relation on our team is leaving, our positions would be outsourced. I think this is highly unlikely but my mind entertains it anyway

We'll officially know after the end of the month what is happening. In any case, I am very thankful to have 5 years of expenses saved up at this point. By the time any other "separation programs" may roll around, I will have over 10 years of expenses saved.

This is why I pursue FI. So when this happens again, it won't even matter.

[_JT]

So, am I correct in seeing that your average ROR for Lending Club is about 8%?

[cmonkey]

So, am I correct in seeing that your average ROR for Lending Club is about 8%?

My site return is about 11.5%, and my adjusted (taking all losses now instead of spread out) is about 6.5%.

My actual return is just above 10%.

[FBeyer]

High-yield for the win (for now)!
I'm happy for you.

[cmonkey]

@FBeyer, thanks I am very happy with where we sit in the aggregate. The past year has been consider "tough" in the P2P space but I really haven't seen it, most haven't. There are a few more outliers now though. I like being invested a both ends of the capitalist model (producer & consumer levels) and have solid confidence in the consumer side of things for many years to come. My actual returns should drop to about 8-9%.

For the past few months, volume shrunk considerably at LC, but it has picked back up in the past month as investors return.