Good Morning! A Tuesday update after I hosted the Carnival of Personal Finance yesterday, I hope everyone had a nice weekend.
What a better way to start Easter week, the busiest week of our year so far, with several visits planned and the final push on the works, than with a broken fridge? Can’t complain here since the old fridge was at least 10 years old, and graciously left by the previous owner who couldn’t be bothered to come pick up his stuff when he sold the house. We knew we would need another fridge eventually, not just that soon, and right after buying a second car and a boat. I digress. I was presented with the option to buy another old fridge for $120, have a repair man fix our fridge for $80, or buy a new fridge. Eventually the reasonable part of me went with a new, $750 fridge that will make my life easier and have BF stop calling me cheap for at least 48 hours.
He wanted the fridge that had an ice dispenser, the cheaper ones went for $1250 (after a few frustrating visits at shops asking for ice dispensers and being presented with water dispensers, why would you show me something I don’t want?) and I couldn’t justify $500 to stop making ice yourself. I can empty an ice tray for $500. Still, I bought a pretty cool fridge with little ice trays you can manually pour into an ice bucket, making life easier for my lazier than me boyfriend.
I bought it at the supermarket, that happens to have been recently bought by Walmart, and the manager assured me they would deliver my fridge with a minivan they have that drops you off if you purchase more than $40 worth of stuff. She hugely underestimated the size of the fridge and the seats wouldn’t recline so the fridge came to the house half hanging from the minivan’s sliding door, miraculously in one piece and fully functioning by the time our guests got here.
The rest of the Easter week was spent with our friends, swimming in the lake and sailing our new boat. Holy Thursday and Friday were bank holidays, no workers around, a welcome change of pace. The next week they were back to do a boat makeover. The boat is an old aluminum carcass that they pimped out with wooden seats, coffers, and floors. Those guys have their flaws but they can really do anything. One day they lay concrete, the next they fix a boat. Nothing goes to waste, everything gets a second, third and hundredth life, and gets fixed over and over again. That is pretty amazing.
It was just an aluminum carcass
The wood came from our neighbor who had no use for it.
Land development
After Easter it was time to go back to work, and the architect had finally given us the level maps of the 90 acres land, so we are starting by developing the back of it, into cheap, small plots.
The small square is the house plot, the big one the future development
As you can see, the Northern part is already accessible by the town’s street network to the East. The good news it that they are fixing up the streets.
This is the street leading to our development, I am standing at the corner of the development.
They are also bringing electricity, yay!
And, biggest surprise of all, asphalting the main road that comes from the village 3 blocks away. Residents will only have to drive 3 blocks on the dirt road. It also adds value to our plots which is awesome.
As I mentioned on Friday Recap last week, we burned down the weed and grass of the land, after finding no one to put cattle there for a while, so it looks a little bare, and three guys with machetes are there full time to weed some more and draw the plots.
This is the future main street of the popular part at the back. Don’t worry, the rainy season is in a couple of months and it will grow back even stronger. Here is a part we burned in January
Why would people trust us? Because we have turned this in week 6
Footprint of the new room with lake view
into this, in four short months.
for a grand total of $12,000 including furniture and roof terrace/kitchen.
And a bathroom that will make an interior designer jealous.
Also, we are not borrowing a penny for this development so we are not going anywhere! Bankrupt developments are frequent around here.
To make the plots attractive for locals, we are donating a football (soccer) field to the village, that is the green patch below. The trees you see at the back are the rests of an old Mayan ruin that we also have to preserve and will serve as recreation area.
10 plots will be built around the football field, and in total we are launching around 60 plots.
Plot pricing and sale
We have decided to make this cheap development at the back of the property mainly to free up some cash fast to work on the higher end development at the front. Plots are priced at $2,000 for a 900 sqm size, or 0.22 acres.
Since our handyman was able to afford a $2,000 motorcycle with monthly payments we think this is reasonable and affordable for locals. A same sized plot in the village sells for $4,000 and up to $8,000 for the best locations.
We offer interest free finance over a year, which is roughly the rate our handyman is paying is motorcycle at.
The higher end development is looking greener since we burned earlier, this is what you see from the main road that goes around the lake
We are drawing plans for a paved road and entrance gate that will be the first steps on that part.
That’s it for now, what is new with you?
The little house in Guatemala updates are definitely my favourite posts to read! Good idea to donate a football field to the locals!
I love these updates from Guatemala. Definitely my favourite reading! Good idea to donate a football field to the locals!!
thanks! had to fish you out of spam, probably the new domain name!
Oh my gosh, I wish you had gotten a picture of the fridge hanging out of the minivan. It would have been a classic!
Are you envisioning locals purchasing lots, or people who want to build vacation homes?
I wasn’t back home when the fridge got there unfortunately, and didn’t take my camera to the shop where it left from…
I think locals are the main target for the cheap plots at the back of the property. For higher end plots with panoramic lake views we are targeting people looking for a secondary home.
Cool idea on the development! Good luck! Also, I love your boat😀
thanks!
I’m pretty surprised that the refrigerator made it to your place in one piece.
me too!
Wow, I can’t imagine that fridge hanging from the minivan like that. Sounds like things are going rather well and coming together nicely. We started our bathroom remodel yesterday and excited to have that done. The kids keep wanting to help out the man working on it. Thankfully he’s a family friend so he does not mind much.
haha they want to play constructors! I can imagine traces of little hands on recently poured concrete… that would be kind of cute though.
Good luck with selling your land, I hope it works out for you! You have had some crazy stories my friend! Glad your fridge made it ok!
haha, my FB friends are always asking what the hell I am doing, it doesn’t make any sense to anyone!
Wow, that’s all that I can say. I love reading your story Pauline and hope that someday you write a memoir. Great job.
We’ve had one hell of a week on our short vacation. Enjoy your ice.
Glad you have a blast on your vacation! thank you for your kind words Justin.
You’re development has really come a long way! Very cool to hear about some of your future development plans as well. The soccer field looks like a ton of fun. I can see how developers would go bankrupt as well, since there are probably lots of people who think developing this land can turn into a quick profit, but then run into issues.
most of them borrow to buy the land, and forget they have to pay back while the plots don’t sell for the first few months. Not being worried about that is all in our favor.
Wow love this post. Good luck with your development 🙂
thanks!
That boat redo looks awesome. I am always jealous of your updates Pauline.
thank you Grayson!
Looks awesome Pauline, I can’t wait to see what your development will look like once you get the paved roads done.
thanks Chris!
It’s looking really good! I hope you don’t have any trouble putting the plots on the market – do you have some local connections that will help you get the ball rolling?
yes we know a few people and we offer free finance, plus have put ads online so I hope it gets going.
My parents wound up getting a new refrigerator last week as well. That one lasted 22 years of family (read: hard) usage, so my mom felt she couldn’t complain too much.
With four people here (and three of them seem to have an allergy to any kind of housework, or at least doing it without being asked), an ice maker becomes more of a necessity. The mobile home’s fridge didn’t have an ice maker and even with just three of us there, I was still filing an ice tray, and sometimes two, every day during the summer.
We use at least one tray per day but do bulk ice making with 8 trays or so that we empty into a bag. I would imagine it differently if no one was keep on helping out with that. 22 years for a fridge is crazy! I hope the new one will last as much, but doubt they do them as sturdy nowadays.
I still can’t get over how cool that bed/bathroom are! Cute boat too!
thank you!
Gorgeous bathroom! Ours still isn’t refurbished (even though most of the house we did three years ago). Would you care to be our designer? 😉
If you can do stones, and mud, and flinstone style, I will be happy to 🙂 I only have one design so far!
Comparatively, nothing! My modem went down on Sunday, little bumps and obstacles as usual and it is sunny in southern California. All is well!
haha, happy life is good!
Those little houses look really great, you guys are doing an awesome job! It really is beautiful there!
thank you Nick!
Freakin’ amazing. You and BF are living enough for the lives of 20 people. Your posts help motivate and inspire me. And they leave no excuses for wimping out and avoiding risks. Thanks, man (I call everyone man, sorry).
haha yes sometimes I feel like I need to rest for 20 people!
Isn’t that just the way things happen. When you have something important going on things break down. Back home our refrigerator fit under the kitchen counter top. Our refrigerator is huge over here and we can fill it with much more than a few days food. I agree about the ice maker. It’s just another gadget waiting to break which will cost you a fortune to fix. Glad to hear it’s all coming together for you my friend.
thank you. That is the first thing I though about, another engine, another thing that can break. Like the microwaves who are also ovens, they can’t do both things properly. If you want an ice maker, get an ice maker, not a fridge to make ice.
I have to totally disagree with the ice maker. When we built our house, I insisted on one. We never had one before and my husband always used all the ice and never filled the trays. I’d go for some ice and there was none to be found. $500 seems like a lot, but if you figure the cost of our divorce over the ice trays, it seems pretty cheap:) You never have a dull moment. I love that they brought your fridge in a minivan! At least is wasn’t strapped to the top of a Smart car.
this is indeed a small price to pay for your marriage’s sanity. I took the cheap way around and bought 10 ice trays that you only need to empty/fill once a week into a bag and since the man just built me a house, I can do some ice for him. The Smart car could have happened, never say never!
The place looks great Pauline! I like the boat too, the wooden inside looks pretty cool!
Thank you Jose, the wood is awesome, it does weight a lot though and slows up the boat a bit.
I love these updates! And yes, that bathroom would make any interior designer or any regular person envious! It is gorgeous. I love seeing how your developing your property. It’s great how things are repurposed and used again and again. We have a “throw away” mentality here, which is sad.
Pauline, I just love reading about your developments. It seems so foreign to me here in my little corner of Houston. You remind us all to dream big and take action. Yeehaw!!!!
thank you Tammy, it is funny how many things just seem normal on this side of the world, and then I process them and think “uh, that would be a good story”! we take it as it comes but surely have come a long way since last year. Thank you for your kind words.