Cal,
You hit the nail on the head. It's so easy to just point and shoot with the Q2 (and SL2). Have you moved to Beacon? and will you have a man-cave for your guitars, photo gear and bikes?
Jean-Mark,
We expect to close on a 1912 "Baby Victorian" that is in Peekskill on the outskirts of town that is about 4 blocks from the 1500 acre Blue Mountain Preserve later this week.
Dickey Brook which drains all the lakes and ponds within the preserve feeds into the Hudson River runs behind my house. It is a corner lot so I only have one next door neighbor.
Somehow I have a house and a 2 car garage on one 40x100 building lot, and a second complete 40x100 building lot that I call my "second backyard" or my "back-backyard" where I could build a second house if I wanted.
The house is a 4 bed 2 full baths, but only 1500 square feet, so the rooms are small. The basement will be divided into a laundry room, Darkroom, and sound proof music room.
The 20x12 foot two car garage I have big plans for. It has a "Hip" roof that needs to be replaced, but I intend on replacing the roof with a pitched roof so that I can have half the space as an open space with vaulted ceilings and half storage loft.
I hope to extend the roof about 10-12 feet to build out what they call in England an "observatory" which is a room with windows that wraps around.
The house already has 200 amp service, and the garage is wired in with it's own circuit breaker panel. Looking at a Cloplay 16 foot garage door that is constructed of 5 layers that has a "R" value of 20.4.
Looking into Structural Insulated Panels (SIP's) to have an "R" value of 52 for the roof, and using SIP's for the walls with a "R" value of 26. Will eventually add HVAC via a Mitsubishi heat pump.
"Maggie" is crazed with furnishing the house with Eastlake furniture and wants the yard to resemble an English garden. "Don't tell Maggie," but somehow I would like to install water features: a Koi pond; and a long lap pool.
So it may take a bit of time to build out. We want to remodel the kitchen as a first priority, then the first floor bath. Maggie wants a deck off the kitchen, and a Pergola for shade.
I'm walking a tightrope because the garage will look like a carriage house, but Maggie does not want it to resemble a guest house.
What I love about this property is the privacy. I intend on growing mucho food. Let's see the "Calzone Factor" going into farming a 40x100 plot. Beyond the back-backyard is a steep drop-off that leads into a marsh of catails with Dickey Brook. My basement is dry, no sump pump, I'm 30 feet above sea level and only an hour's train ride on Metro North to Grand Central.
The train station is a 1.3 mile walk away, so I' also close to the majestic Hudson River.
If the second wave goes into another lockdown I might be laid off. In the first lockdown they gave me paid leave for several months. They froze my pension, and cut all the upper management salaries 25% to cover losses just recently. I can see this not happening again a second time. As I say, "The money has to come from somewhere."
But truth be told, if I had to retire earlier than expected financially it could work out where I won't get killed by taxes as badly. My problem is I have all this money the government wants to tax. If I got laid off perhaps my employer might be doing me a favor.
I was going to retire at 66 years 8 months, but since the pension got froze it made sense to retire at 65. Now if there is another lockdown I'm kinda prepared to retire even earlier. The numbers just get crunched differently where I would be able to pay less taxes by paying them when my income drops. In a way this could be an opportunity for me.
So the basement is about 750 square feet overall, plus I have a second basement under the front porch, and the garage will be about 620 square feet plus the 210 square feet in the storage loft.
Happy-Happy...
Cal