Well that was two minutes wasted that I will bever get back. LOL. No worries dude, I'll let you know if it happens.

Just don't know.
 

Yea I don't know what to say about that anymore. The site is still in operation, but the owner has pretty much abandoned the place. He pops in once in a while and makes comments on threads, and there are still a few items in his store selling, but other than that he is a sleep at the wheel. There is nothing new coming out of the store and he seems to have pretty much given up on doing much of anything for his customers these days. He even opened a thread last April asking for suggestions about parts requests that he should get back into production and sell, but nothing ever came of it. He did make a short run just before that of setback arms, and high impact arms, and he got supershocks and shock parts back in stock. After that things seemed to go dead. We can only guess that the response was not what he was hoping it would be money wise.

He moved to a new location last summer, and started sharing photos of the move with everyone on the site including the new shop, his new house and remodels project, and even pics of a site where he was going to build a new R/C track on his property. We don't know if he got hurt, ran out of money, or got sick, but everything just went quiet around June or July of last year. I have tried to provoke him to pop in and share with us whats going on, but he just ignores any questions about the prospect of any future for his business. The only reason he even still has a forum is because he once made some of the best R/C gear in the business, and we would all love to see him going strong again. If not for that hope I think he would have closed up shop a long time ago. If Traxxas treated people the way he does no one would buy anything from them. Its the engineering design, and quality of the UE parts that have kept UE afloat this long. I love UE products, and I really do enjoy the UE site and the people on there, but from a business standpoint it sucks. I kind of feel sorry for the business, because it is really great stuff, but if you ignore your customers there isn't much hope for a future.

I was not aware of that. That's very unfortunate but what you did was probably the best solution so you can keep the property and keep it from depreciating even more. Nevertheless, I'm sure all the work you did brought the value up. Have you had it appraised by an agent just to find out how well you did?

Not yet.
 

No not yet. We were in too much of a hurry to get a renter in the house paying a monthly payment so we could breath a little bit. I had no doubt that this was the only way for us to go in order to keep things moving forward. We have no idea when the market will turn around, but hopefully before we retire stateside in 2018 so we will have a reasonable choice as to which way to go with the house at that point. We know it has to have appreciated somewhat, but probably not to near the level of the $100K difference that now exists. I was just reading that the market in California is expected to drop even more over the next year or so before any kind of recovery can be seen. A lot of people are just walking away and leaving the mess for the Banks to deal with, but this also ruins your credit for the next ten years. I understand that some people have no choice, but a lot of them do. Randy Quade's house in Cali was upside-down over 1million$$$$$$$ so he lit it on fire and moved to Canada last year. He did an interview a few weeks ago and he said screw the Obama Administration and what they have done to our country. He has no plans on ever returning to the USA. Some people just go too far in the wrong direction. We are trying our best to remain positive and move forward like Americans have done for hundreds of years. Hopefully things will get better for all of us.

[QUOTE=JERRY2KONE;404922]Randy Quade's house in Cali was upside-down over 1million$$$$$$$ so he lit it on fire and moved to Canada last year. He did an interview a few weeks ago and he said screw the Obama Administration and what they have done to our country. QUOTE]

Pity he buned the house. He should have just lit the Obama administration on fire and saved the rest of us the trouble... I do have a little more respect for him now.

Saving benefits
 

I still have to get more pictures off of the wife's computer showing the completed stuco job, and how the place looks now, but I will move them over here soon. One of the nicest features of our new kitchen was the included "Soft closers" on all of the drawers and cabinet doors. A must have once you see how they work. No more kids slamming drawers or doors. The range is one of those new glass top stoves that clean up easily with a built in convection style forced air oven. The micorwave is one of those convection micros that allows you to brown food as it is heated inside and out. The 3/4hp disposal is a double encased stainless steel unit that is nearly silent compared to the usual models, and came with a five year Manufacturers warranty. Plus it was an inventory close out item marked down 45% ($200 down to $110).

Here is why I shop at The Home Depot. The first noted benefit was that I received a special 10% discount on every item purchased for being a US millitary retired VET. Way to go Home Depot. The fridge and dishwasher were some of the best that Home Depot had to offer at the time, and all of these appliances were GE models on sale (reduced 20-30%) because of some special manufacturers discount program, plus there was a 10% sale on all of their appliances that were rated with some kind of 5 star efficiancy rating(state sponsered), and we got another 10% off of everything we purchased during that month for using a new Home Depot credit card for the purchases. We saved a ton of money because of their wonderful sales and policies. All totaled we received these appliances for less than half of the sticker price or MSRP listed on these particular items. Some or most of them were at a 60%-70% deep discount. Even the cashier was amazed at how little we had to pay for them. Just to give you an idea the fridge/freezer was listed at over $1500, but we got it for just under $650. We were able to purchase nearly $4000 worth of kitchen appliances for less than $1800 after taxes. Can't beat that with a stick. To top that off we purchased all of the kitchen cabinets and solid granite countertops under one of their special discounted programs for supporting the military/VETs which took 10%-15% off the top, and with the added credit card discount we saved nearly 30% on those as well. Home Depot is just awsome

More work done.
 

I forgot to mention that there were also a few things going on in the background while I was busy doing my thing. My wife's cussin painted all of the POPCORN ceilings for us, plus he did all of the sheetrock repair work for me after I was tearing into walls left and right trying to get all of the wiring done right and installing all of the new windows and doors. I poured some new cement and widened the front walkway two feet, and then painted it green. We rebuilt both bathrooms and put in all new fixtures. We replaced every doorknob & dead bolt with new hardware.

I also had to jack up the backside of the house 2.5" to compensate for some foundation issues. I had to repair/replace some rotted wood under the house before lifting it up to level that side of the house. I replaced the garage door, and installed a new Sears door opener. There was a back door in the garage seen in one of the first pics that was actually an interior door. I ripped that doorway out and installed a larger new metal clad security door with a new frame and triple locking system. There was also a window on the backside of the garage, which I removed and boarded up the opening. That is now stuco'd over. No one likes to have thieves breaking into the garage and stealing their tools, right? So why make it easy for them? I mounted a utility ceiling fan to keep air moving during the summer months in the garage for the new working area. We left the old side-by-side fridege freezer (two years old) in the garage for secondary cold storage. I know I am missing other work that we did, but trying to remember everything is hard at my age. And finally one of my most important contributions to this project is that I do not use nails for much of anything these days. About the only thing that received nails was the new floor moldings. Everything else was built or put together with heavy duty corrsion protected screws. Nothing in this house comes apart without using a big crow bar or a piece of heavy duty equipment. most of the exterior wall frame work was installed with pressure treated lumber to keep the termites from eating any of it. I never understood why houses are not built with PTL in the first place.

All of the plumming valves were replaced with 1/4 turn ball valves. The only place I did not work on this house was in the attic. There was never an access built into the attic of this house, and because of the daily high temps in this region during the month of June I stayed out of the attic. Even when I installed the new exhaust fans in both of the bathrooms I decided to mount them into the exterior wall just so I did not have to access the attic space. Maybe next year I will open it up just to pump in some added insulation to keep the heat out. I was actually not that bad in the house temp wise.

On the other side of the coin
 

[QUOTE=lincpimp;404928] Well on the other side of the coin Nicolas Cage just sold his 27 acre Rode Isalnd estate for 6.2 Million dollars. BUT he paid $19.6M when he purchased it just a few years ago. He lost about $13M. I can't even swallow the idea of losing $100K, let alone millions. I wonder if all these liberal hippie movie stars are still on the Obama band wagon while they are losing millions of US dollars, and will also be getting hit harder with bigger taxes? Things that make you go Hmmmm???

Sliding doors
 

[QUOTE=mistercrash;404897]You been busy! :gasp:

You sure have the right to look back at it now and be proud sir, looks like you did real good. The place looks awesome, you should get a very good return on the investment not to mention that you can rent the place at a much higher price. From the pics I have only one suggestion, the sliding doors I saw in front of the washer/dryer. Maybe put a pair of folding doors instead so that you have access to both the washer and dryer at the same time. Or maybe you've done it already and I missed the pic.

Just to get back to you about your suggestion for the laundry room doors. We had folding doors on that closet for years and have had to replace them 4 times since 2004. Those kind of doors are much too easy to damage and never last for very long. With renters in the house we needed to install something that would hold up to some abuse as well as look good. I used that washer & dryer for several weeks with those sliding doors installed and honestly it was no big deal. If you open the left side in front of the dryer you can reach right into the washer and move the clothes to the dryer with ease. If for any reason you need full access the doors lift right up and come out of the opening. The doors are actually fiberglass formed over a metal frame structure, which makes them a pretty tough alternative so they will hold up much better in the long run. Good eye though. Experience is the mother of invention, right?

We are actually hoping to stop by there during our summer vacation to speak with the tenants to see how they are enjoying the place. From all the reports so far they are loving how the place turned out. I will be installing one of those morden decor style heavy duty security screened gates at the entrance so they are free to keep the front door open for better air flow without being worried about anyone walking into the hosue unexpectedly. Most summer days there is a nice breeze that blows in this area. There is no A/C installed.