When life deals you lemons ....make lemonade

Rob Keeble

Member
Messages
12,633
Location
GTA Ontario Canada
Well in a matter of a week or two, we managed to turn around a negative situation to a comfortably positive one. :thumb::D

We are on the move again to a another home about 1Km from where we are now. This will be the last before we buy again and hopefully in the country somewhere next. What we dont do for kids.:eek:

But the real good news is finally we found a landlord that is a sensible reasonable person.

Anyhow the best news is the new house has an enormous garage that i will use for a shop. Its all closed up, and I have permission to install my radiant tube garage heater , only will have to get a conversion to propane gas first as this house has no nat gas.

I also have permission to fit a temp panel for electrics and whats more this garage abuts the main home so running a line from the main panel is not an issue. Who knows i may get power enough to run my jointer. :thumb:

But the best is the size of this place.....roughly 30 by 20 so around 600 Sq ft and with two brand new garage doors and a side entrance and rear entrance that both lock and seal up. :bliss:


Essentially this house is owned by a builder who just purchased it and by just i mean closed this past Friday and his buddy a real estate agent put us first on the list to see it. He is going to completely redo the whole property when we move out.

Turns out he has two sons exactly same age as us and him and his wife have exactly same plans and waiting for one to finish school in same time we are. How uncanny is that. They gonna move to this place while we plan an exit to the country.

He is still going to do a bit of bathroom reno for us and given us permission to clean up the place with paint etc as we choose, so we got a bit of work ahead before we move in.

But the most reasonable thing of all is we got the keys signed the lease and in return for the work we gonna do cleaning up we don't pay rent till January 1 2016. Now we have given notice on existing place despite it being up for sale, we not sticking around to end up moving in middle of winter, and this new place makes it possible to move in a military fashion ........organized.

New house is bigger, floorboards don't make the racket the existing place does, way more space in general in the house so momma is happy and i get to have shop again for at least two winters that all things being equal will be heated.

So all round we way happier with the situation could not have worked out better and we have not been forced into buying into the property market at a time when there are almost nightly warnings of the perils that await.


I like to share a story about change , while doing this post.


Much of my daily job is helping business owners adapt to change and make changes in their business in order to survive and grow rather than the opposite.

Many many years ago i read a very impressionable parable called "Who moved my cheese"

The essence of the story is one can take a passive approach and do nothing as change begins to happen and have change be inflicted upon you or one can take a more proactive approach and engage the change happening and be more in control of the whole event.

I have practiced this approach in my life since i was 10/11 years old (at the time i had no idea of the parable "who moved my cheese".

But every time i have engaged with change and being proactive about driving my own change process as uncomfortable as it can be at times, my message is the outcome has always been way more positive than the alternative of letting it be driven down your throat.

This has happened in family life, work life , and business life.

So i encourage others to embrace change and get the most out of it and you will find in almost all cases no matter how bad it seemed at the time after you have engaged the change and embraced making it work for you the outcome is way better.

It kind of speaks to the Marine Corps motto, adapt improvise and overcome.


I am going from a place where we have tolerated and not been the happiest to totally throwing off that unhappiness simply by making the move ourselves.


I have so many examples of where this kind of approach has been a huge success but the biggest is simply to evaluate moving from one country to another. Which i did 13 years ago.



Now all i have to do is psych myself up to do house painting for a few days. :rofl: Thank goodness for those rollers that suck the paint up. :thumb:
 
Terrific for you & Linda, Rob!

Sounds like a nearly ideal situation until you're ready for that move to the country. The new landlord sounds great. It'll almost seem like the place is your own, instead of rented.

BTW, I share your philosophy of 'Adapt, Improvise, Overcome.' No room for complacency!
 
This sounds like a great move for you and the family. When the HR people started handing out copies of Dr Spencer's booklet, most of us knew it was time to scurry about and sniff out new jobs:D
 
Sounds great Rob. My shop is about 20 x 30 less about 30 sq. ft. for the washer, dryer, sink and water heater. The additional footprint over a standard 2-car garage has me spoiled. When I think about eventually moving, the need for an outbuilding is my largest wrinkle. Sounds like some good honest work ahead but, you will be fleet of foot having left all that unhappy baggage behind. :thumb:
 
That sounds like great lemonade! Looking forward to seeing the new shop digs. And if it works out, perhaps you've found a builder for the new place in the country. ;)
 
sounds great, but you better buy a house soon, you aint getting any younger old man, and moving drains a lot of energy, even if you don't do the move yourself. Painting, flooring, unpacking, packing, eh......good luck and congrats on the new space.
 
Good deal, I figured you'd figure something out :D

Having a shop again will be pretty nice and that's a nice size as well.. you'll have a hard time moving down from there that's for sure! Sounds like the new house is a winner as well.

Many many years ago i read a very impressionable parable called "Who moved my cheese"

My take on that was always less of the "where's the cheese" and more of a "can we just build a cheese factory already and maybe get some more cows in here to up the milk production?" :rofl: Usually its at a place with all farmers and no cows so the analogy works reasonably well, in other cases you do need to move to where the grass is green enough to support the herd :D
 
Top