I Need a New Pad

One of the first things I need to address in order to get my plan into action is that I need some place to work. Right now I live in a condo, and frankly, everyone I know lives in one of these damn condo complexes. This makes doing even the simplest things a pain in the ass, due to various strata rules. I don't mind the strata rules - I know they need to have them, and it is obvious to me after living in a few different places that the nature of the rules can either make or break the experience of living in the place. So, I'm not really complaining about the rules but merely saying that for what I want to do, a condo simply does not work for me - at all.

I have two choices: Try to find an entirely new place - a small house or mobile home out in the countryside - or find a garage or a shed to rent, or heck, even a piece of dirt that I can work on. All I really need is a hose and electricity. I could even put up one of those portable canvas sheds to get me started. I'm not too fussy - at least not in the beginning. If in a year I need something different, I'll deal with it then. But for right now, if I found a vehicle to buy and sell, I wouldn't even know where I could park the thing - let alone do the most basic of work to it, like detailing. For firewood, I just need a place where I can chop wood and stack it up under some tarps. If I can finagle some work painting, I'll need a place to leave some ladders and paint. I don't really need too much to get started in these things, but I can't do any of it while I'm sitting in a condo.

Between the two choices, an entirely new place to rent or to find simply a place where I can do some work, I suspect moving to a new place might be the best. I mean, if I had to rent an old garage or shed, I doubt I would get something for less than $250 or $300/month, and it might possibly be $500 or more. Well, then for the same money, plus the rent we already pay, we could probably rent a pretty decent little house out in the countryside too and improve our over-all lifestyle at the same time. We'd like to have a dog and I'm getting kind of sick of living in town - I much more prefer the country. Also, if we could find something to rent from a farmer, perhaps if I got to know him and made a good impression I might be able to pick up some seasonal employment from him or from someone he knows - which might lead to another addition to the "diversified income stream."

The thing is, it's not all too easy to find people with places for rent out in the countryside. A lot of them I don't even think list in the paper/online. I quite often see "for rent" signs posted beside the driveway, then for a year or two, no sign... then a sign again. So, I've been driving around looking for signs - and of course when you need to find one, you never can! We did find a place for rent in Chilliwack - a nice little two bedroom house with a huge back yard and a decent work-shop/shed. It'd cost us around $500 more than what we pay right now. But, so far, that's the only place we found. If I was lucky, I'd find a place that badly needed paint and offer to paint the place for the owner for really cheap or in exchange for rent - that way I could get my head back into painting. I've painted a few houses and I know I can do a good job, but it's been a while and being able to do one job like that would be all I'd need to get me going and rebuild my confidence in my painting abilities.

We've kinda made a goal for ourselves to have a new place - or a place for me to work - by the end of the summer. So we've got a couple of months to find something, and in the meantime I can do some more research on the types of small businesses I want to try to get into, while putting my car up for sale (I need a truck!) and getting other little odds and ends taken care of.