We closed on the sale of our old house last week. I can’t even tell you what a load off that is!
When we began this project, we needed to use all the equity of the old house in order to make up the difference between the construction loan and the actual cost of construction. We did this by taking out a home equity loan and we maxed it out for construction costs. Which means we’ve been paying our mortgage plus the home equity loan, plus the new construction loan. The math all worked in theory, but it meant leveraging ourselves out pretty far financially. As long as nothing significant broke, the cars kept running, and no other major financial disaster came along while we were paying on 2 houses, we’d be fine!
The first thing that happened before we even started construction was the water line in the old house started leaking and needed replacing. So that was fun. In addition, the township required us to replace it with copper, so that was only about a $4000 fix. Perfect timing.
The old house was good to us for the almost 20 years we lived in it. It changed a lot over the years, we added on 3 times and moved kids around to make the best use of bedrooms and space constantly. I don’t know how many layers of paint are on those walls, but it is a LOT. We maximized every square inch of that place to make it work for us for so long. It’s a little bit bittersweet, because it’s the only house our kids have ever known. Every birthday and Christmas was spent there up until this last Christmas. It was years and years of memories we are leaving behind.
I truly hope the next family will be blessed by it. The house definitely needs a good amount of work, I mean we packed as much living into that place as we could over the years, and it shows. But I feel like there is still so much potential for it to be a great house for someone. My hope is that it will be a blessing to a family who can make the most of it’s less than traditional space.
I was also encouraged by the new owner’s request to keep the play equipment. I built a ninja warrior course in the backyard (That was not coming with us either way). Also 2 trampolines and a zipline, and of course there was the rock wall in the living room. The fact that a new family wanted to keep those things gives me hope that there will be a young family to appreciate the space and the fun that the house has to offer.
And I hope they someday do foster care.
Speaking of foster care… we closed our license a couple years ago after we finalized our last adoptions. They said 11 kids under 18 was too many, so no more foster kids for us. You might recall that this was all just a few months before they sent us 2 more foster kids by direct placement. So we’ve been living these last couple years with 2 foster kids and no foster care license. Such is the nature of child welfare. All the rules are mandatory unless the state really wants to break them anyway.
WELL, that brings us to our new foster care license. Aiden is 18 now (that seems insane to actually type that), so he no longer counts toward our total. Jared is going to be 18 later this year, so he’s kind of a gray area. The the 2 fosters aren’t ours still, so they don’t count either, right?
I wrote a post a while back about Child Haven, which was the temporary group home in Muskegon where they could drop kids off they were having a hard time placing. Since that home closed down, the goal has been to replace it with TPP homes, which stands for Temporary Placement Program. TPP is kind of like a temporary shelter for foster kids, but instead of one building they are housed in designated TPP beds in various foster homes throughout the community. These are kids they couldn’t find a place for, a lot of times they are older kids, and they need a temporary place for them to stay while they find a longer term solution.
As far as we know, Muskegon currently has none of these beds. I can tell you that this is a need, because a couple weeks ago we got a call from DHHS at 11:30 at night asking us to house a teenager overnight. I was asleep, Katie took the call. I vaguely remember her waking me up enough to tell me they were bringing a teen who needed a place to sleep that night, and I vaguely remember reminding them that we aren’t a licensed home anymore. Not that that matters if there is a creative way around it, which of course there was.
So there is still a great need for TPP homes. In fact, there is enough of a need that they are willing to license us again as a TPP home.
So here we go again. Our license has been closed long enough that we have to begin the licensing process all over again. I haven’t heard for sure if we have to do the full training again or not, you know, since I am one of the ones who teaches that training.
We’re evaluating exactly what that means for the house and where everyone is going to go. We weren’t planning to double up most of our kids, but we’re wondering if it’s working well enough to keep a couple more of ours sharing a room in order to designate a bedroom for TPP.
It also moves up our timeline a little bit. We’ve been plugging away at the basement bedrooms, and we’re pretty bogged down in drywall right now. I’m not sure that we can afford to continue at the pace we’ve been going, since we are going to need that space to be considered for licensing the house. Tonight we had our drywall guy come back to quote us on finishing the job downstairs in order to get it done faster. We’ll see where his quote comes in, but we’re hoping to be able to swing it to have him get it done in a fraction of the time that we are spending on it.
Also, every day I am hating drywall more and more. So there’s that.
The only other space in the house that will still need to be finished will be the apartment area. If we can get that project going sooner than later, that will give us 2 more bedrooms we can use to help kids transition into a little bit more independence within our house while we wait for the additional houses out front to be built.
Pieces are coming together and we’re excited to add this TPP foster care into the fuller picture of what we’re doing here.
