Man, did my partner and I ever need to get creative about our finances quickly.
Buying this house cost us so much money. Not only did my partner and I sink just about all our savings into the house but the costs of owning this loft were steep. We had to update the entire heating and cooling plan along with redoing the kitchen completely. That was no low cost project. And the mortgage was steep. While my partner and I had it covered, we didn’t have it covered by far. So when she lost her job during the pandemic, we only had my income. Things got real in a hurry. My partner and I had to chop everything but essentials from our spending. Working from home that summertime came with a lot less Heating, Ventilation & A/C cooling as we targeted Heating, Ventilation & A/C utility costs for savings as well. Still, my partner and I just weren’t quite making it. Then it sort of came to us. We realized that we had a money maker right underneath our feet. The house came with an almost finished basement that had a shower and toilet down there along with a separate entrance. This prompted my partner and I to turn that into a really lovely one bedroom apartment. Most of the work like putting in a vanity and doing the interior walls was stuff that we could do. But when it came to the heating and cooling, my partner and I hired the Heating, Ventilation & A/C specialist. They put in two ductless heat pumps at either end of the apartment to supply even heating and cooling to the whole space. So now, my partner has a new job and we’ve got 80 percent of our mortgage covered with the new apartment.