Itsumo Mawaru

I’ve been thinking about chickens for the past few weeks. They will be the first animals joining us on the farm, so I’m taking the time now to learn all sorts of chicken related things.

Wikipedia has been very helpful in listing and illustrating many of the various breeds of chickens found throughout the world. Some breeds we’ve found interesting include Silkies and Australorps. I’ve also been keeping my eye on UsedOttawa’s poultry listings to see what breeds are available in the area. It’s encouraging to see the low prices of these animals, however I’m fully aware that the majority of the cost in chicken keeping is their feed and hay for their coop, after the costs for constructing the coop and run of course.

Speaking of coops, I’ve been looking at all sorts of coop ideas and plans. One common trait I enjoy is the easily accessible nest boxes, so that one can collect eggs by simply opening up the hinged roof to the nest box and voila there are the eggs! I had read about portable chicken tractors, but since I am not really concerned about space, I think I will go for a more standard and permanant instillation. And for their safety a deeply buried fenced in run area so they can range in peace!

In this post I’ll be talking about a few things I’ve discovered and learned throughout my recent home buying adventure! Of course, this knowledge applies to Ontario Canada, and is only my interpretation.

General and Realtors: My overall general thought about the process was simply how easy it was. All in all, some of my university projects took more effort and concentration and work than buying this house has. Some of this was certainly facilitated by the sellers having a realtor who also represented me at no cost to myself, his knowledge of rural property selling was handy and valuable, and his aid in filling and filing the appropriate forms was well worth it. I can see where having your own realtor would be beneficial, such as if you wanted to play hardball in the negotiations or if you were finding it hard to find a good property; luckily in my case I did not want to play hardball (I felt their asking price was a fair price) and I fell in love with that first property, so I had no need for a realtor of my own.

Morgage: The mortgage application process was quite simple, I applied for one from PC Financial online, and called in for one from ING Direct. For whatever reason I never heard back from ING Direct, and the mortgage I got from PC Financial fit all of my conditions at a reasonable rate, so I chose to go with it. I believe they assign you a mortgage broker who works specifically with PC Financial and CIBC (the bank who backs PC Financial), and all of the process is done through emailing or faxing documents and talking on the phone. The process was very clear at every stage, and all my questions were answered quickly by the broker. Best of all the mortgage has no “twenty pages of fine print”, the conditions are clear as can be, and I respect that greatly.

Inspector: Finding the home inspector was done completely online via search terms like “eastern ontario home inspector”, as well as browsing a directory of certified inspectors from some credential-giving organization. I sent out the same email to all who interested me, and weeded out a few based on the quality of their replies. I narrowed it down to three inspectors, the final choice was influenced completely by my insurance’s recommendation to have a WETT (chimney and fire stove) inspection, of which only one inspector offered. This inspector is Greg Keith who runs Matrix Property Inspections. The inspection was a great learning experience, the report he prepared up will be invaluable in guiding our overall renovation process, and he helped to identify a key problem which I then negotiated to have the sellers fix. This fix alone makes up for the inspection fees. I highly recommend Greg to anyone in the Eastern Ontario region.

Beyond gaining valuable insight into the house, the report provided most of the information needed for the insurance company. Without this, I would have needed to talk with the owners and find out all that information… I think it would have been a hassle! So I was quite grateful for the report.

As a side note, my final three inspectors all had websites, and all featured pictures of themselves on their website. I find it interesting how much of an impact this played on my openness to them and their services. It seems when you are selling your services, you really do have to sell yourself just as much.

Lawyer: My lawyer was found in a similar way, through the internet. Again I contacted a few lawyers and narrowed it down based on the professionalism of their responses (such as striking off the lawyer who made snide comments to me about my knowledge). I met with one who was quite interested to hear about my experience in finding him through the web. He seemed to be very knowledgeable and successful in his field of practice, he laid out the fees for the entire process clearly. Once I am complete with the process I will post my recommendation and name of the lawyer in this space!

General thoughts about selling a house: I can’t believe how important pictures are in selling your house. I would estimate one could easily make a few more thousand dollars, or sell their house in less time, by hiring a professional photographer who will photograph each room with a proper wider angle lens or with multiple shots. The same thing goes for having floor plans. In fact, I would take it one step further and say if you really wanted to sell your house fast or for your desired price, having a website made for your house with details and pictures of each room would help out immensely, as would sharing any and every tidbit of information you have. As more and more people turn to the Internet to buy a house, I believe to sell your house properly involves bringing as much of that “real life house showing” aspect into the digital realm, whether that’s through pictures, videos, floor plans, information lists, et cetera.

Eastern Ontario-specific knowledge: Water tests (for checking well water) are free, if you’re in the Ottawa area you can do it the fastest by going to the St Laurent lab off of Conroy, where they have the water testing kits to take and where you will also go to drop off the water sample. The instructions are simple, 2-3 days later you can access the results through the phone and 4-5 is when the paperwork will be available. Potable drinking water results are under 5 coliforms and 0 e-colis.

While I was hoping to add a Part 2 to this series, I wasn’t expecting to add one this fast!

The picture above is the first and only property I visited before making an offer. It was love at first sight!

The property is located about 40 minutes East of Ottawa. It’s 70 acres of agriculturally zoned land with a small barn, a creek, pasture, and lots of wooded brush. The house itself is a wonderful three story dwelling – a traditional second story with bedrooms and a balcony accessed from the master bedroom (the area above the front door in the pic above), a lovely social main floor with a combined open kitchen/dining room and a gorgeous living room with fireplace (and a laundry room looking onto the property, a nice view), and a spectacular only slightly underground  fully finished basement complete with an apartment-sized kitchen, lounge room with wood stove, two rooms, and an indoor woodshed room.  So basically it’s everything I ever wanted, in fact it’s more than I could have imagined!

Best of all is that I got it at a good price. The seller had recently reduced the price as well as posting the property on other sites, such as where I found it, UsedOttawa. In fact, it was my decisive actions that secured this property for me – there were many other buyers hot on my tail, at least one was scheduled to visit the day after I visited, and more people were calling their Realtor in the past few days! You know that whole “lines follow Meagan” thing? Well it happened when I bought my house too! Luckily I had taken some steps in advance, done some research, such that I was able to take the required actions immediately when needed.

One interesting note – Ontario mortgages only use the term “him” in the buying contract, even in cases like mine where it is a woman buying the property. But I’m not offended at this, in fact in the past few days I’ve felt more “manly” than I’ve ever felt before – checking out land, contacting inspectors, being an adult!

The closing date is February 12th, meaning from that day on, I imagine there will be a ton and a half blog posts featuring this area and my experiments with doing pretty much everything I ever wanted to do! For those who want to see more pictures, I invite you to visit the Flickr album I’ve put together, which is where I’ll be uploading more pictures as we go

I’ve entered the period of my life where my next goal is pretty much buying a house and land, so that I can get started with many of my other goals such as having a large veggie garden and various farmyard animals, trying my hand at all sorts of crafts and skills and trades, having the ability to set up a little comfy outbuilding to sew or spin, making the walls into a home where I feel comfortable all the time.

The first step is of course to establish the down payment. Since I don’t spend a lot of money regularly, this isn’t too hard of a thing for me to work towards. When I’m out and about and have a thought about buying a drink or some other item, I find it’s very easy to ask myself whether I’d like this item or whether I’d like to be that much money more towards a house. Every week I’ve been transferring over a bit of money into my savings account.

I will also start thinking real far ahead in terms of what we’ll be eating, so that we do not waste food, and so that we have meals ready for taking with us. I’ve never really been an ad-watcher kind of person, but I think I will find links to my local stores’ weekly fliers and keep an eye on what things go on sale.

I’m also starting to think about the qualities I want in my purchase. I’d like it to be close to Ottawa as we’ll still need to come into the city for work, but at the same time the land must be zoned for agricultural use so that I can have animals on it. More importantly it needs to be large enough to run a farm on, and a suitable distance away from neighbors. A somewhat secluded hobby farm is what I’m looking for, preferably with a stream, a barn would also be awesome. And it must have access to high speed internet. Luckily my odds of finding a property that satisfies these conditions are not bad at all, and get better for each half hour I go further from the city.

There are a few places which may be interesting to go and visit when I return from my trip to London this week, so hopefully there will be a part 2 and onwards in this series soon

I was putting this box away when the top flap flipped up. Immediately I thought of a long and narrow wall overhang in this same room that this very shape could occupy perfectly.

Then, for some reason I was reminded of Cthulhu, so I separated the length into five portions with little baby Cthulhus. I’m not sure what I’ll put in each of the sections, but I do think it will be with the pink and blue house paints I have.

I am pleasantly surprised with this art form, of course due to the total monetary investment (none), but more importantly I think it’s the fact that I’m putting these buckets of paint to use after years of existing in the basement. No can contains enough to paint a room, some have barely enough to paint all the trim, yet they kept holding out for a time to shine again. Well here it is, long forgotten house paints, and box that would have been discarded without a care! You shall now shine forever. Even if you break or become sold or disappear otherwise, we influenced each other, we combined to create something that didn’t exist beforehand, and now you are documented and shared with others via this blog post. What more could a cardboard box want in life!