8002 again

Posted on by Ian C.

Now that we’ve completed our purchase of a second home in Florida (just a few miles from Walt Disney World), we headed down at the weekend to check everything out – and enjoy sunny weather 🙂

One thing to note … we purchased the home “as is”, including all the furnishings and fittings that you see! The original owners (2000-2003) rented the property, and the second owners (2003-2007) may have planned to, so the furniture is “simple but effective”! We’ll probably update things in the future, but for now we’re just getting used to everything 🙂

 

The street:

But I thought it was a MINI …

Posted on by Ian C.

I got a package in the mail, about GBMINI#6 … from BMW … it says “Congratulations on your decision to purchase a certified pre-owned BMW“:

Strange, but reminiscent of early days with GPMINI!

I spoke with Kerry at Herb Chambers MINI, and she’ll get corrected – it seems to simply be a matter of mailing out the wrong envelope, since the MINI dealership computers confirm that the car is CPO / MINI NEXT.

In a very vaguely similar vein, GBMINI#6 might have thought it was a Dodge today and not a MINI or a BMW! She spent much of the day at Herb Chambers Dodge in Peabody – I delivered her there this morning so that new “clear bra” protection could be installed; Kerry arranged for installation there to save my trip in to Boston:

Unfortunately things didn’t perfectly! The installer had been told the MINI was at Herb Chambers Chevrolet, so waited for the car-that-never-showed … eventually the Service Manager at Dodge tracked down the error and got the MINI to the right place.

But then, the hood part of the protection was apparently damaged so couldn’t be fitted – Kerry told me this but no-one at Dodge knew, so I got a call that all was done and assumed they’d got a fitted the correct part – but no … when I retrieved GBMINI#6, it was protected “below the belt” but still naked above! Hopefully, this will get finally sorted some time this week.

8002

Posted on by Ian C.

When we visited Florida at the end of December, we weren’t only having a vacation … we also looked at a number of homes for sale, with a plan to purchase one as a second home!
Florida house prices are very low at the moment, so it’s a good long term investment – and of course having somewhere warm and sunny to go when New England is in the grip of winter will be nice 🙂

Anyway, we visited many homes, and eventually concluded that most were wrong for one reason or another … too near busy roads, pool north-facing so in shadow, too dark inside … but the last home we saw solved all those issues! The back of the home, where the pool is, faces south south east; there are skylights in the main living area, and it’s a quiet location!

The home has a total of four bedrooms and three bathrooms, with a nice master bedroom/bathroom, and is “open plan” with a large living area; the home is fully furnished and is zoned for short-term rental if we decide to do that … but for now, it’s just us! We completed the purchase today, and we’re flying down in the morning to spend a weekend there, and meet Brian & Angie from a management company who looked after the property for the previous owners, and probably will do the same for us …