At this point with our year of travel over, we have returned to our regular life in CO. In the kickoff post for our year of travel I was speculating about what we would return to in terms of having achieved FIRE or not. Our at-home budget is still developing at this point, and I will be covering that in more detail in an upcoming separate post on that topic. The posts on the blog are going to shift from being travel FIRE focused, to at-home FIRE focused. I’m not sure I’ll carry on the day-by-day format long term, as there will normally be very little to write. These initial days however will have rapidly developing house and financial details.

FIRE: Day 1 (6/29)

This is our first day back in CO, and we are staying at JC’s mom’s house. We slept ok last night considering everything like time-zone shifts, a missing bag, and a looming car purchase.

We had a great breakfast of bacon, eggs, and toast. That sounds simple but we haven’t had much access to bacon this year.

Car Purchase

JC and I talked cars and decided to rule out the Nissan Leaf just because it doesn’t totally fit our life. We make regular 300 mile road trips that will require progressively more charging as the battery degrades, and I can’t take it into remote national forest. Based on that we narrowed in on the Subaru Crosstrek, and called a dealership about a certified pre-owned 2025.

At the dealership we saw the car in person and it was beautiful, a sport trim in black. We went on a test drive and I really liked how it felt. When we got back to the dealership the salesman just basically asked what we thought. We said we really liked it but we needed a minute to think about whether we can live without speed limit sign recognition. I almost couldn’t believe he just said ok, thanks for stopping by, gave us his card, and to let him know if we wanted to proceed. Then he literally disappeared altogether. It was pretty awesome because he put zero pressure on us.

We decided we wanted to buy it, and we had to get the front desk lady to track him down. The purchase process was straightforward but it still ended up taking a few hours from entering the dealership to driving away. They accepted a personal check for the full amount (~$29K), but we had to fill out a credit check application. I guess they only accept personal checks if you have good credit, and I suppose if your credit is terrible you would just have to get a cashier’s check. After signing a couple dozens things between the sales guy and the finance lady, the car was ours.

Coming from two old beaters, driving home in the Crosstrek was so nice. I barely even had to actively drive after enabling adaptive cruise and lane centering.

Storage Unit and House

In the afternoon JC and I went to our storage unit. We wanted to make sure our stuff was still there, and see what we could easily access.

Driving back from the storage unit we decided to go swing by our house, which still isn’t in our possession until 7/1. This was a risky move because if any of our neighbors spotted us we might get caught in a conversation trap. I also didn’t want to see any problems there might be with the house since there’s nothing I can do about it until 7/1. The house looked good though, and we didn’t see any neighbors.

FIRE: Day 2 (6/30)

Today we were scheduled to go over to our house for the first time since arriving back in CO. We met our property manager and walked through the house. There was one issue she pointed out, which was that the front storm door was falling off and pulling the molding with it. The closures were also completely off, so I’m not sure what exactly happened. My assumption is that the door is damaged and will take a lot of work to restore.

We were surprised to be given full access to the house today even though we don’t take official possession until tomorrow. I started looking around at things, starting with the sprinklers. They turned out to be a mess and not fixed at all besides the new controller being in place.

The solenoid that was said to be replaced was not replaced, and that zone was still showing a short. It took me about an hour to fully diagnose that it was the solenoid since I don’t trust anything found by the incompetent sprinkler guy who I’ll call Ronald. I took the part out, got a replacement, and fixed that issue that was already supposed to have been fixed. The solenoid I took out was covered in years old dust and grime, so if Ronald said he fixed it he was lying. It also means this zone has not been running yet this season.

The next issue was a sprinkler head that just wasn’t spraying at all, which we believe was a botched fix by Ronald of a broken sprinkler head that was spraying straight up into the air. I replaced the sprinkler head but was having limited spray distance. Time ran out in the day, so I have to save this for tomorrow.

I discovered more issues when I looked at his schedule in the controller. He had the run times set to 6 hours but then applied a season adjust of 5% to pull the run times down to 18 minutes. Super confusing and unnecessary, so I fixed that so the times read the actual run time.

I was feeling pretty discouraged even after gaining some momentum with the solenoid fix.

In the late afternoon JC’s brother’s family came over for dinner, and it was good to see them, but I was so wiped out it was a lot to handle.

FIRE: Day 3 (7/1)

Due to a combo of jet lag, thought spiraling on the house issues, and existential issues, I woke up at 2am and never fully went back to sleep. Eventually around 6:30am I just got up and started the day, and it turned out to be a day of wins which we really needed.

House Prep

JC and I went over to the house and I started in on the low flow sprinkler head issue. I dug the line farther looking for a pinch or bind of some kind but wasn’t seeing anything. A feeling started to develop that I should just go get a new sprinkler head, even though I put on a seemingly new head already. I got one from Lowe’s and was surprised to find it worked. Another Ronald issue off the board.

I moved on to the storm door issue. I removed the glass pane to start with to make the door easier to handle. Then tried banging the door molding back into place, which worked but took a lot of banging. Running a few really long screws through the molding into the door frame made a much more solid attachment. The closures went back on with no issue to my surprise, and with some minor adjustments the door was fully functional again.

While I was doing that stuff, JC was calling all of our utility providers to get them back in our name, and she cancelled our landlord home insurance after a frustrating 33 minute call.

We got a lot of other stuff done at the house as well, like JC sprucing up the yard, I got internet set up, and we brought two loads of things from the storage unit.

Flooring

We met with the flooring company rep this morning, described our project, and he took measurements. Later in the day we went to their showroom and looked at carpet samples. The guy we talked to was very helpful, and JC and I agreed on the carpet we liked. We left with that picked out and waiting for them to send us an estimate email. The carpet price was lower than we expected.

Later in the day we received the estimates and it was all far less than we expected. We earmarked $20K for this, and it came in at under $12K. Combining that $8K of savings with the $5K we saved on our car purchase, we’re $13K ahead.

Identity Theft

I was started to worry progressively more through the day that my identity had been stolen. Emails kept arriving from people asking me if the parking spaces I listed were still available to rent for an event happening in Iowa. The only thing I could figure was that someone was using my identity to run a scam collecting payments for non-existent parking spots.

I eventually emailed one of the people and asked if they could send me the post where they got my email. What I found was a relief – there is an actual guy with my same full name (not a common last name) who lives in Iowa and truly is renting out parking spaces. He correctly listed his email address in the post, and the people sending the emails were screwing it up. I sent him an email just to say hey, small world, and laugh about the situation. As far as all the emails, I replied to them pointing them to the right address.

FIRE: Day 4 (7/2)

After yesterday’s accomplishments and productivity, we turned our attention to other matters besides physically fixing and moving things at the house. We did go over early in the morning to watch the sprinklers run on their natural schedule, and they worked perfectly.

While at the house, I did AI mockups of our carpet and stain choice with Gemini Nano Banana. That tool is incredible for probably a lot of things, but definitely for interior design visioning. With those visuals we signed the contract with the flooring company and paid 50% down.

I called the post office because we suspect mail is not being delivered to us. They delivered a form later in the day that we had to fill out listing all of us at the house who should be receiving mail. We filled that out and dropped it back in the mailbox.

Since we had to go to the house to get that, I started inspecting the electrical situation in the pony wall we are going to remove. My hopes of an easy task sunk when I saw the two outlets in the pony wall come from two different circuits, and one of those originates in the basement. I asked my neighbor if I could go in their house because they had a pony wall removed. Sure enough, his floor had a junction box right where the pony wall would be.

I continued poking around though and found that almost certainly that basement originating circuit does not come up through the floor into the pony wall, but from an upstream outlet on the same floor. I disconnected the lines I suspected feed the pony wall and confirmed that was them. For something to be coming up through the floor into the pony wall at this point would take some of the dumbest-ass electrical routing ever done. I won’t rule that out though until I open the wall and see it.

I reconciled our June budget and have nearly completed the blog post for it.

FIRE: Day 5 (7/3)

Today our main objective was to tear out the pony wall. I had BC help me some with this and he’s actually getting to be useful. We did a double check to make sure the wires I disconnected at the source receptacles didn’t disconnect anything else. After turning the power back on with those lines disconnected, we tried every outlet and light, both inside and outside of the house. I sent him around the upstairs while I moved on to other things.

The wall removal was as easy as I could have hoped for. After getting the sheetrock off I was able to confirm there was no electric coming up through the floor. It all tore out pretty easily, held together by nothing but nails everywhere. The only part I had to slow down a bit for was the stud against the outer wall, so I could feed the electrical lines out of it.

I tried pulling the cables completely out but they wouldn’t budge. That wasn’t a surprise, so instead I capped and labeled the ends in the source receptacles, and trimmed back the dead ends. Claude is insisting I can cut those dead ends flush and pass my inspection. I’m going to leave enough slack to put these in junction boxes though, in case that’s what the inspector demands.

Although this wasn’t the completely best case scenario, the way this turned out was great. The best case would be if these two wires were not bored through the studs, with a gap in the drywall where I could put them in the wall but still grab them and pull them out if the inspector didn’t like it.

The cost angle of all of these house projects has fortunately been very low so far. These have stayed within my skill range, so I’ve been able to insource all of the work. Here’s the breakdown up to this point:

• Sprinkler repairs: $57.48 total including a solenoid, some gel filled wire caps, and two sprinkler heads
• Storm door repair: $0 due to using materials and tools I already have
• Pony wall removal: $128.58 total including the permit ($59), heavy duty trash bags, two new outlets and covers, corner bead, joint tape, mud knife.

FIRE: Day 6 (7/4)

For the 4th we stayed at my mother-in-law’s house and grilled hamburgers and hot dogs. JC and I had some drinks.

We also went over to the house and did some things around there.

FIRE: Day 7 (7/5)

Today we packed up our things and moved back into our house, although with very few things. We are sleeping on our bedroom floors with some foam padding. After a couple storage unit runs we had some essentials for our stay. It feels good to be back in the house, even if we don’t have any stuff.

We made a trip to target to get a coffee maker and some groceries.