Offer Accepted, Now What?

After the thrill of realizing we owned a house in Puerto Rico, we needed to plan our next move. I figured we would travel to Rincon for a month at a time a few times per year and get the house fixed up slowly. Cyndi wanted to pack a few essentials and sell everything else, grab the dogs and catch the next plane to Paradise. Fortunately, for me, we had to wait about a month for escrow and the house needed a lot of work.

While in Rincon we had met up with a few people who could help us fix the house up. Over the phone, from California we were able to have the roof patched, a few walls ripped out, the kitchen plumbing moved to the west side of the house and 2 new sliding doors on the south or "view" side of the house. We also had a new new tile floor and shower installed, the electricity upgraded and the walls and ceiling refinished and painted. All this was done over the course of about 3 months, actually a short amount of time in Puerto Rican terms and at a cost of $10,000.

So by the end of June, we had the upstairs part of the house as ready as we needed. We felt we could install the rest of the bathroom and kitchen fixtures once we got there. The budget of $20,000 for repairs to the house was down to about half.

Back in Los Angeles, Cyndi and I went back and forth if we should make the move completely or go slow. We have no kids and our jobs are easy to leave behind and start back up anywhere, but we would have to sell or rent our house in LA. I felt we needed to take our time and figure Rincon out, work on the house slowly, spend our money slowly and enjoy the 2 or 3 year process it would take to set up our lives in a new and very different place. Cyndi felt we should jump in head first and not overthink this. We bought the house, we love Rincon, let's go !

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