Don't Tell Me I Can't: An Ambitious Homeschooler's Journey by Cole Summers

Author:Cole Summers [Summers, Cole]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2022-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

Drilling the first fence post hole on my ranch.

Chapter 7

My First House

The timing wasn’t on purpose. I had to hire a lawyer and the paperwork took a few months. My dad got openly exhausted at the legal mess it was. But eventually, for my tenth birthday, I bought a house. It cost me right at $10,000 after everything was done.

This wasn’t some fancy, nice house in the city. I couldn’t afford anything like that. About seven miles from my parent’s house, in the middle of absolute nowhere, sat this run down old shack that was about to go on the tax auction. Half the roof was missing. A window was broken. A storage shed in the yard had collapsed. The trees looked awful. And that’s just the outside. I had no way to see the inside yet.

When my dad and I found the owner, her first question was if I planned to tear it down or not. Apparently the only reason she hadn’t sold it was because every possible buyer told her they would tear it down. Her father had built that little house himself. She couldn’t afford to keep it up or repair it, but she wasn’t going to sell it for it to be destroyed.

She agreed to sell it to me in exchange for paying for her trip to come get her dad’s keepsakes out of it, plus I had to pay the back due taxes.

A 700 square foot, two bedroom house was all mine. Not that I could move into it, or wanted to, but it was totally unlivable. There was no floor. Part of the ceiling had caved in. Half the walls needed major drywall repair. I think that’s the first time my dad worried I was in over my head. I probably was, but a local rancher that wanted that house so he could tear it down and build a new one unintentionally motivated me.

“You’re just a kid. What you should do is sell it to me and double your money.” The way he said it was obvious he was talking down to me. If he had been nice about it I would have been tempted to take his offer. I couldn’t because I promised her I would fix it up. But I probably would have been tempted. As my dad and I were driving back home was the first time I said he (the rancher) can “kiss my butt, get out of my way, and watch me!” He didn’t think a kid could fix up a old, run down house. I had to prove him wrong.

There is no way I could have ever done this project without one of the greatest educational tools ever created. YouTube. I learned plumbing, roofing, flooring, cabinet making, painting, and electrical work. I learned them all, and did them all.

With my mom and brother’s help, it took me almost two years to fix up that old house. I had to stop because I ran out of money several times. I took a break to put up the first mile of fencing on my ranch.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.