New real estate and a new business!

Ok, so the reason it took me 3 months to post anything is because of course John and I have been busy making sure there's never a dull moment! As most of you know I bought my condo up near Burlington a little over 3 years ago. I've been renting it for the past 2 and have had really good luck and actually enjoyed playing landlady. John and I are planning to build on his father's land this summer and the sub division is moving along at a pretty good pace! We were both getting pretty antsy and decided to start looking into buying a duplex to fix up and rent. So, about 3 weeks after we started looking... WE BOUGHT! We figured we'd keep ourselves busy this winter by renovating and then just when things wind down with this project we'll hopefully be starting the house. We bought a 2400 square foot duplex in downtown Middlebury (each unit is about 1200 sq. feet each has 3 bedrooms). The house was built in 1919 and still has so much original charm! Structurally the house is very sound and a lot of major updates have already been done. It needs a lot of cosmetic love and over the next few months that's what we intend to give it... with the help of some contractor friends! I'm posting a few of the "before" pictures below and when we are all done I will post the after's. We're focusing on the inside right now so we can get the units rented hopefully by the first of the year... really no later then lets say February? :-) Next spring we will be doing new siding and painting all of the trim.

Here she is!! What a beauty!




Front doors, original! Unfortunately they will be departing.

The first Saturday we got to work on the house, John and a few of the guys tackled some big trees in the back yard that had to be cut down... only 1 neighbor's window was broken! Keenan had it fixed within an hour :-)

The driveway had not been used it what seemed like a decade. All the bushes on the left have now been removed.

Unit 1 - original built-ins! All of the wood floors in both units will be refinished towards the end of renovations.

Unit 1 bathroom - needs a new vanity and a few things but not too bad!

Unit-1 kitchen sink! Classic! Unfortunately this will be leaving us as well.
Unit-1 livingroom
Unit-1 built in pantry! I want one!

Ohhhhh, beautiful carpet...

Unit-1 dining room
Unit-2 bedroom... this smells as bad as it looks...

mmm carpet and baby gates!

Unit-2 dining room - all of the woodwork in this unit has been painting.. bummer!

Farley and the living room.

Unit-2 kitchen... red sink!


More Unit-2 kitchen.

So that's a glimpse of what we have ahead of us. Nothing too major but a lot of small jobs. This will be investment property #2 and hopefully not our last one! Watch out Mr. Trump!

And lastly, the other thing I've managed to squeeze into the past 3 months is the launch of my new business, Peak Creative LLC! My friend Jean and I who graduated from Champlain have been talking for a while about starting to do more graphic design work on the side. Back in September on our daily 2 mile walk at lunch we finally said WHY THE HECK NOT. We have since filed all of our legal paper work, chosen our name, designed our logo, worked very closely with the Vermont Women's Business Center and researched our butts off! Our website will be www.peak-creative.com and I will let you all know once it's up and running. Peak will be offering all graphic design services (branding, business identity packages, brochures, web sites, announcements, t-shirts, signage, advertisements, catalogs and much more!). We will also have photography (Jean specializes in family, wedding etc...) and wedding invitation packages. Our focus will be in Vermont, Northern NY, NH and Maine. A large focus on the business will be that it is 100% women owned and 100% awesome at that :-). We both do side jobs currently and want to ease into things slowly so we don't end up working a 100 hour work week :-) . We've already made so many great contacts through the VWBC and can't wait for our official launch. We're not 100% sure if this will end up being a full time gig or not, in the end, that would be nice! I'll keep you all posted and in the mean time if you know of anyone looking for ANYTHING graphic design let us know!