A family converts a decommissioned school into a home and bed-and-breakfast

If they are earning their living living far away from their old jobs, it's interesting to know how they are doing that.

I always feel there's kind of a weird slant to these kinds of stories...a "hey, look at how these clever people are living, isn't that a great idea hint hint maybe you can do it too!". And you'll see this kind of living referenced in all kinds of alternative living magazines and websites and whatever. It's like the tiny house movement, where you read about some daring young family who've moved into a 300 sqft shed with a composter out back. What you never hear is what life is like 2, 3 or 4 years later. (actually you do, and it's usually stories of people about to go crazy for lack of places to go just to have normal time alone after a year or so)

I think it potentially paints a false picture of what it takes to do this. For example, it mentions that the school was listed for $256k, has 10,600 sq ft of space and 8 acres of land. It sounds like a steal and so obvious that only idiots wouldn't think this sounds like a great idea.

But wait, it gets better! They actually only paid $190k for it! Well shit, I should sell my house, quit me job and cash in my 401(k) so I can live the highlife like these folks in my slightly oddball, yet roomy estate.

Sure it was a little bit of a fixer upper, but that's nothing some elbow grease won't fix. Heating bill is $4k/mo? No problem, I'll just bring the kids out and we'll chop wood.

It sounds like for under a quarter million these folks ended up with a little slice of consequence free paradise.

But that's obviously not true.

"After much searching he found a plumber who was willing to make the drive to the south-east corner of the county to help him get the new system running. Loads of insulation and 60 new windows were in place. Suddenly everything came together and they were all blissfully warm."

Okay, so that's like what, $60-100k in windows. $10-15k for a wood pellet boiler they could never install. Probably thousands of dollars in plumber bills (I can't get mine to come out to even look at a sink for anything under a couple hundred dollars). What do you want to bet that the school was packed full of asbestos they had to replace?

It talks about ways they save some money, gardening for vegetables (in those great long Canadian growing seasons) and run a B&B with 3 whole rooms (only in the summer months).

"Last summer, for example, all five of them planted seeds for growing organic corn. When the corn was ripe, the girls earned their own money for new tablets by selling it at a roadside table."

Well isn't that nice. That's a lot of corn. Are they basically just farming the property? 8 acres isn't a lot of land to support commercial farming. Now toss in the expense of farming equipment, seed, etc.

I believe (based on the description in the article), that this is the place https://www.google.com/maps/@43.9341989,-77.1030939,358m/dat...

If so, they lose about 2 acres to the school, the tennis courts, the entrance and the back lot behind the building. From google earth it looks like they have about a quarter acre under cultivation right now...but the sports fields to the West look like they may have something growing. Some googling shows that you can get about $300 per acre for corn with costs of about $250/ac to grow it. So if they put all 6 available acres under cultivation they might get about $300/year in profit. Those poor girls must have been selling corn at that stand for years before they could all get tablets.

Actually it also look like they're planting trees that will eliminate lots of their arable property. That may be what's going on in the old sports fields.

"They have already planted 1,000 trees and aim to plant many more.

“We are treeing the land just as quickly as I can possibly do it,” Mr. Parker says."

Maybe this is a desperate attempt to cut down on the crazy heating bills? Either way, they aren't paying for heating with roadside corn and 3 months of 3 room B&B overflow.

So either they started off wealthy and this is just some kind of "get back to the earth and spend time with our family" early retirement, or they're living in virtual poverty conditions. Wait until they need to spend $100k to reroof that school.

I really wish these kinds of stories would talk more about how these families make ends meet because otherwise it comes off as a little idealistic and even fantastic. These are incredibly expensive fantasies in these stories and I think lots of people believe it's not.

Interesting, will check those.

Thanks

But you only had to exchange your time to learn, not your time and life savings (I hope!).

How much money does it make?

Running a restaurant is easy, if you don't have to cover any expenses.

Americans love burdensome zoning laws. They appeal to our inner racist. Unfortunately for them, buildings like schools, fire stations, and police stations are usually in residential zones anyway. The major problem in the US is that there's just no way you would be able to set up a bed and breakfast as easily as the article implied.

Our property taxes vary wildly in the US. One place, you might pay 3% of the fair market value, and in another, only 0.25%. Or maybe the assessment value is restricted by some formula. Maybe it's reassessed annually, or maybe every 3 years. There's really very little consistency, because property taxes are usually assessed locally and the major service provided from them is the local public schools.

Building codes between Canada and the US are pretty much the same. In either place, there's a "model code", but each locality has to adopt it explicitly for it to be in effect. Some places adopt it without modification, and others amend it heavily. A Canadian town could adopt the American model code (called the international building code, of course) if it wanted to, or vice versa.

But for the most part, they have nearly identical intent, even if the implementations are far apart. As long as you hire local contractors for the work, you shouldn't need to know the particular variances in the building codes. Either way, you won't be allowed to do anything serious without a work permit, and someone will inspect the heck out of it.

(Of course, the permits and inspections are often ignored for DIY work.)

I doubt you would even be able to buy an old public school building in many places in the US. Perhaps in Detroit. Most local governments would rather board it up or use it for administrative offices than sell. You would have better luck finding an old church.

I suspect it's more of an urban/rural split than a Canadian/US split. I assume you don't own property in a rural area of the US.

Yeah, its like he learned his technique from cartoons about people hitting the high striker (strongman) at a carnival.

Weigh your options... wear safety glasses or lose vision. You can't say it never happens.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23311802

I may not be from a rural area, but it doesn't take a genius to know that wearing safety glasses is simply a smart thing to do.

>SUMMARY: Wood chopping is still present in many homes in rural regions. In some cases, it may lead to serious ocular injury and potential loss of vision.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23311802