A while ago I confessed to running out of money to build our home, and mentioned a Plan C. That has come through for us now. A morsel of backstory:
Fjeldheim is a Norwegian-style vacation home my dad built in the 1970s as a sanity project. My brothers and I learned to ski and to love the Sierras because of all the time we spent there as a family.
Thirty years later, Dad gives the house to us three boys. We quickly learned how expensive it is to keep such a house! Kathryn and I saw potential in renting Fjeldheim to families and firms, for reunions and retreats and such; my brothers were not interested in pursuing the venture long-term, so they agreed to let me run it and buy them out, over time.
Meanwhile, we discovered another clientele for Fjeldheim: Tahoe weddings! The home has a beautiful view of Lake Tahoe but is far enough away to avoid the insect population one always finds around lakes; conveniently close to casinos and shopping, but conveniently secluded from the noise, traffic and attention of the town.
We also discovered how much work the house needed, to become the premiere vacation rental home in the Tahoe Basin. No laundry lists here, but despite the good and growing rental income over the past two years, we saw no profit until last year, and immediately plowed that profit right back into the home. By next year, we hope it will actually generate income for us.
Meanwhile, Fjeldheim is serving as our Plan C. We are able to borrow against Fjeldheim (”Mountain Home”) to complete our Fellesskapheim (”Urban Home”).
This is scary. I love Fjeldheim, and have a thrilling vision for what might happen there. So I hate to see it mortgaged, mostly because it seems like a huge risk: I will have to earn a good deal more money than I’m doing now, in order to pay down this debt.
The adventure continues…
