Cottage Dreaming...

I have this dream. We own this modular home (trailer home for those in the know!) that is 3 bedrooms and 2 baths. It needs a lot of work - we have one room where we need the drywall replaced. I want to take out carpetting and replace it with linoleum in some areas and in others with wood.

I need to clean out the underneat, put up wainscotting around the outside while also ensuring proper ventilation - tons of vents given the square footage.

None of this work is possible for us because we just don't have a clue. C has done some work around the place which is not bad but for what we want we need professionals.

On the other hand, when we first bought the place we pictured it full every weekend and lots of weeks with people from the church and friends who would be interested in using it. Originally when we were looking around Prince Edward County I had imagined an older house that could be used by the local church for meetings if needed.

Now my dream is to find a family that could live in their and do the work in exchange for rent for a year. With the economy being what it is, maybe this is possible but it is so idealistic - I can't imagine a lawyer wanting to tackle this. How would we work out whether the work was fair in exchange - how would the person staying keep disciplined enough to keep on working while livng in there - how much gas will it cost me to heat the place? I keep thinking that this should be a good idea somehow. Maybe I just have to sink the money into it and then rent it out to recoup some of my expenditures.

Worse, the assessed value just went through the roof, I bought it for less then half the value it is now listed as. There is no way it is worth this, I can't imagine the land going for anywhere near that and mobile homes are a dime a dozen.

So, I am keeping this an open idea - maybe there is another plan similiar that I could put into place. If I had known that I would leave my job I never would have bought a separate property - at the time it was perfect for the few overlapping days off my husband and I had to get away - but now its an unused luxury.