Bates Motel?

In the movie Psycho, Norman Bates was super super crazy. Down below the haunted mansion on the hill was  the well known Bates Motel. It was run down, falling apart and just plain scary. Who in their right mind would want to go in there? You yell at the people on the movie screen, "don't go in there, you'll die". So when Mark came to me with a plan of buying a motel in Shelby, MT that looked worse than the Bates motel I was highly sceptical. We went to look at it in the middle of the night. The wind was blowing, it was cold and the tumbleweeds were rolling across the street. He asks me proudly, "what do you think"? Of course I'm the on looker watching the movie yelling run, run for your life.

    Hey, this place looks nice compared to ours!!

          See what I mean? Spooky!!

Now of course my loving girlfriend side kicked in and I thought that's not very supportive. He is asking for my opinion and my advice on what we should do.

The thought here is to buy the motel at and very inexpensive price. It had previously been converted into small apartment/ studios with 2 burner stoves and Murphy beds that fold out of the wall. We could gut the interior, reconstruct them from the inside, siding on the outside  and start renting them for a year. After it shows that rentals can be held for a year then we can sell it for cash profit.

Shelby Montana is a small town with a 2011 population of 3300 people. The towns' future job growth over the next 10 years is predicted at 39.6%.  If the state prison officials have their way, the privately run prison in Shelby will double in size. They built the prison ready for expansion and expecting the growth. They say they are expecting 5-6% growth a year which is about 200 inmates a year, Adding 500 beds means another 100 employees, most of which would be guards. Montana's largest wind farm is progressing. When it is completed it will include 140, 300 foot towers. That is so amazing for our state environmentally and also for the amount of jobs in the area that it will provide.

With these jobs becoming available, this sounds like a great project for us to do. It comes at a very busy time for us though and I am hoping that we can keep it ALL going as "normal".

Mark's oldest son, Alex and his friend have been working down there for the past month and a half working on units 1&2. They got them to the point of being ready to be painted and the floors tiled. Mark and I headed up there for the weekend to do just that. In the bed of the truck Mark had also purchased from the Restore 10 pre-hung doors with door knobs for $200 and a bathroom vanity for $40. We loaded them up and headed over. The drive is about 3 hours through Maria's Pass. The snow up there was pretty deep and the roads were not well plowed. We made it there safely though.

            The snow banks next to us at the peak of the summit were about 10ft tall. or taller.

                  That's a lot of snow.

We took a tour of what had been accomplished by the boys, which was very impressive work, and got started on our own tasks. Mark started spraying while I swept up all of the debris ahead of him so it didn't get into the paint. Come 6:00pm we were invited over to a friends cattle ranch in the area for a dinner of cow and bison steaks. They were amazing!! When we got back we stayed the evening in one of the units and watched a James Bond movie with the awesome bikini scene with Halle Berry. I made it through to that point and then fell fast asleep. I admit I was not very comfortable .  staying the night in this "Bates Motel" so if I fell asleep well before Mark, the better. Mission accomplished.

I spent almost the entire next day laying down backer board for the tile. I screwed in 800 screws, literally. My hands were not happy with blisters expecting to break out all over. Mark sprayed 2 coats of paint (25 gallons) in the 2 units. Then we started to lay the tile. mark did the mudding and I cut the tiles to size along with inserting the spacer. Mark also grouted the bathroom floor. We were very sore and feeling the pain.

Tiling the bathroom floor.

 

                 Spraying the first unit, which is the larger. It is a 2 bedroom with a full kitchen.

Mark asked for the tape measure and they we the same color, so I grabbed a Mike's!

 

 

 

I didn't know what pain I actually had until the next day when I went to work. As the day progressed my muscles screamed more and more. They tightened up so much that I couldn't even bend over. Mark is hurting as well but he was in various positions over the weekend that a variety of muscles. Note to self, change it up! I have soaked in the hot tub now both days and have used a cream called Traumeel but today is even worse. Soon I will hit the hump where the pain will start to lessen. I will rejoice in that!

Shawnae

No see um's sound nasty!

I have read and heard a lot about these nasty little no see um's (also known as punkies and biting midges). They come out at night and early morning in the tropics and literally bite a chunk of flesh out of your skin to get at your blood. The bites are irritating, painful, and can cause long-lasting painful lesions for some people. You will feel that something is biting, but the person suffering can not see what it is. That sounds mighty painful and I can imagine right now that I would be up all night trying to figure out a way to get rid of them.

So, I have decided to be a little proactive on the bug front. I am making screens for our hatch and companionway door out of the screen farbric that are no smaller than a 16-mesh. We are using a thin board cut out the shape of the companionway and gluing the fabric in between. Then I will paint the board white to match. We are putting on a hinge on both sides in the middle so that it can fold in half and be stored under our bunk when not in use. I hope that our plan here works. The only problem that we see is that the board material that we used won't be strong enough.

We have also heard that the Avon lotion "Skin so soft" works well at deterring them. I happened to find a bottle of this in my bathroom drawer that has been there forever. Never liked the stuff until now. If it works I will love the stuff.

 

 

 

Cheers, Shawnae