The pandemic definitely forced my partner and I to reexamine our finances.
It’s just us and the cats, so when we bought this house, we both felt that it was a bit out of reach due to the size. But, this house just fit us on every level, and we weren’t going to just let it get away. Still, after updating the heating and air conditioning device and upgrading the living room, we were stretched a bit thin. I work from home as an IT consultant, and my partner is an artist who worked part time making a lot of money at a nice restaurant. When the pandemic hit, one of the early casualties was my partner’s job. This ended up being a real hit to our finances. Thankfully, she was able to find some online gig work that helped a little. Still, we knew we had to do more in order to make ends meet. That’s when it occurred to us to turn part of our home into a nice studio apartment. Like I said, our house is pretty large, and there was an immense part that had once been what we assume to be a workshop. It had some nice plumbing set up, and initially we thought this would be my partner’s art studio. But the light wasn’t suitable, so we chose another room. To get everything ready we added a bit of a living room, painted, and added a door. Finally, we had our local HVAC provider come in to install a ductless heat pump. This was the finishing touch, and wow, that ductless heat pump delivered some seriously high quality heating and air. Now, we have a lovely renter and a whole lot more breathing room when it comes to paying the bills.