Well. Like many people I have a lot of monster aquarium dreams, yet only a 20 gallon aquarium. It's just never been "the right time". Sorry this a long ranty post, just curious if anyone else has had a similar journey towards finally getting their aquarium...
My living situation for my adult life has been very dynamic. Moving between rental apartments / condos / townhouses every year or two. I moved around 2-3 tanks (from 1-100 gallons) from house to house, always dreading the move. Always wanting something bigger but never doing it since it would be even harder to move.
About 3 years ago my wife and I put a (refundable!) down payment on a new construction house in a new construction / custom home neighborhood. We went through the design with the builder and it had a 300 gallon aquarium built in to the basement as the showpiece. It was everything I wanted, and then it fell apart. Long story, but the builder got super sketchy, the price went up about $100,000 for zero real reason, and we had second thoughts about that type of neighborhood. So we walked away.
We ended up buying an older (1962) house nearby. Awesome lot, 2.6 acres with a little pond and perfect privacy yet still close to the city. But it hadn't been updated and needed lots of work, so no tank yet. I do love it though, and have planted a perimeter of fruit bushes around the house (probably 25 bushes), and 3 years in I actually got quite a few berries (blueberries, yustaberries, aronia berries, etc).
So we started with the upstairs. I could write a 50 page essay on everything that went wrong, but basically we hired an incompetent contractor who went bankrupt half way through and left us with a screwed up project and kept our money. So a 4 month project turned in to 18 months, and we went on the order of $50,000 over budget (with lawyers fees and the money he stole being a big part of that).
The original plan was to tackle the basement right after the upstairs, and do a 300 gallon in wall aquarium. But now there are a few problems:
-over budget so bad upstairs, only so much I want to put in to the house...
-don't really want to deal with remodeling headaches anymore
-our area housing market is really hot, and since the stock market is so high people are remodeling like crazy too - so prices are going way up.
The basement is bad (wood panel walls....), but not as functionally important as the upstairs. The main things I want from the remodel are the aquarium and a home theater. But it's a REALLY steep price for an aquarium....
So that's where we are. Trying to decide if it's worth it to do now, if I take on a year long adventure to do it myself, or if we wait a few years for a stock market crash and cheaper labor....
So that's my story, and where I'm at. Can anyone relate???
My living situation for my adult life has been very dynamic. Moving between rental apartments / condos / townhouses every year or two. I moved around 2-3 tanks (from 1-100 gallons) from house to house, always dreading the move. Always wanting something bigger but never doing it since it would be even harder to move.
About 3 years ago my wife and I put a (refundable!) down payment on a new construction house in a new construction / custom home neighborhood. We went through the design with the builder and it had a 300 gallon aquarium built in to the basement as the showpiece. It was everything I wanted, and then it fell apart. Long story, but the builder got super sketchy, the price went up about $100,000 for zero real reason, and we had second thoughts about that type of neighborhood. So we walked away.
We ended up buying an older (1962) house nearby. Awesome lot, 2.6 acres with a little pond and perfect privacy yet still close to the city. But it hadn't been updated and needed lots of work, so no tank yet. I do love it though, and have planted a perimeter of fruit bushes around the house (probably 25 bushes), and 3 years in I actually got quite a few berries (blueberries, yustaberries, aronia berries, etc).
So we started with the upstairs. I could write a 50 page essay on everything that went wrong, but basically we hired an incompetent contractor who went bankrupt half way through and left us with a screwed up project and kept our money. So a 4 month project turned in to 18 months, and we went on the order of $50,000 over budget (with lawyers fees and the money he stole being a big part of that).
The original plan was to tackle the basement right after the upstairs, and do a 300 gallon in wall aquarium. But now there are a few problems:
-over budget so bad upstairs, only so much I want to put in to the house...
-don't really want to deal with remodeling headaches anymore
-our area housing market is really hot, and since the stock market is so high people are remodeling like crazy too - so prices are going way up.
The basement is bad (wood panel walls....), but not as functionally important as the upstairs. The main things I want from the remodel are the aquarium and a home theater. But it's a REALLY steep price for an aquarium....
So that's where we are. Trying to decide if it's worth it to do now, if I take on a year long adventure to do it myself, or if we wait a few years for a stock market crash and cheaper labor....
So that's my story, and where I'm at. Can anyone relate???
