1985

New House

House on Easy Street sold.
My white Chevy Van in back

I liked living on Easy Street but the house was rather small, particularly after Julie and Anne moved in after Julie and I got married. It was a three bedroom, two bath house so Anne had one of the small bedrooms, Julie took the other as her study while I finished the inside of the garage and sectioned a portion of it for my study.  I also did some improvement to the kitchen and added central air-conditioning but we were cramped so we started looking for a new house.  The previous year we had found one that was under construction a few blocks away and put in an offer for it but then interest rates hit 10% and we canceled the contract. Interesting enough the parents of one of Anne’s best friends in high school ended up buying the house.

Interest rates had dropped to more reasonable levels and so Julie and I started looking again and found a house that was only a few years old on Tallpine Road in Melbourne. At 2,159 square feet, it was considerably larger than our house on Easy Street.  It had a large master bedroom and bath, two good sized bedroom one for Anne and one for Julie’s study, while I again was banished to half of the double sized garage.   The house listed for $90,000 but we managed to get them down to $85,000 which was pushing the limits of what we could afford.  We listed the house on Easy Street and got $52,000 for it, not bad considering I bought it for $35,000 but we still needed more cash so I made a sacrifice, I would sell my Lotus Elan. 

My Lotus Elan in front of house on 192 Easy Street

I had had great fun with the Lotus, restoring it and driving it but I ready to let it go so I took photos of it and listed it in one of the cars-for-sale news magazines that you could find a most any newspaper or magazine stands.  I listed it for $6,000 which I thought was a reasonable price and a week later I got a call from someone who was interested in it.  The young man and his wife drove over from Orlando where they lived, and I showed them the car and let him drive it around.  He was hooked, especially after I showed him the restoration I had done on it.  We negotiated the price to $5,000, not as much as I would have liked, after all I had put over $2,000 in the restoration, but I was happy with the amount.  I was kind of sad to see it drive down the street for the last time.  I had my fun with it the past few years and was OK with letting it go.  With the extra cash in had we closed on the house on Tallpine Road in November and with that we no longer lived on Easy Street.

Our house on Tallpine Road in Melbourne

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