MY MEMORIES

Charles Glenn Petersen

1983 - Mississippi Years

Building Projects (continued)

Nancy and I decided to take our money out of the Wisconsin Retirement System. We went into partnership with my brother and we had our house builder construct two duplexes in Starkville. We put 25% down on the duplexes, borrowed the rest from the same bank that had our home loan. We priced the rent to cover all expenses, including the bank loan payment and a realtor’s management fee, it cash flowed, so there was no money out our individual pockets. Every month we simply took in the rent money and paid the bills. Twenty years later when we sold the two properties we realized an 11% return on our investment.

Our next building project was a gazebo to house a hot tub. The hot tub we selected was octagon shaped. Every building plan I looked at for gazebos were almost all 6 sided, so I designed a gazebo with 8 sides, thus lots of angled pieces. We built it about 25 feet south of the house tucked in with the trees surrounding it. The gazebo was large enough to have a small covered walkway all the way around the hot tub, plus a 2-foot overhanging eave. The walkway had a railing that matched the railing on the house porch. The railing and the supporting posts for the gazebo roof were painted to match the house colors. Eventually there was a 5-foot wide patch of liriope all the way around the gazebo.