Herman School of Business
Buying lessons from the Barn
Yesterday I mentioned moving some items to the new loft office in our barn. I have transformed it into a remote radio studio to record the DAILY HERMANISM spot being played across the country. And that got me to thinking about an issue that we can use the barn to illustrate.
People with money find better ways to buy things. When I was younger and broke I would ride by a flea market and say out loud “Please buy my junk!” as we passed by. Yard sales were just traffic stoppers to me. And auctions meant someone was unloading Grandma Moses stuff no one wanted. Well now I can write a check for anything that I have needed to convert this huge monstrosity of a barn into a place with more living space and workspace that can be utilized by our growing family of kids and grandkids. The barn consists of seven different rooms and areas. It was at first a two story wide open typical barn structure and then over the years more “shed like rooms” were added on both sides and the back of the original barn. We hold our annual baseball draft there and because of the renovations the barn is now referred to as the “Draft Palace.” One room has a beautiful fireplace ($200), architectural window inserts with shelves ($15), a full bath with a showerhead that comes out the ceiling fourteen feet over your head.
The shop area has ceilings almost twenty feet high and therefore there are floor to ceiling windows and even some stained glass windows ($100) that came from a Vanderbilt mansion being renovated nearby. Remember those picture windows in the loft from the last posting…I paid one cent apiece for each of them…at Home Depot. It was a pair of patio sliding doors that came from the factory without any hardware and the store manager said he had to mark them down to throw them in the dumpster…I took them for a penny each and turned them sideways and they look great with etched glass around the edges.
There is now a kitchen in the barn with a refrigerator ($15) and an electric stove ($10). It has taken me ten years to complete the transformation of the barn into the “Draft Palace”, and I spent nothing on labor as I did the work myself. But truthfully, keeping my eyes open at those damn traffic stopping yard sales, and spending quality time with my wife at estate auctions has paid off. Every window in that barn was bought that way. The sixteen leather chairs were about twenty cents on the dollar. The chandeliers are unique, are antique, and cost less than anything in a lighting store. Even the hot water heater was from a failed building project being sold off. And just think, the money I saved was in Apple stock most of this past year and they did me a favor and doubled the price of the stock.
Buy better…and put the rest of your money to work for you.
- Posted: 16 December 2007
- Comments: 0
- Category: Business success
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