Cleaning House to Build a House

When Maggie and I moved into our current house, it was a bit of a last minute thing. She owned a house an hour south of me, and I had just taken a job an hour north of where I was currently renting. Then one day my landlord dropped off a letter stating rent was going up $400 a month... So we did what any reasonable people would do, and looked for any available place we could both move into that was in reasonable location, but had a garage and an enclosed yard for her dog, and only had about 3 weeks to figure out it! For the last 8 years since I moved to Michigan in 2014, I had been living in apartments all around Ypsilanti while renting a stand alone garage with 2 110 power outlets and 2 light bulbs. Did multiple engine swaps and fabricated my Jeep axles in that garage with a Craftsman flux mig welder.

Looking over the garage and office from one of the bedroom interior windows.

Now that I had a new job, making much better money than before, it was time to start building a race car. The plan was to give ourselves 2 years at this address, work on the car, and save up for a house. About 6 months into building the race car, friends and family convinced me to start a business making those same parts for other people. So January of 2023, Bad Investment Investment Builds LLC was founded! At that point I had roughly 10 years in the OEM industry and had been wrenching on cars my whole life. I thought I had a sense of the pace of business, but I was dead wrong.

I spent all of 2023 stretching myself thin, letting my excitement get the best of me, spent a bunch of money, and didn't actually get much done. I had been using a machine shop I rented space from for all my machine work. It was a full shop, and was getting familiar with machine work I had never done before. I continued working through the summer developing products, and then they suddenly decided to sell their business and close the doors. I now had a business built on having access to a fully functional machine shop, and no machine shop. So I pivoted; I bought a mini lathe I could power at home, changed the business model, and went to town. I spent 2023 learning what I should be focusing the business on, and essentially spent 2024 figuring out how to actually do it all.

I started 2024 by working with Ferrari in Maranello, January and February for my day job, which put a halt to work on BIBs. 2024 was spend getting the business model and process dialed in, focussing on only a few products at a time. Making improvements to documentation, logistics, getting inventory built, etc. All the little things that make up the last 10% of getting a product to a customer seemed to take up 70% of my time. Early in the year we had decided to buy a house, had some money saved up, and finances were sitting good. I was having some health issues that left me in pain between a 7 and 9 most days, and Maggie had some issues come up preventing her from being able to work and drive. Luckily, the business was self sufficient at this point, so as savings were slowly draining, the business was able to comfortably continue. We were finally able to find some stability around October, got our bills in the black, and paid off almost all of our high interest credit and got down to only 1 card with a balance,

Our current dream house! We'll save the inside views for later.

2025 was just around the corner, my shifters had inventory, and I was ready to launch the cables. Then January hit, and I was home for the first time in January since moving to Michigan in 2014 due to traveling to warmer climates every winter working in vehicle dynamics. I had customer orders I had to machine to get sent out, but with my garage only being able to run 15 amps at 120V and having zero insulation and visible holes, I couldn't run enough electric heaters and propane heaters to get the place warm enough to continue machine work. I also don't have any room to work, store inventory, we're tripping over 3D printers in the house, and it's overall just really inconvenient to try and be efficient. I can't even run my media blaster with the filter, as the air compressor will blow the garage fuse if the air scrubber is running too. We need more space.

So here we are. What does BIBs need right now? A bigger, heated, powered garage than can support a machine shop, fit a car, and have plenty of space to work. It also needs full sized cnc machines and a heavy lathe. I need a real office with room for 3D printers and sanitary work space. The Cotton household also needs more space, more room, more storage, more parking, and a safe place to start a family. Given the current economic climate, my fixed income on salary, it's become apparent what neither BIBs or the Cottons need right now: A bunch of fancy car parts for a car I haven't touched in 2 years, especially since I can make most of those parts myself, and make them more functional at the same time.

Notice the 2 story shop on the right and the 2 car garage on the left for daily driving.

So we're clearing house to build a house! Any parts that aren't exactly what I need, and all the extra parts from all the other cars gotta go. We are looking for a few acres to drop this house we designed on the property. Our first go at a house was intended to be paid for with a home loan, had a huge foundation, and was something we were going to spend another year or so working to get ready to build. However, right now, we just really need to get out of this tiny house, dysfunctional garage, and get ourselves on our own land in our own place. So we designed another house, needs no foundation, and uses 6 shipping containers. We haven't broke down the cost yet, but it should be roughly 30k to be livable, and 50k to be finished. Hopefully over the summer we'll be able to sell all the extra parts we don't need, sell the VROD, raise some money with the business, and have our little homestead for around 60-70k all in and without a loan!

Floor Plan Layout of the Starter House. This house doesn't require a foundation and has been designed to movable allowing us to start with a smaller property and move to a larger one later. We can then stay in this house while we build the big one.

Keep your eyes tuned to the blog or Jon Cottons personal Facebook account for sales information. I'll be updating the next blog with a personal sales ad as parts become available to sell.