A SURE SIGN YOU’VE GOT TOO MUCH MONEY…

PLASTICVILLE-USA

A SURE SIGN YOU’VE GOT TOO MUCH MONEY…

If you drive anywhere in TV on any Monday-Friday you will swear that TV is under siege by the International Brotherhood Of Building Trades. Virtually everywhere you go you will find vans and trucks belonging to plumbers, electricians, carpenters, stone masons, brick layers & flooring installers.

Now if you happen to be in the far southern sections of TV this makes sense because the southern end is in the process of being built-out. New homes are jumping up out of the ground like dandelions. But once you make your way back north the scene doesn’t change much except you don’t see quite as many bulldozers, cranes or cement trucks. What is going on?

Villages residents seem to be obsessed with renovations. They’ve either watched too many episodes of Kitchen Crashers and the Property Brothers or they just have too much money that’s burning a hole in their pocket and they’ve got a need to give it to somebody else. This may be the actual truth.

One of the odd things about the constant renovations is that most of the homes in TV were originally custom-built. Until about a year ago a home buyer in TV could sit down with a Villages “home planner” and you could pick every single drawer pull, cabinet screw and flush handle that you wanted to have in your Plasticville McMansion. You could build your home EXACTLY as you wanted it as long as you stayed within the borders of the home plan. First you picked the home model you wanted, and then added what builders like to call the “upgrades”. So if you built your home EXACTLY as you wanted it, why all the major renovations?

At the end of Summer 2013 TV announced that it would no longer take orders for custom homes, and would be building inventory homes only. You could pick from whatever was on hand to be sold, but you could no longer spec out your home the way you wanted it. With that now being the case I suspect that the renovation contractors are going to have a field day rebuilding these brand new homes in the very near future.

One of the true signs that you have far too much money and don’t know what to do with it is the “decorated driveway”.

In TV and pretty much all over central Florida residential driveways are made out of poured concrete. You almost never see a blacktop driveway. In fact if you live in the country many homes..including expensive ones..have no driveway at all. There might be a concrete slab at the garage door but often there’s nothing but a grassy path from the main road to the home.

In TV most driveways are poured concrete. With the older homes you could choose brick pavers which look very good, but that’s no longer an option. So now if you want the bricks, you have to tear out your poured concrete driveway that comes with your home and have it done after the fact. About 55% of the people living in TV just leave it at that. But then there’s the rest of the folks who figure that a plain old concrete driveway just isn’t good enough. What they need is a little art work to brighten things up and relieve the pain that their heavy wallet is causing them.

So you contact a company who specializes in “concrete creations” or “driveway décor”. You plunk down anywhere from 4 to 12 grand and they will send over a batch of illegals who speak no English (my in-law’s neighbors found this out much to their horror when they found they could not communicate with the people doing THEIR driveway!) who will transform your poor, tired-looking driveway into a work of art.

What happens first is that a thin layer of white concrete is poured over your existing driveway. It seals the cracks and then provides a canvas if you will for your driveway art. After the concrete dries out the crew returns and begins your “concrete creation”.

This is not a short process. It takes multiple days for the work to be done because each step has to dry before they move to the next step, and God forbid it starts to rain. This cake is going to melt! Once the process is over, you can’t drive on your new driveway for a week. So for all intents and purposes you lose the use of your driveway for about 14 days.

That leaves you with little problems like where to park your car(s) and your golf cart(s) for a couple of weeks.

What happens in the course of time is that your driveway will be transformed to look like it’s been laid with flagstone or it’s now some sort of mural covered with a pretty glaze and there’s a palm tree designed into the center of it all. If you happen to be one of those people who think that they’re going to live forever..they have the first letter of their last name designed into the center of the driveway. Of course that has a sort of killing effect when it comes to selling the home to people who’s last name doesn’t start with the same first letter as yours does. Oopps!

So 2 weeks and 10 Clevelands later you’re now the proud owner of a decorated driveway. Isn’t it beautiful? Of course everything’s shot to hell the minute your friend’s car or that next renovator’s van you have over drips oil, hydraulic fluid or coolant all over your new “concrete creation”.

WELL..like the song says…”That’s the way the money goes..Pop goes the weasel!!”