Let me start by thanking the 30 Steemians who have already invested with us, buying a permanent share of our blog's revenue. Without you guys and gals, this would have taken months or years to start up, instead of mere weeks.

For those who haven't heard about @thesteemhouse;

This is a project to open a real-world business centered around creativity, learning, and the Blockchain. We will be a "Steem-centric" makerspace and small business incubator, a place where members of our local community can come to use tools, machines, and materials like 3d printers and arduino boards, and more, to make and create anything they can dream up! We will educate all of our members on how they can turn their hobbies and talents into money by joining the Steem Blockchain, and posting about their time in our space!

In the past three weeks, we have already collected 1272 STEEM of our 2000 STEEM startup goal. So far, every bit of it has been from average Steemians. Our "Dream Team", or group of early investors, does not yet include a whale or funding group. It has all come from people who see the potential for this project to bloom into something not only profitable, but beneficial to @thesteemhouse's local community, and the Blockchain as a whole.

With what we have collected thus far, we have enough to sign a lease, and get moved into a building we've been looking at in the downtown district of our city. @thatsweeneyguy has spoken with the agent who manages the property, talked over a few terms, and will be signing paperwork hopefully tomorrow. They said they'll have their attorney take the terms we talked over, and write up the lease, and that it should be ready by then. Whether it's tomorrow or early next week, we will be getting to work VERY soon! Here's where we stand so far:

This is the space we are about to be leasing:

About 2800 sq. ft in the basement of a historic school building, in what used to be the cafeteria and kitchen. We had originally planned to only lease the larger cafeteria room, but the owners didn't want to leave the kitchen to lease be leased by itself.

You see, the owners of this three story school building want to house multiple businesses within, creating a sort of mini-mall in our downtown district. We will be the first business to take up residence within the building, and the owners seem to be pretty impressed with our long-term goals of helping regular people become business owners. Our little city of around 30,000 has SO much creativity and talent just bursting at the seams, and we don't have many outlets to express said creativity, especially something like a makerspace ! The terms of our lease will include a few things that will put @thesteemhouse in a position to grow quickly, and decide who our neighbors will be (to an extent).

The lease will be on a five year term, at around $1100 per month plus the cost of utilities (a little more than $70,000 for the full 5 years of rent). We talked about an "option to buy the entire building" at a locked in price of $550,000. This means if we grow quickly, and show them the kind of magic STEEM can do for someone's finances, no less a business' profits, at any time during the next five years, we can buy the entire three story building at that price. Here are the other two floors of the building:

1^st floor

2^nd floor

That's 14 more large rooms to create separate learning spaces, a computer/electronics lab, an A/V studio, a wood-shop, and more, while still leaving rooms to allow entrepreneurs to rent their own private space to work/conduct business from! The potential for this building is nearly endless, and to continue to spirit of learning new things in a building that was built for that purpose 96 years ago, will be something we can all be proud of. (That also means we will be in this building on it's 100^th birthday!)

Another part of the lease we spoke about is called a "first right of refusal". This essentially means that while we hold this lease, if someone would like to rent another part of the building, we have the first say on whether they can have it, in case we intend to acquire the space ourselves. I find it unlikely that we will "block" businesses from coming into the same building, even if we intend to buy the entire structure one day. We are a very big supporter of new businesses, of course. However, it will be useful in case someone wants to set up right next to us, if there are other spaces available. We plan to expand to fill the bottom floor of the building as soon as possible, so we wouldn't want someone coming along, and taking part of what we know we're going to want soon.

As stated, we are simply waiting for the lease to be drawn up, and we will be looking it over, signing, and getting down to work!

STEEM has seen a bit of a dip over the last week or so, but is slowly recovering. We are biding our time until the lease is written up before we cash out what we have collected to pay the deposit and first month's rent, as well as purchase some necessary starting materials for things like tables, storage, and workspaces. We watched as the STEEM in our fund wen't from being valued at close to $4,000 to less than $3,000, which is nearly a full month's rent. Regardless of what that estimated value may say, though, when the paperwork is dry, we're signing! At the moment, what we have collected will get us in the door, but will leave little room in the budget for anything else

We have a few tools and monies of our own to bring into the space, but we will certainly be hunting for any donations of tools, equipment, materials, supplies, or machines, we can find in order to fill out the space on a minimal budget. Our main goal in the beginning is going to be getting enough together to be able to start holding crafting and tinker workshops for children, as well as having a few computers able to onboard people to Steem. Once we are in the space, we can start applying for business and educational grants to help us grow a bit quicker as well. We want to avoid loans at all costs, though. We are confident that with the business model we have set in place, and when conducted carefully and intelligently, we will prosper beyond our wildest dreams in time. Slow and steady wins the race.

We've gone over a lot already, but what exactly will we be doing when we get moved in?

If you don't know what a makerspace is, Makerspaces.com offers a really good explanation of the general idea. I'll give you a minute to read that.....

Okay. Now that you know what a makerspace is, and the sort of creativity and new ideas they can generate, imagine pairing that with something like Steemit... Did you just get butterflies in your stomach? By allowing people to not only bring their wildest dreams to life, but to earn money for doing it, we can change the world, starting right here in our hometown! We can show people that there are options when it comes to earning a living, and that they likely have what it takes to create something of real value to someone. Sometimes all it takes is a little bit of encouragement and support to see the greatest potential shine through someone, and that will be our ultimate reward.

We will host as many educational workshops as possible, for both children and adults. We will teach our community new skills, and empower a new generation of entrepreneurs. We will give people access to expensive software and tools that will enable them to create brand new things, and giving them the confidence to succeed in anything they put their mind to. We will themed around a play on words. "STEEM and STEAM put the steam in our esteem" We want to bring out all the creativity we can, and encourage totally out-of-the-box thinking to solve some of the world's toughest problems. The Steem House will host many crafting, building, and tinkering clubs, getting the community as involved as possible, bringing some much needed new entertainment and connectivity for all ages, to our city.

We're still looking for investors to join our Dream Team!

We're selling a 10% lifetime share of the liquid rewards generated by this account, for a total of 2000 STEEM. This means someone who invests as much as 200 STEEM, which 3 amazing Steemians have already done ^{(Thank you for your votes of confidence @fingersik, @mattclarke, & @o07!)}, will receive 1% of SBD generated by this account forever! Anyone can invest, though we must enforce a minimum of 10 STEEM or SBD. This is simply to prevent a thousand people from investing 1 STEEM each, causing our weekly payment system to be a headache.
Said payments will begin the week after our funding goal is met.

We still need 728 STEEM to complete the fund, which would allow us to immediately purchase a couple 3d printers and computers. The remaining amount equates to a 3.64% share of our blog, so there's still room for a few more bigger players... wink wink. When we have collected the full 2000 STEEM, this opportunity will end, and any further transfers will be returned unless labeled as a donation.

Investments can be sent directly to @thesteemhouse. Please label your transfer as an investment in the memo field for public transparency.

The early bird gets the worm, so don't miss your chance to buy a piece of this real-world Steem business!

Some perks we plan to reward the Dream Team with....

We haven't really talked about this yet, so it's a surprise to the 30 people who have already invested, but on top of receiving weekly dividends from @thesteemhouse, we plan to throw our supporters a few bones as well... These are mostly ideas, and may change a bit before they come to fruition, and we can't exactly give a timeframe on when investors will be receiving these perks, but, here are a few of the things we plan to do for the Dream Team:

Regular upvotes^{(at our discretion)} from @thesteemhouse
A 3d printed STEEM keychain
A Steem House Dream Team T-shirt
Access to a private channel in our Discord server where investors can speak with us, as well as put forth suggestions, of which each will be responded to by one of the three owners directly.
Access to "behind-the-scenes" videos, showing parts of our development not seen by the public!

We're over 60% funded, and we'll be signing a lease within days! Here's a FULL update on where we stand, and where we're going!