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osodecanelaSo here's the story. We came into some money last year after my brother-in-law died, leaving my husband as his sole heir. Not long thereafter, the investor who owned the 50 acre parcel next to us, subdivided it and put it on the market. There were several reasons for us to put together the money to buy it. First and foremost, we live on a hillside in a rather narrow river valley, which is heavily wooded. In this type of environment, you don't want someone building uphill from you. That's a great way to find your property sliding into the river. Secondly, the outbuildings that we thought we owned, when we bought the property were standing on the five acre parcel immediately contiguous to our property. This was the opportunity to finally own them.
We bought the place from an estate back in 1989. The previous owners had both died and when we bought the place, it had not been surveyed. Four, perhaps five years later, that lack of being surveyed came back to bite us. The then owner of the property next door had it surveyed, and low and behold, three of the outbuildings were not on our property, and as an added bonus, neither was about a third of the main house. That little fiasco was remedied by $5,000, and a lot line adjustment, which gave us the house, though not the outbuildings.
For the past 20 years, those outbuildings have been sitting, or should I say standing, untended to. Now that we own them (finally!), they're now getting 20 years of delayed maintenance. Every summer for the past two decades, has been in part devoted to house maintenance. This year the projects are much more ambitious. In essence we're not just doing maintenance, we're remodeling.
So far, there have been new roofs for the gazebo, and the main house, the gazebo has had the whole structure treated with copper sulfate, the dry rot replaced, and has been painted. Same for the storage building, and the electrical service on both buildings has been rewired. There are new steps into the storage building, as well as a reworking of the back fence, so the entrance to the storage building is now within the fenced area. Both the main house and the kitchen building has been painted (amen! Now there is one unifying color scheme!), there are new skylights in the kitchen, and the leaks have been fixed in that building. The broken cabinet doors, plus the smashes in the kithcen island and the door to the guest bathroom have all been mended, erasing all traces of the outburst of a friend, who was house sitting last year. He didn't deal well with the rodent trouble we were having at the time. The rodentia are not gone, but the edition of two cats have made the problem somewhat better. We do however feed them too well, so their motivation is not what it could be.
We've put down several truckloads of road base on the new roadway up the hill, which now makes the climb to the upper areas of the property possible without a 4 wheel drive. The ultrasteep portion of the road right next to the mainhouse is for going downhill only.
In progress now. is finishing the garage and redoing the "cork" room. The cork room was a sun porch that had been enclosed by the previous owners, and it has been my studio/workshop/sewing room. It's connected by a doorway to the bedroom. This morning, we pulled out all the old windows along the front end, as well as the doors on the side. A sliding glass door will go into the side moved off to one side, so a wood stove can go in the corner of the room, and the double French doors will be moved around to the front-end along with one nice large window. The pass-through to the bedroom will be changed over to a closet, a new doorway off to the any of the bathroom will be created, and this room will become the new bedroom.
The loft in the garage is becoming my new workshop, with nicely finished walls and ceiling, track lighting, new cabinetry under the loft space for storage of things like fabric and fiber, dye stuffs and chemicals, patterns and craft books. I'm itching to get in there and get set up. Hopefully by the end of next week, that will be a reality.
So far we've managed to do all this without killing one another. The disruption is difficult and has led to a few tense moments, but nothing too horrendous. We shall see how things progress over the summer. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Depending on the day, I go from being excited to overwhelmed and back again. The key is to not have that happen to both of us simultaneously.
The only real disappointment so far is that an indoor staircase between the first and second floor of the main house is out of the picture. Too expensive a project, and moreover, no easy location that won't take a major chunk out of the room upstairs, or pass-through areas of structural support. Worse, the multi-levels of this home leave no area where the natural traffic flow through the house foster the placement of the new stairway. Current thinking for us, is to put a roof above the outdoor stairs to the second-floor, as well as the section of deck along the side of the house, leading to those stairs.
I had better stop now - need to get back to work and I'm starting to feel overwhelmed again.
We bought the place from an estate back in 1989. The previous owners had both died and when we bought the place, it had not been surveyed. Four, perhaps five years later, that lack of being surveyed came back to bite us. The then owner of the property next door had it surveyed, and low and behold, three of the outbuildings were not on our property, and as an added bonus, neither was about a third of the main house. That little fiasco was remedied by $5,000, and a lot line adjustment, which gave us the house, though not the outbuildings.
For the past 20 years, those outbuildings have been sitting, or should I say standing, untended to. Now that we own them (finally!), they're now getting 20 years of delayed maintenance. Every summer for the past two decades, has been in part devoted to house maintenance. This year the projects are much more ambitious. In essence we're not just doing maintenance, we're remodeling.
So far, there have been new roofs for the gazebo, and the main house, the gazebo has had the whole structure treated with copper sulfate, the dry rot replaced, and has been painted. Same for the storage building, and the electrical service on both buildings has been rewired. There are new steps into the storage building, as well as a reworking of the back fence, so the entrance to the storage building is now within the fenced area. Both the main house and the kitchen building has been painted (amen! Now there is one unifying color scheme!), there are new skylights in the kitchen, and the leaks have been fixed in that building. The broken cabinet doors, plus the smashes in the kithcen island and the door to the guest bathroom have all been mended, erasing all traces of the outburst of a friend, who was house sitting last year. He didn't deal well with the rodent trouble we were having at the time. The rodentia are not gone, but the edition of two cats have made the problem somewhat better. We do however feed them too well, so their motivation is not what it could be.
We've put down several truckloads of road base on the new roadway up the hill, which now makes the climb to the upper areas of the property possible without a 4 wheel drive. The ultrasteep portion of the road right next to the mainhouse is for going downhill only.
In progress now. is finishing the garage and redoing the "cork" room. The cork room was a sun porch that had been enclosed by the previous owners, and it has been my studio/workshop/sewing room. It's connected by a doorway to the bedroom. This morning, we pulled out all the old windows along the front end, as well as the doors on the side. A sliding glass door will go into the side moved off to one side, so a wood stove can go in the corner of the room, and the double French doors will be moved around to the front-end along with one nice large window. The pass-through to the bedroom will be changed over to a closet, a new doorway off to the any of the bathroom will be created, and this room will become the new bedroom.
The loft in the garage is becoming my new workshop, with nicely finished walls and ceiling, track lighting, new cabinetry under the loft space for storage of things like fabric and fiber, dye stuffs and chemicals, patterns and craft books. I'm itching to get in there and get set up. Hopefully by the end of next week, that will be a reality.
So far we've managed to do all this without killing one another. The disruption is difficult and has led to a few tense moments, but nothing too horrendous. We shall see how things progress over the summer. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Depending on the day, I go from being excited to overwhelmed and back again. The key is to not have that happen to both of us simultaneously.
The only real disappointment so far is that an indoor staircase between the first and second floor of the main house is out of the picture. Too expensive a project, and moreover, no easy location that won't take a major chunk out of the room upstairs, or pass-through areas of structural support. Worse, the multi-levels of this home leave no area where the natural traffic flow through the house foster the placement of the new stairway. Current thinking for us, is to put a roof above the outdoor stairs to the second-floor, as well as the section of deck along the side of the house, leading to those stairs.
I had better stop now - need to get back to work and I'm starting to feel overwhelmed again.
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no subject
Date: 2006-06-26 10:19 pm (UTC)If you only fed the cats dry food, might that increase their interest in mousing?
Good luck with all the work; I can only imagine the potential for disruption inherent in remodeling. I've only had to have outside decks worked on in my place so far, and even that was more stressful than I'd imagined.
mousing......
Date: 2006-06-26 11:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-28 06:10 pm (UTC)