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stonebender I really am trying to post more. The keyword being trying. There's lots of mostly boring stuff to anyone but me and perhaps Carol and Betty. At the beginning of this year we started a long-delayed house repair. The previous owner of my house was quite the do-it-yourselfer. Unfortunately, he didn't follow any building codes of any sort. In fact, we are constantly finding very odd "solutions" to some of his building issues. My prime example is that we have a piece of car radiator hose being used in our bathroom sink plumbing.
Now we knew when we bought the place that it was a fixer-upper. In our income bracket it was impossible to find anything we could afford that wasn't in need of some serious repair. When we bought our house, we weren't particularly sure where the money would come from, but we (or at least I) had faith that we would figure something out. In my experience life is all about figuring things out.
This year with the help of Carol's mother. Who died much too soon, but took care of her kids to the very end. We had a serious clump of money to take care of our house. So we have been working through our to-do list of house repairs.
It has been a remarkably stressful experience. Even though in many cases we met some really wonderful people. At this point we have redone 90 percent of our foundation, upgraded the electrical, upgraded our plumbing, knocked down a hideous home built shed that took up a good third of our backyard. We've replaced it with a much nicer and smaller shed. Poured concrete for the new patio in the backyard and an extra wide driveway. Our street although residential has a large grocery store next to it. This produces an amazing amount of traffic and since our street is very narrow, we really needed another parking space on our property.
We are mostly finished with the new fence around our yard and a doggie door. So Gillie, our Dobie, will have easy access to the backyard. The most exciting part of the whole project has been the redesign of our kitchen. We found a young fellow who wants to be an interior designer and has a large amount experience doing small construction and handy man type work. He can do most things except plumbing. He had been attending the California College of Arts and Crafts. Which has a fine interior design program. We had been using him for smaller projects around the house. When he heard that Carol had wanted to redo the kitchen. On the spot he had an idea which he drew up for us.
He had become a good friend of ours and we had faith in his abilities. The drawing helped solve several of our problems with the kitchen and we liked his ideas. So we hired him. In the near future I hope to have pictures of our new kitchen. We love it a great deal and it has transformed our entire house.
Dustin, our kitchen designer and very close friend did a great job and is now moving back east to attend Pratt University in the design and project management programs. I feel a little like I'm sending my son off to school. He's a truly wonderful human being and I will miss our long conversations while he was tearing apart our kitchen or living room or whatever. I didn't really get to what I wanted to write about, but I will in the near future.
Now we knew when we bought the place that it was a fixer-upper. In our income bracket it was impossible to find anything we could afford that wasn't in need of some serious repair. When we bought our house, we weren't particularly sure where the money would come from, but we (or at least I) had faith that we would figure something out. In my experience life is all about figuring things out.
This year with the help of Carol's mother. Who died much too soon, but took care of her kids to the very end. We had a serious clump of money to take care of our house. So we have been working through our to-do list of house repairs.
It has been a remarkably stressful experience. Even though in many cases we met some really wonderful people. At this point we have redone 90 percent of our foundation, upgraded the electrical, upgraded our plumbing, knocked down a hideous home built shed that took up a good third of our backyard. We've replaced it with a much nicer and smaller shed. Poured concrete for the new patio in the backyard and an extra wide driveway. Our street although residential has a large grocery store next to it. This produces an amazing amount of traffic and since our street is very narrow, we really needed another parking space on our property.
We are mostly finished with the new fence around our yard and a doggie door. So Gillie, our Dobie, will have easy access to the backyard. The most exciting part of the whole project has been the redesign of our kitchen. We found a young fellow who wants to be an interior designer and has a large amount experience doing small construction and handy man type work. He can do most things except plumbing. He had been attending the California College of Arts and Crafts. Which has a fine interior design program. We had been using him for smaller projects around the house. When he heard that Carol had wanted to redo the kitchen. On the spot he had an idea which he drew up for us.
He had become a good friend of ours and we had faith in his abilities. The drawing helped solve several of our problems with the kitchen and we liked his ideas. So we hired him. In the near future I hope to have pictures of our new kitchen. We love it a great deal and it has transformed our entire house.
Dustin, our kitchen designer and very close friend did a great job and is now moving back east to attend Pratt University in the design and project management programs. I feel a little like I'm sending my son off to school. He's a truly wonderful human being and I will miss our long conversations while he was tearing apart our kitchen or living room or whatever. I didn't really get to what I wanted to write about, but I will in the near future.
