Jumped two deer on my walk down to dump my bucket of trimmings. Before 8:30 my totals were up to two deer, half a dozen squirrels, a woodpecker, several humming birds, and sundry others. Add in yesterday’s box turtle and I am reminded entirely why ended up here instead of back in a cookie cutter shoulder to shoulder subdivision.
Tag Archives: house
A year later…
As most of the rest of the Western world is busy celebrating Easter, I’ve mostly spent this Sunday morning trying to wrap my head around the idea that one year ago almost to the hour I was sitting down and signing my name on 37,361 pieces of paper that allowed me to borrow a horrifying sum of cash and move into a far better house than I imagined possible. I won’t say that the year has been all sunshine and roses – it feels like there’s been some part of the place under construction for most of that time; not to mention an ever-lengthening list of projects yet to come.
Now with that being said, and despite the general pain in the ass of being a homeowner, this place ranks among the better decisions I’ve ever made. Good bones, good neighborhood – and neighbors I can’t even see for three seasons of the year – it’s a hard place not to like. The longer I’m here, the more I change to suit me versus suiting the last guy to live here, the more I like it.
I’m already struggling to imagine that a year ago I was standing in the middle of a totally empty house wondering what the hell I’d gotten myself into.
Improving the margins…
With the budgets set and deposits for the major (planned) home improvement projects for 2016, I’m having to satisfy myself currently with making small improvements around the margins.
The big ticket items are easy enough to find – gutting the master bath back to the studs and putting it back the “right way,” pulling up the laminate countertops in the kitchen and replacing them with something more formidable, new carpet in four rooms, reworking the front yard a bit to improve grade, add deer-resistant plantings, and correct a few spots prone to erosion. All of those find their place somewhere along the grand 10-year plan. That’s not accounting for other general maintenance items – like the inevitable new furnace, air conditioner, or new roof. The joy of home ownership, right?
So yeah, knowing were I want things to go over the next 3,500 days, I’m trying to find and enjoy the quick hits where I can. Last week I added a few fire extinguishers – not sexy, but nice to have if you happen to need them. This week I added a battery backup to my a few of my key critical electronic components. That was a spur of the moment add after several round of the power not quite going out, but going out just enough to turn off all the computer gear. In the coming weeks I hope to see a few hanging tool racks and maybe a new work bench in the garage. Then there’s time allocated to make the basement more than a slightly leak prone but otherwise empty hole in the ground.
I’m pretty pleased with the improvements I’ve been able to make here less than a year after taking possession – even though they’re largely invisible unless you know what you’re looking at in the first place. All the little things – the nitnoid $50 improvements – go a surprisingly long way towards improving what you could call the quality of life. Given the length of the to do list I’m pondering, I figure I’ll have the last of it crossed off just about the time I’m ready to retire and let this place be someone else’s problem.
Stepford…
I can’t speak for anything beyond the field of view that stretches a couple of hundred yards on either side of my own driveway, but from all outward appearances the county has done a respectable job at getting things scrapped down to pavement. The fine exurbanites in the neighborhood have been diligently blowing, plowing, shoveling, and salting for the last three days. The whole place looks about as much like Stepford as anyone could ever want.
Being the hermit I am, hanging out at the house for the last two and a half days hasn’t exactly felt like a burden. It hasn’t actually felt like much more than a normal weekend, really. Now there’s an impromptu three-day weekend and curiosity is getting the better of me. The two winding back roads leading out of my little slice of Americana roll past farms and fields and a few sections of deep woods. In fair weather there’s a decided charm to it.
In the current other-than-fair environment somehow I doubt that they’re quite as inviting. I can think of two or three places on both routes where things are probably still sitting over the side or in the ditch from sometime yesterday. The whole county can’t be Stepford. I forget that sometimes. Maybe this afternoon I’ll fire up the four-wheel drive and have a look at what the rest of this mess looks like from outside the warm and toasty.
Plumbed…
Every time I hire a plumber I’m struck with a moment of wondering why I’m paying good money to have someone do things I could do myself. Then I generally remember that I’ve probably tried, and failed, to do the work myself and that’s why I called the plumber in the first place. Yes, they’re expensive. Yes, they disrupt the household. Yes, there are other things I’d rather be spending my money on. Then again, I do like indoor plumbing so there’s the rub.
With time and practice, trial and error, I don’t doubt there’s any system in this house that I couldn’t eventually learn to repair in its entirety. While I have many skill sets, though, plumbing and electrical aren’t currently among them. Maybe they should be, but they’re not.
In most cases it boils down to the value of time. Some small things are easy enough, can be whipped out in an hour and life can return to normal. Others, well, that’s when it pays to know what your own time is worth and be willing to farm out the jobs that are going to eat up too much of it.
What Annoys Jeff this Week?
1. Fall foliage. I live in the woods… but not the deep woods. That’s a plan for the future. After a couple of days of wind and rain I’m reminded that I have neighbors. For the first time since mid-May I’m starting to see them again. Well, not “them” exactly, but certainly their houses. I’m deeply happy with my little plot of land, but at this time of year I’d be ok with another hundred yards – or maybe a few more miles – of trees between me and the next guy.
2. Rain is the new snow. It’s been a few weeks since we’ve seen any rain to speak of. I know it must be a frightening and unnatural experience for everyone. I know this because for the last two days everyone has driven like there was eight inches of new-fallen snow on the roads. If nothing else, it has served to reinforce my long-held belief that most people are idiots. As usual, though, it’s probably all my fault for having even the lowest of expectations of my the average man on the street.
3. Draftees. As the American Army, the most decisive fighting force ever fielded in history, is drawing itself down to the pre-World War II levels, the Russian president is drafting an extra 150,000 of his citizens into military service. Let that sink in for a minute. In terms of troops in active service, that will put Russia within spitting distance of parity in manpower. Figure in their increased pace of modernization and the simple fact that they don’t have to move their personnel across an ocean to get at many of the world’s current “areas of interest,” and in my humble opinion, this brave new world of our is going to look very familiar… almost like the one we left in the early 1990s. Talk about back to the future.
Working dog…
I’ve read countless times that dogs behave better when they have a job. Some are trained to sniff out bombs or drugs, others pull carts, a few, the happiest probably, carry drums of liquor to skiers stranded somewhere on an Alp.
My Maggie never trained to do any of those things. She’s the definitive house pet… mostly well behaved, but possessed of a few bad habits that I’ve simply allowed to develop over time because they didn’t bother me enough to correct.
This chocolate lab of mine has always taken her patrol duties in the yard seriously – birds, squirrels, and cats have all felt her wrath at one time or another. Interlopers are less welcome by her than they are by me. That’s saying something. Since we moved, though, she’s taken on a whole new role.
The front windows aren’t quite floor to ceiling but they’re big enough to give her an unobstructed view of the front yard and the street beyond. Her domain is all she surveys. My working dog has appointed herself protector of the cul-de-sac. Every living thing that moves upon it is fair game for her hell-hound-like bark and ferocious snarl. Children on small motorized scooters are particularly hated enemies. The barking for them is the loudest and most long lived.
Technically I should probably be correcting her at every opportunity… but if I’m really dead honest about it, I’m not sure I hate the idea of everyone who drives, walks, or otherwise wanders past having a thought that herein lives one of the most vicious dogs on the face of the earth. It’s not a job for your typical working dog, but it fits in just fine around here.
Learning acceptance…
Even with the afternoon and evening to go, I can feel Monday’s grinding maw approaching. One look at the list of things I was shooting to have finished by the time the curtain fell on the long weekend tells me there’s no path to get there from here. I hate that feeling. I also, just a little bit, hate that I care quite so much about it.
It wasn’t an exciting list, including such fun-filled activities as flushing the well filter, getting the mulch out of the front yard and back into the planting beds, wiping down baseboards, and giving the dog’s room a good scrub, and going on from there. Some of the things god crossed off. More of them will spill over onto next week’s already growing list.
It’s probably a character flaw, but I wish I could quiet down my head just a little and let more of the “small stuff” just be. I’m not wired like that. I thought briefly about trying to catch a movie this afternoon, before grudgingly admitting I wouldn’t get any joy from it as long as things were left undone or out of place on the homestead.
I do wonder sometimes if I might be a more sane person if I could somehow manage to learn acceptance – or at least come to an accommodation with whatever in my head urges me on to use every available hour to get one more thing off the list… Though with my own small mental quirks notwithstanding, I have to admit I’ve got this old house looking damned good. I wouldn’t eat off the floors or anything, but I’m pretty sure the casual observer would give the place passing marks. That’s something, right?
Now if it would just dry up enough outside that I could cut the grass and do some trimming we’d be all set.
I’ll get to it when I get to it…
Sunday afternoon I spent a not insignificant amount of time shoveling mulch off the sidewalk and driveway and back into it’s rightful place around the front flower beds. With a little raking it looked reasonably presentable and not at all like last weekend’s rain had washed a goodly portion of it into places it had no business being. It stayed there for approximately 30 hours before last night’s torrential rain promptly washed even more of it down the driveway and out into the street.
Sigh. I won’t even start on the volume of water laying against the back side of the house, ever willing to probe for a weak spot in the masonry. Funny how that sort of thing didn’t bother me when it was someone else’s foundation soaking for hours at a time. Paranoia is possibly one of the joys of home ownership.
The good news is I think we’ll start to have some of those issues addressed this weekend – with a little gutter cleaning to help resolve the issues out front and hopefully enough time to get some risers under the air condenser. As next week marches on, I’m getting some initial estimates from landscaping companies on reworking the drainage and slope of the back yard… and maybe a few other little projects that would be awfully easy to deal with while they have a bobcat running around the premises.
The thing that’s constantly surprising me about this house is that the little stuff is squared away… which only leaves the big things to do when time and funding allow. It’s safe to say that the master bathroom renovation budget is officially busted and that project is now on the “I’ll get to it when I get to it” list. That one hurt a bit, but the part of my head ruled by logic and reason tells me the mechanicals and drainage systems aren’t working right, all the other projects are purely academic.
Yep. The joy of home ownership indeed.
Two months in…
For lack of a better update, after making the first two of 360 scheduled payments the whole “new house thing” is coming along nicely (I’ll just set aside the discussion on storm water and runoff management for the moment). The boxes are almost all unpacked, with the empties being passed along for others who had use for them. A few rooms still look awfully sparse – a surprisingly nice side effect of trebling the square footage you occupy. The empty maw of the dining room was filled in with pieces that have been knocking around the family for over 100 years. The 3rd and final bedroom is an ongoing effort that has been part staging area for all the other rooms and part catch all for the things that don’t fit in anywhere else. Under other circumstances that would have been the designated home office, but in this case other more convivial locations were available.
The stacks of cardboard have even disappeared from the garage. I’ve resisted the temptation thus far to organize that space on the fly so it’s still basically controlled chaos. With the rest of the house whipped into livable shape, though, it should be long before I jump in to get tool racks hung and bring my own brand of order to everything piled onto shelves and ever available flat surface. One temperate weekend afternoon should suffice to get that effort out of the way. Like the back bedroom it’s not one of those tasks I’m chomping at the bit to dive into. Since both require some serious organizational planning, I’d like to give it some time to ferment and then do it right so I only have to do it once.
I find myself still finding out the quirks and oddities of the house. There’s nothing earth shattering, but odds and ends I wish I’d have known about when I was writing up the pre-closing “owner will repair” list. All things considered though, the place is starting to feel like a home – or my home at any rate. I look forward to being there at the end of a long day not just because it’s where my stuff is or because it’s where other people aren’t, but for reasons far more intangible.
To be honest for the first few weeks I was confronted by “oh God what did I do” more often than I thought possible. The house and its nuances were all strange to me. Everything felt not-quite-right. It’s safe to say I’m well past that initial break in period. Sure, I still want to gut the master bathroom down to the studs and replace the tragically white composite kitchen countertops with something more substantial, but I won’t feel at all strange about doing it now. It’s taken a couple of whole-house cleanings, a few weeks of cutting the grass, and a whole bunch of rearranging furniture, but it feels indisputably mine now… and that’s not bad for being just a couple of months in.
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