An UpDate
As I commented before, the complications have complications... at this point we're sanding everything down and painting. Not my favorite cure and one I would rather not have to do, but c'est la vie, I guess when we re-fi we'll tell 'em we want new cabinets too:). I'll post a pic when we are done (finally)...
Thanks all for the encouragement and camarderie...so we're not just artists, but DIY homekeepers as well, how cool! Tseka, your story reminds me of the houses my ex and I bought in Springfield, Il for $12,000 for both. Falling apart internally from neglect...all the neighbors were rooting for their demolition, but the 'bones' were southern yellow pine, a nearly extinct species that was prized because the sap hardened into a concrete-like substance. After the work he's done on them, those houses will stand for another hundred years....I just don't get the 'that's old, tear it down' mentality...
In the meantime, to relieve the tension, I take breaks and go out to my garden to talk to the zuchini and offer encouraging words to my cactus and the tomatoes which are FINALLY showing some infant fruit after half a summer of bloom. I hope the neighbors don't notice when I throw the slugs in their yard:)...
And the moles here are outrageous, hills all over... They are strangely cute tho...One of my favorite stories about my dad:
I was living at home, expecting my son, Eric. As I was driving along, I saw a small creature in a busy intersection, rolling/waddling excruciatingly slowly. I jumped out of the car and scooped the small animal up in a T-shirt (my family has a history of rescuing turtles, frogs, snakes, etc from the street). Turns out it was a little mole, it's paddle feet more suited to 'swimming' underground than crossing the street. I took it home, figuring we'd take it out and release it in the country somewhere. When my dad came home, he looked at it and said, "Put it in the backyard, just don't let the neighbors see you"... When people ask me about my parents I just smile and say it was like growing up in the Addams Family....
Thanks all for the encouragement and camarderie...so we're not just artists, but DIY homekeepers as well, how cool! Tseka, your story reminds me of the houses my ex and I bought in Springfield, Il for $12,000 for both. Falling apart internally from neglect...all the neighbors were rooting for their demolition, but the 'bones' were southern yellow pine, a nearly extinct species that was prized because the sap hardened into a concrete-like substance. After the work he's done on them, those houses will stand for another hundred years....I just don't get the 'that's old, tear it down' mentality...
In the meantime, to relieve the tension, I take breaks and go out to my garden to talk to the zuchini and offer encouraging words to my cactus and the tomatoes which are FINALLY showing some infant fruit after half a summer of bloom. I hope the neighbors don't notice when I throw the slugs in their yard:)...
And the moles here are outrageous, hills all over... They are strangely cute tho...One of my favorite stories about my dad:
I was living at home, expecting my son, Eric. As I was driving along, I saw a small creature in a busy intersection, rolling/waddling excruciatingly slowly. I jumped out of the car and scooped the small animal up in a T-shirt (my family has a history of rescuing turtles, frogs, snakes, etc from the street). Turns out it was a little mole, it's paddle feet more suited to 'swimming' underground than crossing the street. I took it home, figuring we'd take it out and release it in the country somewhere. When my dad came home, he looked at it and said, "Put it in the backyard, just don't let the neighbors see you"... When people ask me about my parents I just smile and say it was like growing up in the Addams Family....
posted by juno jones at 11:48 AM
9 Comments:
Growing up in the Addams family, hmm are we cousins then?
We'd be rescuing moles too, tho we kiddies learned early to salt slugs. or put beer out for them....throwing them into the neighbors yard, in B'ham, you better make sure they don't see you.
Kitchen Cabinets: IKEA if you didn't already know-down by Seatac. Beautiful well built easy to assemble good price very good finish and almost no outgassing, you can get pretty nice other things there too.
i have a full cabinet shop in my garage but wouldn't consider making my own any more.
Envy you and Neith your gardens. My eyes are hungry for the NW, just a few more weeks and i'll be there for my show, yippie.
LOL!! I know how my S/O would react to someone putting a mole in the yard . . . :-) He's not a fan shall we say . . . Your family sounds like a good one though!
IKEA, yes! They have great tables too. My boss's S/O is of Swedish descent on her mother's side & all the furniture in our office is from IKEA. And my grandniece who Bday is the day after mine choose the bunk bed set w/the slide coming down from the top bunk. We assembled it for her & I will vouch for the quality & ease to assemble.
Tseka, that house you've been reassembling, when was it built? In the 1950's or 60's? My uncle went to Stanford and studied Art & Architecture in the 40's and most the houses he designed & built featured the big ceiling beams, lots of open space & huge windows. More suitable to warmer climates for sure back then. Now w/the increasing effective double-paned glass w/argon gas in between the panes, big expanses of glass are lots more energy efficient.
It's amazing how much information one can absorb just being around all it . . . and having a mind like a sponge . . . :-)
Neith that would be 60's but this would never have been anything so wonderful that your Uncle would have been involved. This house began as a landhold claim, veterans of first world war were not given GI Bill that came later but becasue the gov wanted to settle the west...they gave away plots of land mostly 2.5 acres, you had to "prove" on it within so much time -build at least a 400' sq cabin..i think, maybe they were smaller. So all over the desert are these little rat shacks from then. They were just given through a random draw, sight unseen, is my understanding. Some got really great and others got impossible... This one began as a small cabin then got added on to with several little after-thoughts. There is a major road going trough my property out to the National Park with no easement it was once the carriage road. Until about 30 years ago there "warn't much out thisa way".
*smile* I have lived in a lot of part mining cabin/part houses up in the Sierra foothills, probably pretty similar to your homestead, Tseka. The worst one was one that someone had updated a few years before and put in all these flash modern windows and stuff...without giving a thought to insulating the rest of the place. They also built a lot of the house out of the effective range of the obnoxious wood-eating stove that they had installed. Would have froze that winter had my cat not insisted on sleeping under the covers near my feet every nite! Thank goodness that CA is not nearly as cold as IL.
Yeah I love IKEA. Gotta make a day of it to go get a few things, but I just drag along my sister-in-law, Laura, to keep me company (she lives in Everett, fun to shop with and is ta-da, yet another artist:) Funny thing, her sun (Leo) is conjuct my asc. I get along better w/her than any other in-law I've ever had, and nearly as well as with my own (sag) sister. It's nice to be able to like your in-laws...).
One of our bathrooms is being redone w/IKEA cabinets, but we didn't have enough money this time to redo the
kitchen as well(although, let me tell ya, we probably shoula just spent the two grand and shut up, we'd have a kitchen now and we'd all be a bit more chill...)
I have tried putting beer out for the slugs here with mixed results. They don't seem to like IPA much, maybe it's too sophisticated for their palates. Perhaps I need to try something less hoppy:)...
These descriptions of old mining camps remind me of a place I stayed while visiting friends in AZ in 1981. It was up at about 6,000 ft in elevation in the mountains between New Mexico & AZ in the southern part of the state. There was a post office in a home for Blue, AZ. You had to come in by a little town called Alpine, AZ that is at 8,000 ft, then drop down switch backs to Blue. There my friends had bought some property w/a variety of odd buildings in various states of repair. Great place to visit when Tucson was 100+ for what seemed like months! Some of back roads thru the mountains in that area came out on some amazing vistas. One in particular fascinated me . . . we were probably at around 9,000 ft & looking up we saw a cliff dwelling on a quartz outcropping! The nearest water looking to be about a mile or so down hill . . . Interesting to speculate why those people chose to build there. That was back in my wandering days when i never stayed @ the same address more than 2 yrs . . . :-)
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Yep it would describe my house, cold in winter hot in summer and there is little other season here! We get about 10 min of spring and fall and i think they occur in the middle of the night.
Speaking of middle of the night, Zamma awakened me all in a dither, my foggy brain was thinking did i not put water in the moat around her food dish (ant protecttion) did i not pick up her wet food? A small nightmare of a huge ant swarm in the kitchen filled my mind...it's happened...well morning would be soon enough i figured.
Morning arrived and in the half light i could see some unidentifiable object on the floor by the bed. Gray furry boxy, otherworldly what the heck? i touched it and it moved. Ah a bat so soft, got a towel and wrapped it up, took it outside and helped it stretch its wings. Poor baby hobbled away a few feet. i wet back for some footwear and the fellow had disappeared. Hope he's okay.
aahh, cat presents . . . and they are so pleased with themselves when they leave their little offerings! Nothing quite like stepping on one w/bare feet either . . . :-)
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