It started with a piece of paper….

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, closing in on a year, but this year we’ve been busy. This year we decided one of two things…either we were going to move, or we were going to add-on to the house. We started by looking at a really cool farm house, but the interest rates were simply way too high to go the route of buying – especially something as big as the farm house with the property and out buildings that it had. So for now, we opted to go the route of adding on. Our house was built in 1967 – it’s a single story ranch, and only has 1.5 baths. With 3 of us in the house, 1.5 baths is starting to be too little, especially with Riley getting older. What we needed was a master bath suite – and it all started with a piece of paper.

Plans for addition
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Shed Adventures

At the end of August, a very large storm went through the area. It ended up causing a lot of damage in the surrounding area, including structural damage and downed power line and poles. As it turns out, a tornado was also in the area and cause lots of damage, including loss of life, along the highway.

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A roof over our head…sorta

In 2018 we re-sided the house. As part of that, we added a ledger board to the back of the house – the future home for the deck that would be built in 2019. When we got around to building the deck, I had the idea of building one without a railing. Because the deck was going to be relatively small (essentially 12’x12′), I didn’t want it to feel claustrophobic with a railing. On top of that, because we have such a large expansive back yard, I wanted the deck to feel open – one of the main reasons I went with 10′ wide steps. It took us a while to get actual patio furniture, something we did this year (2022), but even without the furniture, we’ve gotten a lot of use from the deck. The biggest problem however has been the sun.

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It is the year 2022 – A check-in

Wow, it’s been a while since my last blog entry. A lot has happened since the last one…let’s try to cover some of that.

Overhauling the house flooring

When I purchased this house back in 2016, I knew the flooring was eventually going to have to go. Initial pictures of the house when i found the listing showed that it had a somewhat dark brown stained hardwood flooring. When I toured the house, the current homeowner was trying to update it a bit, and decided to sand the flooring and overhaul it themselves with black stain. Upon taking ownership of the house, I literally had a weekend to seal it – the previous homeowner didn’t even get to that. In the end, its was a black hardwood floor….which would have looked OK if it had been done right, it wasn’t. So because of that, I knew I would eventually change out the flooring, and over the spring and summer of last year, I did just that. Ripped out the old and put down the new. I have a lot of photos of the process, but I’ll include just a few here.

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Almost like new…

Prior to settling on the idea of buying a house, I looked at building a house. The problem was that I didn’t have the necessary amount of money needed as a down payment (40% of the cost) to obtain a building loan. At that time though, whatever the house ended up being, I had the idea of wanting the house to be green with white trim. When I finally settled on the idea of buying a house, especially one with painted siding, I knew at some point I was going to be replacing it…and I still wanted to go with the original idea I had for colors.

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Summer Project

Summer is upon us (well, ok, really we still have a few more days) and the housing projects are getting underway (to be fair, they haven’t really stopped)! Last summer the house got a new roof, and this summer it’s getting new siding.

I left work early on Friday to meet the delivery guy. Good thing I got home sooner than the time-frame I gave them for delivery, because they were actually there about 10 minutes early. With the stabilizers in place, it was time to unload my order.

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