A Knock On The Door

This morning at about 10am there was a knock at our front door. My husband has a horrible cold but I have this policy about not answering the door if I don't know who is on the other side. So, he got the job of answering. It ended up being the second owner of our house standing on the other side of the door! She wanted to know if she could come back later today with her family to see the house. This is the lady who happened to be very good friends with my mother's best friend and we have emailed about the house several times. I had not heard from her in quite some time. So, we set an appointment for 2pm when they returned.

At 2pm the owner showed up with her daughter, husband, granddaughter-in-law and grandson. It was so interesting to hear what they had to say about the house. They seemed to like the things we had done to it. I am going to type some of the things they told us about the house so that I don't forget. We started in the living room. She said when they moved in, the living room floor had just been carpeted with wool carpet for the sale of the house. We speculate this may have been the same carpet that was in the house when we moved in. She said the living room windows had white sheer panels when they lived there. We think they were the same ones on the windows when we moved in. They also told us they used the fireplace. We were told by the inspector that he thought there was no liner in the fireplace and we shouldn't use it until we know for sure. We haven't had it inspected by a chimney sweep yet but we suspect it does have a liner!

The kitchen was still terrazzo when they moved in but they covered it in linoleum. She thought the kitchen cabinets were white when they moved in and they had been painted due to damage. I was told that the cabinet that divides the living room and kitchen was moved further into the kitchen by them because they thought it went too far into the living room. She said the kitchen had a gourmet freezer/ fridge that was very large and had wood surrounding it. It was not very efficient and when it broke they couldn't find anyone to fix it so they replaced it. We think that was the original fridge for the house. She said it was very tall and flush with the kitchen cabinets. That is what I had speculated. The original owners had a laundry off the kitchen with a washer/ dryer all in one unit. That was removed and the laundry was added in the basement by these people.

The hallway leading to the family room.
The laundry room is on the left. The laundry
room and door leading into the family room
were not always here.

The pink and blueish/green carpet that was in the two smaller bedrooms when we moved in sounds like it was here when these people lived here. The pink was added by them. One bedroom has funny marks in the floor and ceiling right above and below each other. (I have been meaning to do a post about these to see if anyone knows what they are.) All I can think is that some kind of tension unit was in this spot. Maybe a lamp or a shelf. They said they don't remember having anything like this. I had suspected these were the owners who put the wallpaper in both of the bathrooms but they said they did not. The basement bathroom has tile on the floor that was also in the entry way. They said they don't remember this tile. They think the basement hallway and bathroom had carpet when they lived there.

This is the same floor covered in white splotches
at the "floor problems" link  below.

They used our guest room as a den which is also what I think the original owners used it for. The biggest surprise of their visit was learning about the rest of the basement. The rest of the basement had originally been a dog kennel. I know these people had removed the dog kennel. So, I assumed they had also refinished the basement and turned it into the laundry room and family room. But, they were not the ones who refinished the basement. They left it unfinished with a cement floor. What is now the laundry room and family room were all one big room. At one time the entire basement had a long hall that went from one end to a door that went outside. They said that hall was still there when they lived in the house. This was a very big surprise to us.

When you walk in the family room this divider is in front of you.
We assume it's there as support instead  of the original wall. You
can see the door to the carport past this divider.

I haven't included many pictures of the basement. That is where a large part of our floor problems happened. (Remember the story about the floors that got stained purple on accident?) I figure it is about time to post some photos of the basement. I'm sorry I didn't take them in the day when there was more light. We are just about moved in down there. For those of you wondering, our other house still has not sold!! So, we aren't completely moved into this house. We still have furniture at the other house. We do have an offer on the other house. It is supposed to close on June 24th. Hopefully everything will go through without any hitches. We are now in the process of moving the last of our furniture to the new house.

This is the divider from the opposite side.
The right side of this divider was where there
was a wall that ran the length of the family room
and created a hallway.

At our old house we had a lot of built in shelving in our family room. We were wondering how we were going to make up for all of that lost space. This past winter we got a shelving unit for the family room that comes in two pieces. They are supposed to be stacked on top of each other but we separated them. One unit is being used as an entertainment center. The other unit is being used as shelving for books. The unit was originally a beverage rack. I will have more photos soon of our guest bedroom. It has also been neglected in my photos. A new bedspread comes this week and we should be about done with that room. We finally had our front yard repaired after the new sewer line. So, be watching for more landscaping photos. We also have some new patio furniture.

It is our hope to paint the exterior of the house this summer. Choosing colors is not fun!! I wish someone could just tell me what will look great.

More to come soon!

This is the new storage unit we got in the winter. The piece on the left is actually supposed to stack on top of the piece
on the right. The top of the piece on the right is actually from our old house. My cousin built it to serve the same
purpose it serves now on top of a built in shelving unit where our TV sat. The two pieces on the right are not attached.

Where Do We Stand?

It has been a while since I have written a blog. I need to do a little update on where we stand right now. I haven't blogged because not a lot has happened since my last post. We have basically been trying to recover financially from the expense of all the work we did last winter. We also still have the financial obligations that come with still owning our old house. On top of those things I am feeling a bit poor due to the number of shoes I have purchased over the past year. For about a year now I have had very painful bursitis in both of my feet. (I think all of the cement floors in this house could be exacerbating the issue.) I have really struggled with finding comfortable shoes.  I would have much rather put the money I have spent on shoes into a new house project.

We were considering having the house painted this past summer. But, we did not get the roof damage I posted about here fixed until this past summer. We called in October of 2013 about getting the roof fixed and it took close to a year to finally get it repaired. The leak from the roof caused a lot of damage to the door frame of the storage shed in the carport. So, there was no point in painting until the roof was repaired. By the time the roof was fixed the weather wasn't very conducive to painting. The painting will most likely be next summer's project. We have no plans to make any drastic change to the color of the house. We just want to freshen it up.

We also have not had the yard and sidewalk repaired after putting in the new sewer line. We had to wait to let the ground settle. It has now settled and doesn't look quite as much like a giant mole went through our yard. Since the weather is cold this is most likely something that will be taken care of when the weather warms up. We would also like to eventually have some landscaping done to the yard. We are not planning to make any major changes but all of the bushes are very old (maybe even original). They have gotten very woody without having much green. We would like to freshen them up. There were also a few trees that were lost in the yard during large storms. There are some really key spots where trees are missing that we would like to have replaced. We also need to add some rock around the house to protect it from standing water.

Inside we still need to get a new dishwasher. Ours is really ugly and doesn't do the greatest job but it is limping along for now. Eventually we would like to get a stainless steel one to match the rest of the kitchen. We need to put new ceiling tiles in the family room (former dog kennel). The tiles that were there were sagging and didn't look very nice. Then when the toilet flooded last year some of the tiles got water damage. We also have yet to tackle the pink and blue bathroom. We finally have furniture in the guest bedroom. I will make a post about that later. Our family room is without a TV which is still at the other house. We need to eventually paint the laundry room. This isn't a pressing issue but when they stained the floor they got one large splash of stain on the laundry room wall which kind of annoys me. We also need to eventually get a new mailbox. Ours has an issue with collecting water. I will have to do a post about mailboxes at some point. I have found a cool one that I want.

As you can see there has not been a lot of action here so no new photos. Oh yes! I forgot to tell you that we got the door on the indoor kitchen grill repaired. It is now in great shape. Thank you to my wonderful cousin for taking care of that for us. I forgot to add the fireplace to our list of to dos. My husband would kill me if I forget to list it because I think it is at the top of his list! When we had the house inspected we were told they didn't think our fireplace was lined. Apparently not having a lined fireplace is extremely dangerous even though the fireplace has been used in the past. We need to have it inspected by an expert (along with the chimney to the kitchen grill) and then decide how we will proceed if it is not lined. There is a pretty good chance we will turn it into a gas fireplace.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We are having 20 people here for Thanksgiving tomorrow so we have been trying to get all of the finishing touches on the house before then. We still have lots of stuff at the old house to "stage" it for a showing. So, things aren't quite like we would want. Most of the walls have nothing on them. We have no coffee tables in the living room. And a lot of our stuff that makes our house seem like ours like lamps, books, pottery etc. is still at the other house. I wish we had our kitchen painted but that was not a part of the plan. We decided to wait a while on painting the kitchen and bathrooms. We have taken care of some other things lately.

We decided we wanted to get 6 stools for the built in table that divides the kitchen and dining room. I liked the idea of stools because they could be completely slid under the table and out of the way. We had been looking for a while for vintage stools. But, it is hard to find them as short as we need and even harder to find six. So, I settled on 6 stools at Bed, Bath and Beyond. I found them a few months ago and decided I would hold out as long as possible to see if anything else I liked better came along. With Thanksgiving around the corner I had to bite the bullet and order them because we need the seats. Then a week or so later I saw the exact stools for $25 less and I liked the color of the wood better. The stools I bought are darker wood than I would like (and darker than our other furniture.) but after we refinish the walls this winter and they are darker maybe the stools won't stand out as much to me. We also finally reupholstered the dining room chairs.

Almost ready for Thanksgiving. You can see the new upholstery and one of the new stools.

One of the first things that really stood out to me when we looked at this house was a wall sconce in the downstairs hallway. It seemed so out of style for this house. I'm sure it was put in when the dog kennels were removed and the basement was remodeled. I finally changed it a couple of nights ago to something more modern and the style of the house. I tried to include some photos but taking a picture of a light is quite challenging I discovered!

This is what the old light looked like in the hallway.

The new light turned off (much easier to take a picture of)

The new light turned on

I think I have already talked about accepting our pink and blue bathrooms for what they are right now. I decided we would decorate with vintage ads for pink and blue bathrooms. I really wanted to have these up for Thanksgiving so maybe people would see what we see in our bathroom.  So, this afternoon we spent some time getting photos of old ads printed, buying frames, mattes etc. One of the ads is for two bathrooms (kind of like ours) and it is being advertised with twins. I thought that was really cute. Another one of the ads has a picture of blue prints in it and it is about designing a bathroom divided into compartments with a curtain on tracks (we have pocket doors on tracks) so that 4 people in one family can use that bathroom at the same time. It is much the same idea as our bathroom. I love that the blue prints indicate that YES someone did at one time actually plan this pink and blue bathroom with intention. I have included some photos of the ads below. I will take pics of them on the bathroom walls soon.

This is the ad for two bathrooms with the twins. It is in the master bathroom.

This is the ad with the blue prints. It is in the second bathroom.

This is also in the second bathroom.

This is in the master bathroom.

 Another thing that we noticed immediately when we looked at the house was that the refrigerator just didn't fit in the kitchen well. It seemed like it was the first thing you saw when you walked in and it stuck out way into the middle of the room. As most people know refrigerators are much larger these days than they once were. So, this apparently was the problem. We were told that at one time the house had a "gourmet" fridge and the second owners put in a "normal" one. I am very curious what a "gourmet" fridge is and what it looked like. We discovered that in order to solve our fridge issue what we needed was a counter depth fridge. If you are not familiar with this concept, it is a fridge that sits flush with the counter top (which most modern fridges don't) and they are about triple the price (or more) of a regular fridge. So, you have to pay more for less space!

We had no plans to buy a fridge right away. But, we happened to be at Home Depot and my husband was bored waiting in line and started looking at a black Friday sale ad. (Apparently at Home Depot and Lowes black Friday takes place all month.) They had an insanely good sale going on for a counter depth fridge that was actually a name brand. The cheapest price up until now I had been able to find on one was double this sale price for a brand I had never heard of. So, we decided we better take it while we could get it. We were a bit bummed out to find out they wouldn't deliver it until after Thanksgiving. Then the next day we were at Lowes. I don't remember why but we have replaced a few light switches lately so that could have been the reason. Lowes had the exact same sale (well actually $1 more) and they could deliver tomorrow. Woo hoo! We cancelled the sale with Home Depot and got our fridge from Lowes. It now has an 18 pound turkey in it! Happy Thanksgiving!

I don't think this photo shows off how great it looks!

Getting To The Bottom Of Things

Yesterday, the flooring people finally began on the floors in the house. I decided to stop by at about 3PM and see what was going on. The entryway tile was pulled up and the terrazzo was looking good on the main floor. All of the upstairs carpet was gone. The cork up there looked good. It was very worn but I'm sure when they sand it, it will look good. There was a gap between the cork and both bathroom thresholds. I'm sure it can be filled in or covered with some kind of transition strip. I just hope the floor people will take care of it so that we don't have to. There is a corner broken out of just one of the cork tiles in the master bedroom. Hopefully, they plan on filling that also. So, upstairs and and the main floor are looking good. Though we haven't seen the kitchen yet. The top layer of the linoleum is gone but the paper backing is still stuck to the floor. There was only one layer which was a good thing. They are going to use a chemical to remove the paper and doesn't sound like they are expecting any problems with that.

This is the pile of carpet, padding and tiles under the carport that have been removed from the house.

The basement is another story. The carpet has been pulled out of the basement den and the cork has water damage which we were expecting. The plan is to remove that cork but it hasn't happened yet. All of the tile in the basement hallway has been removed except right at the bottom of the steps. There is gross, gross, gross glue coating the floor completely where the tile was. You can't even see the cement. This glue was the biggest concern the flooring people had. So, hopefully it comes up fairly easily with their chemicals and other magic tricks.

The family room has 5 (I believe) spots on the floor where the dog kennel fencing was. It looks worse than I expected. There was one exposed dog kennel spot in the laundry room and it isn't bad. They already told me it wouldn't be a problem. I was hoping the spots in the family room would be the same. I haven't been able to look at the spots in the family room close up because the floor is too yucky to walk across. I could see it through the back window though. There are big white circular spots on the floor. It looks almost like paint but we think it is actually cement that was used to fill in holes were the dog kennel fence posts were. Maybe just a different color than the rest of the cement. So, again I hope the flooring people can work some magic because right now it is a pretty big mess.

The circles in the family room floor taken through the back window while standing outside. There are 2 more circles not in the picture. The dark strip at the top of the picture is glue from tile against the back wall. That strip used to be tiled hallway

 We are not sure what we are going to do with the steps right now. They are covered just on the top with some kind of linoleum. It actually looks very nice and we don't mind it. It could use buffing or whatever they do to make that stuff look shiny and new. One of the workers recommended getting oak stair treads to replace the tops of the steps since there is plywood under the linoleum (we think). I am supposed to get a call from the "boss" to discuss the steps. Hopefully they can help us decide what would be best. Speaking of the workers. They were these young boys who loved our house! They were totally intrigued by all of the weird little gadgets it has.

The steps with linoleum on them. The right corner of the bottom step is the only damage because the flooring people pulled on it to see what it was and what was underneath. There are still tack strips down and you can see the entry way tile to the right which has now been removed along with the tack strips.

Owner Number Two

This week I received an email from the second owners of the house! We will be owners number four. So, I have now had communication with every family that has lived in the house! It turns out that the second family to live there was very close friends with the family we grew up next to until I was in the fourth grade. The old neighbors are still close friends of our family. When they heard about the house we will be buying they contacted the second owners who they still keep in touch with even though they have moved from our town. Our friends had shared this blog with the previous owners and then they contacted me.

Owners number two lived in the house for only 6 years. They seem to be the ones who made some of the more obvious changes to the house. They said, "We did not cover the terrazzo floors in the kitchen but remember that the terrazzo was damaged in front of the double ovens - perhaps by a spill of some sort.  The rest of the house was carpeted though.  The great room was newly carpeted when we bought it and the rest of the house had wool carpet from the original owner.  We removed all of the indoor kennels and two of the outdoor kennels. The outside of the house had been painted (not stained) a redwood color before we bought it. We then painted it brown. The small room off the kitchen contained a washer / dryer unit. We removed it and put a washer and a dryer in the basement.  I used the small desk for a sewing machine. The kitchen had a "gourmet" refrigerator and freezer (two separate units built in). We removed those units and replaced them with a "normal" refrigerator / freezer."

We will be very relieved to see what the condition of the floors are under the carpet. Hopefully the stain mentioned can be sanded down. I also started thinking that there might be flaws in the basement concrete where the kennels once were. We were at the house the other day and noticed for the first time there are the remnants of old fencing posts from the kennels in the patio concrete. Again, hopefully anything like that inside the house can be ground down or filled in with new cement. I took some photos of those places in the concrete were the posts used to be and the places in the brick where the old outline of the doggy doors can be seen.

If you look closely you can see the outline of the three doggy doors in the brick. One is behind the pile of stuff. One is directly under the middle of the window and the last is to the right of the water spigot. We believe the window was added when the kennels were removed but we are not sure. It is definitely a newer window than the others.

You can see at the edge of the patio, next to the cracks, a circle that is the remains of a metal post from the kennels. There are several of them along the edge of the patio. I am wondering if there are more of these inside under the carpet. Or, maybe the kennels inside had walls instead of fencing. Another mystery!

The patio- You can see three circles from old fencing along the edge of the patio and you can see the doggy door marks in the brick.

We also decided that there were definitely trees that were lost in the big storm four years ago. The fence in the back has been damaged by a tree. Someone told us this but I can't remember who. It was very obviously crushed by a tree falling right on top of it. It was obviously a large tree. You can tell right where the tree used to be by the way the ground slopes, the grass grows and where some ornamental rocks are placed in the area. Yet, there is no stump to be seen. The owners must have had all of the stumps removed after the storm. We have also been told that so many trees were lost the day of the storm because the ground was so wet from a previous storm the night before. All of the trees came over with large root balls still attached. It would make sense that a tree in the spot fell since it is a low spot where water would collect. We have talked about planting another tree in the same spot.

In this photo you can see where the fence is leaning next to the gate. It has been crushed and is no longer attached. We think there was a large tree in front of the rocks in the sloped area that fell on the fence.

In The News

I have been bombarded with informative emails from the woman who grew up in the house. It turns out that UPI ran stories (as in more than one!) on the house when it was built. She said, "I don't know how many towns carried the stories, but we have copies of a few." She sent me photos of some of the news stories. Some of them are easier to read than others. I plan to eventually try seeing if I can track down any of the stories on my own but I haven't had time yet.

Reading these articles was another shocker. The house was built for the dogs!! I knew there was a reason I was so intrigued by the dog kennel and had to get more information. The intercom was for the dogs too! How ingenious! I bet some of you wish your neighbors had an intercom system to keep their dogs quiet with.  And, Wow! They were show dogs! This all started with me thinking some cute little poodle pets lived in the house. I have been able to read the clearer articles by dragging them to my desktop and then opening the photo and zooming in on it.

The Sister

The man forwarded my emails to his sister who was a wealth of information! She told us that the shelving units on the walls in two of the bedrooms and the den are System Cado. These are Scandinavian designed highly collectible floating wall units. Some of these wall units have metal brackets but these have more desirable wooden brackets.

This is the unit in one of the bedrooms. The desk at the left of the picture is NOT a part of the unit. It was left by the owners and will be moved.

The top of the unit in the above picture. This is the part above the desk.

This is the other top corner of the above unit.

This is the shelving system in the den.

This is part of the shelving unit in the other bedroom.

The last time we were at the house we noticed one of the shelving units was actually not part of the shelving system at all. It was a speaker! We couldn't figure out what in the heck it was for. The woman finally cleared up that mystery and told us that her parents got new speakers and decided to use this one as a shelf in her bedroom. It is STILL there over 40 years later. It is the coolest idea ever and doesn't look like any speaker I have ever seen. Old speakers were so much prettier than the ones we have today. I think we will continue to use it as a shelf!

Speaker shelf

I like to sew and had wondered where the lady of the house would put her sewing machine in 1960.  I know many women did their own sewing back then. There was a master bedroom, one bedroom for each child. A den which I feel certain was the husband's office. A very nice living room which surely was no place for a sewing machine. There definitely would not have been a sewing machine in the bathrooms, kitchen or dog kennel! I came to the conclusion that if the lady had enough money to have a custom built house she could have someone else do her sewing for her.

I forgot about one room! There is a butler's kitchen or prep kitchen next to the kitchen. It is a small room like a pantry with some counter space and kitchen sink. A place to prep your meal without dirtying your large kitchen. On the plans it is listed as a laundry room. The laundry is currently in the basement. The woman confirmed that the prep kitchen used to be the laundry room. There is a little "desk" in there with a telephone jack that looks like the perfect place to sit and pay your bills. She said that little "desk" was for a sewing machine! I told her my husband is the cook and I don't think he would be very excited if I told him that my sewing machine was going to be in his kitchen! This all brought about a new mystery. What did the current laundry room used to be?? It is the only unaccounted for space. It is next to the space that used to be the dog kennels but I don't think it was part of the dog kennel though it is possible.

The little desk in the prep kitchen that was made for a sewing machine.

3-2-1 Contact!

Last weekend we had dinner with my parents for my brother's birthday. I realized that the first year my dad taught at our high school would have been the freshman year of high school for the boy who grew up in our house. My parents just happen to have the yearbook because it was given to my dad as retirement gift since it was from his first year of teaching. I got it and found a photo of the boy. I now know what all of the original owners look like except the father. While we were at my parents house I finally received an email from the man who lived in the house!! We exchanged some information and it turns out that my father was his high school history teacher! He was in town last year and drove by to see the house. The owners were in the yard and he was able to talk to them. They confirmed they were the third owners of the house. I had started wondering the night of the bike ride if the house was originally stained wood instead of the current brown paint with yellowish white trim. He confirmed that it was redwood stained with aqua/ blueish trim!!! I would have NEVER guessed and have been attempting to imagine it.

I finally got the scoop on the kennels! He said, "There were 3 dog runs going in and out of the kennel room. There were 3 fenced in areas inside leading to 3 fenced in areas outside. The back yard was fenced in. We had doberman pinschers and they pretty much had the run of the place." DOBERMAN??? Here I was imagining cute little poodles. And THREE? Wow! Those must have been some dogs to get that kind of treatment.

I also started wondering if the white kitchen cabinets were at one time natural wood to match the paneling. The kitchen is open to the living room and it seems odd that the kitchen would have been white but the living room was all natural wood. He confirmed that the kitchen cabinets were not white but wood. I think we will eventually try to strip the cabinets and have them stained to match the living room again. The walls in the living room have faded tremendously due to the amount of windows. In fact they have faded so much that my husband thought someone must have changed their mind and not used redwood in the living room like the plans indicate. After we removed some wall hangings and saw where an old thermostat used to be we realized it really WAS redwood. Hopefully we can eventually have the living room and kitchen cabinets re-stained at the same time. Then maybe they will be good for another 50 years!

White cabinets in the kitchen

All of the windows in the living room have faded the redwood paneling.

A Bike Ride

My husband and I love where we live right now because it is in a nice neighborhood within walking distance from the university, the campus lake, a small shopping center, the post office, several restaurants, a park and much more. The new house is fairly close to all of the same things but it is on the other side of a very busy four lane highway. About a week ago we decided to take a bike ride and "practice" how to get from the new house, across the highway and to some of the places we would like to be able to go. We have to practice because I am a scaredy cat! I now know I am completely justified. My husband road his bike to work yesterday. While he was stopped at a stop sign a car ran a stop sign and hit him! The car didn't even stop and now my husband is in bed with a cracked rib. The owners have moved from the house so we rode our bikes there and walked around the yard a bit before heading back. In the back yard, along the back wall of what is now the family room I noticed three squares in the brick. The squares were slightly off from the rest of the brick. It was obvious that someone had filled in three square holes with new brick. THREE DOGGY DOORS!! I was so excited I figured out part of the mystery of the dog kennel. It was where the family room is now. But, THREE doggy doors?? And, how exactly was it set up. Was the WHOLE family room a dog kennel? Surely not! More questions! I wish I would have taken a picture of the brick where the doggy doors were but I forgot. My mother also told me that she told her friend Sandy about the house we are going to buy. Sandy said her friends Jim and Judy lived there in the late 70's and early 80's. I remember Jim and Judy from when I was a kid. They eventually moved away from our town. It looks like now there were at least three owners of the house but from what I know I don't think Jim and Judy lived there very long. I think the original owners lived there about 18 years. I believe Jim and Judy lived there about 6 or 7 years and I think the people we are buying it from lived there almost 30 years.

This is the family room that used to be a dog kennel. The doggy doors where under the windows to the left.

Intermission

This is where the story starts getting really good. But, before I get to the good stuff I have to tell a little bit more about the house and post some photos. The house has an intercom system! It also includes a radio. Our inspector said it doesn't work but I have read stories about people who have been able to fix them very easily or even just had to let them warm up for a while and they cranked right up. Eventually we would like to try fixing it or replacing it with a new version.

Control center for the intercom system

Intercom at the front door

There is a charcoal grill in the kitchen, a built in mix-master in the kitchen, a warming drawer under the stove, and a funny little outlet to plug in a special griddle that goes with it.

The charcoal grill- We will need have to fix the latch so that it doesn't need a piece of string to hold it shut.

The Mix-Master

The warming tray under the oven

The strange outlet for the griddle

The griddle

At this point you might be asking yourself what the heck a Mix-Master is. Well, we didn't even notice the thing the first two times we went to the house. When we finally did see it we had NO clue what it was. It was our friendly home inspector who enlightened us. It is a motor built into your counter with many different attachments like mixers, choppers, food processors etc. Basically, it's a built in Kitchen Aid. It sounds really cool to me and apparently you can still get them. The new ones look almost exactly like the old ones. The inspector says ours doesn't work. I would eventually like to try to get it working or replace it with the new version.

The house also has a bathroom scale that folds out of the wall!! According to Retro Renovation these things are one of the three most collectible vintage bathroom accessories. We also have the "concealed lavatory" discussed on that site as well as the relaxation unit which can be seen next to the toilet in the photo below. I would like to attempt getting the foot prints off the scale. Speaking of the bathroom. We still have not discussed the pink and blue bathroom issue. That is still coming.

Master bathroom scale

I like to joke that the house was built for the Jetsons. It appears that most of the Jetson type attributes were made by a company called NuTone which still exists today. Their website says they are the leader in Central Vacuum systems. I have a feeling there are still some other little nifty things we haven't yet discovered in this house. And, there are a few that are so neat I am going to save them for their own post.

I will mention the dog kennel right now. Yes, I did say dog kennel. As I said, the house was inspected and got an excellent report. We were told the house was built and maintained in a top notch quality manner and building with the same supplies today would put the cost through the roof. While the inspector was doing his thing I decided to look at the plans again. I can only look at them for a short period of time because they are very musty. I'm not sure why. They are currently stored in a kitchen cupboard but at some point they must have been somewhere else. The musty smell makes me feel sick. (This is part of the reason we have been coming across information in small bits and pieces.) On inspection day I noticed there was a dog kennel on the plans. Somewhere in the basement there was a dog kennel. Where?? Why?? What kind of dog gets their own indoor kennel? A cute little spoiled poodle? What was it's name? When did it live? So many questions and no answers! Back to my quest. I HAD to talk to the original owners of this house!