It Arrived!!!

We can finally live in our living room again!! All of the walls have been stripped and stained. We put a very thin molding around the ceiling. You can't even really see it. It just makes it look finished and the edges look sharper. We had new vertical blinds put up last Friday. Our awesome guy who did the walls came back and put them up for free so we wouldn't mess up his work by accidentally drilling holes in the wrong spot. Now our walls will be protected from more sun damage. The kitties can also stick their heads through and look out whenever they want. I have decided there is a lot of green in the room. I love green but we need something else. I think I will eventually make some pillows that are a different color. Maybe I will blog about pillow ideas next. I still need to do a blog on the bathroom.

Today my piano came!!!! I have been so anxious to get it here and see how it looks in the room. But, we decided to hold off until the walls were done and new blinds were up as long as our old house hadn't sold. The mess from the construction would have been very bad for the piano. We have a few little things we would still like to do in this room but there is no rush. We will most likely eventually take the ceiling fan down. We think it detracts from the fire place. We will live through all of the seasons and see for sure if we can do without it. We are under the impression the fireplace is not lined. At some point we need to have a chimney sweep look at it. If it is not lined we will look into our options. We may possibly put in a gas fireplace. I read about unlined fireplaces. It sounds like they are a very bad thing. We have a pretty low open shelf that we are going to put against the window in the open space in front of the piano. We also have four more chairs for the table. We are waiting to move them back into the room because we still have some spots where stripper got on the floor that need to be scrubbed. If we are lucky we may even get our intercom system working again!!

Before

After

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.

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.