Outbuildings are a sorry lot. They generally are “creatively” constructed, receive the least maintenance attention, and often undergo heavy use. There are countless garages throughout Rochester that were built on a shoe-string budget 100 years ago that gently lean or twist in the direction of the prevailing winds or sink toward an improperly routed downspout. Many have not seen a coat of paint in decades, some have half-rotten vehicle doors, while others have boarded up windows. Back when we were house shopping, nearly every house in our budget had a garage that was afflicted by one if not many of these conditions. Continue reading
Exterior
Taming Our Thorny, Overgrown, and Bland Wilds
We have accomplished some of the things from our list of juggling, but have done a really really poor job of keeping you all up to date. If you have seen our instagram photos you probably know about our bathroom rehab, garage progress (new roof going on last week), and our newest fuzziest addition to the family, but this post is about our landscaping progress thus far.
I Was Never Very Good at Juggling
A number of small projects were begun over the past several months. Some were intentional, and others were forced upon us by fate. I told myself that we would be much further along with these projects by now…much like I was supposed to have already begun taking my architectural licensing exams. Here’s a list of the loose ends yet to be tied: Continue reading
Seasonal Style without the Seasonal Snow
As I write its 65 degrees outside. Spring bulbs and forsythia have begun to emerge for a premature bloom. Rochester has received a whopping 1.2 inches of snow so far this year…and that happened on one night over a month ago. Last year at Christmas there was over a foot of snow on the ground and temperatures were in the single digits…so needless to say “When you’re still waiting for the snow to fall, It doesn’t really feel like Christmas at all.”
Last year I had mainly focused on just getting used to living on my own as Kit was still living outside of Rochester. We had got a bunch of electric candle lights for the windows, but I had to go to my parent’s house to enjoy any decorations beyond that. Continue reading
The Big…and Colorful…Transformation
I was on a ladder stripping paint until 9am the morning the painters arrived. I was also on a ladder stripping paint and installing reconstructed woodwork the following day before the painters had finished their prep work and priming. To say that we ran up and until the last-minute is a bit of an understatement. You may remember that the front of the house used to look like this on the day we bought it:
My Perfect Little Money Pit 