Today in both the Albany Democrat Herald and Coravallis Gazette Times, they featured an article about local blogs. The beginning of the article was actually about the people over at 1951 Ranch Redo. Congrats! We got a mention in the list of "Other Local Blogs" with an interesting quote from somewhere in our blog that I can't even remember if it was Mike or I that said it. :P
Doesn't matter where it sits man, it could even be a footnote...it's just neat that anyone would look at what we've written and go "hrmmmm....that's good readin' " because this all started to help us keep track of the things we do to this place and keep our family back east up to date and not having to call every week to make sure we're still alive! Gotta love moms!
To everyone who has found their way here from there....Welcome!
So if anyone looked at the comments in the last post, there's one there from a writer for the Albany Democrat Herald and the Corvallis Gazette Times. She said that they are doing a piece in the papers this Sunday in the Lifestyle section about blogs and they're highlighting ours and recommending it as a good read! I'll link to it if it's online and if not, I'll scan it!
How freaking awesome is that?!!?
See...*sniffle*...we've finally come of age...*sniffle*...we're on our way to being as cool as House in Progress or even Casa Decrepit!
I swear the weathermen here must be retarded. They can never get it right. This weekend was supposed to be in the mid-50's and rainy. The weather today? Sunny and 72 degrees?!?! I'm not complaining about what it turned out to be but I would have made different plans had I known it was going to be so wonderful out. It can stay like this all year round as far as I'm concerned. Currently, it's 10pm and 61 degrees! w00t!
Anyway, yesterday was migraine day for me and Mike and we got all of zilch done anywhere including cleaning up the place. Today was different though. I went and trudged around on the roof of the porch and breakfast nooks to get leaves out of the place where they meet so rain water can flow through correctly. Mike mowed the lawn which beyond needed it as you can see...
Before
After
Yep...just a little long. I also got the kitchen cleaned and the laundry done (actually still doing that). Plus I made a little video of the outside of this crazy place for everyone to cringe at:
I'm feeling a lot better about all of the work and beer and pizza and money and blood that's going to be going into this house. It's a lot easier now to stand outside and look out at the property and see what great things we can make from it.
It's nice that we have such a large space on the corner to work with and I think Tina and I have come up with some really great ideas together and independently. If we do even half of the things we talk about this is going to be an incredible place. We have enough land to make the yard beautiful and relaxing, and expect to have an awesome place to hang out in and have people over for bonfires, strange conversations and debauchery. Who would have thought to camp in the damn yard? I'm up for it! Anytime we've had friends over, the house lights up like it's hosting itself. Tina and I love the house even more when there are people in it (or outside of it), laughing and eating and having fun.
I'm looking forward to really getting into the house and seeing what's behind some of these walls. (12 layers of wallpaper!?!?) The railing and posts are going to be a lot of work, because we've got a lot of repair to do. The upstairs newell(?) post needs some love, nail removal and wood filler and needs to be reattached to the floor so it stops the wiggles. And if I recall correctly, we have a stair or two that is split and funky. I'm definitely looking forward to it though. I think those stairs may be the same pine that we found under the flooring! (.)(.)!!! W00t!
(Douglas fir my ass!)
I've also gotta say that we have made some damn good friends here in cold, wet and miserable Oregon, and for the most part have totally scored when it comes to the neighbors and place we live. If we have a project to do and it comes up in conversation we have no end of people offering their valuable time and energy for some hard, nasty work. And we've been offered the use of trucks on about 6 different occasions now, in some cases the first day or week we met a neighbor or coworker. So strange coming from the places we've been.It's made all of the nasty little surprises along the way so much less horrific than I would expect them to be. Many of our friends and neighbors "know people" and can hook us up with all kinds of necessary stuff like dirt and grass seed and inexpensive back-hoe service providers. We got more rock than Led Zepplin from a guy our neighbor referred us to for about 1/3 of what I expected it to cost. The guy who excavated the filthy sewer trough did it for $120 or so and the guy who put the gravel and dirt back after we replaced the line did it for the same. We were able to pay off the work on the sewer in fair monthly installments after they had already completed the job, with no interest or fees or crap. The people at the septic place were totally cool about it. Lots of businesses and people here are like that. I don't think we could have picked a better place to live. We just need to gather up some people that need to be here with us and it will be paradise.
Once again, it's been a long time since there's been any posting on here, but really, unless the weather is nice, there isn't a thing we can do because the ground is so wet.
This weekend we started on some little things. All the trash and plastic and bits of broken pipe were removed from the ugly zone on the side of the house. The fence was repaired in the 2 places it was open so now the dogs can go out and run themselves stupid...thank god! I picked up a metric fark-ton of poop and put it in the compost heap. We figure a.) it's old poop, b.) the compost isn't going to be used for food plants and c.) it doesn't matter what we put on plants in this place, it's like pet cemetary, nothing ever freaking dies!
Which brings me to my next point...flowers. Remember all those hours and days and weeks I spent digging the plants out of the yard so we can start this year with grass and kind of start over? Yeah? Well, they're back...not all, but quite a bit are back. I have no idea how when I dug some super huge holes around them to make sure that nothing was left, but apparently not enough. Ugh. Looks like we're going to invest in a little tractor like thing because we've got tons of dirt to shift around the yard and tons of gravel as well. Doing it by hand would take forever and it would be retardedly expensive to rent one every weekend.
This coming weekend it's supposed to rain, so we've decided to start working on the stairs...sanding. We're going to do the steps themselves first since they just have bits of paint and glue and such on them and it should be pretty quick to get them cleaned up (famous last words!). Doing the posts and such will wait, not sure of when, just not yet.
Weekend after that, it's back outside and taking on the yard a section at a time to get it prepped and cleaned up for machinery later on in the summer. I can't wait until the weather holds for a few weekends in a row. We'll get some people over at that point and start tearing down the paneling and more shingles and work our way upstairs. I want to get the paneling in the kids rooms done before they both get here for the summer so they can paint if they want to.
That's about all for now....hopefully weather will be on our side and there will be more regular posts to come.
