Fixing Up the Farmhouse, Part I

There's an old, 1980s movie, The Money Pit. It starred Shelly Long and Tom Hanks, and was about a couple who purchased an old house, sunk all their money into trying to get the house fit to live in. I never saw that movie, but I don't have to see it. I've lived it. Twice.

I'm not saying I have spent every dime I have on the 3 houses I've owned, but I've learned that buying an old house, most of the time - means buying problems you didn't realized existed. It also means buying problems that no one else sees as 'problems', other than yourself.

As much as I loved my Fair Oaks home, I mostly refused to spend $$ on it, unless whatever was wrong seemed super urgent to me. I spent a lot of $$ on that cute old 1950s home, but only to make myself happy with it, nothing done to impress the neighbors so-to-speak.

So when I bought my adorable bit of Sequim property, I was well aware there would be 'things' about the 1947 farmhouse that were not emergencies, to anyone other than myself. I was right. DAMNITALLTOHELL, right?  So here's the quick run down of where some the $$ earned from selling my Fair Oaks home of 23 years went.


WTF:  Yes, wtf, indeed. Every room in the house, and one of its closets had one of these saucer-sized thingies on it, for a total of 5 'whats-its' for the entire house.

The house inspector told me they were state-of-the-art, 1940 & 50s era, air fresheners.  The white disks tunneled through the wall, to a small vent on the house exterior. Each disk has a cord, that pulled, rotated an inner foam disk  presumably sucking in outside air, through the scented (?) filter, to refresh the inside house air. Not even one of the 5 thingies was in working order. I made an immediate mental note, "If I get this house, the fancy schmansy air fresheners will be the first to go."  True to my word, as soon as I got the house, one by one, I pried every freakn' damned disk from the walls, revealing... gaping holes.

You can see on the right, the disk holes, the and the vent on the outside house siding. You can also see the yellow fiberglass insulation inside the wall.

To remove the holes, I insulation-foam filled the vents (to stop anything from crawling into the interior walls) and stuffed the rest of the hole with fiber insulation. The last step was to just slap on a wall patch, & spackle over the hole. The spackled holes were then painted over and voila! Weird thingies GONE. Bonus: I was my own labor pool, so the total cost, to replace all five ugly thingies, was under $25.

Interior Paint:  Previous farmhouse owners decided the house required a paint job. The painting job was so 'slap dash' that nothing was taped over or covered or removed for the painting. If something was in the way, it got painted. Honestly, six year olds with ADHD  could have done a better paint job, but I digress.

I have no clue what the color previous to the gold walls was, or why a LOUD & HOT shade of... uh... 'butterscotch' was selected. I crudely referred to the paint color as 'Mariachi Gold' because it made the farmhouse look like the inside of a Mexican Restaurant (forgive my sarcasm my Hispanic brothers & sisters).

Enough whining, here is the 'We gotta sell this house' paint job pictured below. Bright enough there for you Skippy? See what I mean about it not being particularly awful to anyone but myself?  Oh, and note the white 'air freshener' disk to the right of the central window.

Living Room in Butterscotch

And below is the living room repainted in a color that doesn't make me break out in a sweat just looking at it.

Living Room repainted in a hue that soothes my soul

 The overall interior painting happened over about 3 weeks. It's lucky only the kitchen, living room and upstairs hallway needed painting, and one upstairs room only needed painting on one of its four walls. My former housemate Curt was hired on to paint the rest. The entire house feels cheerier and cooler with its newly painted interior.

Kitchen/Dining area, half way through transition from Butterscotch to 'Cameo White'

 

 

Flooring: With the house interior in soul soothing colors, next up was a larger job - flooring. I have seriously begun to miss the hardwood floors in my old Fair Oaks home. If only I could have brought them along, right? After deciding on a flooring budget, I then proceeded to blowing it 3 ways from Sunday. Oh hush! I bet you've blown up a budget yourself once or thrice.

The flooring company, did a great job... ok except for the stuff they effed up, but I'll get to that.

This entry area photo, shows both the ugly, cheap, 'dried blood' colored laminate floor, and the v. new, but - in my eyes - uggy, cheap carpeting. Yeah... I just have a thing about carpets - I hate them. And that blood red laminate made me wonder if an axe murderer ever lived here.




I informed the flooring company I would be away for a week. They told me the flooring would be done by my return. After leaving, I got a call telling me the floor materials would be delayed so nothing would be even started by my return.

So when I drove back home from California, backing into the garage I had to suddenly skid to a sudden halt - so as not to run into my toilet! The toilet was dead center in the garage because flooring was currently being installed in the downstairs bath, and overall, the flooring project for the big house was about 90% complete.  Yippy Skip... uh... well, not quite 'yippy skippy'.

The installer 'in charge' was a kid that did his own thing, instead of, you know, reading the effing instructions his bosses gave him?  

Instructions: Cottage is of the first priority, and must be completed ASAP. Rip out carpeting in front room and replace with new laminate. Leave rear of cottage (bedroom) alone. 

So, what did the millennial do? The opposite. He ripped out the back room laminate, and totally ignoring the cottage's front room. ARRRGGHHH!

So that was this topsy turvey mess I arrived at on my return from California.

The errors caused a lot of headache (for me) and as the old laminate could not be put back in. So the kid's error added to my expenses as I paid for the unasked for additional flooring, though I did not pay for the labor. Sing this to the tune of 'Bye Bye Birdie':

  ♫Bye bye Budget! Why did you have to blow?♪

All whinging aside, the flooring in both buildings is now complete and, for my tastes, beautiful.




Back at the big house, the upstairs hall, showing pre-laminate, old carpeting, and half done paint job.

The upstairs hall showing new flooring 'Seasoned Oak' (without even a hint of old dried blood) and with completed paint job .

That is nearly the whole shebang! Newly painted walls that don't make me want to crawl into a hole to digest my enchiladas, and a dirth of carpeting to suck up dust to aggravate one's allergies. Can hardly believe so much work on the new property happened so relatively quickly (considering how freakn' long it took to get the place in and out of escrow. But wait folks, more to follow!

The Piggies Have Flown

A drive north always necessitated a stop
at the red schoolhouse in Orick, CA

As most know by now, I am living in a cute and old, 1947 Farmhouse in Sequim Washington.  Moving to NW Washington was always part of a grand plan from more than a decade ago. Way back in the 1990s, my bud Barbara and I took several driving forays north from Napa, California, up into Oregon and Washington. That was back when Barb was married to Phil. He'd stay behind to care for their their pack of doggies, and Barb & I would trek north from her parent's home in Napa. 

Now, here it is more than a decade later and that plan has come into fruition. You'd better have a look out the window and let me explain why. When Barbara and I were students at UCD, if someone said something that was unlikely, one of us would go peer out of the nearest window. Then said window peerer would make a show of looking skyward, saying, "Well I don't see any pigs flying around out there..."

That was the joke. That whatever-it-was would happen when pigs fly. That was the way we kind of looked at moving north, anywhere from Crescent City to NW Washington state. We figured it would happen when pigs fly.

This past week, because all her other offers from family/friends were canceled due to CV19, I was wrangled into caravaning north with Barbara from Monterey County, CA, up to Sequim, WA. She, suffering from dire back pain (OUCH!) rendering her as mean as a kicked sack of rattlesnakes. She drove in her car with her dog. I meanwhile drove in my car with her two black cats a yowling and meowling away. Somehow we all made it north without any murders occuring.

So, by the gods, here we are. Barbara lives in the little Cottage (ADU, alternative dwelling unit) and I live in the old farm house. So stop reading this and go peek out the nearest window. You might just see a cute little piggie, winging its way through the sky. Yeah, no surprises there. Trust me - the piggies have flown.

I Have a House in Sequim, Washington!

On Friday, April 10th, I got the keys to my house! I am now the overwhelmed, and excited to be the happy homeowner of a cute 1.9 acre lot in Sequim Washington. Actually, as the property has an 'ADU' Alternate Dwelling Unit' or whatever, I have two houses in Sequim. ME! You, know, the fat kid from the Bronx, owns two homes. How the @%&# did that happen? Nevermind - it is a long & arduous tales and there are not enough hours in a day.

Here's the living room of the main house that I will live in. All butterscotch colored but soon to be painted a nice Earth Mother color.

Am pleased it already has a ceiling fan and a corner where I intend to put a wood stove

 2nd floor bedroom, with the rug that will not be there for long 

My room, showing cute little balcony (SQUEEE!)
that faces Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge. 

 The upstairs hall is going to be the first area painted. I'm thinking pale sage green.

Upstairs Hallway

Second Guest Room & its one 'Butterscotch' colored wall

This is the other bedroom on the second floor. For now I call it the 'play room' but it will double as a second guest room. The room is mostly a nice pale yellow, except for the door wall that is butterscotch and will be painted to match the pale yellow. And where does that door go?

The door goes onto this patio (SQUEEE!). The house is an old farm house, built in 1947. The patio is the top of the garage that was added to the original building. The patio faces south, and you can just kinda sorta see the Olympic mountains in the far distance. 

So it looks like it'll be a while before I get new floors in, and until I do, I'm will not send for my POD - which contains all my worldly goods, delivered. Currently I have zero furniture in the house. I bought a director's chair so I'd have something to sit on for now. I also ordered an air mattress so I have something to sleep on. Until the air-mattress arrives, I continue my stay at Ingrid's house in Port Angeles.  The woman should be put up for sainthood, not only for putting up with me for 8 months, but for all the community minded projects she undertakes. Ingrid makes Mother Teresa look like a shirker.

And see the white building to the right in the patio picture? That's my cottage! It's a rental and my friend Barbara is going to move up here and rent it from me. It is a cute 1 bedroom/1 bath with a wood stove (wah! I want a wood stove too!). It also has pretty floors, although the bedroom has a carpet. 

The interior of the 'Cottage', the front room

So my Washington adventures have begun big time. I'm still not quite caught up on my blogging but I am now blogging again in real time, and will 'back fill' what it pleases me to record. Life is good. OK, except for this STUPID pandemic. Damned CV-19 virus....