Three Years Later

Has it really been three years since I last posted?  Since we moved in, things are progressing a little slowly.  Right now we are working on replacing the deck, which as of this writing is still a work in progress.

But let’s go back.

2014

We were pretty much done with working on the interior of the house after June, 2014.  We had moved in and were fairly comfortable. So, we mostly spent the summer in Lake Tahoe, like we normally do.

During that time, we placed our other house on the market.  In July, there was a major fire in the area of that home and insurance companies quit selling homeowners insurance policies in the area.  Our house became unsellable because no bank will lend money without homeowners insurance, especially if that house is located in the forest.

We couldn’t really afford to sink anymore money into our Mid Mod because we were trying to maintain two homes.

So…we waited.

The fire went on for several months, but by November things had begun to settle down and in late November we got an offer…which fell thru 30 days later.

The result is no more work was done on our Mid Mod.

2015

By late spring we had another offer on the house, which we accepted.  Thirty days later, the buyers backed out of the deal with no real explanation. We couldn’t really work on the landscape, but I enjoyed seeing some of the flowers my mom had planted so many years ago, which included bulbs, grape hyacinth, daffodils, iris, etc.

I hung up a hummingbird feeder outside my office window.  And, we waited…

We celebrated birthdays and Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.

We went to Lake Tahoe for the summer.  The California drought was in full force, so there wasn’t much snow or water in the local streams and lakes…even in Mid May when normally the snow would be melting and the waterfalls would be blasting with water.

One of the upsides of the drought (if there was any upside) was the amazing amount of wildflowers that bloomed along the lake shore where it was normally covered by water.

And we waited.  The first year anniversary of placing the house on the market passed.  And we waited.

I had never seen Lake Tahoe’s water level so low.  I’m sure it has happened many times before in it’s long history, but I had never experienced it.  The photo below is a boat house located along the lake shore.  Normally, the water would be about 1 foot from the bottom of the boat house.  During the summer of 2015, we had to walk a long ways past the boat house to get to the lake.

We waited for our house to sell, and Northern California waited for rains to come in the winter.

Fall came.  The rain did not.  And we all waited.

My beloved companion, Obie T. Dogg, passed away. He is still sorely missed.

Finally, in October 2015, our house sold and nobody backed out of the deal.  We hadn’t done a lick of work on our Mid Mod and we probably wouldn’t be able to do anything until 2016.

We were able to take a trip up the California Coastline from Los Angeles to Monterey.  We were no longer waiting to continue work on our Mid Mod.In late November, 2015, we finally installed blinds in all the windows.  We had been living with sheets and makeshift curtains over the windows up to this time.  The new blinds really made a huge difference in the temperature inside and the look of the home, both inside and out.

2016

Finally, we began to gather our resources and find a contractor who could do the exterior work that so badly needed to be done.

We found a great contractor in May and he had many ideas to upgrade the house.  One of the things he suggested is that we build out a trash cubby inside the carport for the bigger trash cans we use now.  Back in the 60’s, when this house was built, my parents made sure there was a trash cubby for two cans, but those cans were much smaller and shorter, so the new cans would not fit.  Plus, we now have a can for green waste and for recyclables.

Our contractor, Tom Turnbull, planning the new cubby.

Laying the foundation for the cubby.  This is the back side of the carport.  The gray fencing will be removed and the new cubby will be built next to the storage unit already there.

I’d been meaning to clean this out anyway.  The cubby will go behind all this stuff.

Finished except for the painting.  Neat and tidy.

And now the outside matches the rest of the house.

First item on the list:  Check.

To be continued.