4/1/2007
We got a visit.....
The son of the original owner stopped by.
The wife and I were enjoying a relaxing Sunday afternoon yesterday. We had gardened all weekend and were pretty sore from digging.
I was working in the back room when Kim came running in and said Mr. Wenzel and his wife were at the front door.
I was very surprised to hear this as Mr and Mrs Wenzel had both died in the 80's.
She laughed and told me that is was their son. He was in town and wanted to see the house where he grew up.
We both ran out of the house and greated them with joy because we had always hoped that someone that knew the history of our home would one day stop by.
We learned a great deal from their visit. Some things that we knew were confirmed and some things we thought were corrected.
The house was built in 1929, not 1926.
It took a year and a half to build because Mr. Wenzel Sr. was very specific in how he wanted things.
The cost of construction was $6500.
The servert quarters were actually that. And, they had a bell system to summon her from her room. (that no longer exists)
Mr. Wenzel Sr. did die in the house in 1990. It's amazing that he lived there for 61 years.
Some of the finishes that we thought were original were not. Like the Lincrusta in the kitchen.
The vent hood over the stove was original.
There used to be a swimming pool in the back yard. Wish that was still there.
The big oak in the front yard has always been the same size, so it must be a really old tree.
Mr. Wenzel Sr owned the lot next door and sold it in the 50's. A ranch house was built almost on the property line. I wish he'd have not sold that lot.
Mr. Wenzel Jr. told us several stories about growing up there. How he used to sleep in the attic of the servents quarters. That the black paint in the bathroom window was there because it was his dark room. How he had a telegraph line hooked up to a neighbor down the road to send messages back and forth. How he had once taken a morter shell and packed it with gun powder and accendently blown up the fire pit. How his uncle had put his foot through the ceiling from stepping wrong in the attic. (you can still see the patch from that one)
His wife was teared up through out most of the visit.
They were very happy with how we took care of the house and were very glad that we are the caretakers.
He said that his mom and dad were smiling down on us from Heaven.
I've asked him to send us copies of any pictures of how the house looked when he was living there and I hope to be able to share those very soon.
All in all, it was a very good day.
5/8/2006
Spring has definatly sprung.
Today I added some pictures of our gardens as they look in May 2006.
I also added a new catagory for pics of our shed/servants quarters.
One day that shed will be a greenhouse. I just have to be patient and dream big enough.
2/9/2006
Well, it's been a while since I was able to get in here and update everyone on whats been happening with Kimberly and I.
We actually haven’t been doing all that much, except for waiting for spring.
A few weeks ago, we painted the masterbath with gold metallic Ralph Lauren paint. I don't have any pictures of that, but will post some soon. It turned out fantastic.
Last weekend we took all the furniture out of the master bedroom and ripped up all the carpet.
Nothing like breathing in 10 years of accumulated dust. (cough cough…hack hack)
The wood floors underneath were in pretty good condition with just a little bit of damage.
We found out that there used to be a closet in the alcove and the previous owners didn’t replace the wood floors where the framing used to be.
We plan on just putting in a built in dresser in that spot, so we won’t have to do any repairs either.
I’ve posted some new pictures in various sections so go check them out.
That’s all for now.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7/16/2005
I figured I should post something since my husband always does. I can't believe that we found the perfect house. I have been working hard to get it decorated the way we want. We still have so much to do. We went out today and priced some stone to tier off the front of our yard since no grass grows there anyway. It looks like it is going to cost around $1400.00. This project is just one of the many ideas my husband has come up with.
Thank all of you for looking at our site and signing our guest book! We will continue to post new pics as we finish new projects.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6/29/2005
9 years ago today, I married my lovely wife.
I'm very lucky that she is not a "high maintance" kind of girl.
I bought her everything she wanted for our anniversary.....1 Gallon of paint to repaint one of the bathrooms and a new nose ring.
I'm a very lucky man.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5/19/2005
Well, I'm back to doing this after a little break.
The one thing that sucks about buying a home is all the money that you have to spend on the front end. WE ARE BROKE. Well, not really, but we don't have any extra to do some of the things that are on our list.
The only things that we've been able to do on the inside are very simple little craft projects.
Kimberly took our $25 fire screen and made it look like a million bucks with a little gold leaf paint. Looks pretty good, huh?
And, we were able to finally hang the heavy Chinese print that we picked up at the local import shop. It looks like it's hanging from the picture rail, but that is an illusion. I had to use a 100 Lbs. rated picture hook on the back of the frame, and we added the tassle rope to make it look like it's hanging from the top of the picture rail.
So, since I don't really have anything new to share on our project list, I figured that I would just post some new pics of our house and plantings to update you on the growth of our gardens.
This is a pic of the HUGE Oak Tree in our front yard...
Kimberly's learning that all of the full sun plants that we over wintered won't do very well in our 95% of the time shaded back yard. Off to Home Depot we go......again.
My mom gave us this bench and Kimberly painted it with the left over black paint from our railing project.
Well, that's it for now. Hope we were able to give you some ideas for your own place.
Feel free to post in the guest book if you have any questions. I will get back to you.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3/15/2005
Man, do I love getting stuff for free.
I took 4 days this past weekend (Kimberly is on Spring Break) and we worked outside for almost the entire 4 days.
Saturday, we went to this ladies house (that we met on FreeCycle) and dug up every clump of Monkey Grass that she had. We came back with enough to line the entire front walkway.
It's going to look great when it starts to fill out this Summer.
Sunday, we went to my mom's house. She's in the process of selling and wanted us to dig out all the plants that we wanted. No use just giving them to the people that are buying her house, they'll just dig them up anyway. We got a couple of different ferns, several kinds of daylilies (my favorite), a butterfly bush, dusty miller, and 3 huge Lantanas.
Monday, Kimberly and I built a trellice to run yellow Jasmine up. I got 4 of these 6 x 2 black metal racks from work about a month ago. They were a product display and were going to be thrown out, so I scavanged them and we made a frame for them and planted up the vines.
I can't wait to see if the Jasmine does well in this spot.
Tuesday, I just sat on the couch all day and watched Star Wars (IV, V and VI). I was too tired to do much else.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3/6/2005
WOW!!! Another beautiful weekend. There's nothing better than 65 degrees and sunny on both Saturday and Sunday.
Well...there might be one thing better....and that's free stuff.
Kimberly and I are members of our local FreeCycle group. (If you don't know what FreeCycling is, then you need to check this website out. http://www.freecycle.org/ There should be a group close to you.) About a week ago, I put up a Wanted Ad for plants. Lots of people have flower gardens, but not a lot of time to work them. I asked if I could come and divide up some of their plants. Well, I got about 10 responses to this and Saturday we went to a ladies house and got all kinds of stuff. Daylilies, hostas, shrubs, a Japanese Maple...almost a truck load of free plants.
Digging the plants out is just half the job...we then had to find spots for them in our yard. All I can say is that in a couple of months, our yard is going to look great. (It's too early to take pics.)
Well, that was Saturday...Sunday turned out nice too so I had to put myself to work. The original owners had put in a rock (bolder more likely) firepit. It had gone to pot over the 80 year history of the house, so I decided to take it down. Turned out to be a lot more work than I thought it would be. I probably dug up and moved about 2 ton of rock morter and bricks. My aching back!!!!
Looks like this coming weekend is going to be nice as well. I guess I had better start stocking up on pain meds...this house is going to break me.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2/28/2005
It's just amazing what a little fresh paint, a lot of scrapping and some hard work will do for the look of your home.
Kimberly and I spent all day Saturday outside repainting the metal railings on the front of the house. It was a beautiful day to be outside.
Here's what it looked like before. (This is Kimberly scrapping the stiles of the railing)
Let me tell you, it's hard damn work scrapping paint off of every inch of about 30 foot of metal railing. Also, don't ever put paint stripper on turned stiles. I learned the hard way that getting the paint off of the curved serface of every other stile is very hard to do. But, we did it. It took us all day to strip and repaint the rails. Jet Black...they look brand new.
Since we didn't use all of the gallon that we bought, I went ahead and painted the grate over the floor furnace (now the air exchange) in the living room. (I need to start to remember to take a before picture before I start a new project.)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2/10/2005
Yeaaaaaaaa......we got a new roof.
The PO's had every chance to do this themselves, but I'm glad that they didn't. It gave us a chance to get the shingle color that we wanted.
Looks real nice, huh?
We also got new gas logs and a fireplace screen. Kimberly's parents bought the logs for us. (I've got the greatest in-laws)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2/2/2005
You gotta love having a home warranty.
We just had both toilets rebuilt and a brand new disposal installed and it only cost us $50 for $550 worth or labor and parts. (I hope my fridge/hot water heater/washer & dryer/all the ceiling fans/every electrical wire fails sometime this year.)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1/18/2005
Well, I got all of the paint off of the bathroom window glass only to discover that it was the paint that was holding the glass together. Lots of cracks. I'll have to replace both panes completly.
That's all that we did this weekend. Some weekends we do stuff, some weekends we're too damn tired.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1/18/2005
Didn't do too much this weekend.
We raked the entire backyard, which isn't that big.
I stripped paint from about a foot of molding in the guest bedroom just to see how to do it and to see what the wood looked like.
I stripped paint off a window in the bathroom. Why it was ever painted in the first place I'll never understand.
Kimberly finally got everything in the place that she thinks she wants it. (She thinks)
I just added a lot of pics to this site. Kimberly took the time to take them. We were getting tired of showing pictures with the PO's stuff still in our house. Our Pics
That's it for now.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1/12/2005
Kimberly met the neighbors yesterday and learned a little about our house. Turns out that the room off of the carport wasn't a storage room, it was servents quarters. We had been wondering why there was a sink and toilet in there. I thought that it was a good idea to have a bathroom in that room, just to keep from getting our house dirty while we were gardening. I would have never thought that anyone actually lived there.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1/6/2005
My wife is a real trooper. She rested for one day and then got up this morning and repainted the blue bedroom. It looks better green. I can't wait to go and get the queen sized bed and dresser from my moms this weekend.
After moving from an 1100 foot house to a 1600 foot house, all our stuff looks so spread out.
I priced tile for the shower and it looks like it's going to be an expensive endeavour. The Iridescent tiles that I wanted to use run about $18.00 per sq. foot. We have a 74 sq. foot shower...that comes to about $1400 just for the tile. With just having paid the closing costs on the house, we'll probably have to wait a little longer. I'm looking at other options.
These are what I want to use, but cost too much.
These may work as well, and I think they will be less expensive.
Got to go to the carpet store to do some pricing.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1/5/2005
Kimberly had a root canal yesterday, so she isn't able to do much for the next couple of days.
She's already finished with her decorating and has started on painting over the horrible colors of the PO's.
I fixed one of the toliets last night. It wasn't flushing all the way. I found an old rubber tube with some sort of flange on it wedged in sideways in the siphon jet hole at the bottom of the bowl.
1 week to fix several small things that the PO's had 4 years to do. Sheesh!!
Both of the cats and the stupid dog are loving have so much more space to run around in compaired to the 1000 square feet in our old rent house. The cats haven't had one fight yet. Stupid Dog (Max) now has a nice flat yard in which to play "catch the ball." (ballballballballballball...durrrrr) Our old yard was straight up hill and Max is just too old to be running up and down hills anymore.
Spaz
(her cat)
Bob (my cat)
Stupid Dog (Max)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
12/31/2004
What others might consider work, I find relaxing.
I spent all weekend powerwashing various parts of the house (and staying out of my wife's way). The concrete path from the street, the concrete front porch, the rock back patio, the drive path and the parking pads all got a good going over.
The previous owners (PO's) seemed to have done nothing in the 4 years that they lived in our home.
Every square inch of concrete was pitch black from years of Pecan Tree dripping.
Parts of the drive path and parking pad were covered in inches of dirt. I felt like I was on an archelogical expedition, digging up the past.
Kimberly spent the weekend putting the house in order. Making sure that everything went in its proper place. (As long as I can find my socks, she can do whatever she wants.) The house is starting to feel like home already.
This is just the first weekend for us to be in the house. It gives me hope as to what we'll be able to accomplish over the next year, let alone the decade we'll probably be in this house.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------