The House that love built

This is our house as was when we bought the humble abode in the summer/fall of 2003.

This is our house today, March 2008.

Russ and I have spent countless hours repairing our little 1 1/2 story home. The first year and one half we spent addressing the exterior. Russ spent 4 – 8 hours a day in the summer of 2004 stripping paint, replacing cedar siding, priming and painting. With Metta being little I focused my time on the garden and landscape. The rocks were salvaged from Sculpture via permisson from David Helm, and Russ built my first raised beds, which we filled with omagrow, and I started my love of all that grows.

In 2005 Russ and I painted the two bedrooms, which involved a great deal of repair. Russ stripped 8 layers of wallpaper from Metta’s room, exposing the original plaster walls. He and I (mostly Russ) also refinished the original long grain fir wood floors.

In 2006, with the enormous help of Alex, Bart, (and my dear father) we converted the two car garage into our studio. This was an enormous task. In the process we learned about unfriendly neighbors, building permits, running new gas lines, the difficulties of doing drywall, and the glory of completion.

In 2007 Russ tackled the front porch. He removed the old funky miss matched windows and created a old fashioned screened in porch. I am working on growing vines on each side of the house in hopes of providing privacy and natural comfort.

In 2007 we also actually paid someone else to do some work – we had a new roof installed! The housed had needed one since 2003 – but we finally were in a position to pay someone (barely).

In 2009 we will be removing the majority of the grass lawns and creating a large vegetable and flower garden.