Birds and More Birds
Saturday I took part in an online birding event sponsored by the San Francisco Bird Observatory. It was pretty straightforward: go out and take pictures…
Author: stega
The Shifting House
Our house is now over 50 years old. While not old compared to many other buildings, it is old for up here. There are at…
The Site is Now Open for Comments
When we started writing about all the stuff here, we kept comments disabled as moderating a ton of spam wasn’t something we–well, really I–was willing…
In the Teaky Teaky Teaky Teaky Teaky Room
The house, built in the late 60s, has teak parquet flooring throughout the main living areas–north hallway, foyer and great room. We know from old…
Neighboring Dog
Our nearest neighbor has several dogs who love to come visit each day–probably because near the door I have a bag full of tasty freeze-dried…
People are Annoying
As mentioned before, our road is a private road. That means no city, county or state authority oversees management of said road. (There is actually…
Bringing Outside In
One of the perks of having so many windows is that my desk sits right next to a few large ones. When working at my…
No more static
In addition to the race cars built at Purgatory Auto Works and Dinosaur Farm, we–well, Agent Smith really–work on our daily drivers as well. While…
Arcadia
A somewhat odd fact about the living space at Purgatory is that we have many exterior doors for both the house and studio buildings. The…
Sunday Panorama
A shot of the stables when we were working on the house yard fence.
The Small Idiocies
Since tackling the creek embankment that was used as an illegal dump site by people who don’t live along our road, Agent Smith and I…
If the same tree falls
In winter 2016, we had a tree near the north gate fall onto the electric line feeding the phantom power pole. PG&E came out, saw…
Another Tale of Fencing
When we purchased this place, we knew the previous owners had it on the market in 2012 and again for most of 2013. It failed…
Sunday Panorama
This shot was taken in July 2018.
Friday Bonus Post
I’m pleased to announce that not only is spring finally here, but the garden areas, especially the north garden, are starting to go bonkers with…
The unGreat Room
Once the furnace work was done, it was time to take stock before moving on to the next projects. I took a handful of panorama…
Many Leaks
Once the dust from the furnace install settled, we noticed a few new issues–not with the new HVAC setup, but various bits of leaking plumbing.…
Under the House
After the furnace work was completed, I took a lot of pics and videos of what is under the interior of the house. We worried…
Shelter in Place
California, like most of the country, is currently asking residents to shelter in place. Except for the fact that Agent Smith isn’t going into the…
Along Come Spiders
We tend to have a live-and-let-live mentality at the ranch. This even carries over to some of our more daunting neighbors, like this beautiful Black…
Drain Videos
When Able Sewer and Drain re-piped the drains in the north wing, another member of their team ran a scope down the entire drain line.…
More Plumbing Woes
During the furnace project in May 2018, one of the guys from Ventwerx spotted something awry with our plumbing and brought it to my attention:…
Chimneys Be Gone
After the old diesel furnaces were removed from service, we still had two chimney stacks sticking out of the south wing roof. Since Armstrong (who…
Finishing Touches in the Guest Room
Once the walls were painted and the great tree finished, it was time to add some finishing touches to the guest room. First, Agent Smith…
Guest Room Makeover
Since all the furniture had been moved out of the guest room to allow for furnace work, I took the opportunity to paint that space…
Big Glass
An annoying thing that exists since we first looked at the house were the seal failures on all the large downstairs windows of the great…
Garage Lighting
In June 2018, when we rented a scissor lift and installed new glass in three of the courtyard lights, we completed another big project: Agent…
Courtyard Lighting Revamp
The last post covered replacing the glass in three of the courtyard lights in June 2018. We held off replacing the glass in the remaining…