Revisiting First Impressions, Part 1: Front Exterior
As part of the anniversary of us finding Purgatory, I’ve taken new photos attempting to match the views and angles of the original listing photos. (I’m…
Author: stega
The small pile of random junk
Our Nearest Neighbor told me a while back that when the POs were getting ready to move out, they had a garage/yard sale to lighten their…
So Many Birds
One fun thing about Purgatory is that we have a lot of wild birds. And I mean a lot. So far I have seen: Turkey Vultures…
Survey SAYS…
As part of the great wall project, we had geologists on hand a few weeks back to complete soil studies. They did three bores: one…
Living with two large parrots means…
1. Living in a house with no attic but transom windows throughout means sometimes this happens. 2. Living in a house with windowed french doors…
The State of Our Borders, Part 3: Fences
One day early in March, we took a drive down the low row to the bottom end of the property. As I mentioned in Part 1…
The State of Our Borders, Part 2: The Weeds
Continuing on from the last post–we have a lot of weeds and grass on the land. Most of the weeds are now taller than Agent Smith,…
The State of Our Borders, Part 1: Horse Residue
As we’ve said numerous times in numerous posts, the Previous Owners took little care of the property. Another example of this is the state of…
Exactly…
…one year ago, I sent this text to Agent Smith. And after a brief discussion, I included this in an email to the agent we…
Yes, it can get windy
Since we live halfway up a mountain, it can get a bit windy up here. Per the weather station we run, the biggest gusts we’ve…
A monthly update not mentioned often
As part of maintaining this site, we regularly go through and update the static sections to fill in details or fix silly auto-correct-induced spelling mistakes.…
Closet of Doom
When we moved in, we discovered one thing that neither the inspections nor the previous owners had noted: the fact that the closet off the great…
Come and Visit!
We now have a booking calendar so friends can “suggest” times they’d like to come and stay over for a night or two. It’s still in the beta…
A better lock
Our kitchen has two doors to the exterior, side by side–one a sliding door, the other a standard door with an auto-closing arm put in…
The View, Part 4 of 4
Last week, as the latest storm system started to seep in to the valley, the sun was just setting. Here’s is the last of the four pictures…
The View, Part 3 of 4
Last week, as the latest storm system started to seep in to the valley, the sun was just setting. Here’s is the third of four pictures I…
The View, Part 2 of 4
Last week, as the latest storm system started to seep in to the valley, the sun was just setting. Here’s is the second of four pictures I took.…
The View, Part 1 of 4
Last week, as the latest storm system started to seep in to the valley, the sun was just setting. Here’s is the first of four pictures…
Final Blue Room Pics
Here are the before shots, followed by that shot or a similar one that was loaded into the Sherwin Williams Color Snap App for a messy mockup,…
And now we have a hot tub!
A few days ago I filled in the trench containing the buried electrical conduit, raked the river rocks into some semblance of ground cover, filled…
Happy, Spartacus and Rusty
Those are the names of three of our Nearest Neighbor’s dogs. They’re very friendly and often come to visit us which, since we don’t have dog of our…
Mud: we has lots of it
Not just any mud but clay mud that sticks to everything. As such, we now have shoe scrapers scattered about and this is what they…
If a tree falls on a power line,
and nothing is connected to that power line… Suffice to say, there was much head-scratching all around last week when a tree decided to fall…
Tiny Updates
Here is a list of small things that are done/sorted/no longer broken but they don’t really merit a post of their own. 1. Wood chips continue…
Furnace Fun
When we bought the house, we were well aware that the furnaces were old and needed eventual replacement. They are original to the house, installed in…
Painting Update: The trim is now done
More time was spent painting what was the purple room, but now is the blue room. Here are a few pics after the first coat on the trim.…
Hot Tub, Step 4 – Electrical
As mentioned in an earlier post, we’re in the process of replacing the antiquated hot tub that came with the house. Now that the deck…
New Hot Water
We knew when we bought the house that the water heaters were getting up there in years–one is nearing 10 and the other about 13.…
More on the painting
The purple room is now blue! It took 2+ coats of paint, plus 2 coats of primer, but it’s looking so much nicer. Next up,…
Hot Tub, Step 3 – Delivery
Our new hot tub arrived! The guys from Trade Wind Spas trucked it up the hill late in the afternoon. There was a bit of difficulty…
Sink Update
As noted a few weeks back, our new kitchen faucet ran into a couple of serious hiccups, leaving us with no hot water or clear…
Hot Tub Update – Pad done and new tub purchased
At the beginning of January, we visited Trade Winds Spas in Los Gatos (we had to wait a couple of weeks as the place was…