Tractors of Purgatory
In an earlier post, stega mentioned that the original owner of the property did quite a bit of earthmoving–building roads, clearing and building the pad for the…
Author: stega
Outside my windows, there is life
My big Canon sits behind me as the area just outside my office is visited by wildlife all the time. Occasionally, I actually get a…
Final Kennel Details
On Sunday, the Smith boys finished up the dog kennel by placing some long boards to secure the gravel bed. Below are the before shots,…
Debris Removal Week
As mentioned numerous times, the POs did next to nothing in terms of taking care of the property, so we have been sorting out and addressing…
A little history lesson
WARNING: this is a really, really long post. As part of the purchase of Purgatory, we got any drawings/plans pertaining to the house. Right after taking possession,…
Belated Birthday Gift or Atonement?
Wednesday night I got home from class and found AS had purchased something I had requested from Home Despot. This one will live in the house…
Filing Cabinet Rehab
I’ve had a fairly standard four-drawer, table-shaped filing cabinet for years. When I lived in Ohio I painted it a swirly blue and packed it…
Looking back…
While mucking about, cleaning up the backend of Purgatory’s website this week, not only did I discover the scheduled publishing feature, but I also came…
The Tale of the Planter Boxes
When we lived in SF, we had an odd little porch off the living room. It looked out and down into our neighbors’ backyard and, while…
Random Pics that Never Got Posted
While doing a bit of admin work, I came across a bunch of pics highlighting past projects and things that, for various reasons, never made…
The end of the little stable
Another of the eyesores on the property was a small three-sided stable built on the south side of the property. It too dates back to…
A peek inside
I’m currently working on a bunch of posts covering things from the last two weeks, but those won’t be up until later today and tomorrow.…
A barn full of stuff.
Monday, while the Smith boys were tearing down the small horse shelter, I did a little barn exploration. The property has a six-stable, two-room roofed…
The size of things
I managed to contract some sort of plague last week and spent much time in bed with a fever and congestion. While AS and his…
Back Again
She visited again this morning.
Another New Neighbor Stops By to Say Hello
Last Wednesday I got to meet one of our neighbors. She(?) came over to sample some of the figs that had fallen from the tree…
The Magic Bucket
One of the downsides of moving was that the woman who cleaned our house in San Francisco doesn’t work in San Jose, so when we…
More Water Work and Coining a New Phrase
One of the smaller things on our list of house to-dos was to sort out the existing water softener. Because we’re on a well, we really…
Great News Everyone! They’ve Fixed the Slime Pipes!
Able were back today to finish the work. Around lunchtime, a county inspector arrived to check things over. I was all excited that I could give…
End of Day One: Septic tank in place, and we can flush the toilets!
Things are not done yet though. The outbound end isn’t connected to the leach fields and the inlet isn’t fully connected, but we can take a…
More Pics of the Septic Work
The hole is now much, much bigger and the pieces of the old tank were trucked away. The crew is now readying the hole for…
Septic Day!
The previous owners had a new septic put in over ten years ago, but in all that time never had it pumped. When we were…
New Walkthroughs Are Up!
On Monday I made a few new videos of the house. These, unlike the first batch, have some basic explanations of what you are seeing and–more importantly–some…
Photo Stream* Highlights
I finally posted some new images up on our Photo Stream. (Update: the Photo Stream is no more, so here are some highlights and a…
Scanning Complete
Last week I finished the small document scanning project I started two weeks earlier. The POs left behind a small pile of rolled-up plans, which…
10 Reasons to Never Buy from Lumber Liquidators
While I wrote an earlier post about getting hardwood flooring installed in two rooms, the saga took a few extra turns. To be brief, Lumber Liquidators…
Before and After Roof Comparison
For final comparison, here are pics of the great room roof and linen/entry roof before and after the roof work. All the tar and paper…
A week in review
Last week a lot of small things got done: 1. Sold the old golf cart. Agent Smith somehow broke it, so we Craigslisted it. 2. Got…
And we swam and swam all over the dam
As mentioned a few posts back, we had to have the flat roofs redone. When the guys from Armstrong demolished the roof above the studio,…
We have pretty electrons now
When we were in escrow and having inspections done, the electrical service to the house was noted to only have 175 amps. For out here…
More Flooring Tales
I did some research online as we have teak parquet flooring throughout half of the house. It is original to the house and was looking…
So we moved and so did the boys
We are now living full-time at Purgatory. Almost three weeks ago the movers showed up and carted almost all our boxes and furniture down here. I…