Just add steel sculptures
Regular readers will know I started using a few auction houses (usually local ones) to find furniture for the great room. But what you all…
Category: Update
Fallen Fig
Following on from the previous post and covering another related story… In January of 2020 we had a major storm. I detailed the damage a…
“New” Bathtub
Back in 2019 when we were assisting our neighbors, we came across one last old bathtub down in the south pasture. Buried by weeds and…
The Deal with the Devil: Addendum
When I mentioned in this series of posts that we got some dirt, I never included pictures of the before, during and after. So here…
The Deal with the Devil, Part 3–Now What?
As covered in the past two posts, Purgatory is basically in…Purgatory. So to summarize: we made the deal with the devil back in the summer…
The Deal with the Devil, Part 2–The Stop Order
Instead of explaining in my usual pithy way what went down, I’m instead providing the timeline I had to prepare, as shortly after we filled…
The Deal with the Devil, Part 1–The Dirt
Or perhaps this post should be titled “Santa Clara County Planning Department should not be run as a revenue generating department especially when it is…
The Lesser Wall of Purgatory: Part 1
Back in 2016 we rebuilt the Great Wall of Purgatory. It was a very arduous project that took months. You can read the full tale…
Old Windows
When the house was built, the original configuration of the bathrooms opposite the linen cabinets had half-baths on each end with two smaller rooms, one…
Midge Was Stolen
I’m taking a break from writing about bathroom windows to type out this short post. Midge was stolen last night/early this morning from the yard…
Best of 2021
After a few false starts, I finally put together our annual year-in-review video. I went with epic music instead of the usual “chill” or “uplift”…
A few new trees
A very long-in-the-tooth and long-in-the-making story–it basically can be summed up with the sentence “We have a handful of new trees.” It started back in…
Predators, Prey and the Occasional Electrification
Carrying on from the last post–where I mentioned a number of our apex predators–here’s a collection of some of our more interesting encounters with the…
Feral “Fun”
Since moving here, we have been fighting the good fight to trap, neuter/spay, and release (TNR) the feral cats that live here. The first couple…
Divesting
While we have purchased many things since buying this crazy place, we’ve also managed to get rid of a lot of things left here by…
Rain Machines
As part of our home automation work, and a setup we actually got up and running last summer, are the new RainMachines. These are Internet…
Neighbors, Drainage, AirBnB and Guns, Part 2
The last post detailed some of the craziness of living here, namely a particular resident and the drainage issues she caused but blames on others.…
Neighbors, Drainage, AirBnB and Guns, Part 1
Recently there was an article in Bloomberg about the many efforts of AirBnB to silence any reports of crimes committed at properties listed through them.…
Birds and Windows
People in glasses houses–besides not throwing stones–also need to find ways to mitigate the needless avian deaths caused by all that glass. With over 100…
“New” Desk
Still working through the backlog of images and stories, but unlike the last multi-post saga, this is a relatively quick story. During his last visit…
Related to the Great Room: Kitchen Touch-ups
While painting the great room, one extra thing our painter tackled for us was covering patched areas in the kitchen–where the old furnace register once…
Making the Great Room Great–Footnotes on Molding
Perhaps my favorite detail in the great room is the very subtle change in the molding. Backing up a bit to tell the story… For…
Making the Great Room Great, Step Nine: Ambient Lighting
In addition to deleting the sconces in the great room, Agent Smith got creative and ordered some color-changing strip lights from superbrightleds.com and controllers. Unfortunately,…
ChaCha Mucha
The original deal for the property included an old 40″ riding mower that had seen better days. It was underpowered, top-heavy, and just not really…
Making the Great Room Great, Step Five: Finding Furniture
During the first few years we lived here, there was much discussion about any furniture we wanted to purchase for the Great room. We wanted…
A bit of sad news.
I was thinking of writing a summary post about the history of this place, as I was stuck on mapping out the story of the…
Last Stop: Zurich
The primary reason for traveling was to attend the wedding of friends in Zurich, so after four days in Paris, we caught a train to…
On to Paris
Soon enough, we were back in London after two lovely days up north visiting family. We then boarded a Eurostar train to Paris. Unlike my…
Inanimate Birds
While there is still plenty of house/land stuff to keep us busy, sometimes it’s nice to have a scheduled activity to allow us to relax…
Quick Beaks and Quick Fixes
One of the recurring issues we’ve experienced–besides the ineptitude of the previous owners–is the destructive desire of the boys, Tenar and Thlayli. When moving in,…
The wee gopher snake
Concerning stuff under our house–something posted to my Instagram feed but not here was the end story of the snake that lived under the house.…
January Aerial Video
A high-up tour of Purgatory, and details on the recent big storm and resulting damage.