Move of '98

The Move of '98

I spent ten years living in this townhouse with surprising privacy and a great common area to let dogs run a muck. When I first moved in, the neighborhood was fine. About three years later, the apartment complex across the street became low income housing for our town. All sorts of disreputable people started hanging around and trash appeared in the street. It looked pretty bad. Many people in our complex tried to sell, but always had a hard time of it. Those that moved in didn't care much for the appearance of the place and I started to be one of the few who tried to keep things looking decent. No one wanted to become an association officer, so at one point I was President and Vice President. I was definitely ready to trade home association duties for my own projects.

I decided to wait for a winter when the housing market was hot. During winter, people didn't hang around across the street so much. When the winter of 97/98 came, houses were selling before they even hit the market. I went across the street, cleaned up their mess, and threw out all my old furniture. The result was that I sold this place in three weeks:

And bought this:

Yes, a window and a front door. Well, in my town, that's all I could afford. The result of this move was predictable:

The 50 year old garden in the back makes up for the lack of trifling things like rooms and a roof. There is even a nice back door to get to the garden which beats climbing through a window any day:

Hay, whose paw prints are those?

I solved the hardwood/dog-print problem by putting carpet in the kitchen where the dogs walk through when then come out of the doggie door. I love carpet in the kitchen; no crunch after salt spills, no slippery floor after water spills and it hides every crumb since last week. Speaking of the kitchen, I put a mirror next to the kitchen window which looks out onto the garden. It turned out to be a great idea:

Going out the door, lands you right on the path to tranquility:

There are three benches. One is tucked away in a very peaceful spot. To get to it you get a tour of the flowers. Flower lovers click here.

The problem with having a garden and dogs (Tom the tan mutt and Abby "the white flash") is they do this stare hour after hour because I will not them go out there and run a muck:

Actually, the doggie door goes to this side of the garden as seen through the garage door window:

There is a fence on the right side of this picture that protects the rest of the garden and the main fence is behind the bushes on the left side. So they have a bit of room and I allowed them three rose bushes to destroy. Fortunately the rose bushes can defend themselves. So Tom and Abby tend to stay inside which isn't all that bad. More on Tom and Abby.

After moving the furniture back and forth, the living room looked like this:

Of course I moved it one more time and replaced my photos on the wall with something I can stand to look at. OK, sometimes I am a bit too critical, but it keeps the quality high.

Click here to see part of my photo collection.

I converted one of the bedrooms into an office and had a rather large contractor put in a picture window (kind of looks like there is no wall there at all, I like that):

The construction was really hard on my dogs who were already shaken from the move. I came home from work and they gave me that look, you know that look that says, "The big guy eat the wall! We tried to stop him, but he was too big for us. So we'll need extra food tonight." Funny how they always seem to end their looks with the same thought.

The office looks out onto my favorite rose bush which looks a lot better when that Jack-whatever tree blooms:

I guess you can tell I love to play with lights. The ones that worked out the best are my bed reading lights, imagine that. They are actually kettle track lights that make great light for reading in bed without lighting the rest of the room and washing out my old Egyptian light which I love dearly. Mounting these track lights in my new place posed a real problem. I came up with a great solution and got a shelf in the bargain. I cut, shaped, and modified two track light wall outlets so they would fit inside a couple of antique style drapery sconces that I found at Wallmart.

My old Egyptian light in my bedroom still wins all the oohs and ahs. This 8 sec exposure greatly multiplies the color intensity, but the actual patterns are more colorful; the long exposure lost the blues and greens for some reason. The light is automatic and is lit if it is dark outside and my stereo is on. Since I have 30 channels of non-interrupted satellite supplied music (for $10 a month) , a timer on the stereo, and don't have a TV, the stereo is on all the time wherever I'm awake and not making music myself. I love my satellite music; I wakes me in the morning and puts me to sleep at night with nothing but music, ever. The timer had four off-times and four on-times; from my bed I can control the volume and turn the music back on if it goes off when I'm still reading or, in the morning, I can turn the music off again if I want to sleep some more.

Do you think this lamp was worth waiting seven months for? I bought it in Cairo and had it shipped to me. I finally gave up waiting for it and cursed them. It arrived the next day. I changed the glass panels and installed my own lights inside. Can you guess what I used? The black squares are actually framed photos that prevent you from being distracted from the colors by the white of the wall. Maybe I didn't need them.

I hope you liked visiting Paul's place. Come back soon and bring something for Tom and Abby.

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