To Ride an Iron Horse - Jack of the Green's Blog

[sv-wolf]

Just tuned into your blog, Jack. Congratulations on the new house. Hope you will settle in quickly and get to enjoy it. I envy you the garage. Never had one, myself. One of those things.

I'll look forward to hearing about future trips.

Cheers

Hud

[blues2cruise]

[JackoftheGreen]

Just dropping a quick update. (-:

Things are great with the new house, moving in has been a slow and careful process and moving out of the old place complicated the issue. Carrie and I pride ourselves on leaving our rentals cleaner than we found them, but after four years in the old house the deep cleaning really took some elbow grease. We're all moved out now though and there's a For Rent sign in the lawn, so we're really free now to 'get into' our new place.

I haven't owned the home I live in since my ex and I got divorced, and all I can say is, what a trip. It's great to pad around in the lawn mowing and look at a tree and think 'that's MY tree', or to be putting a hole in a wall to hang a shelf or something and think 'this in MY wall'. And the freedom to customize and decorate without restriction is a relief in itself. I've got a whole basement to finish, which is sure to be my winter project for a couple years at least. There's a lot to do and I'm itchin' to do it.

The nights are getting cooler -- I switched back to my 3/4 helmet last night and I think I'll have to put the sleeves back on my jacket soon. We didn't get to do nearly enough riding this summer, and several trips we'd planned had to get the axe because of the logistics of buying a house and moving. But it was well worth the loss to have our OWN place and a home that fits us. We'll get in as much riding as we can before the snow comes down, but really this ended up being the Summer of the House instead of the Summer of 6000 Miles. (-: No regrets.

Our home still isn't ready for her close-up, but soon. Very soon.

[JackoftheGreen]

Wow, what a summer this has been.

Really, it's been quite a year altogether so far, but this summer especially has been all red letter days. Carrie and I have paid off OODLES of debt, purchased our home, made inroads into starting a home business and just generally have been go go go. As I mentioned above, riding has been difficult to manage with everything else going on though, and with the riding falling the wayside I haven't made it to the forum nearly as much as I ought. For that I apologize, both to members who follow my blog and to the membership in general to whom I owe a measure of diligence as a moderator.

With any luck, this post will be the first in a new trend. With things settling in and new routines starting to emerge in our household, I believe I'll manage to check in here on TMW at least three times a day. I'll attempt to update my blog as I go, but with the riding season winding down I suspect this winters blog-fodder will be basement finishing projects and the like. We'll see how it goes. One particular hurdle is that yet another laptop died on me, so for the time being I have to use my big clunky PC for TMW and we keep the computers in the basement. But I have to come down here a few times each day to check on my birds (we keep a separate controlled breeding room down here for our home business) and I'll make time with those chores to check in on you fine folks. (-:

[JackoftheGreen]

And now, without further adieu, the promised and long awaited pictures of our house!!

Here she is from the front...

It's a .43 acre lot on a corner. We've got seven bedrooms, three bathrooms and three living areas spread across three floors and 2,850 square feet, with an attached two car garage. It's AWESOME, and we LOVE it.

From the corner... (it's a corner lot)

The field of tall grass you can see there in the right behind the tall fence is a federal wetland preserve right in the middle of the city, which means our view of the mountains from the back of the lot will never be obstructed. That's Ben Lomond Peak there at the edge of the frame, and if it's looks familiar it's because you've seen it displayed in sharp relief in every Paramount Pictures movie you've ever watched. (-:

And the back. Note, the PowerWheels Escalade belongs to one of the neighbor kids.

That black asphalt lane is part of our property, but it's an easement to allow DWR access to those wetlands. I'm currently feeling out the possibility of having the easement released, since it's been years since DWR or the city has needed it. There's a better, more accessible gate into the wetlands just down the street from where we are.

So that's our place. Sometime in the future I'll start posting pictures of our basement projects so I can keep my blog alive and well over the winter. Thanks for tuning in!

[blues2cruise]

Good find. Having an obstructed view is so great.

[Hanson]

What a great house. I am sure that you and your bride are going to make a good life in that home.

Safe Travels,
Richard

[JackoftheGreen]

Thank you Blues, Richard. (-:

This place really was a hell of a find. When we first dipped a toe into the market last fall, this place was one of the listings that caught our attention. It was the right size, the right location and the right price, but it had been very roughly used. Pictures on the internet of this place showed GOBS of clutter, two dining room tables piled high with stuff and so many refridgerator magnets you couldn't see the fridge itself. We did a drive-by and noted a healthy scattering of sporting equipment, bicycles and other assorted roughage in the back yard, and made the correct assumption that the place had been ravaged by a herd of kids. We tried half-heartedly to arrange a walk-through, which was challenging with the owners schedule, and it never happened. Then, around mid November last year, the house sold. We figured ca sara sara (SP) and kept looking.

Other places came and went, some incredible, some not quite so, and we even put in a offer on one place but got out-bid by another party. And here they told us the market was soft. Serendipidous, though, because then at the end of May this place suddenly showed up back on the market! The entity that bought it back in November turned out to be a "property management" group, read: house flippers. And they flipped the beejeezus outta this place. New carpet throughout, finished two of the three basement bedrooms, roughed in the plumbing for the basement bathroom, refinished all the kitchen cabinetry, two tone paint and brand new dishwasher, range and microwave. They did a fanstastic job on the flip, and when it showed up back on the market it only took one walk-through to sell us.

It hasn't been without work though, especially the grounds. All the flower beds were completely overgrown with five foot tall broadleaf weeds, and in some places there's more weed that grass in the lawn. The concrete curbing around the flower beds and that central island were almost totally grown over by sod, and a patch in the back that looked as though it had been inteded for a garden was more safari than suburb. I ALMOST bought a machete, but in the end just got some good gloves and heavy duty shears. We're going to let that patch sit and fallow all winter, then dump a couple tons of rock in it, build garden boxes and plant vegetables.

Other up-and-coming projects are finishing the other 70% or so of the basement, including a 3/4 bath, wet bar and home theatre. There's also one parking strip that is beyond rescue, so we're going to tear that all up and put in rock there as well. It'll match the opposing strip on the other corner, so, excellent. I also need to build a loft in the garage for storage, plumb for the industrial sink in my bird breeding room and either learn how to make crabapple beer or tear out the crabapple tree. (-: For the moment, the basement finish gets top priority though. I'll post some pictures as that project slowly ramps up through the winter.

Thanx for reading, and I look forward to keeping on this thing. 'Till then...

[sv-wolf]

Thanks, Jack. Enjoying your posts. Keep 'em coming.

[JackoftheGreen]

So the first Halloween in our new place was AWESOME. Our neighborhood has a GREAT turnout for the walkaround, and people from all over drive to our little wedge of town to let their kids trick-of-treat. In the literal sense of the word literally (which having to say specifically ought to be a crime) we got more kids at our door through the whole night than we had the entire FOUR YEARS we lived in the other place. Just awesome, we really enjoyed it. Had the garage door open about four inches with a strobe light and creepy music inside, strobe on the door too. A good time was had by all.

Then, today, first snow of the season. Just high elevation stuff, not in the valley, but Ben Lomond got dusted and it looked amazing. I've been meaning to take some nice panoramic shots from my back deck, literally ten feet from my dining room table, and this was the perfect excuse. The weather was a bit windy and it wanted to storm all day, so the skies were very dramatic. It took four panoramic shots to capture the entire 160 or so degrees of range visible, so here they are ordered left to right 'cause I'm American. (-: