Our First House

Rich and I were married in March, 1977 and in August of 1978 at the tender age of 21 and 22 we bought our first house.

We paid $26,900 for it.

It was a small, 1125 sq ft ranch with 3 small bedrooms, 1 bathroom, no basement and it was on a pie-slice shaped lot so most of the yard was on the side of the house.

It was only intended as a starter house but we ended up living in it for 21 years. We raised both of our kids in that house, and the great neighborhood it used to be.

Sometime during those years we replaced the ugly baby-poop colored asbestos siding with vinyl siding in a light grey.

We rarely had any extra money during the time we lived in that house so improvements were few.


We knew we wanted to sell it as soon as Shauna graduated from high school and as that day got closer we did what we had to do to make the house sellable.

This is what it looked like in early 1999 before we sold it in August.

We got $89,000 for it.

From what I heard from the people that lived next door (and still do) the couple  we sold the house to lost it to foreclosure about 5 years later. The house sat empty for a long time and then finally sold for $25,000, less than we bought it for back in 1978.

Whoever bought it had to put a ton of money into it because from sitting empty for many years the walls had molded from the damp crawl space.

Then it was a rental for a while and a few years ago it was finally sold again, but I'm not sure for how much.

The neighborhood is not like it was when we lived there.

Anyway, the people who own it did a beautiful landscaping job. It doesn't even look like the same house!

See for yourself !

I took this picture off of Google Street View because I didn't want to stop in front of it and take a picture!

I'm impressed! I would love to see the inside. Maybe some day I'll get brave enough to go knock on the door!



Until the next time!!

New Sink

We finally got around to replacing the sink that came with our house.


Again, as with the deck, I say "we" but I mostly mean "Rich" because he does the majority of the work. I'm usually just the helper!


Anyway, when we moved in to this place we went from a nice big, deep double sink in the kitchen to a shallow, lame double sink with no room for anything!

I started looking for a new sink pretty quickly. I knew I wanted a single instead of a double. They are not as common as the double sinks but I found one in the Spring  that was the size we needed and would work in our kitchen. 

But then the deck took over and I figured that was enough of a project for the summer so we put the sink replacement on hold.


Now that the deck has been finished for a while,  I figured it was time for another project for us (Rich).  I bought the sink a few weeks ago and it's been sitting in our living room until this past Saturday.

The first thing to do, obviously, is to remove the old sink. This involved undoing the two water lines, the line from the dishwasher to the garbage disposal and the plumbing from the two drains.


Next was making sure that the new sink fit into the opening. It was a little bigger so we cut a couple inches off around the perimeter, tried it and it still didn't fit so we cut some more and sanded some off and finally got the sink to fit!

Then Rich had to redo the plumbing from a double drain to a single drain. Luckily he was able to do that without having to buy any more pipes.

We did get a new sink connection for the garbage disposal because the old one was scratched and worn looking and I didn't want to install in in the brand new sink.

Then we reconnected the water lines and that was it!

Nice big sink with the sprayer right on the faucet and lots of room for soaking bakeware and whatever else!  It's a bit industrial looking but I don't care. I'm all about the function these days!

So now we've taken care of the two main things we didn't really like about this place; the kitchen sink and nowhere outside to sit. I don't see any big projects in the future. Maybe some painting but we'll see.

We went to Shauna and Brad's for Halloween. Watched Levi so they could take Maxwell out trick or treating. He did really good and looked so cute!

That's it for now!

I feel the Christmas spirit coming on which is unusual for me! I have a new Christmas tree that I bought after Christmas last year and I am looking forward to putting it up!

Until the next time...

Sunday Browsing

Last Sunday Rich was busy doing his Uber eats deliveries and I didn't feel like doing anything like cleaning or another chore that always needs doing.

It was nice and sunny out so I thought I would take a walk somewhere.

Downtown Plymouth was having their annual trick or treat for the kiddies so I knew it would be crowded. Shauna and Brad took the boys there and said it was crazy how crowded it was.

Maxwell gets a little overwhelmed when he's in a crowd!

I decided to talk a walk in the next closest downtown, which is Northville.

They had a pretty cool skeleton display.

This one was cute with dogs chasing a cat up a tree! Or maybe it was a squirrel. Couldn't tell for sure!

This one was in front of a jewelry store. Skeleton proposal! If you look close you can see the ring is a spider ring!

This skeleton was fishing in the fountain!

This skeleton was Audrey Hepburn. 

This car was parked on the street. 

There was all sorts of creepy crawlies glued on it!

There was a lot more I didn't get pictures of . 

I may go back and take Rich with me so he can see and then I'll take more pictures!

Until the next time!!

Update

Not a whole lot going on right now. Summer is officially over and we are deep into Fall.

The trees are changing and they are beautiful I suppose, but truthfully I am over it! Changing leaves only mean one thing to me anymore, Winter is coming! 

Shauna, Brad's mom Sandy and I took a glass snowman nightlight workshop a few weeks ago. You get a tray with all the glass pieces you need like this. I picked a green background because my small bathroom is green. The instructor tells you how to put it together.

And you end up with a cute little snowman nightlight! Here's mine.

Then she takes them home and puts them in her kiln and we get them back in a few weeks.

It was fun and nice to get out of the house, especially for Shauna!

Rich's sister Judy came into town to see her daughter last week. She lives in South Carolina, Anyway, we picked her up at the airport and took her to the casino for lunch. Then she spent the night with us and her daughter picked her up the next day. It was so nice to spend time with her!

We took the boys to the cider mill today. Maxwell being 2 at first didn't want to put socks on or shoes or a jacket so we could go but we eventually talked him into it. Boy, 2 year olds are tuff and if I recall 3 is even worse! Anyway, as soon as he gets a little older it will be Levi's turn to be 2 and 3! Good thing Shauna and Brad have lots of patience!

They're so stinkin' cute though, aren't they??

That's it for now. 

Rich will be installing a new kitchen sink for us in the next week so I'll tell you all about it!

Until then!

More Deck and other things

Deck is completely done, inspected and we are using it daily!

We got everything cleaned up and the grass back to as normal as it's going to get this year! All the wood laying around and the clay and dirt took a toll on it but we're hopeful it will all come back in the Spring!

I took this past week off of work and we spent one night in Traverse City. The water levels are still pretty high right now as shown in these pictures. Part of a board walk on a canal is closed because it's under water!

We also took a drive to Leland and Fishtown. This normal little flowing dam was raging and the water was threatening to come over the boardwalk into the little stores!

I also painted our front and back doors a beautiful blue.  I only took pictures of the front door though. 

And of course I spend as much time as I can with these two adorable guys!

Maxwell is 2 years 8 months and what can I say? He's a 2 year old and tries his mom daily! But he's talking up a storm and so darn cute. He doesn't try me because I let him have pretty much anything he wants! He's so sweet and loving and laughs all of the time. He loves trucks of all kinds;  the garbage and recycle trucks especially! Shauna and Brad had a big tree cut down in front of their house and new landscaping put in and Maxwell was over the moon for a few days watching all of the happenings around his house! He is my heart!

Levi is going to be 1 year old next Friday the 27th already! He's just starting walking a little and takes 4-5 steps but if you crouch down for him to walk to you he gets so excited he falls down right away and then crawls like crazy to get to you!  He's incredibly affectionate and loves to be held and cuddled  and reaches out to me as soon as he sees me! He gives kisses and says "uh oh" and "wow" and "mama" and looks more and more like his dad the older he gets! He is my heart also and both of these boys make my life worth living!

Anyway, that's all for now.

Until the next time...

Part3-Oh look! It's a real deck!

EDIT: The inspector came and the deck passed with flying colors!


For all intents and purposes, the deck is finished.

The inspector from the Building Department is coming on Tuesday. We have to leave the bottom open so he can see underneath it but we are not anticipating any problems. We built it as close to code as we possibly could!

One of the last things to do was putting this handrail on.

After the inspector looks at it and declares it good we can finally close up the bottom and put our table and chairs on it. Not that we haven't been sitting on it already, it's just that according to the city you're not supposed to do that until after the final inspection.

Each phase of building this deck had it's own set of problems we had to puzzle out. The easiest part was by far the railings between the posts and the balusters! I helped as much as I could but Rich did the majority of the work while I was at work!

Kudos and all the credit goes to my hard working husband!

I'll post a final picture at the end of this week when it's all closed up on the bottom.

Until then.

The Deck-Part 2

So just to clarify, we own our house but not the lot that it sits on. It's in a manufactured home community. Although we have every right to move our house out if we want to,  we have no intention of ever doing that.  It's expensive, and  hard on the house. Our walls are drywall and probably wouldn't hold up well to being rocked and rolled! Plus they have to cut it into two pieces! This deck will be a good selling point when the time comes for us to leave.

After taking all day Saturday to put the joists up we put a level all over the place to make sure everything was plumb and even before putting the deck boards on. It actually has a very slight tilt downward towards the street, which is not at all noticeable but good so the water will run off when it rains.

The next step was to screw 22 boards on top of the joists to make the surface of the deck. Luckily they came pre-cut to 12 feet so it was just a matter of making sure they were straight and screwing them on.

All during the day on Sunday we probably had 10 people stop and tell us how nice it looked! A few asked if Rich would build a deck for them and could not believe it when he told them he had never built a deck before! He also said no to building any decks for anyone else!

  

After we got all of the boards nailed on we put a trim board around the edge.

It's far from perfect but I think it looks pretty good so far!


The next step is the stairs, which is probably the toughest part of a deck and Rich has been struggling with them for a few days.

They're made and attached but they are not exactly right.

We decided to hold off on them and concentrate on the railing for now,

That's for the next post!

Until then.