When you buy before you sell...

This has been on my mind several times in the past 2 years, and is on my mind again - what it means when you buy before you sell. Two years ago, after several months and several extensions, we closed on our current home. We did so assuming that although it had been several months and we had pushed back the closing several times, that my husband's home would sell relatively soon after.

It has now been 2 years that we have had his house (for the most part) on the market. This leads me to what happens when you buy before you sell... You end up with:

• 2 mortgages
• 2 sets of utility bills
• 2 houses to maintain & upkeep
• 2 gardens to keep weeded & watered
• 2 lawns to water & mow
• 2 driveways to keep clear of snow
• 2 places to insure and stress over
• and ultimately one home too many!

To be honest, at times it has been a little much, but we've definitely been managing alright overall. For the most part we have had renters in, so many of the responsibilities have been theirs - taking care of the grass, snow, utility bills, and most of the mortgage. And when we haven't had renters in, then our arrangement with the seller on our current home has enabled us to pay less than we might like, but still make utilities and payments on both houses fit within our budget.

So this leads me to the next thought that has been on my mind lately... cleaning. Oh, and repairing. Yup, the last renters we had weren't exactly the best. There might be only patches of grass left in the backyard. And there might be a bathroom that smells like there is still a dirty dog hiding somewhere in it (don't worry, I checked under the washer & dryer that live in that bathroom, and although there was some mouse & (shockingly) dog poo (and pee?) under there, along with a random assortment of dingy dirty socks and rags, there wasn't a dog hiding there). And there also might be smear marks scattered over the walls.

But life wouldn't be worth living if it didn't teach you things now and then. And boy have we learned some unexpected lessons from this last set of renters. And I expect that I'll be learning some new things as we repair and clean in their wake (I may have a father-in-law who was in the garage door business, but I certainly have never replaced a garage door spring!). Really though, I can be nothing but thankful that they moved out and left the place in as 'good' of a state as they did, because it could have been a lot more painful and a lot dirtier!

So please bear with me as I spend my time over the next few weeks pulling mammoth weeds in the flower beds, touching up paint, stripping floors down & re-waxing them, and any number of other fix-up tasks to get the place looking beautiful again so we can leave it vacant and staged for a couple of months, and leave my house & garden to tend themselves. Some of the before pictures are a bit too disgusting to share (namely what I found under the washer & dryer), but I'm sure I'll share some of what I'm up to as the place gets back under my thumb :)

Garden Crashing - A Full-Yard Garden

Earlier this week we visited some friends that my husband made sort of through work. Garth & Berri are glass blowers in town, and have this amazing garden that takes up pretty much all of their acre and a half property on the outskirts of town. When we arrived they welcomed us and then toured us through their gardens for over an hour - yup, their gardens are that extensive! We got to try out a cool garden tool they use that apparently makes their weeding lives way easier, we talked with them about their wheat crop, and they showed us how they efficiently water their plants.

They have a low little house that is built into the earth, and just installed a row of solar panels this spring. In front of the house they have a great herb garden with some ornamental plants & grasses in there too. In front of the herb garden, they have row upon row of veggies!

 

Below you can see the peas, onions & celery, peppers, tomatoes, more peppers, potatoes, and then corn.

Looking across from the house end of their property you can see their garage/shed and attached greenhouse, along with some fruit trees, more ornamentals (lots of flowers for cutting). Their raspberries, strawberries, and wheat are down at that end too.

They have numerous areas that are just great mixes of perennial plants. It was shocking just how short of a time they have been there working the gardens - about 3 years, the same length of time we've been at our place. They have accomplished so incredibly much in that time! I can't wait to see how much more function and beauty they accomplish in the next 3 years time.

  They have this neat little garden hoe-type tool that sits behind a wheel and you push it. As you push the wheel along the surface of the soil, the hoe rakes along just under the soil and cuts all the root and slightly disturbs the soil. Weeding without bending over, and without vigorous hoeing - perfect! I got to try it out, and it was easily done even with Little M on my back.

Here is a close up of the tool. They are made & sold by Valley Oak Tool Company, which is based out of California. You can check out their website if you are interested: valleyoaktool.com. They are a bit pricey, but think of the rows upon rows of weeds you could hoe quickly and easily with this thing! I suspect I would have to space my rows a little wee bit further apart to be able to make use of this, but maybe in the future I won't plant everything so close together :)

This is their wheat patch. This year they are just growing one variety, although in previous years they have tried several to see which one did best here and tasted best. I tried to remember which type this is, but I forgot - I'll just have to ask again if we visit again. The wheat variety is neat because it doesn't have the long spines off the seeds, so it is easier to deal with by hand. They use their wheat for baking - this past winter they made pancakes and other things with their home-grown wheat. How is that for self-sufficient living?!

They have irrigation shares in one of the valley ditches, it actually runs right between their land and the road. They have a great setup for watering all of their crops. They have their land divided into 8 zones, and they have a timer set up so that each of the zones gets watered at a certain time for a certain amount of time. Because they get their water off of an open ditch (unlike our piped gravity-fed irrigation water), they have to have an electric pump to pressurize the water. They also have several filters to get sediment and other things (for example we often get crayfish in our pipes...) out of their pipes so that their sprinklers don't clog up.

 Speaking of sprinklers, they have several different types that they use around the gardens, but these were the coolest. They had these jets that you can see, and then the top spun slowly around. but instead of the jets always spraying out water, when they got facing the shrubs on the right, they cut out! This sprinkler only watered in 180 degrees, even while rotating! Awesome, right?!

I definitely got lots of new ideas, both of veggies to try my hand at in the future (they sent us home with some kale and I had forgotten how much I loved it!), and also ideas for garden layout and irrigation set ups. We would have loved to stay longer, because there was still so much to see (including their root cellar!), but the sun was about to set and Little M was starting to get a bit fussy since it was past her bedtime.

Hopefully we will be able to go back and visit them again, and maybe they will be able to come over and visit our garden! I love touring around other people's gardens, seeing what plants they grow, how they organize their space, learning new ways to do things, and seeing what works for their spaces. I always learn a lot and come home feeling so inspired :) Thanks Garth & Berri for being so welcoming and friendly and for sharing all sorts of gardening tidbits!

Easy memo board rehanging

My husband and I have had this memo magnetic whiteboard basically since we started dating. Initially it hung at his house in the bedroom and we would keep notes on it, pictures, tallies, or to-do lists. It was initially hung with double sided sticky foam on all 4 corners. It stayed in that same spot until after I moved in with him, although it was removed once or twice for painting projects in the room. I think the first time it came off the wall it took some paint and perhaps even some of the drywall coating with it, which didn't make me happy, and obviously the stickiness of several of the foam pads was seriously reduced. After that it likely fell off the wall a couple times, and so when we moved into our current house it never got put back up on the wall.

 Instead for the past 2 years it has floated around, sometimes being used, sometimes being stuffed into a closet somewhere. It always annoyed me when it was floating around on the table, or in the entry way on a shelf, because it took up space and just looked sort of junky since it definitely didn't belong there. So last weekend (after it had been brought back out and was being used for to-do lists again while surfing around the table) I decided to do something permanent about it.

First I tried to use some string or elastics pinned to the back of the board, and then thumb tacked to the wall. Didn't work. So then I got more creative and went looking for something sturdier. I was initially thinking plain paper clips, but all I could find was those larger paper clips, alligator clips I think they are called. I cut one in half, bent it around to the shape I was looking for, and used epoxy glue to glue the clips onto the back of the board.

Then I waited for a couple of hours to let the glue set, and I hung it on the wall with thumb tacks spaced so that I could wedge markers up there. Perfect! Now I have a easily modifiable and visible to do list for myself where I can also put important notes up where my husband can see them too! Now I just have to get him to keep an eye on the board for those important notes...

It was simple and easy, and I'm amazed that I put off doing something like this for so long, because it makes my life so much easier, and my table so much cleaner!

Updates to our Entryway

I have been meaning to share what we've done to our entryway for a week or two now, and since Melissa at Houseography is doing a house tour and today is Mudrooms, I thought this would be a perfect time to share what we have done to make a better landing area in our entryway, making it function more like the mudroom we dream of in the future (for more of my dreams for the entryway you can check out my entryway board on pinterest!). Here is a sneak peak at what it now looks like:

When we moved in, our entryway was looking pretty rough. There was worn down wood paneling on the floor that may have once been intended to be on wall, it was hard to tell. The coat closet was as it is today, minus the coat of white paint, and the other closet was wall to wall wood plank shelves with stains and lots of dust bunnies. It was rather disgusting! Sorry I don't have any pictures of it in its glory :(

Before we moved in we cleaned off all the surfaces and gave everything a coat of kilz primer. We ripped up the floor boards/paneling, and even put a coat of primer down on the floor to cover the patchy stained plywood. We put a length of indoor outdoor carpet down to catch some of the dirt that builds up in an entryway, and we moved in. Eventually I painted the walls the same tan color as the living room/dining room area, and we called it good enough. A month or so ago I rewired the front porch light, installing a timer switch so the light would turn on and off automatically. That is when this picture was taken, where you can sort of see the mess to the right on the shelves.

The thing was, the deep (double planked) shelves were great at catching stuff. All sorts of stuff. Miscelanous stuff. Stuff on its way into the house. Stuff on its way out of the house. Stuff I didn't even know was in the house. Stuff I didn't want in the house. Stuff I was looking for and could never find. You know how those spots work... Or don't work...

So a couple weeks ago I got sick of it, and was dreaming of the day we could tear both closets out and put in some builtin locker-type units like I've been pinning. I suddenly realized that by taking out the outer plank of wood from each of the shelves, that I could use some recycled cardboard boxes to get the same effect, albeit not nearly as nice looking. And so that's what I did, and boy does it ever make the space work so much better for us! Sure it isn't pretty, but it is functioning, and sometimes that is much more important. Also, now we can have one (or maybe two) chairs in that spot, so that we can sit down to put on or take off our shoes, which is great for guests with limited mobility. I can also sit Little M on it to put her shoes on, so I don't have to bend all the way over! Isn't it crazy how such a small thing (like a chair or cardboard boxes) makes such a big difference?

I figure that eventually we will get real boxes or bins or some sort, or at least paint or paper over the cardboard we have now, but since right now I am still shifting things around in the house so that the important mudroom/entryway-type things are actually in boxes there, I figure I'll wait a bit longer until the system gets a bit more like perfect :) I also don't know that I want to spend money on bins or boxes until we know what sizes are needed once we rip the closets out and put in a new system in there. So perhaps cardboard boxes it will be! I know it doesn't look pretty, but right now for us that is just fine.