The basement half-bathroom has a fiberglass shower. Very convenient when the kids come into the house via the garage or basement cellar stairs all full of dirt and grime.
The 1st floor half-bath, right at backdoor garage entry off the kitchen, is quite unusual in that it has a marble fireplace (non-working) it. We’ve added white tile and a black marble hearth. Click to enlarge.
We’ve cleaned out most of the stuff that’s accumulated in the attic over the years, gave it a good vaccuuming, and tidied it up after the new windows were installed. It’s a classic, including steep stairs and rope-pulley trap door (with bucket of sand, natch!). An attic is primarily for storage, but one can easily envision an extra room or two up there. Click photos to enlarge.
I cleaned out the garage on Saturday, including hosing down the floor (left). It’s an oversized 2 car garage, with two electric garage door openers. It would accommodate two large pickup trucks or SUV’s. We had one of those huge Dodge Maxi-vans for many years and still had storage space in front of it. In the photos, you can see how much room there is in front of Robbie’s Subaru Outback wagon. We’ve got three bicycles there, a couple of motorcycles, lawnmower, a workbench (it stays), storage shelves, and rafters for more storage.
We finished spiffing up and cleaning out the basement last weekend. We fell in love with the basement when we bought the house, because the kids immediately adopted it as a play area… and I had plenty of room for a workshop. Although the house is over 90 years old, the basement is only 40 years old since the house was moved here in 1965. Hence, it’s got a bright, fresh feel to it, unlike the dark dungy basements of most century-old houses. Click photos to enlarge.
Storage room at the bottom of the stairs.
The rec room, complete with a radiator, small storage closet, and a non-working fireplace. We refer to it as a rec room because this is where we had a pool (billiards) table and a ping pong (table tennis) table. Prior to those items, the kids used it for roller skating, floor hockey, impromptu forts, etc.
The workshop. Or another rec room.
Left and center: the area outside the bathroom, in between the stairs and the workshop. Right: laundry area, adjacent to the workshop.
The cellar stairs to the backyard patio. The double doors at the top and bottom make it convenient for hauling big items in and out of the basement… like a pool table!
We moved all the storage items out of the living room today, did a thorough cleaning from all the plaster dust the past couple of weeks, and put all the furniture back.
I’ll take more photos tomorrow when it’s sunny — these photos (click to enlarge) make the walls look like they’re yellow, and a flash photo didn’t do the room justice.
Update 11/26: I took these photos on 11/19.
On the front page of today’s At Home section of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, reporter Julio Ojeda-Zapata has a Personal Tech column titled Owners post Internet blogs to sell properties which features this blog and my son Tyson’s house-for-sale blog in St. Paul. (Julio is one of the few print reporters in the industry who has both a blog and a podcast: Your Tech.)
It’s also one of the “spotlight” articles in the Home section and a “top story” of their Personal Technology section of their TwinCities.com website. Click the images above for larger versions.
I’ve flipped on the comments feature here in case visitors have questions or comments raised by the article.
Since the new attic windows got installed last week, Professional Exteriors co-owner Brad Hildreth and a couple of his siding crew guys arrived yesterday to finish the metal window trim around them. They were evidently expecting me and my camera, as one quipped, “How’s my hair?”
Workers finished plastering and painting the 2nd floor ceilings today — popcorn texture in the hallway and knock-down texture in the rooms. See my previous blog posts here and here about the damage and repairs.
For the past ten days, we’ve been sleeping on an air mattress in the basement, Gilly’s been sleeping in the living room, and the dining room table has mostly been a computer work station. It’ll be good to sleep in our own beds in our own rooms tonight… and work in our own offices tomorrow.
I must tip my blog hat again (see the previous one here) to adjuster Todd Hodapp and the people at Auto-Owners, our homeowners insurance company. They handled this additional claim quickly and competently. Interesting to see that they have an entry in the Wikipedia: “Although the name suggests only auto insurance is provided, it actually provides many lines of insurance ranging form [sic] property, liability, auto, garage, workers compensation, and life.” Must not have been written by the corporate PR department.
Wigley House for Sale Blog 