16 posts tagged “house”

You might recall that I've written about my houseplants before, that is, before we moved. I had to cull them down to three to take with us and in the end chose Phil, Lily and Spike. And I had to prune Spike of half his spikes before I could fit him into my car. I think about Barry now and then, wondering how he would have looked in that corner or in front of this window...

So...how are Phil, Lily and Spike doing now?

Phil loves his westward view and since last spring he's grown plenty of huge leaves. Despite my turning his pot every few weeks he seems to always be able to keep most of his leaves pressed up against the window pane soaking up the photons and watching the neighbours.

Spike has also adapted well, growing back new spikes to replace the ones I cut off. Spike's view is of our back yard - dirt, weeds, rocks, trees, the swamp and The Big Guy's radio antennas.

Lily had a tough time. She does not like to see the outdoors and bright light is torture. First I put her in an inside corner in the dining room. The room has windows on three sides but it's on the north side of the house facing the bush and I thought it wouldn't be too bright. After a few months it was obvious she either had to be moved or be put out of her misery. Next I put her in a corner in the front hall - dim and quiet, no exterior view at all. That was not to her liking either.

Finally, late last fall I stuck her on the floor in the library which has a south facing window. In the winter it doesn't get hot and at midday there is at most an hour or so of sun shining directly in. She likes it there. Grew a bunch of new leaves and right now also has two flowers. But spring is coming and soon I'm going to have to move her again. The library gets way too beastly bright and hot in the summer. Where will I put her next?

Despite having successfully found, purchased, and moved into a new house last spring plus sold our old house, The Big Guy is still keenly interested in the real estate market. He spends part of every day looking at houses for sale in our neighbourhood and on the web, noticing how long houses sit on the market, figuring out who has and has not lowered their prices, trying to find information about assessed values, speculating about realtors' sales strategies, etc.

Yesterday he found this house for sale near Sooke, the area where we first house hunted last winter. He quite likes this house. I wonder if the furniture is included in the $7.7mil asking price...

We went for a walk today in the fog and I took my camera along...

That`s Ingot down the road by the hydro pole.

Here are updated photos of the house showing the freshly painted exterior.

Believe it or not, that wild grass in the foreground is as tall as I am. It does a nice job of screening some of the less attractive portions of our unlandscaped yard. I tried to encourage the grass to spread by spending several days digging up hundreds of thistles in late May and early June. No wonder my back got sore. The lawn was green for a little while as it became colonized by weeds, native grasses, teeny weeny flowers and other assorted local riff, raff. I did get all the thistles and broom seedlings out. Then the weather turned dry and hot. Now it's dirt with dried dead stuff on top and a few very hardy green weeds. Andy's on the lookout for deer even though they don't come this close to the front of the house (no shrubbery or baby trees or garden to eat). A guy working next door with an excavator asked our permission to spill some fill down the side of a slope a few feet onto the back of our lot. We said okay and I asked him to set up this rock beside our driveway in return. Someday I'll get around to cleaning it up and sticking some numbers on. The back of the house looks much better now that it has been painted. I have a few planters on the deck railing. We probably won't be able to do the landscaping until next year and I'm dreading the mud that we'll have all winter in the rain. This is a close-up of some of the Petunias I have in the deck planters. They did nothing for about five weeks. Then it warmed up and boom! Flowers all over the place.

The weather has not been very good for painting outdoors this week but the painters did manage to get one coat on most of the outside of the house.

This is my office. My view to the south is our front yard, the roadway, trees on the other side of the road, and between the trees further uphill on the other side of a field of Broom, a couple of our neighbour's houses.

Unfortunately, on sunny days the light and heat make it impossible to work at my computer. I've ordered shades for the window.

The Scotch Broom is in full bloom all over the place here. The stuff grows anywhere where the ground has been disturned or fill put down. It doesn't seem to like shade so it's never right underneath trees. Broom was imported from Europe in the 1800's and here on Vancouver Island it's considered a noxious weed. It spreads really easily from seed and crowds out native grasses and plants. Once the plants get established they are really difficult to uproot.

 

We have a little under an acre. Most of it is woods. The rest is bare dirt and stones around the house with a few weeds and stubborn ferns poking through.

Painters came Friday to start on the outside of the house so these are the last pictures I have of the house in its plain and boring primed phase.

 

 

 

 

 

We've had this Rhodo in front of our house, the house we just moved out of, for at least 20 years. It's always been a skinny, awkward plant, sprawled over an impressive amount of space but never with enough leaves on the brittle branches to look good. These things are supposed to produce lots of big white or pink flowers in the spring but ours never produced flowers on the ends of more than five or six of its long, mostly bare stems. Some years it had no flowers at all.

 

We moved out of the house on April 30th. On May 15th I went back to the house to check it over, air it out and pack up the last few odds and ends that were left behind.

And the Rhodo picks this year to put on a big show! It was covered with big fat bright pink blossoms. I took a few pictures.

Ok, here are pictures.

Front: Yes, it is a bit plain in pale yellow and white but it will look brighter once the final coats of paint are on and the landscaping is in. The builder is waiting for warmer weather to finish painting the exterior. We'll live with the colours for a year and if we still find it too plain after that, I'll have it repainted then.

Landscaping... I have vague notions of a raised bed in the front of the house behind a low stone wall with low maintainance shubbery and perennials. I'll have to figure out what sort of plants the deer won't gobble up the instant they're planted.

Back: The upstairs windows from left to right are master bedroom then dining nook then the living room which has french doors opening on to the deck. Downstairs will be mainly The Big Guy's territory. Deck railings need paint.

Living Room: Lots and lots of windows facing west and north. Gas fireplace. Hardwood floors. French doors out to the deck. Most of our current family room furniture will work just fine in here. There isn't enough wall space for our oak bookcase so that will end up in the den.

Deck: This good sized deck is partially covered by the roof overhang so it can be used on both sunny and rainy days. I will need all new deck furniture of course, the old stuff just won't do.

Kitchen and Dining Nook: We will have all new appliances! The Big Guy will not be allowed near the new appliances if he's holding a screwdriver or a drill or any other sort of item from the tools section of a hardware store.

Den: The oak bookcase will go in here along with one or two other bookcases for my books plus the bookcases holding The Big Guy's DVD collection. I'll add a comfy rocking chair with ottoman and floor lamp. Yikes! I don't think this room is big enough for all this stuff. Anyway, if there's any room left at all I'm putting a small TV in here too.

Next week we both going over for a house walk-thru with the builder. I sure hope The Big Guy likes the house and property. I've been through it in person but he's just been going on my pictures and descriptions so far. We get possession on the 16th and we're actually moving the week of the 28th.

It seems as if there are a million things yet to be done!

Today I loaded up the car with three more big bags of stuff to donate away, set up a new account with Shaw for our HD TV and High Speed Internet service and bought a shower curtain and associated accessories so that we can shower in our new house as soon as we get moved in without having to immediately go out searching for stores near our new neighbourhood that sell these sorts of things.

Tomorrow some guys are coming over to dismantle and bring down the RBRAT (Really Big Radio Antenna Tower). Our back yard will seem empty without it.

We're still waiting for the formal signed paperwork to arrive but we've been told that our offer won the house.

I'll post more info and pictures in a day or two. Right now I'm too tired to compose a readable post.

As per our New Technique for acquiring a house, our agent submitted our offer for the second house on our "A-list" last night.

This house already has an offer on it but the seller put a time clause in his acceptance. That means he can continue to consider other offers while the first offer has outstanding conditions. We don't know exactly what those conditions are but they probably had to do with the buyer selling their current home to get financing for this house.

With a little financial tap dancing and doing a couple of other things out of the normal sequence, we are able to submit an unconditional offer.

And, we just heard that the seller accepted our offer at noon today!

Now the buyer who submitted the first offer has 72 hours to withdraw their offer or remove all their subject-to clauses (in which case the seller could choose between their offer and ours) or just let it terminate.

More nail-biting suspense...