Housing Horrors and Staying Put

As most of you know, we had a whirl-wind couple of weeks as soon as we arrived back in Wisconsin for the summer.  Our financial advisor told us we should look for a new house to better suit our interested and our needs, and he gave us the name of a good realtor on the Thursday after we were back in Wisconsin.  On Friday we contact that realtor, and she immediately started to send us listings of homes.  On Saturday, she took us to a private showing on a house in the neighborhood of our dreams.  On Sunday, we made and offer, and on Monday, the offer was accepted.  All was good... until the inspection report came back with failures in several areas.  Long story, short:  after $2400 worth of expenses, be backed out of the offer.

Our next step was to look at brand new homes, but we soon discovered that for prices almost beyond our means, those houses did not come with tiled bathrooms, granite countertops, six-panel solid oak doors, a huge kitchen, heated bathroom floors, Kohler fixtures, or triple-paned Pella windows.  We would have had to invest $20 - $30,000 just to bring those houses up to the standards we currently own.

Since the first-floor laundry was a huge consideration for moving, our next query was to learn how much putting a laundry addition on to the back of the house and enclosing our porch into a four-season room would cost.  The answer: way too much!  One contractor told us not to put that kind of money into this house in this neighborhood.  He suggested that we take one of our three bedrooms and convert one into a laundry room.  That idea did not appeal to us since we did not want to leave our daughters with a two-bedroom house to try to sell someday.

However, I did have another thought.  Traditionally, a first-floor laundry room is located next to the kitchen and near the garage, and we happened to have a den that fit that description perfectly.  Yes, we had to move the TV into the living room, but we are adjusting to that scenario well.  Also, the plumbing for the washer and the duct for the dryer both are located right below where we want to locate the units on the first floor.  Getting the laundry installed into that room will take both time and effort, but in the end this may be the perfect solution for our dilemma.

Since we decided to stay where we are, we have to face other problems and repairs in this house.  The first thing that had to go were the dangerously large and brittle trees in the back yard.  We had an art least 120 foot cottonwood that dominated the back yard.  While it has provided good shade all of these years, it also is old, brittle, and subject to killing us or our neighbors if it happened to fall in a storm.  We also had a very leaning cottonwood at the back of the property and a smaller ash tree on the property line that we wanted to take down.  That process started on Thursday of this past week.

This huge cottonwood dominates the back yard.

A worker in a boom truck cuts off the upper
branches on the smaller ash tree.

The cottonwood before...

during...

more during...

and after they finished "topping" the tree on
Friday.  They will return to remove the trunks
and the debris on Monday.

Lots of debris needs to be removed from the neighbor's yard and from our yard.

The trees did not come down as we expected.  First, they are taking more time than the owner of the tree service anticipated, and secondly, they are in our neighbor's yard as well as in our yard.  We are going to owe the neighbor some restitution for the damage to his clothesline and his garden.  In the end, though, we will be glad to have them all gone.

Keeping Busy

We have been keeping busy since we ventured north for the summer.  I'll quickly try to recap the "high points" of the last couple of weeks.

Gladys Glitches: A couple of days before we were set to depart for the summer, we awoke to water in the garage.  Our HVAC system was on the fritz, and the day before we flew home, we had to cough up over $6,000 to replace the HVAC system.  Not our idea of a good time. Now we just pray that everything is working while we are gone.

The Flight North:  We arrived at the Tampa Airport for our flight north with plenty of time to spare.  We easily walked to the head of the line since we have Pre-TSA; however, once again I was "randomly selected" for additional screening.  Of course, the full body scan revealed my insulin pump, so I had to be hand-checked before I could go further.  Sadly, that required a female TSA agent who happened to be busily checking a cast on the woman before me.  I probably waited at least 10 minutes while the woman removed the walking cast which the agents then sent through X-ray.  When I finally had my turn, the TSA agent searched my upper arm... and found nothing.  Then I told her the other item seen on the x-ray was my insulin pump, so she just had me touch it and then tested my fingers for explosive residue.  Same old routine with the same results.  I have learned that they are just trying to do their jobs to keep everyone safe, so the fastest thing to do is just to follow their directions.  I finally was able to join Rick.

Our flight was supposed to leave at 4:40 p.m.  Rick thought we might be able to squeeze in between two approaching storms, but no luck.  We watched the grey skies continue to get more and more dark as the cloud ceiling descended.  As the darkness filled the sky, the clouds opened into a torrential downpour.  It rained so hard that we seemed to be in a dense fog.  Then the lightening started.  Of course, that meant that the entire airport shut down since the law requires that all personnel must get off the tarmac in the event of rain.  Our plane, due to land from a Denver departure, eventually was re-routed to Orlando as it got low on fuel from circling so long. Long story short, our plane was not sent back to Tampa until almost 7:00 p.m, so we did not take off for Wisconsin until 7:30.  Once we landed in Milwaukee, we still had to drive north.  We did not arrive home until just before midnight.  I do not know how Rick was able to complete that drive.  We both were exhausted.

The Weather: Strangely enough, we seem to have brought the Florida weather home with us.  Just a month ago, Wisconsin received 30 inches of snow.  For the first few days that we were home, the temperatures were in the low 90's with the humidity to match.  Rick did not have to wait long to wear his shorts again!

My Health:  Just before we came north, I made a quick appointment with my rheumatologist to get medication.  I have been in remission from Dermatomyositis for the past 18 months, but my legs have started to ache again, and I am noticing weakness and trouble swallowing.  She prescribed the same medications I was on for two years, so now I am dealing with a suppressed immune system and an upset stomach from the Prednisone.  Forgive me, my friends, if I do not want to go out to lunch!

Wisconsin Work:  As usual, we came home to a number of jobs that needed our attention.  The warm fall lead to a late leaf drop, so the yard was covered with leaves this spring.  Lindsay came to rake the worst from the front yard, but our lawn service still fertilized around the groups of leaves. They also miscalculate the square footage of our yard, so we were paying for more than we owned.  We have cancelled their contract. Other projects include trees in the back yard that need to be removed to the tune of $8,000, and a possible fence to screen out the neighbors.  We no longer like our neighborhood, so we have some serious decisions to make.

To try to keep the house looking nice, we tackled the yard today.  While Rick was at the dentist this morning, I raked the leaves from the front flower gardens.  Once home, Rick mowed the lawn, and then we edged the whole front area.  After that, we picked up two yards of new mulch and spread it around the front gardens.  We worked until 4:00 this afternoon, and we both are exhausted.

The truck holds approximately a yard of mulch,
so we had to make two trips.

The new mulch nicely outlines the hostas and
the daylilies growing outside the front door.

The rest of the shaded garden now has a new layer of mulch.

The above are all reasons I have not been logged into this blog.  Each day brings new adventures.  My goal this summer is to clean out every nook and cranny of this house, and to simplify our lives by getting rid of the last 28 years of clutter.  Our lifestyles have changed, so it is time this house reflects that new way of living.

Packing Up

Since we only a few days left in the muggy, hot South, we are starting to assemble items we want to take North, items we want to stow away, and items we want to throw out.

We started the day by going over to Steve and Chris' house to check on their home and to add water to their drains before we leave for the summer.  All looks good.  We decided to take a walk in their neighborhood just to see some new scenery.  We had a delightful walk on mostly shady streets while the breeze was strong and the temperatures had not started to rise much.

From there, a quick stop at the Library for me to drop off the two books I had borrowed will now keep me in their good graces until the fall.  I was surprised at how busy the Library was just as it opened this morning!

Once home, I worked in the gardens a bit, trimming the Podocarpus, cutting out the dead branches on the front Firecracker plant, pulling a few weeds, and driving fertilizer stakes under the palm trees to give them a boost for the summer.  A bit of water kept them all happy.  I did not spend too much time watering because we are supposed to get rain for the next three days.  (Note: We were supposed to get rain for the last three days, too, but we did not get enough to even use the windshield wipers on the car! Meanwhile, Orlando is flooding because they have had so much rain.)  Pray that the rain finally comes here in the next few days... a good, slow, three-day soaking would be just fine.

While in the front yard, I noticed a lone Freesia plant blooming amidst the crab grass.  I emptied a cottage cheese container, added some potting soil, and transplanted the Freesia from the front yard -- where it would get mowed down on Monday -- into the new container.  If it lasts the summer, I will find it a new pot in the fall.

The Freesia I dug out of the back yard and put into a pot seven years ago is still going strong.  I usually get one or two blooms in the spring, but today I went outside and found a lovely surprise: five blooms on the plant!  This is the same plant that the bunnies almost ate down to nothing a couple of months ago.  The Freesia gave me one last look before we leave.

My Freesia plant blooms once again.

I love the pale pink blossoms.

We both are bummed because we had been saving for a lanai roof for next year; however, this week we noticed that the air handler in the garage (read: our air conditioner!) was leaking water.  We had had the whole system checked just a couple of weeks ago, and now it was leaking.  We learned that the pan is cracked and the insulation around the unit is soaking wet from the condensation.  Grrr!

We were quoted over $1500 just to fix that part of the system. Since we heard no guarantees, though, that the "fix" would work for very long, we decided to have a whole new, matched system installed.  We were told that our unit should have lasted longer than the seven years we have had it, and the current company we are using said that the problems we are having were probably due to a "poor installation job" and faulty equipment to begin with.  We went with a cheap company at the time because they were the only ones to offer financing, and we had a million places to go with our money.  Lesson learned.  My Grandfather used to say, "If you buy something cheap, you GET something cheap."  He was so right.  The new system will go in Monday.  We pray this one will work fine.

The only good part of the HVAC story is that we will get our money back from the "all is well" check from two weeks ago.  Not much, but better than nothing...

After lunch I helped a neighbor pick out new colors for her house.  She took one of my outdoor plants home for the summer and will water another of my plants that is too big to carry.  I "paid" her with a two-pound brick of cheese from Wisconsin.  Since she is a Minnesota gal, she loved it!

Since our garage will have to be open for the new air handler installation on Monday, we brought the two bikes into the Florida room for summer storage.  Rick put another coat of paint on our metal chairs today so they can dry in the sun today.  Then we'll bring them into the house for the summer also.  We hope that will protect them from getting too rusty.

As we continue to organize the house, we move closer to having the house ready to face the summer while we seek cooler weather in the North.  So far, so good.

Retirement

We went to church, and I prayed for rain.  We finally got some late last night, and it is still overcast and trying to sprinkle as I write this.  Rain is predicted for the next few days, and we so badly need it that I don't think people here will complain if they have to get wet.  Our grass actually "crunches" when I walk on it, so any green that the rain produces will be much appreciated.

Yesterday I asked Rick to take a picture of me standing next to our hibiscus.  I want this to be the "before" picture so I can take an "after" picture when we return in the fall.  That way I can judge how much the hibiscus has grown over the summer.

Right now, the hibiscus is just a little above my knees.

We've been a bit lazy the last day or so.  Our actions continue to pack things away or sort things out.  We passed about five rummage sales yesterday. (Must be that time of year!)  Rick asked if I wanted to stop at any of them, and I replied, "Truthfully, no. There is not one more thing I need to bring into this house."  About the only thing I would even think of buying are books that I could pass on to several of the "little library" boxes scattered across the neighborhoods or puzzles that I could pass on to Chris or to the public library.  Otherwise, we have filled the house with all that we need.

Speaking of puzzles, I completed a small 300 piece puzzle yesterday.  It is part of a box of 8 puzzles that I bought at the Library for a couple of dollars.  They are so colorful that they are fun and not at all hard to do.  The 300 piece can be done in one day.  I finished both 100 piece scenes, and I have one more 300 piece one, two 500 piece scenes, and two 1000 piece puzzles.  They are a fun way to exercise my mind and to pass the time.  I'll definitely save them for you, Chris.

The 300 piece puzzle only took a little time to complete.

Other than that, reading, exploring what we want to build and to do next year, and scheduling a gazillion appointments when we travel to the North have taken up our time.  This is what retirement is all about.

Prepping to Go

In the last couple of days, we have started to lay things out on the bed in the guest room that we want to remember to take North when we leave in a couple of weeks.  We also are starting to prep the outside of our house.

Yesterday we turned off the freezer in the garage.  While our indoor freezer in the bottom of the refrigerator is still packed with several meals (and ice cream treats!), we now have "eaten down" our inventory enough that we can fit it all into our smaller freezer.  The freezer in the garage is defrosted, wiped dry, and soon will have a cover over it for the summer.

Today we started by dressing in work clothes.  We took the remainder of our weed killer over to church, and Rick sprayed the garden wall at the front of the church (which tends to grow weeds among the stacked layers) and weedy cracks between pavers and next to the driveway.  It will not solve the weed problem totally, but every little bit will help.  We hope the weed killer has a chance to work today before the (finally!) expected rain tomorrow.

After that, we headed home and Rick sprayed the last of our bug spray around the perimeter of the house and inside the garage.  Again, we hope the rain holds off for 24 hours so the spray has a chance to work.

We packed away the hammock for the season.  We have been experiencing a terrible drought, but rain is finally predicted for tomorrow and for each day in the coming week.  We could get as much as 3 inches total, and that would be wonderful for our trees, flowers, and lawn. Pray for rain or do a little rain dance, everyone.

Speaking of trees, yesterday the city arborist came out to look at our trees.  He said that the palm trees in the front yard look good, but that the bottle brush in the back yard was planted too deeply and that the roots have wrapped around the tree ("girdled it") so that it probably never will grow.  He suggested that we could try to dig it out, free the root ball, and try to replant it less deeply, but he offered little hope that it actually would survive.  That the tree was planted incorrectly angers me because we had the nursery both deliver and plant the tree for us.  We paid good money to have them plant the tree, and ultimately that is what will kill it.  We'll have to replace that tree in the fall when we return, and I assure you we will not purchase it from the same nursery.

We picked up a few other things in the garage, starting to store items away for the summer.  We emptied the gas can into our car, bought stabilizer for the gas-powered equipment that needs it, and generally are getting things organized.

When we finally leave for the summer, we still will bring bikes and our metal lawn chairs inside for safe keeping.  We'll move our park bench into the back to protect it from strong storms, and generally do what we can to make our house and neighborhood secure until we return.

We really do not have that much outside that we need to take care of yet.  Gladys really is not a high-maintenance kind of gal, so our transition out of here will be fairly easy.

A Little Light on the Subject

The corner of the garage where Rick put in his workbench has always had a lighting disadvantage.  The garage light is more toward the middle of the garage, so anyone who works at the workbench is always casting his or her own shadow on the bench top.

Additionally, the freezer right next to the workbench has the same problem.  When we go out to the freezer a bit before dinner time, seeing what is in the depths of the freezer with little illumination can be a real problem.

The problem: the area above the workbench
had no source of light.

For approximately $40, a couple of scrap 2 x 4's, some already-on-hand wire, and about an hour of hot work, Rick solved the problem today.

We started the venture at Home Depot to pick up a small can light, a "decorator" ring, and some LED light bulbs.  The bulbs consume low wattage but give off 120 watts of light.  Just what that corner needed!

Then up the ladder Rick went.  We wanted the light centered over the workbench, so Rick had to scab on some scrap 2 x 4's to the existing 2 x 4's for a surface onto which he could attach the can lighting fixture.

Two scrap 2 x 4's were added to existing
2 x 4's in the ceiling to hold the new light.

From there, it was a matter of running the wire to the fixture, attaching the wire to the rafters, and splicing it in to a power source.  Of course, the garage lights were one of the only switches in the electrical panel NOT identified, so trying to turn off the power to the garage took almost as much time as actually connecting the wire to the can light fixture.

Success! The new light eliminates shadows
and excused about not being able to see to work.

In the end, we now have a 120 watt "daylight" illumination above the workbench that also does a great job of adding a little light into the depths of the freezer.

Now Rick has no excuse not to get a lot of work done out on the workbench in the garage!

Lids and Lift-Off

On Tuesday and Wednesday of this past week, Rick and I spent long days on our hands and knees in the front garden of our church.  The garden is a raised bed, and it had been badly neglected.  A middle raise bed had once been a three-tiered brick affair, but the top tiers of the bricks had been removed, leaving only uneven, mounded-up dirt piles which surrounded a middle bush.  Two of the last tier of bricks were missing, and the surrounding garden was over-run with weeds to the point that the bushes in the garden were lost in the mess.

On Tuesday, I shoveled out four bucketsful of dirt from the middle area, replaced the missing bricks on the lower tier, and removed all of the weeds in the middle of the garden.  I also weeded about 1/4 of the lower garden.  While I was doing that, Rick was making great headway on the lower garden.  He weeded more than half of his side of the garden before the sun came around to the front of the church, making the day over for weeding.

On Wednesday we returned to the garden to finish the weeding.  When the main garden was finished, Rick tackled a smaller garden next to the driveway leading into church while I weeded a longer front garden and a side garden visible from the street.  The result is a much more presentable church property.  The gardens all badly need landscape fabric, weed-killer, and new mulch.  For now, though, they are what they are.

On Wednesday afternoon, we went to Lowe's and purchased a Ti plant to add to a back garden at church.  The added Ti balances the garden better so that people entering the church will have a nice view.  That's about all we can do for now.

Thursday was our first day of a two-day mini-vacation.  We drove to DeLand, Florida, which is in the middle of nowhere, north east of Orlando.  Traffic was horrific getting there, so we were both happy to arrive.  We went to tour one of Florida's best-kept secrets: the Stetson Mansion.

The Stetson Mansion of DeLand, Florida, was saved from the wrecking ball
in 2005. It was completely renovated in 18 months.

Although the roof was replaced, the Mansion retains its original
siding, soffits, millwork, and windows, many of which are stained glass.

The Stetson Mansion was built in 1886 by John B. Stetson, the creator of the Stetson cowboy hat.  Stetson built the largest, grandest home of the 19th century in Florida.  He had planned a 18,000 square foot home, but his third wife Elizabeth, who hated the bugs and the beasts of Florida, persuaded him to build a home only half that size.  He did, adding a school house so his two sons could be privately tutored in the winter, and approximately 300 acres of orange trees.  The joke turned out to be on Elizabeth, however, because even though the house was smaller, she was forced to come down for the winter with John B. for the next 20 years!

One side of the house shows the "stepped" windows which
add light to the main staircase of the house.  The windows are
stained-glass and may be the work of one of Stetson's friends:
Louis Comfort Tiffany.

Stetson also was a friend of Thomas A. Edison, so this house was the first in Florida to have electric lights installed as part of the plans. One can see the original fuse box for the house, including two fuses identified by tags written by Edison himself.  Stetson took care of the town also, making little DeLand the first city in Florida to have electric street lights!

This bronze statue of a little girl reading rests outside
the entrance to the restored school house which today
houses a small gift shop on the premises. 

The house was purchased in 2005 by Michael Solari and JT Thompson, two men who took the dilapidated home and transformed it into a showplace in only 18 months.  Inspired by HGTV, JT raised funds and got materials donated to the home by promising manufacturers that they would showcase their goods in home tours to the public for three months after the home was finished. After that, the home would revert to being their private residence.

A shady Zen Garden, a pool, a gazebo, a putting green, and
a small sitting area are all additions to the Mansion's landscape.

The tours turned out to be such a success that 13 years later, they are still being conducted three times a week.  The home IS a private residence, but tour guides takes "guests" into all of the rooms, allowing people to freely wander through the rooms and to sit on the furniture.  The tours are very interesting, and on our tour, JT even dropped in to say "hello" to his "guests." Since the home is still considered a private residence, no inside photographs were allowed due to insurance restrictions.

Michael is an architectural historian, so the home is magnificently restored to its 1880's glory.  The woodwork is exceptional, the parquet floors are some of the best in the world, and the house boasts over 10,000 panes of stained and antique glass in the original windows.

In addition to the house, JT also restored and added to the gardens and landscape.  The tour is truly worth the money to see and an afternoon of your time.

After the Stetson Mansion, we drove to Cocoa for the evening before venturing out early the next day to the Space Coast.  We arrived about a half-hour before opening at the Kennedy Space Center.  We have been there two or three times, but the exhibits keep changing, and one could spend two weeks there and still never see all there is to see.

Part of the Saturn V rocket looms overhead at the Space Center.
Note that even Snoopy looks on in wonder.

A space suit that Gene Cernan wore on Apollo 17
for the last mission to the moon.

We took the 40-minute bus tour which eventually took us to the Saturn V center.  We had lunch there, watched a movie, and looked at some of the exhibits.  Back at the main center, we spent a little time and money at the Gift Shop -- which was half outdoors since it is being remodeled -- before getting back on the road a little after noon.

The Center is extremely educational.  This map
of the moon shows where six of the Apollo
missions landed.

We were home by 3:30, missing the worst of the Tampa rush-hour traffic.  The Stetson Mansion was a delight to visit, and since we bought a 13-month pass, we will return again to the Kennedy Space Center.  I would love to take Owen there some day; I am sure he would be amazed.

Travel is always fun, but so was being able to climb into my own bed last night for a good night's sleep.

Spring in Florida

Happy Springtime!

We spent this last weekend watching to the Weather Channel as snow, ice, and hail pelted the Upper Midwest.  We were worried about our family and friends as well as our property in Wisconsin; however, we also were happy that the worst weather we had to deal with was a line of powerful thunderstorms which brought much-needed moisture to Florida.

We received a good shower with lots of rain, but we could use still more to keep everything green and healthy in my flower gardens.  For now, though, I will share a bit of spring with those of you who are now just watching the mountains of snow that you moved off your driveways being to melt.

When we purchased this house, the back yard was filled with overgrown trees and shrubs that filled the back six feet of our yard.  The vegetation was so thick that we could not see the chain-link fence that surrounded our property in back, and we had no idea how may trees and shrubs actually grew in that mess.

Dense vegetation almost hides the house behind us from view.

A worker removes some of the trees from the yard which
hides my gardenia tree somewhere back in the mess.

In time, we removed nine Brazilian Pepper trees (which are invasive), a malformed palm, a dead holly tree, a dangerously-leaning "ear" tree, an almost strangled red hibiscus --discovered only when an errant red flower suddenly bloomed in the midst of green foliage -- and a second palm that was too close to overhead wires.  Layers of unnamed bushes, scores of mother-in-law tongue, and even a gnarled cactus eventually had to go.  When we finally had cleaned out the gardens, we discovered a tiny gardenia tree buried in the corner of the yard.  I had no idea it was even hidden back there, but something told me to let it alone.

Exposed to the sun for the first time in years if not in its entire life, the gardenia started to grow.  In the past seven years, it occasionally would grace us with a few delightful white flowers, but nothing that made us say, "Wow."

This year, I have been watering the garden extensively to get some crotons to grow after they were devastated by cold weather in January.  The result not only is new croton leaves, but also scores of blooms on the gardenia tree.

Buds promise wonderful flowers soon to appear.

These are the most buds I have seen at one time on the tree.

Spring has arrived in Florida, so I share with you the fragrant blooms on my gardenia tree.

The gardenia flowers are not large, but they are fragrant.

P. S. My Freesia also bloomed again!