Our house is a very, very,very fine house
With (more than two) cats in the yard
Life used to be so hard
Now everything is easy 'cause of you
I have been thinking alot lately about how we ended up in this house, and about the house itself. This year will mark twenty years we have lived here -- 10 months before we got married, and the longest I have ever lived in one place anywhere.
I still remember the first time we looked at the house -- I had found out about it from the graphic artist at the printer where we got our bus schedules printed. They were moving to Oregon and we looked at it and rejected as "needs too much work". With our list of "must haves" we had been looking throughout all of Napa's subdivisions. We had just seen a four bedroom in north Napa that met every condition on the list when I turned to Rod and said "You know what? I don't want to live in a tract house". And he said "Neither do I" and that changed everything. We went back to the older house on Coombsville Road and gave it another look. Rod crawled around under the foundation with Larry Ellis, and they looked in the attic (luckily the house was vacant). Larry (a contractor) pronounced the house structurally sound with no visible termite or dry rot damage. And then we found out that our neighbors (in front) would be someone we both knew who also worked for the City of Napa, and that the house had begun it's life in Benicia as a WWII duplex built for shipyard workers. It had been barged up the Napa River, then hauled up the hill on a flatbed truck to be plunked down on the (almost 2 acre) lot where it was remodeled into a single family home.
The deck was covered with the dropped dried puffy flowers from the Chinese silk tree overlooking the deck, and there was a pool. Once there had been a garden, too, and there was a brick patio and walkways. I was also intrigued by the unfinished rooms over the garage. Maybe this house had potential.
We talked about how we could afford its $325,000 price tag. Rod had cash from his divorce settlement, and I had a house on South Montgomery Street. Would they take $50,00 down now and another $50,00 when my house sold by carrying back a second mortgage? We made the offer and I completely freaked out. I fretted that we would not be able to afford it, that they would never accept the offer, that there was just way too much work, that we had made a big mistake.
Then they accepted our offer. Oh. My. God. When we found out that the daughter of the owners was still living in Napa with friends to finish high school, we borrowed a house key and sneaked inside to measure rooms for carpeting and windows for curtains. Even before closing, we were over there every day after work clearing brush, planting things, and one eventful day taking a skinny dip in the pool when our Realtor showed up with papers for us to sign!
Of course we thought we could get all of the work done that needed to be done in three weeks before we moved in -- painting, wallpapering, painting kitchen cabinets, tearing out an old woodstove and patching the ceiling, laying new carpet, making curtains, buying blinds, and packing up everything we needed to move as well as having a yard sale for all the things we didn't want to move! By coming to the house every day after work and staying until midnight, working all weekend long, and utilizing child labor (Rod's kids) we did everything we wanted to do. We even got practically new oatmeal colored wool carpeting to replace the existing brown plush from Larry, which had come form a remodel he was doing. This was wonderful, because when we pulled up the carpeting in the living room, expecting to find the hardwood that was in the dining room and largest downstairs bedroom, what we had found instead was all of the evidence of walls that had been removed when the house was converted from a duplex to a single family home. There was enough of that carpeting to complete the two remaining downstairs bedrooms as well. We took the blue indoor/outdoor carpeting from the upstairs (unfinished) space and put it in the downstairs mudroom.
And only four months later , my house on South Montgomery Street sold (I had staged it before staging was the "in" thing to do), and we paid off the second mortgage.
Since then we have done so many upgrades, starting with finishing the upstairs -- turning the long narrow space originally planned as a bathroom into a walk in closet, closing off the hall entry into one of the small bedrooms and turning it into a bathroom (it is no fun having no upstairs bathroom when you have to get up in the middle of the night to pee) with a donated tub, ceramic tile from the tile outlet in SF, and kitchen cabinets instead of typical bathroom cabinets with deep pot drawers in the middle to take the place of a linen closet, and last but not least, putting in a separate (also donated) heating and air conditioning system after I threatened Rod that if we went one more summer without AC in our bedroom, I would be sleeping downstairs on the couch).
Then came rebuilding the deck with Trex, lots of landscaping, including a new sidewalk to the front door, a picket fence (picked up from a scrap heap at the Corp Yard after a flood) separating the front yard from the side yard, building a water tower (Rod's project) and extending the back yard, adding a second covered patio with an outdoor kitchen behind the pool, and a sidewalk to the back porch. Also a wonderful balcony off the master suite with donated mission style French doors (thanks Gene and Ethel)
Here is a view from the covered patio in the back yard toward the back porch with the outdoor kitchen (actually only a sink, countertop, bar and storage) in the foreground. You can see the door into the garage and railings of the balcony on the left, our olive tree and garden window (both a freebie) to the right.
This is the kitchen facing south and looking into the dining room. The 1949 Wedgewood stove on the left came with the house and we still use it every day. I wouldn't trade it for the newest cooktop around.
Our dining room in the summer, with roses from the garden on the table. We bought this beautiful mission table and chairs at a yard sale in Carneros for only $500! I have had the Victorian oak secretary since 1972.
Living room with hardwood floors, my needlework on the wall, and (of course) cat toys!
The final upgrade was to add hardwood floors throughout the house. That is if you don't count the new paint, carpeting, drapes, and furniture we got for our master bedroom (after only 20 years) last November.
Now the picket fence is peeling and has been pushed side by a tree that has grown up too close to it, the back yard garden needs to be overhauled (new cement block planting beds are in the works), and I am as close to having my ideal home as I ever will be.
Every morning, I can sit on my balcony and watch the Canadian geese fly over head, honking on their way to somewhere. I can sit on the front deck and see the hummingbirds flock to the silk tree (which is dying by degrees -- alas) in the summer time, and to the feeders all the time. I can go out to the chicken yard and watch the girls come flying at me with their waddling run (so funny) to find out if I have some stale bread or browning lettuce for them. I can sit with a cat on my lap and hear the sounds of the children at recess from the school across the field, and I can feel grateful -- so grateful!
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