The Best for Last . . . I Mean First (The First for Last?)

And now for one final update, and this is a big one: we sold our Hague House. It's someone else's Hague House now. But thanks to us (yay, us!) it's no longer anyone else's job to completely overhaul! 

Here are the final photos representing what it looked like when we sold it on August 28th, 2013...Thank you all (mom, my one loyal Hague House fan, who now follows from her garden bench in the ol' proverbial sky): 

The finally finished beautiful office

Our lovely kitchen

One of the first floor bedrooms

The courtyard

My raised beds, rain barrel

The arbor and fence to the raised beds

Front corner yard

Living room cozy reading corner

Front porch door, after removing the ghetto iron gate

First floor guest room

The original selling point: beautiful built in buffet

And the main living room, where we spent most of our time at Hague House

Finally the Floor!

After someone took out the lovely arts and crafts feature here, and all the dog drool and years of being mistreated (before we moved in), we really needed to redo the floors.

So back in the fall (2012) we had Dave's Flooring come in. We wondered what it would look like under a hundred years of wear and tear. Here it is after sanding; a much lighter shade.

How beautiful is the natural color of red and white oak flooring? This beautiful.

Ah, shiny new floors!

Halloweens for Grownups

We've had a total of three Halloweens in the neighborhood now. Some of the kids avoided our house because the jack-o-lantern lights play the Jason's theme when you walk up to them. And I guess we did have a stuffed pumpkin head figure in the corner and creepy purple lights.

Too much?

Garden Stones

Rich's nieces and nephew made these awesome garden stones and they look perfect in the courtyard, especially next to Rich's head.

Front Yard New Look

Because it is sort of downhill from the rainspout, we call this raingarden, which we started last year with a riverbirch and fountain grass. This year we planted it with all kinds of stuff including hollyhock, a mini ever-pink hydrangea, blackeyed susans, and some low growing fluffy silver-green thing that feels like feathers when you run your hand over it.

This is the fence and hidden gate next to the dining area and fireplace. Note the forever-awesome leaded glass windows, found at an antique shop downtown 2 years ago.

Good Neighbors

The reason for wanting a fence was an obvious one: you know what they say about good fences. We have a corner lot, so we wanted to utilize the extensive yard on the side of the house farthest from the ongoing party next door. We pay an outrageous amount of property taxes for all this space - why not use it to the best of its potential?

We asked Dean, favored contractor and long-time associate, to put up the posts. While he was at it, he even got a side-gig of doing the same for the neighbors across the street. Then Rich began the process of framing it in.

And finally - we have a big yard! In the foreground is the old fence in the process of being cut down. It really felt way too open at first. Even the dogs seemed to prefer the old 400-square-foot courtyard area between the house and garage. Like us, they got used to it. Now, what to do with the posts on the old fence - keep them and string lights across, making the courtyard a grilling and eating area? Cut them down and build a countertop on the panel in the lower part of the picture as a kind of bar or countertop or side table? Something else wonderful?

Office Doors

The pocket door, as seen from the kitchen. It immediately opened up the addition part of the kitchen and we wondered, Why in the world did they put a door to that little room inside another door that leads to the basement?

This is the original doorway that lead into the office. You have to open the door from the kitchen that leads to the basement to even see it. Rich and I got a panel of sheetrock today that will cover this old doorway and we can try to pretend someone was never dumb enough to put it there in the first place.

Office Space, the Unawkward Kind

Staining the pocket door that goes between my office and the kitchen. I hate trying to match stains. It was close, but no banana.

This is the new view of my office, as seen from the kitchen. This is now possible because I came home one day and saw Rich with a heavy duty razor cutting a hole in the wall.

The office needed a lot of work. It is one half of the house addition, probably done about 20 years ago - who knows. What we do know is that it was done badly. Also discovered when we tore up the carpet (which I started, by the way, thank you) was where that faint urine smell was coming from on warm days. (I know, gross.) There are pee spots EVERYWHERE, and it can't be much more than a 200 foot square space. There must be one pee spot for every 2 feet. So, some [bleep]-head kept their dog in there - probably when they didn't keep him/them in the dungy scary basement.

But I digress, a lot. Rich is now getting started on relocating the door from its current location at the top of the basement stairs, to the kitchen nook, which already looks better with the light coming in from the office. We ordered a woodframe glass door last night and got a pre-built pocket, which Rich will transform into a - yes, you guessed it - pocket door!

Yay, Rich!

Creating the Courtyard - 'Cause I Like to Say "Courtyard"

We sit out here every chance we get now, especially since Rich re-created the pathway on the right hand side. He saw that the neighbor across the street had some extra dirt, so he asked for some and used it to fill in the path, which was already sunken, but even moreso when we laid the sod rolls down to the left. Then he laid landscape paper and arranged the red square pavers on top. Before filling with gray slate rock, he nailed down a frame - I can't remember what it's called but it's black and comes in 8-foot lengths and you can just barely cut it with scissors. It's funny to see the dogs use the path. Before, they would just run around the yard like - well, like dogs, haphazard and goofy. Now they make a an effort to walk up and down the path, like they want us to know it's so awesome, even a dog can't resist using it.

Man Need Shelf, Build Shelf

I was planting lettuce in a window box and said, "Boy it would be nice to have something like a garden shelf to set this on." And lo, with found wood - one piece literally found on the boulevard one day last week - Rich built a garden shelf.

Now the garden feels more complete. We still need some more stepping stones and mulch, but it feels like it's finally all there: 3 different kinds of tomatoes, eggplant, spaghetti squash, 3 different kinds of lettuce, red peppers, broccoli and chives.

Next up: potted strawberries, and painting the porch.

Swiss Sod Rolls

We've been going sod crazy. I call these Swiss Sod Rolls. They remind me of the Little Debbie version of Ho-Ho-s.







This is where the raised vegetable bed was last year. We moved it and made a patio square that my office window will look out onto. Rich is building a fountain in a birdbath that will go in the middle.









This was the first sod we laid behind the garage. We'll put pavers alongside the fence where there is just dirt now.

Happy One Year!

Today is our one year anniversary of moving into the house, AND getting Jake the dog! It was right around this time of night when I was sitting at the kitchen table with Jake, wondering if he was nervous or would he always pant so hard. (now I know, being a mountain dog, he just runs hot). Happy one year, Hague House! And Happy one year anniversary with us, Jake!

In St. Paul recently, there were two homes in another neighborhood that literally blew up because sewer and gas lines crossed or leaked. After the 1st explosion about a month ago, the energy company, Xcel, planned to scope every sewer (and/or gas?) line in a 40-home radius of the exploding one. Now that there have been two, it seems they are likely to scope every line of every home in St. Paul.

Well, I sure hope this house doesn't flipping explode before then! It's not like I want them to come and scope the pipe system, but I sure don't feel comfortable either way now. They have scheduled replacement of the sewer pipes from the house to the city lines on our section of Hague in the coming months anyway, so I hope they take that opportunity to just go ahead and tell me we're not going to spontaneously combust over here. Here's how much of a worrier I am. See the calm, lovely picture of our new living area here? I wonder how messed up it would be if we had to start all over with another house because this one blew up. I even saw a couple houses on Grand Avenue for sale and thought, "Well, if our house blows up, maybe at least we can still find a house nearby that we can afford."

I should just stop all this worrying (as if no one's ever told me that before). I have to stop putting negative visualizations out there and replace them with positive ones. Like the peaceful living picture here, with our beloved Jake doing his impression of a calm dog. Good dog.

February 20, 2010

February 20, 2010 at the Hague house. This is a day I knew would come.



It was 1 year ago today that Rich and I planned to close on the house, but didn't. Right around now we were at city hall talking to Tom the Zoning guy and finding out that we had to leave and couldn't even buy the house until we could fix a lot of stuff that was wrong with it -- stuff other people did with their incredible lack of care, insane sense of style and ridiculous repair methods. We wanted to fix all that -- on our own, that is. But that wasn't going to happen. This fairly big responsibility fell on us, too, because of a lack of knowledge (at least I hope that's all it was) of the local realtors and, well let's face it, the greediness that is the entity of the city of St. Paul. (Come to find out St. Paul is not that different from other greedy cities, but I won't mention names. Minneapolis.)


It was only 2 weeks later when we really did move in. The whole time, I knew it would happen. And I think that helped it happen quickly. Sometimes, the foundation of what you want has to be a 100% belief in it, and that is reeeaaaalllly hard to achieve, but a handful of times in my whole life, I've done it. And this was one of them. Since then got a dog, made all the necessary (and some unnecessary) repairs, made best friends with Menards, met a lot of neighbors, borrowed too much money, had fun, hosted Christmas, got another dog, and ... fast forward to today, with me sitting at the dining room table surrounded by dog #1, who i guess needs to go o-u-t, and dog #2, who is looking adorable as usual. I couldn't have known the details of this day - including the fact that it's a sunny day and the several feet of snow we've gotten this winter is (are?) finally melting, clearing the sidewalks of all that ice for the first time in weeks. Later I'll go to my first Gopher's basketball game to celebrate Gary's 40th birthday. And then I'll come home to the house we almost bought 1 year ago today.

Drool Damage

The floors didn't look this bad when we uncovered them, but they did look worn. We knew we would need to refinish them, but we couldn't justify any cosmetic, non-code-specific updates at the time it would have been easiest to do so (before we had moved in a lot of stuff). I didn't expect that last layer of finish to diminish so quickly. I'm thinking this is largely due to dog drool damage. I know - now you never want to come over, right?

We were finally able to have people over, although it is still advisable to wear shoes to prevent splinters from the floor, which since we revealed it has been chipping off its last layer of finish at a fast rate. But that's a project for another day.

Our bathroom mirror before, when we moved in, and








After - and why did this take us so long?

DONE!

We started with this on March 6th, and had months of work ahead of us because of the glitch that put our house in "vacant building" status. We ran to city hall in the snow, proved we can rehab the place well beyond what most people choose to do on their own (tempered glass at the top of the stairs. . . really? Add an outlet 2 feet from an existing one. . . seriously?) and humored the overpaid, overnourished municipal employees by complying with their demands, one by one. This was hanging over our heads daily since the very beginning and we spent every available moment saving for work, doing work, planning work, or recovering from work on the house. Although there are many mysteries left unsolved, such as: How many paintbrushes have we gone through? How did I keep from maiming the Building Code Officer when he gave me an attitude and told me we've been living "illegally" in our own home? Why were there so many trees growing from underneath the house (which, naturally, we had remove)? What do you have to cook to form a layer of grease on everything within 20 feet of the kitchen? Who would ever hire Ryan's Plumbing? Yes, these mysteries may remain, but do we need the answers? Not really. Our house meets all city code, ridiculous or not. And that's just fine with us.

I, Lisa, Do Tile

Active verb: to tile - conjugate verb in first person present tense: I tile.