Home For Sale!

Four and a half years ago, we bought this wonderful house in Lindley Park. It had been owned by one family from the day it was built until we bought it. Esther Foster lived here until 2007, when she died at the grand age of 100 years, 3 days old. When we came to see it, it was clear that the house needed some work. It had never had the electrical service upgraded from old, 30-amp, screw-in fuses. The galvanized plumbing was almost completely plugged up. The aluminum siding on the gables was weathered and worn. The awnings over the windows and side porch were an eyesore. The list goes on and on...

The back yard is 200 feet long, from the house to the back fence

We bought it knowing that all these things needed to be done and so we started work on it right after closing. We tore off the awnings over the front door and windows. We had a company come and replace the aluminum siding with vinyl and build us a whole new cover over the front porch, complete with columns! We had a friend of ours who is a licensed electrician and plumber come in and replace 90% of the wiring and pipes, including upgrading the service from 30 amps to a more usable 200, upgrading the fuse boxes and replacing the water line from the street to the house to get our water pressure up to normal. Unfortunately, that blew out the hot water heater from 1979, so we had to put in a new one. We painted everything inside and had the first floor hardwoods refinished to a beautiful state. I wish we'd had the budget to do the upstairs, too.

That made the house liveable, but over the next 4 years, we:

• Replaced the gutters and downspouts
• Replaced almost all the windows (the old ones were wood and were completely frozen in place), including a garden window in the bathroom.
• Added 600 sqft of concrete to the driveway
• Replaced part of the fence so you can get to the back yard from inside the house without having to go through a gate.
• Added a 10'-wide gate to get into the back yard with a vehicle, if needed.
• Put in access doors so the attics can be used for storage. They were just plastered over before.
• Replaced all the exterior doors. The front and rear doors are oak with 9- and 15-lights repectively and the side door is a metal, 15-light door.
• Replaced the storm door on the front of the house
• Replaced the chimney cap
• Added a fireplace insert so the fireplace can be used for heating. (saved us $1500 the first winter we had it!)
• Replaced every light fixture, including adding 2 ceiling fans in the upstairs bedrooms.
• Replaced the metal awnings over the side porch and back door with beautiful matching canvas ones.
• Built a 3 1/2-cord woodshed and fully stocked it.
• Established a working garden with 3 beds and an irrigation system.
• Cut down 3 trees. One was damaged in a storm. The other two were removed to bring more sunlight to the yard.

In all, we estimate that we've spent more than $50,000 on making it into our dream home.

When we bought our house, it was with the intention of living here for the rest of our lives. It was Rebecca's dream house in her dream neighborhood. Unfortunately, our dreams have changed... Our new dream is a farm in the country where we can raise this ever-growing brood of ours with tons of space and work to keep them busy. Sadly, in order to do that, we have to sell our home. It's really a hard decision for us because we love this house, but we know it's what we need to do to take the next step.

So, if someone out there is interested, here are the details:

$210,000 (negotiable)
4 bedrooms, 2 baths.
Approximately 1600 sqft. with a 120 sqft basement
Built in 1946.
Oil furnace and tank replaced in 2008.
Roof replaced around 2002.
Lot is about 19,000 sqft or .44 acre.
Fully fenced backyard.
Everything listed above.

Feel free to email if you're interested and we can set up a time for you to come take a look. 

A Close Call

Last week, a major storm blew through our area and caused all kinds of a mess... We were woken up at 2:50am to some of the hardest rain and winds we've seen and some ferocious lightning. It almost seemed like a strob light constantly going outside our window. The noise woke Olivia up and JR went down to get her. He brought her out to the living room and, lo and behold, there was a huge limb from the oak tree in front of Olivia's room laying in front of the house. "Funny," he said, "That wasn't there a second ago..."

It narrowly missed landing on the front porch we had built on to the house when we moved in.

The next morning, when we surveyed the damage, we found out that ours wasn't the only tree down. We were actuall penned in by trees in the road on either side of us. It wouldn't have been too bad, except that there were power lines tied up in the debris.

 Ultimately, we are having to replace some gutter, a piece of our awning, a few shingles and some flashing. Oh, and our chimney cap, which we never did find.....We suspect it's somewhere in OZ right about now. Really, it could have been much, much worse.

The major portion of the tree overhangs both our house and the neighbors' so we were fortunate that that part wasn't the one that broke. Sadly, we are going to have to cut the rest of it down. You can see in the pictures that there's some bad heart-rot in the tree and it seems like some kind of bug has been eating it from the inside out. We don't want to take the chance that the next storm bring the rest of it down on our heads...

Our New House Lapbook

So we have been working on this lapbook since early spring. We bought our house at the end of January. We spent a lot of time working on it before we ever moved in. I thought it would be a good opportunity to talk about several topics with Olivia. Olivia leraned our names and we have worked on her being able to carefully write her full name and spell it for others. We talked about where we live and have made some headway in memorizing her address and phone number. We also talked about our neighbors and how God wants us to love our neighbors. Now that we live in the house, we take walks most days and always say hello to our neighbors. She also loves to stop and spell/read the "Lindley Park" sign. We made cookies for the neighbors on either side of us so we could meet them and practice greetings. We read numerous books about how other people live and how their houses are similar or different from ours. We also talk about these things as we ride around our city. We talked about safety rules for our new house. Our bible verse was Matthew 7:24-28. We didn't memorize this one but we have talked long about applying it to our home. We want to have lots of family time in this home and recently we have started having family worship every day so that our house will be built upon THE ROCK. Enjoy the pictures...

Yes, Olivia drew Sarah standing upright but she does have a tail. So it's not just Sarah who thinks she is a human in this house. :-)

Spring Time

Spring is such an amazing time of year for new growth, new life, and new beginnings. Our new home has an amazing backyard. One of my favorite trees is the Dogwood with its blooms. Also I really like tulips and there are some of those growing right by my driveway. It will be really fun to watch this next year to see all the things that Ester had planted in the yard. Thank you God for this beautiful earth that sings your praises and points me back to a God who cares for me so much. Indescribable by Chris Tomlin.