Life at Longacre, Part Two

~Inside Longacre House~

Gentle Readers, please forgive how long it’s taken me to get this posted. I honestly didn’t mean for the delay to be this long, but like the man said, “Life is what happens when you’re making other plans.” :-P Plus we sold some of our furniture and bought a few new pieces, so all the pictures I’d taken were obsolete and I had to take new ones! AAH!

But they’re all taken, and now that choir concerts and Easter cantatas and festivities are over, I have some free time to finish my virtual tour of Longacre. So pull up a chair and enjoy! (And don't forget to click on the pix to enlarge!)

* * *

Well, now that I’ve given you a look about the accessible grounds, it’s time to head back up the hill for a tour of Longacre House.

I feel I should mention here, first, that our settling on this house, out of all the homes we looked at, was totally a God-thing. I’ve never seen His hand at work so transparently, so blatantly obvious. We looked at several other places, but one by one, God eliminated them. They were either too old and run down, too close to the road…or too both. This one, while it initially wasn’t my first choice, was the only one that was well-kept and livable (apart from a strong cat-odor in the carpet), and wonder of wonders, the price was right in our budget, even though we took a loss on the sale of Prairie Cottage! Awesome! :-D And just for the record, my “But I don’t want this place” feelings vanished on Moving Day, and all at once it just felt like home…even amid the chaos that is moving in. :-)

 

Peter did an amazing job of packing the moving van

Built in 1972, what is now Longacre House is actually a mobile/manufactured home (which is partly why it was such a steal) that the former owners used as a sort of Summer home. It had already been updated with double-pane windows, a heat-pump (which kept us nice and cool in the Summer and warm when the weather turned cooler), as well as a new coat of paint inside and out, and some laminate and linoleum flooring. We ripped out the ginormous carpet in the main part of the house (with the help of some old friends from California, who dropped in just eight days after Moving Day, to help us out), and Peter installed laminate flooring to match what was already in the house. Our California friends bought him a chop-saw and the right kind of blade for laminate flooring, to make the installation easier.

Peter likes his new "toy"!

Installing the floorboards

But here I am, yacking away about the house, when you’re likely champing at the bit to see the pictures. So then, let’s take a look about, shall we?

 Front entry and porch, seen from the High Road. The former owners had a dog, so they rigged this sturdy gate to keep it on the porch. This Spring, we were delighted to discover Spanish bluebells...

Pix don't do them justice

(and one lone "pinkbell" :-))

 tulips and narcissus...

 in the attempt at flower beds by the crumbling cement pathway, as well as some culinary herbs, California poppies, crocuses, and a rose that say clearly, “We’re not dead yet!”

The PORCH! I still can’t get over how big this is! Who wants to come over for a barbecue? :-D

And now, do come in the house itself and have a look-see!

The plaque, depicting "The Last Supper," was
a housewarming gift from "Aunt" Patty
when we moved to Idaho

Entry, seen from the front door. Here’s where guests can sit and remove their shoes if they wish. This piece of furniture is actually a TV stand, and we still keep our DVD collection in it. Please excuse that ugly strip of unpainted paneling…and get used to the sight from now on, because the former owners left some of the funky ’70s paneling unpainted, and we did some remodeling and haven’t had time to paint. That’s a project for this Summer (Lord willing).

Entry (by the door) and hallway, with a glimpse of Peter’s room. The original third bedroom had been converted into a den at some point, so we hired an excellent handyman (recommended by Aunt Betty) to frame it in again. Poor Peter had to sleep in the living room for several weeks during construction (quoth he, “My room kinda doesn’t exist yet”). Some in-progress photos:

 

Peter ripping out the countertop and mini-sink (???)

...with some "help" from Mister Licorice

Framed in!

 Due to limited space, our handyman installed a cool pocket-door (which you can see in the entry photo above). 

Peter put up the massive computer desk and abundant shelving himself, including the ones in the new closet (“Shelves in the closet—happy thought indeed.”)

All of which the cats heartily approve :-))

Further down the hall is the abode of one Tom Wild Rose. :-) 

Thanks to my mom for making this composite image!

 I’m loving the soothing aqua/pale-blue color they painted it, as it fits the feel of my French Provincial furniture. You’ll note that I left off the “unicorn horn” bits of my bedposts (seen here); they just felt too grand, too imposing…presumptuous, even. The simplified look fits the feel of the room better, IMHO.

The window beside the bed faces East, and it’ll be perfect for hanging my prism collection in…once I figure out how to attach them to the blinds….

The closet! Oh, I am so happy about this! One thing I’ve missed these past five years in Idaho is all the storage I had in California, so I'm thrilled to have a real closet again, plus the two cupboards and drawers for craft books and beading supplies. As you can see, the former owners didn’t bother to paint this wall, but hopefully we can find some more of this color next year….

And now, let’s see the rest of the house, wot?

Living room (seen from the entry). Behind the wing-chair are the book closet...

and my jewelry bench, where I use my God-given talents to create unique beaded jewelry. :-)

Living room, seen from jewelry bench

 The lovely oak corner armoire holds the TV, VCR and DVD player, as well as some larger game-boards that wouldn’t fit with our other games. Like the arbor-seat outside, this came with the house, and we were so thrilled! 

Living/dining room, seen from entry

 This house was listed as being 1380 square feet, but after being cramped in the barely-1000sf Prairie Cottage for five years (and the even smaller hotel room for four days before Moving Day), it looks way bigger! We’re loving the spacious, open living room and looking forward to having people over to visit.

Mom’s new piano. We were NOT of the mind to haul our old one down from North Idaho, LOL. Mom bought this one from a local fellow who says it was probably built in the ’60s. It has a much nicer, less “crassy” tone than the other one.

And obviously it has the Mister Licorice stamp of approval! :-P

The Dining Room. Our friends from California helped us replace the ugly, ’70’s-does-Medieval hanging lamp with a much nicer one during their visit. It’s also much safer for people who happen to be over five-foot-nothin’ (which is pretty much everyone of our acquaintance, LOL).

The wall behind the table houses a built-in china hutch and used to have funky, gold-streaked mirror-panels. As you can see, we’ve replaced them with cherished family heirlooms—in fact, pretty much everything displayed in or on the hutch is an heirloom, and they all have a story.

Across from that is the new plant shelf we built to house some African violets and a maidenhair fern. We’ve missed having house-plants!

Behind that is what we call the Kitty Kastle. You know those scratch-posts they sell for cats, with shelves for Kitty to nap on and tunnels to explore, all covered in carpet? That’s what this is, on steroids! 
There was an old-as-dirt woodstove in this corner, but because it was so old, it couldn’t be certified, so we wouldn’t have been able to use it. The former owners left us the name of a fellow who hauls off metal and stuff for scrap, so we had him take the old stove off our hands. And because we live in a rural area where there are possibly predators (and neighbors with dogs), we decided our cats will be indoor-only cats…which meant they needed something to sharpen their claws on. So, with the help of Aunt Betty and Cousin Brenda, we built this!

The Kitchen. While not as big or efficient as the one at Prairie Cottage (there’s also no possibility of making it so, either), it serves us well enough and has one thing the other kitchen didn’t—a pantry!

Enclosed and shelved by our handyman;
door hung and racks installed by Peter :-D

Mom’s room. I still can’t get over how big this room is! As you can see, it’s plenty spacious enough for typical bedroom furniture, plus a nice custom-built computer desk. 

(The desk was originally under the matching shelf, but that arrangement didn’t work, so we rearranged things, and the room is much better organized now.)

So that’s pretty much it. I hope you’ve enjoyed this little snippet of life in the G family household. Thanks for stopping by!

(For the record, I don’t think I’ll do any more Real Life posts. Life happens so fast—changes before I can finish writing my post. So if y’all want to know what’s going on with me, just shoot me an e-mail at tomwildrose@gmail.com…or better yet, drop by for a visit! You can also follow me on Etsy and Pinterest.

From now on, I’d like this blog to focus on my writing (be prepared for interruptions by the Peanut Gallery!), and I’ll probably be posting pix of my jewelry in shameless self-promotion every now and again. :-P 

Until next time, Gentle Readers,

God bless,

~“Tom”~

Life at Longacre, Part One

~A Virtual Tour of our Oregon Residence~
(Click on the photos to enlarge)

Hail and well-met, Gentle Readers! I’m popping back into the Blogosphere to give you a peek at the new home God led my family to in Southern Oregon last Summer. The pictures were taken in Fall, but due to Moving Madness™, Real Life and my infernal tendency to procrastination, I’m just now getting around to posting this. >Le Sigh<

Anyway, I call our new home Longacre because it’s set on 1.88 acres, but since it’s only ninety feet wide, it extends quite a ways up the hill—possibly half a mile. The name has a slightly Native American flavor to it, although a friend told me it sounds like something out of Jane Austen, too. Cool!

Our new home!

Our tour begins at the road we take to get home—a relatively quiet country road in a hilly, wooded area of Southern Oregon, with gorgeous views of nearby mountains, just a stone’s throw away from two of the three local rivers. As you can see from the picture, there are several trees (TREES!!!) on and around the property, many of them oaks (which don’t grow in Idaho and were sorely missed). The little building in the lower-left corner is the well-house, which not only supplies us with all our water, but with its bright-yellow sunburst decoration, makes a good landmark for friends to find us!

The Orchard

OUCH!!!
(How is this tree even still alive?!)

Further up the hill are the remains of an orchard. We think there are English and black walnut, apple, plum and apricot trees here. I say “remains” because many of the poor trees have problems (the apricots having hardly any wood left on their trunks--see pic at right), so none of them are very healthy. We may end up just putting them out of their misery *cue chainsaw noises* and start over…if we decide we can handle growing fruit.

The Meadow

The Pear Tree

Beyond the Orchard is the Meadow…a small meadow, with a baby willow tree growing in the center. There are also wild roses in one place, :-D and a pear tree at the far edge of the meadow (that bright green one under the golden trees in the upper-right)…which consequently is the healthiest fruit tree at this end of the property. We didn’t get many pears last year because the crows and ravens stole them all….

     

It's hard to tell in the photo, but the High Road (at right) is actually a little steeper than it looks

The driveway splits at this point into what I call the High Road and the Low Road (but unfortunately, neither of them lead to Scotland :-P). The High Road is lined by struggling members of the juniper or cypress family, with creeping juniper and young madrone saplings at their feet. If the trees were healthier, they’d lend a rather grand “manor-house” feel to our humble home, wot?

It ain't fancy, but it's home!

And now we get a better view of Longacre House itself. Note the big, spacious front porch (twice the size of the one at Prairie Cottage) and the lovely, soothing sage-green color the former owners painted it. There are the remains of some flower beds and an herb garden, and a wisteria vine at the left-hand corner (which went bye-bye in late-Fall because we’re all so allergic). The former owners had carpet laid out on the area in front of the house, to smother the weeds, and eventually we’ll probably spread some gravel and make this a parking area.

To our great delight, they left this lovely arbor-seat, and a grape-vine has already taken up residence on it. We’re really jazzed about this grape-vine because it’s a concord—and not just any concord; a highly-prized Dark Purple, to boot!—which means Lord willing we can find us another steamer, we can make homemade grape juice again!

This area has some real potential as a flower garden/thinking spot one day.

Shall we see what’s round the back of the house before we go inside?

"Two Point" (front) and "Three Point" (back)

Here’s the backyard…which obviously needs some TCL yet. But there’s a lot of potential! The little tree turning reddish is some kind of cherry (whether edible or ornamental, we’ll find out come Spring), and you can just make out the apple tree behind the blue spruce at the back of the lawn. We got some good apples off this tree, and what we didn’t eat, the local deer were more than happy to clean up (see picture).

A better shot of the back lawn, taken from about where the High Road connects with the Low Road. Yes, Gentle Readers, we have a circular driveway. *Ooh, vahz!* ;-)

The bushes to the left are rhododendrons and a camellia, with little dog-violets (yay!) at their feet, and some wild cyclamen from Aunt Betty nestled amongst them. I have to watch them carefully, otherwise these clowns will dig them up:

Turkey-turkey-turkey! (--turkey....)

*Ooh, vahz = An expression denoting something is high-class, or very proper. Usually uttered with dramatic sarcasm.

Source: A pronunciation of V-A-S-E, converted by Tasha L. (née H.) into an expression, which was adopted by our family in February 2012.

~Tom’s Dicionary of Whacked-out Terms and Old Family Sayings

The back acre. We were told there was a garden area back there, but now the wild blackberries have taken over. Peter thinks it won’t be too hard to reclaim, though…eventually.

Note the beautiful orangey-red vine maple at right. I don’t think we’ve ever had a maple tree before….

We have hiked up into the back woods a few times—earlier in the Fall before it started raining regularly—but I never got any pix. But Spring is coming, and they’ll be gorgeous when the oaks get their new leaves, and the madrones are in bloom. :-D

The Low Road. This shot gives you a feel for how the house is situated on the property. This one is prettier, however:

We’ll probably leave the creeping Saint John’s wart on the side of the hill to prevent erosion, but eventually we want to clear out what’s at the top of the hill and make some flower beds. You can’t really see them, but there are a couple sweet briars amongst the creeper! Rosehip tea, anyone?

Between the trees on the left, one can see the neighbors’ pond:

Late-October/early-November, 2014.
It's now twice that full with the Winter rains

  In Summer, this was nothing but a little scooped-out-looking hole in the hillside, where the deer sometimes rested under the shade of the trees. After the rains came, however, it quickly turned into a proper little pond. I call it the Naiad’s Looking-glass. :-) (Come Summer, however, it may become merely Deer Hollow when it dries up again.)

The Meadow and the Orchard, seen from the Low Road.

This is directly across the drive from the last shot. Mom and I have evil exciting plans for this site. Like terracing, some flowers, and steps leading from the Upper Level down to the Low Road and the Meadow….

Well, now we’ve come back around to the Y in the driveway, so that completes Part One of the tour. In Part Two, we’ll head back up the hill and see the inside of the house!

Until then, Gentle Readers,

God bless,

~“Tom”~