It did not take anywhere as long to find the house as I thought it might. I signed with a buying agent in the third week of January 1998 and started looking immediately. The main criteria was that the house have some kind of provision for a workshop, preferably a double car garage. The other factor was a maximum commute time of 45 minutes to Duke. I figured that this would be the limiting factor in the search. The first MLS search revealed 18 possibilities. That weekend I drove over 200 miles, driving by each one to see if it was worth a walk-thru. Four houses warranted a walk-thru. The remaining houses were eliminated, either for distance or lack of curb appeal.
We walked through the first house and eliminated it due to an estimated $10,000 repair bill for foundation work that needed to be made. The second house (the one I eventually purchased) was nice, but I thought it was on the very edge of the commute time and there were no trees on the 1.6 acres. The third house had a basement, but was only half the size of the house, a bit small with the utilities. House number four was quite nice with excellend curb appeal but building a garage would probably be impossible due to the proximity of the property line. Anyway, these last two houses were eliminated when I timed the drive back to Durham - 45 minutes and that wasn't during rush hour. A fifth house came on the market and we scheduled a walk-thru. Oh, Boy. I kept wondering to myself how the selling agent could keep a straight face while talking about this house. He would point out the plastic under cupboard paper plate dispenser, and the modern light switches, but gloss over the two inch drop in the middle of the living room floor due to the poor remodeling job. The foundation had worse problems than the first house. This house might have been worth half of what they were asking for it.
I went back to look at house number two and was able to get a better feel for its strengths and weaknesses. The house next door was also for sale and a resonable comp, so in comparison with all of the other houses, I decided to make a bid on house number two. Negotiations did not last long since the house was vacant and a corporate relocation company was listed as the owner. Three weeks later I closed and started moving in.
I connected the washing machine and tested it out and filled the house with the rotten egg smell of Hydrogen Sulfate. This was troubling to say the least, with a water filter and softener already in place. As it turned out, it was either standing water and/or dirty filters. The smell is now gone. The only other problem with the move was that the local telephone company took an extra week to get around to connecting my telephone and then without touch-tone service. Needless to say I wasn't pleased with them, especially since each time I called them, they said that the phone would be connected by the end of the day.
The cats didn't quite understand what was going on during the five days I moved my stuff. When it was their time to move, Dakota flately refused to get into his crate. I think he thought he was going to the vet again. Rusty Spots becam his usuall blob of dead weight when he doesn't want to go anywhere. When they got to the housethey seemed confused. It was a place they had never been to before, but it had a whole bunch of my stuff in it. They are only starting to settle down now, five days after they got there. They should be back to normal in another week or so.
Spending 3-1/2 hours on a garden tractor each week cutting the grass might not be pleasant to some people, but it is very good and inexpensive therapy (cheaper than flying). After all, I'm cutting my lawn.
Future projects include a deck/lanai and a vegetable garden next spring.
Fall 1998
I planted kentucky blue grass in the area of backyard that my next door neighbor smoothed out with his tractor in the spring. That was hot work, as the area was like a moonscape.
I ordered 100 hardwood seedlings from the NC Forestry service for reforesting some of my property. I got most of them into the ground. Unfortunately, the deer seemed to think that they were winter snacks and most of them have been gnawed on and killed. Next time, I will have to plant older trees and protect them better.
Spring 1999
I decided that a 30' x 50' area would be a good size for the vegetable garden. I selected an area behind the garage and erected an 8' tall 40' x 60 area of welded wire fence to keep the larger wildlife out of the garden. The first order of buisiness for the garden was to install the asparagus bed, since it takes three years for asparagus to become established. I bought one year old Mary Washington crowns from Burpee to shave a year off of the wait. The asparagus bed occupies approximately one quarter of the intended garden. This year, the first year of the grand experiment, I planted a bit more than one quarter more of the garden with annual veggies. With the heavy clay soil, the carrots did not do so well, but the tomatoes and cucumbers did quite well, as did the lettuce. I had more than enough for myself, my neighbors, and coworkers. I was able to ammend the area of the planted garden with the compost I created. I added construction sand, peat, and composted cow manure to the area, particularly where the asparagus is planted. I finished off the perrinial beds with chives and mint.
Spring 2000
The kentucky bluegrass is growing nicely. The area is finally as thick as it had been with the fescue. The advantage is that the bluegrass is a turf grass, while the fescue is a clumping variety.
Summer 2000
I started in on plans to create a water garden near the house that will double as the start of a garden railroad. The area in question is having trouble keeping ground cover because of the fescue planted and the slope of the ground. I intend to build a retaining wall to level the area out for a pond.
This is year two of the veggie garden. The fencing did the trick. No deer jumped the fence for a snack. The lettuce that had gone to seed last year gave me the third batch of salad from the one planting. To ammend the second half of the garden, I tilled in 4-1/2 yards of white sand and about twice the amount of my own compost. The sand resulted in a bit less than one inch coverage. The 8HP Troy-bilt tiller I rented from Triangle Equipment did a good job of mixing the sand in until the tine engauge lever mechanisim failed. Because the growing season was a month old, I had to resort to renting the 6" tiller I used the previous year. I noticed that the ground that I ammended last year is quite loamy in contrast to the new area, which is still very heavy with clay. I will need to add more sana, and perpaps some peat next year in addition to the compost. Since the area I have planted this year has more than doubled, I have added corn, swiss chard, and watermelon in addition to last year's tomatoes, red, orange, yellow, cayenne, & jalepeno peppers, pole beans, snow peas, lettuce, scallions, cucumbers, radishes, & carrots.
Last Updated: Monday, August 14, 2000