Walnut Hill Beauty

Driving through the Walnut Hill neighborhood today I saw the "Open House" sign posted for one of my favorite houses. Luckily, I had a few moments, so I stopped and went in. Very nice. It wasn't over-the-top in the way that some Victorians can be, but it still had enough of the historic elements to give it the charm I love. The bathroom upstairs still had the original subway tile on the walls and hex tile on the floors (it was also a good tile job, unlike ours!) There were 4 large bedrooms on the second floor, and an additional 2 on the 3rd floor/converted attic. The funniest thing I saw there was in the sunroom area, which was at some point a porch - they still had the exterior water spigot plumbed in - all enclosed in the piano-adorned sunroom!

The listed price was $799K. Can we sell our Plain Jane and buy please!!! Well, we still can't buy $799K, but that is a serious steal for that place! I would guess that a couple years ago or so, it would have been listed over a million. Just a guess.

So nice.

I'm Alive - I swear!

I'm totally alive... but swamped. Not much house happenings lately. We havve been in puppy madness the last few weeks. About a month and a half ago, we got Abbey, a goldendoodle puppy (now 5 1/2 months)



and then a few weeks later we got Oscar from Idog rescue group, a group that specializes in doodles. He's an 11 1/2 month old labradoodle.



They (Oscar, in particular) are wild and energetic and need lots of attention and walks/runs/playgroups. A considerable change from Taya!

I'm also back in school for summer semester.

So house stuff has been pretty much limited to trying to keep things cleaned up after the dogs. I've been trying to pre-paint some of the wood shingles for the peaks. And Jim keeps planning his future garage addition. But I really don't want to start anything major until the roof is paid for and we have money upfront - so that probably isn't going to happen for another year. The bank downgraded the equity line of credit - not surprising, considering the state of the economy - so there actually isn't really any other good option than frugal saving... which is what I'd prefer anyway.

Now, I've got to go walk a dog and maybe weed some flower beds...