One of the great parts of doing this blog for Readymade has been connecting with our fellow home renovators and redecorators. I was happy to get a comment and follow a link from Reeve and Nick, a young couple who just bought an old 1874 house in Portland, Maine. Their blog, 2 Cats in the Yard, is a bit like stepping into a parallel universe to show us what it would have been like if we had bought one of the more down-at-heels, unloved houses in our neighborhood. Their love for their house and pride in being as ecologically sound as their budget can possibly allow is apparent in every post.
Like Claire and me, they agonize over each original feature of the house. Their kitchen was dominated by a tiny, creaky staircase that took up a lot of space. Ultimately, Reeve and Nick decided that the stairs had to go, and their choice freed up a bunch of space and gave them more light in their kitchen. They also had to do a ton of demolition, tearing out rotten walls, building temporary walls to support the load-bearing walls and tearing out old cat piss-covered linoleum to make way for their Craigslist-purchased locally milled pine flooring.
Right now, they’re months past their original move-in date, the contractor that’s helping out doubled their estimate, and a broken and clogged sewer pipe is going to literally flush $5,000 down the toilet. Reeve has been slinking into Best Buy every few weeks to push the delivery dates for their new appliances back. By the time you read this, though, they’ll be finished moving their stuff into the new house. The heavy demolition and construction seems to be over, and they can get down to the fun of making their house into a home.
Did I mention that they’re doing all of this with a toddler in tow? Our admiration goes out to them. I can’t wait to keep up with their progress. As always, if you’ve got stories (or better yet, WARNINGS) to share, leave us a comment or drop me an email.
[...] Thanks to the shout out from ReadyMade blog Following The Johnsons, readership spiked today to an all-time high of 641 [...]
[...] November 4, 2009 by reverieinmaine Thanks to our cyber-doppelgangers, the Johnsons in Eureka, California, for posting a link to Two Cats on their ReadyMade blog, Keeping up with the Johnsons. [...]
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