Signs of Domesticity

Nance and I are taking care of two neices and a nephew this weekend and in preparation spent a whirlwind afternoon on Thursday cleaning up, child proofing, and making things comfortable for our first-ever house guests.

Remember that tar paper that we put down to protect the floor of the second floor guest room? No? Well you can see it here when it was first put down; after about nine months we finally pulled it up and the floor looks great.

We also decided to install a rough-and-ready sink so we could do some dishes and whatever other sort of washing we needed to do while the kids were here. The sink is an old farmhouse sink that came out of the old farmhouse that my sister and family live in. Its a great sink and we'd be open to keeping it as our permanant sink but its kinda low between the faucet and drain and there are no dividing bays.

1969-2010

Sunset for the garage, now with windows, doors, power supply and stuff all removed

A photo from the days when we were living in the garage. Dana and Nancy we're making dinner

The same space today. Astute observers will notice the larger window at the end of the building which I switched out for the smaller one seen in the photo above

Another shot from today

After 41 years of service, the stalwart garage right next to the house is due to come down tomorrow or the next day.

This building has served many purposes over the years. When we moved onto the property in 2003 my brother-in-law Randy was storing his Volvo 122 sedan in the garage, and the breezeway space was filled with lots of relics and junk. At first we were living in a tent outside the building, and then after a short while we moved into the garage. For a while we had a refrigerator, stove, two computers, a futon and a dinning table all happening in the midst of the space. We moved on to live in the yurt shortly afterwords but have remained grateful to for the shelter.

Later I used it as a workshop and we used the breezeway as a general purpose storage unit, housing extra clothes, books, garden stuff, art supplies etc...

As the house has taken form most "shop" type work seems to just happen in the house so in the last few months the building has been useful primarily as building-related storage. In emptying out the space we've had to move large amounts of stuff to the basement of the house and are already feeling the need to have some sort of utility space besides the garage that would serve to house bikes, garden tools, bee equipment, woodworking projects and the like. We'll see what shape this takes over time.

A couple of friends have written asking why we are not taking the time to take the building down and salvage the materials. The answer in short is that this project was not something we even anticipated doing until August, but in order to meet the certain permit requirements in a timely manner we've had to move this project to the fast track. We leave for vacation this Friday, so we needed to have the project complete before we left. If time were not pressing, I think we'd be fairly inclined to take the building apart.

Although I am glad that the building is coming down, I feel slightly wistful about the passing of this building. Its not pretty or heroic, but it is a tie to the property from before we were here and when the building is gone there will be very little evidence of that past. Sort of feels like passing the last island out as you set sail for the wide ocean.