When we rented in Boston, we didn’t need a car. We lived in the city, right on public transit, so we never got round to buying one. It’s a good job really; we’d have had to drive it 3,000 miles or pay to ship it here. But we’ve coped car-less in Sacto for long enough… …
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Author Archives: Andy
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our mini
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retail therapy
With a pretty small contingency, and a rather large (committed) purchase coming up, we could do without unexpected costs. So the leak was poorly timed. But we’re not totally broke so, to cheer ourselves up, we turned to the obvious cure. Shopping. With a very limited budget, and the dual purpose of getting to know …
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the leak
The weekend started out in familiar fashion –with a checklist of jobs, and plenty of enthusiasm. Then I spotted a small puddle of water on our courtyard path. We dug down a little to discover a leaky sprinkler pipe…and it got worse from there. First step, stop the water. The shutoff valves (one mains, one …
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picking paint
This shade of brown doesn’t do it for us. That’s unfortunate, as it covers our entire house. We’d love to repaint it right now, but we lack the funds. What we do have is time. Time to pore over color samples. Time to figure out exactly how we’d like the house to look. So, we …
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wires
We keep noticing random wires all over the place. Not live electricity, just a legacy of lazy wiring for phones, alarm components etc. No doubt typical for a property of this age, but a trend we’d like to end. So, we set about tackling some of them. The white wire above has been nagging at …
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tree gone
We’re settling in well, but we just can’t ignore the large elephant in the room. Or, more accurately, in the front yard. Take a look at this early pic and you’ll see what I mean. Yep, a big ugly tree, slap-bang in the middle of our lawn. I’m sure it wasn’t born ugly. No doubt …
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smud building
Before making the cross-country trip from Boston to Sacramento, we called ahead to setup utilities. With a large debt owing (from former renters) and us not being permanent residents (according to the USCIS) our electricity provider needed to verify our identity, in-person. When you’ve just bought a suburban house in a new city, you have …
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eichler numbers
When we closed on our house (truthfully, a bit before) there was one purchase we couldn’t resist; an authentic Eichler house number, to replace the existing gold numbers, below. These are available through a Bay Area company, appropriately called Eichler Numbers. One advantage of buying before we got to California; we didn’t pay sales tax. We …
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the plan
Our model is the JE-84, one of four plans from the original Sacramento Eichler brochure. Actually, that version has the garage on the left, so I flipped it …
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