We Bought a House

By Christopher Miller

Before purchasing the house, we didn’t walk the entire property.

We didn’t take notice of the dual-tree lined gardens on the left side of the house. We had no knowledge of the hundreds of tulips and daffodils that would come up this Spring.

And we had no idea that we had inherited such a tall and mighty apple tree at the edge of our property.

This tree has to be at least 50 or more years old. It is so much taller than any other apple tree that I have picked fruit from, and all of the apples are completely out of reach. I think they might be Gala? The skins are not thick, and the fruit is very juicy.

So – since the apples are completely out of reach, my trouble has been HOW am I going to get them off the tree.

Enter: the apple whacker. Three, 10′ sections of 3/4″ Schedule 40 PVC pipe made for whacking the apples out of the tree. Hey – it worked, and very well. We whacked about 3 or 4 dozen apples from our tree and immediately started eating them.

The next day, we started to burn through our pile of dead branches. I recently went overboard with my chainsaw and began cutting and trimming branches and dead trees down to size. At 10:30 Monday morning the fire pit was still very warm (and inviting).

The garden has started to produce many late-season pumpkins and tomatoes as of recently. We already decided to enlarge the garden at least three-fold next year – we did not have a very successful garden this year, but I mostly attribute this to the late-season planting. Remember how we had some near-freezing temperatures at the end of May?

Kate and I started to watch even more home renovation television shows including one called Mountain Mama’s based out of Montana. Why is it that these shows make you want to do demolition and rebuilding of your own home? Maybe it is because of the many new ideas brought forth through seeing what others are doing.

Because of this, most likely in October we will begin to tear out, renovate, insulate, and rebuild another room on the second floor. The “water damage room” as we had named it, suffered some water leak damage a few years ago. Images of this room are actually what kept us from seeing the house in person at first. After learning that it was the result of repairs being completed on a water leak, we were more at ease to pursue purchasing the home.

As I had probably said in past columns, this house is pretty old, at least early 1900’s, and is not insulated. The pandemic really pushed wood prices sky-high and they have just started to settle near pre-pandemic prices again.

The room will pretty much end up looking the way it does now, just with a ceiling that did not partially collapse over the summer, thick wood framing to account for it being on the colder side of the house, and new windows. Stay tuned for future stories about this next adventure!

The threat of winter is at our door – some locations hugging the Rocky Mountains in Wyoming and Montana have already seen a few inches of snow arrive. Shortly I will suspend myself from the gutters again to make sure they are clear for snow and ice melt, writing about good winterization tips, and teaching others how to keep the most heat in your house while dealing with a lack of insulation.

Stay tuned for future progress!