Where has the time gone?

After quite a long pause, I'm resolving in 2020 to get back to blogging about good old Foxcroft.

To say the least the last decade has been busy and eventful at our house. A major factor in my slowing down on posting was that from 2010 through 2017 I served on our local city council. That certainly cut down on my free time to write. In July I also retired from my day job. The last six months have been my "gap year" with a good deal of time spent:

• Straightening the garage (AGAIN) see earlier post here
  sadly the pictures are lost...
• Replacing the original roof on half of the garage 
• Adding 2 inches to the bottom of 7 salvaged storm windows in order to finally have every window with a storm and screen
• With storms in place I have begun to remove interior double hung windows and renovate them. These windows are now 91 years old and this is the first major attention they have ever received. 

So I don't know if any of the faithful readers from 10+ years are still around, but if so, I'll be publishing again.

Not the FIRST Crazy Garage Idea I've Had

Given the enthusiastic response the the garage lift idea I have to admit this wasn't the first crazy garage idea I've had...

At our previous house we also had a garage "situation" The original single car garage was built under the front of the house. There were retaining walls on both sides of the hillside in front so we drove under the house into the garage. Any new car we considered had to come home first to see if it would pass the "driveway test"

What was unfortunate was that the garage "room" was actually an el, that is you drove in and off to the right was full space the rest of width of the house (roughly 18 feet or so. The problem was you could not get a car into that space (and in essence create a two car garage) because you couldn't make the right hand turn to get to the rest of the space.

One day I realized that if I could find something like a railroad roundhouse turntable and got a small enough car (VW bug or Cooper Mini) I could have a two car garage.



We moved before I ever acted on that impulse, but this time I don't forsee going anywhere soon.

Milestones, Rituals, and One Crazy Idea

MILESTONES:

Last month marked the 3rd anniversary of the blog. March 2005 seems like a lifetime ago, but at the same time it feels like it was only last week. This post is the 200th for the blog too.

RITUALS

I planted peas last weekend. My oldest daughter helped, meaning that now a 6th generation of our family has planted them since my great-great grandmother brought them to the U.S. from Luxembourg. Here's how they looked in the 2006 Foxcroft garden:


ONE CRAZY IDEA

I've been thinking about the garage. I've straightened it, but it still needs LOTS of work (as does the exterior of the house!)I've been reluctant to start anything, because it is a small single car garage.


I broke down and looked at new garage plans, and found some that would be aesthetically pleasing, but would hate to give up the yard space, and shudder to think of the cost of removing the HUGE black walnut RIGHT NEXT to the garage:


So I went back to the garage plans site today and found this:


Behm Garage Designs

It's a single sized garage WITH A LIFT! You can drive the first car in, raise it up and then DRIVE IN A SECOND CAR!

This is great, I can restore and keep my historic garage, AND get two cars in. It's got to be cheaper to buy a lift than it would be to remove the tree and build a two car garage.

As my neighbor Mike said when I showed this to him tonight, "How are Lisa and I going to know when you've really gone senile?"