Our Historic Home Renovation
The saga begins Fall of 2014. We made day trips to Mount Dora on the weekends to visit the Flea Market and the many attractions from our home of twenty years in Wekiva Springs, FL. At some point we knew we wanted to move here. We found a house and Ann fell in love with it, so we bought it. It was built in 1925, now part of the historic district. To say it was a "fixer upper" would be an understatement.
We planned on spending weekends doing what needed done before moving in so we could take our time doing it. Downtown is walking distance. So are a number of restaurants. Even an antique shop! But the important thing is walking distance, thinking we don't want to have to drive anywhere with our vehicles packed full of tools and supplies.
Fate dealt us a different hand when a pipe burst at our Wekiva Springs home. Nick and I were unable to repair the leak after spending all day trying. Time for Plan B. We had to move to Mount Dora now! Much sooner than planned. We turned off the water at the curb, rented a big U-Haul truck, and loaded it up. We'll have to make these renovations while living in the house. It's much more difficult having to plan around electrical and plumbing outages to avoid hotel stays and minimize the disruption to our lives.
We've always made renovations to our homes, using skills learned from my parents when I was growing up, helping them restore their rental properties. Many important skills, like carpentry, plumbing, even electrical wiring. The key is learning what the building codes are and meeting or exceeding them to pass inspection. Those skills have been passed down to our son, Nicholas.
The first few weeks were kind of rocky, trying to figure out sleeping arrangements and get everything we needed moved to our new home. On the bright side, that extra time we thought we'd have to fix up the house was now transferred to moving everything here. Beyond the necessities, everything else could wait until there was time on the weekends.
Nick was living with us at first, along with our Black Lab mix, Maya. Quarters were tight in our two bedroom, one bath bungalow. He bought his own house a few blocks away about a year later. Plenty of renovations to be done there too! We were able to fix that burst pipe eventually, but not soon enough to avoid our move here. Our daughter and her husband rent it from us now.
The first thing we had to do was replace the fence between us and our neighbor Pam. Maya and her dog, Sugar, constantly ran the fence after one another. There were already holes and places where they could get a glimpse of each other and it was only going to get worse. We split the cost with her and did the work ourselves. Probably the most difficult part of that job was clearing the stands of invasive bamboo in the back corner of the yard.
The more we did, the more it became apparent the garage was next on the list. The only way in or out was the rotted carriage doors and the only thing keeping them from just falling off was the tension wire keeping the sagging at bay. There's no electricity, so it's dark, and nothing but a dirt floor and two stripes of concrete inside.
That dirt is like a fine silt in sugar sand, almost like they dredged the lake and deposited it here. It's like powder, and once disturbed, floats in the air for hours. Anytime inside there, there's no avoiding stirring up that dirt, and it instantly sticks to your legs and feet. None of us want to have to get in the shower every time we go to the garage for something. Something has to be done about it.
Enjoy our renovations to our historic home and the rewards we enjoy from all our effort.