Dream House Discoveries

Moving into a new home often provides surprises which you may not anticipate. These can either become a stressful situation or you can look at it as an adventure and with a sense of lightheartedness. This has been the case of a lovely country home I moved into a couple months ago.

It was late July when my dad and I moved from California to Oregon. I had left a large four bedroom home on a fairly good size lot for a smaller three bedroom home on a lot with not much yard and only a few flower beds. It seemed like the ideal home for me, as I could not keep up with the larger house due to my physical limitation from a chronic back condition. In fact I firmly believe the Good Lord had total control over this move.

The moving van had scarcely pulled away before I began to discover little surprises about my new home. This adventure was to last for the next couple months and there was a few times I found myself frustrated with some of these discoveries.

The Storage Secret

Upon unpacking the items for the kitchen I was dismayed to discover a definite lack of storage space. I began searching through the house to make another discovery: The laundry had plenty of cabinets. Thus kitchen plastic ware is now in one cabinet in the laundry.

A similar situation held true for the bathrooms: Not much storage! Extra bath towels found a home in one of the laundry room's extra cabinets. This proved a little inconvenient, but workable as the laundry is located central to the kitchen and bathrooms.

The garage attached to the house, is right off the laundry room, and boasts more storage than one could ever hope to use! Likewise there is a nice shop to the rear of the house, and I found cabinets and drawers to make a home hobbyist jealous!

Goliath Did This!

As I tried to find a place for everything, I discovered that the cabinets as well as the nails and hooks for hanging pictures and shelves were installed terribly high on the wall. I wondered why as the former lady of the house was a very short woman, much shorter than myself, and I could not reach these items without a step stool or ladder. Then considering that her husband must look like Goliath next to her, knew exactly who had installed all these things!

A Decorator's Dilemma

Some of you may know I have a diploma in interior decorating; have even taught it. My next discovery can only be classified as a “dilemma”. Deciding to replace the lightweight curtains and draperies with thermal drapes I felt a sense of excitement as I anticipated hanging the new draperies.

In the living room, I discovered the fancy satin tie-back draperies on the window were only one width of drapes on each side of this ten foot window. These were precariously hung over a curtain rod with drapery pins instead of installing on a drapery rod, such as a traverse rod, or a rod with rings to hook the pins into. Removing this bad installation, I took the rod down to find, it was barely long enough for the window; for instead of using two extenders between the end rods, only one was used. I believe only faith and a little prayer held it together! Using clip rings I had my new draperies ready to hang; very quickly. I surmised if she hung those heavy satin drapes on it, maybe thermals which weren't as heavy would be okay on this rod. Nope! I should have known better. The rod wasn't heavy enough for the drapes and completely collapsed.

After purchasing the right type of rod, hanging the drapes was much easier. But the valance rod proved another thing. I was soon to discover, the center support bracket was cracked from too much weight on it and it snapped falling to the floor like a leaf off of a maple tree in the fall. This took only a minor repair to make it work.

In the dining room, the mini blinds had been left pulled to the top of the window. I enjoy the lovely view, but the sun glare was a little too much. Attempting to lower the blind, I found the right side of it was broken; one slat after another slipped off the broken cord until I had about five slats dangling from the blind. Another replacement coming right up!

The walls of my small country home are deceptive. These look so well constructed, that I had no reason to doubt the walls weren't exactly as they appeared to be. After all the owners assured me the house was a custom home built only fifteen years ago.