Update

We're still on schedule to put our house on the market come Feb. 1.  Since I last posted, we have completed the last major renovation on our house, a giant pergola to block out the view of the apartments over the back fence.  Until last week--for the last five years--we could have staged Shakespearean plays for the benefit of our neighbors, who could--and sometimes would--peer down from their bedrooms onto the floodlit back steps of our house.  This was not a selling point; as a matter of fact, it was kind of a deal-killer for us when we bought the house, and one big reason why we got it so cheap.  Unfortunately, it was not an easy or cheap problem to solve, but we have solved it.  I now can look out the back door and not be subjected to this week's NFL game on a wide-screen, coming from an upstairs window.  I could seriously watch a game from my kitchen!

The only thing left to do is paint the attic stairs and dining room floor, the last vestiges of the crazy lady who owned the house before us.  Her dogs started peeing in the corners of the room, and she did nothing to stop them. 

This house was a mess when we bought it, and it looks 400% better now.  Last night we burned the last of the carport that we tore down a few years ago.  

The sweat equity will hopefully pay off.

Other news:  my mother has been informed that we are moving in with her, and the most amazing thing happened!  She started cleaning out her barn, so we can move into it and not be so up in her affairs.  Once the inner walls were knocked down, we saw that we'll have about 600 square feet to work with, which is 600 sq. ft. of our own space, so I'm happy.  All I need is a bed and a table and a bathroom.

We went ahead and had our mountain driveway rocked, which involved tearing out and replacing a damaged culvert (the road would get squishy in the winter--no bueno) and smoothing out a roller-coastery hill that would require a four-wheel-drive to navigate.  The driveway had been a 100-year-old logging road originally, so the work was mostly cosmetic.  At the end of the driveway was an outrageously long mobile home that had not fared well in the 1989 earthquake.  That was crunched up and removed, too.  What a difference!  Behind it we found a wall of ferns!

As Jeff and I marveled, another thing occurred to us.  Now that the MH was gone, the fact that it was surrounded on three sides by VERY TALL, HOUSE-CRUSHING REDWOOD TREES became even more evident.  We had always planned to put our house in that spot, as it has a commanding view of what I call "the meadow."  I imagined being able to look down on my semi-dwarf apple and pear trees as they bloomed their white fluff in the spring...but when I added to this the ever-present anxiety of being flattened...well, we decided to move our building site.

We started imagining every giant tree's deadly radius (about 100 feet), and that pretty much limited us to building at the bottom of the meadow.  This is a place we had never considered, though once we did consider it, the benefits went beyond just not being killed.  The only southern sun we'll hope to get is down there, which makes my dream of having a sun-room possible.  It  might even afford us some solar energy, though I'm not super optimistic about that.  We are, for the record, at the bottom of a north-facing hill, deep in a forest.

Jeff and I took some stakes down there and tried to lay out a 2500 sq. ft. house for kicks.  I don't want a house that big, but whatever.  We will have to remove some smaller trees, including the only two oaks we have, but unfortunately the oaks aren't doing well (oaks in general aren't doing well in California, these days), so I'm willing to cut them down.

If we do build in that spot, the front of the house will be surrounded by California buckeye trees, which I love, even though they smell like sperm (really!) when they bloom.  The septic tank will be downstream from the spring, and the ground is level, so engineering shouldn't be too much of an issue.  There is a beautiful uphill view of two (safely distant) groves of redwood trees.  Yay!

To be continued....