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Published: June 10th 2015
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Our "New" Place in Greenwich
One of the first things we need to do is add some shutters! Well as our Peace Corps experience taught us, “always be flexible”. Plans always have a way of changing and change they have. We made the plunge and bought a “fixer upper”house (built around 1902) in a very nice village, Greenwich, in upstate NY. We never thought we would buy again in the “north”but with Janice’s Mom here, her 2 sisters and 2 of Bob’s sisters within traveling distance from here, decided this was the best place to settle for now. It should make it easier in some ways to have a place here (ie –a place to hang our hat and store what things we do have and most importantly a place for Bob to set up his woodworking shop), but in other ways it will be more difficult as we will have to figure a way to keep the place up when we are away during the sailing season on Tsamaya. Hopefully this turns out to be a good decision –time of course will tell!
For those of you that have been following our sailing adventures –we haven’t given up traveling on Tsamaya –it just will not be as many months each year. This will definitely change some of
The Shed Attached to the Back
will be removed soon so we can put the addition to the house in that location our plans as we won’t be able to travel as far each year, but we still plan on exploring more of Europe and heading down to the Mediterranean. Our plan is to return to Tsamaya which is currently safely sitting in Lelystad in the Netherlands in April 2016. This will give us some time to work on some of the projects we have lined up for the house.
Any of you that know Bob will appreciate that we have some major changes planned for the house. We have already started by tearing apart some of the kitchen making it larger by removing a bathroom and breakfast nook. This is the only bathroom currently in the house so naturally we have to put in another one someplace else. The house has 3 bedrooms upstairs but all are quite small (it is an old house after all). The idea now is to take over one of the bedrooms and make it into the bathroom and a laundry room. The attic space on the 2
nd floor above the kitchen has a low roof-line so the plan is to “raise the roof”in that area and make that the master bedroom. In the end
The 2 Car "Garage" or More Accurately "Shop"
will be built between our house & the neighbor we will still have 3 bedrooms, one much larger for the master bedroom.
If you think that is quite a bit, think again as we aren’t done yet! There is a shed attached to the back of the house which we plan to remove and replace it with an addition to the house. That will allow us to install a half bath on the first floor and give us some room for storage/pantry/closets as you come in the back door. With Bob’s love of woodworking we of course need a woodshop. The construction of a two car “garage”(Bob calls it the shop) will fit the bill and he even promises to provide a small (small is the important word here) space for the car we have purchased. I told Bob, I guess we will never be able to buy a bigger car –fortunately we don’t intend to! In planning ahead though when we do finally sell this house the wall he is putting in to block off the car from the workshop can easily be removed so others can actually use it as a 2 car garage.
We closed on the house on May 29
th. It is now
A Beautiful Area of the State
A view seen close to Greenwich looking toward the Green Mts. of Vermont June 10
th & we have started work on the house already. Bob has done some major trimming of the trees around the property, we have taken out the majority of the wall between the kitchen and sunporch and also the wall between the breakfast nook and the current kitchen. We have to put the headers in for the doors & windows in preparation for being able to build the addition above the kitchen. This was all accomplished in 2 days of work. The other time Bob is spending on finishing the project for his aunt & uncle. Fortunately they are coming along very nicely. Janice has been mowing lawn, cooking for her Mom and trying to keep up with the paperwork and the house. She also is enjoying her time spent visiting with her Mom. Mom is doing so much better now and as a result has been able to get her out more often (and not to Dr. appointments).
We did still take time for a couple of “fun” events which we will tell you about in another blog so we can get this one completed now.
So, needless to say we are hot and heavy into
A Before Photo of the Kitchen
The door to the left goes out to a screened in porch which is south facing - one of its selling points! our new adventure on land. Wish us luck –we will keep the blog up with updates of our progress if any of you are interested. I know I still have quite a bit to update of our sailing adventures last season and will try to continue to work those in to my schedule.
We both have said already that we are excited about the new project, but will probably be more than ready to get back to Tsamaya next spring.
Take care and we wish you all the best.
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