Our Bungalow

Here’s another sketching, this time of some plans for the basement. We sat down again with David Wagner from SALA Architecture and, once again, he did a nice job of working out some details for us (click for enlarged image).

Basement Plans

Again, I’m not sure how useful this is to most people, even if you’ve seen our basement. But here it is, all the same.

We are adding a bedroom, not necessarily because we need one (although I think Matthew is assuming it will be his), but because it will add value to the home. Also, it would be nice to have a place for guests to sleep, so people will visit us once in a while. These plans include the following exciting features:

- a 3/4 bath with a shower,

- a laundry room,

- a storage/furnace room,

- a family room, and

- a “library” space.

We tried, but there just wasn’t room for a horse stall.

So, the next steps include replacing the windows, and having a plumber replace some pipes (some of which are held together with electrical tape!). More to come…

A few photos from the big day (click on image to see larger version):

We’re Craigslist junkies, but for good reason. We moved from a house that had twice the square footage of our current house, so we have lots of extra furniture and furniture that just doesn’t work in this old house. We’ve sold hundreds of dollars worth of things on Craigslist, and currently have several items listed. We’re taking the money we make from these sales to purchase furniture that DOES work in the house. Since we can’t afford all new furniture, and since old furniture looks better in this house anyway, Craigslist is a great resource for buying, too.

Round Mission Oak Table

Stacy found a dining room table. It’s oak, round, and a perfect fit for our home. And it cost very little. Stacy fell in love with the base, which is big, solid, and can be split down the middle to accommodate adding leaves. The table came with five solid oak leaves, so now we can have a party!

Speaking of oak, we’re very excited about one other Craigslist find:

Mission Bookcases

These bookcases were salvaged from a 1920’s home. They’re solid oak and beautiful. They are meant to be installed as shown in the photo: as half-wall type room dividers. I’ll be honest: we bought them without knowing exactly where we’re going to install them. But we’ve been trying to figure out how to make the basement feel like it fits into the rest of the house, and the only way we’re going to do it is with quarter-sawn oak. And, again, that’s more than we can afford new. It would cost thousands for us to have someone build bookcases like this. And it feels good to reuse instead of buying new. So we purchased these off Craigslist when we saw them (for a small fraction of what they would cost new). It will be fun to design around them.

Thank you Craigslist!

There’s an interesting ad in the 1940’s comics that is worth a look. It is done in cartoon style (hard to tell apart from the actual comics).

I searched for more on our hero, Cecil Yates, but all I could find were other ads like this, and a short bio.

Imagine if this were in the papers today (click on images to enlarge):

Complete Ad

Bong?

My hero!

Wow, what a guy

Is there anything he can't do?!

The Lance Armstrong of his age

He's my he....WHAT?

Wait, was he smoking in that last frame?!

He rides to...

...EMPHYSEMA!

Wait, I thought FAST was good...

The End

The crawl spaces had some junk in them. Earlier this year, I pulled an old maple syrup bottle out of the space beneath the family room. I searched for Griggs, Cooper (manufacturer/distributor/whatever) and found the following:

Griggs Cooper & Co. was founded in 1882 as a distributor of grocery products to stores in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota, Montana and other states in the upper midwest. The Company was not only a distributor of grocery products but also a manufacturer of its own brands of crackers, cookies, candy, coffee, spices and jams and jellies under the ” Home Brand” and “Sanitary Products” labels.

And a court case.

Unfortunately, that still doesn’t exactly tell us how old it is.

Syrup Bottle

Syrup Label

Also, Val found an old newspaper in one of the crawl spaces. It is a complete comics section from the Sunday, February 25, 1940 edition of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. It’s in pretty good shape, although it has some holes in it. It’s amazing that it survived in a seemingly damp, floorless crawlspace for nearly 70 years.

So, where were you on February 25, 1940?

The comics include:

• Li’l Abner
• Terry and the Pirates
• Smitty
• Our Boarding House
• Out Our Way
• Skippy
• Katzenjammer Kids
• Joe Palooka
• Freckles and His Friends
• Mickey Finn
• Off the Record
• Jane Arden
• Joe Jinks
• Little Mary Mixup
• Polly and Her Pals
• Abbie an’ Slats
• Tarzan
• Chief Wahoo
• Fritzi Ritz
• Ella Cinders
• Bringing Up Father

Each comic takes up between a half and a whole page. For example, see the photo of Li’l Abner. The section is 14 pages long.

1940's Comics

Li'l Abner

So, this is our house. It’s a 1919 bungalow. Our family moved in last September (2008) from a much newer and larger home on 20+ acres of land. We’ve been adjusting to the new living dimensions, but we also decided that we’d like to make some changes to the home to better accommodate the five of us and improve the home.

Our 1919 Bungalow