The carriage house

So this is the carriage house. It's 20 by 40 feet and has an apartment upstairs which I only learned about after we closed. (Buying blind is kind of fun.) I've been calling it my "spare house" and, now that it has water, I can clean it and -- soon -- move into it so I'll be on-site and can switch back and forth between manual labor and paying work. Also, the dog will learn to think of it as home, which will be a plus.

It turns out the linoleum in the carriage house kitchen is pretty decent. I mean, long-term, I'd like a classier floor, but this is more than serviceable for now!

The floor of the entire apartment is just as dirty. It already smells better, though -- I started with the bathroom, of course. Bleach and Lysol are our friends.

The water heater is capped, so I thought it had also been drained before freezing. No such luck -- or possibly it had already frozen earlier. It's leaking, copiously. So I need a new water heater. I'm seriously considering going with on-demand here, too. Or as they call them now, "tankless" water heaters. Way cheaper to run, plus there's a tax credit to offset their higher cost of procurement.

So that was today's progress. I may head back over there later and mop some more, and maybe Lysol-wipe the walls and cabinets. It won't take that much to make it livable for one guy and a dog.  And all our stuff is due to arrive tomorrow, so hey -- it'll be like not traveling again!

Here's a view of the front room, from the hallway. Note the boarded-up window, which you can see in the outside picture above, too. My dad and I were downstairs in the garage area, removing the 2x4 frames that the previous owner had started installing (to make the downstairs a habitable area as well -- but of course I want the garage area). The window being open, a guy walking his dog in the alley asked us whether we were fixing the place up. I allowed as how that was indeed the plan, and he asked, "Upstairs, too?" I said especially upstairs, and he said, "You know who used to live there, don't you?" I shook my head (I knew the person living there had been mentally disabled). He said, "Crazy Cabot, that's who," and told me how he would break the windows out when he was angry. So I guess that's why so many windows are missing. Or maybe that's just gossip, who can say?

This is a neighborhood with some bite to it. I suspect Garrison Keillor has taken the scriptwriter's job for my life. But suburbia it ain't.