Tall Tales from the Patterson Ranch

I’ll keep a photojournal of the progress we’re making on the house here. This was my grandmother’s old farm house. Most of the land has since been sold off and remains pastureland, except for the plot to the East of us. For a long while, the house wasn’t maintained as it should have been, and it fell into some disrepair. Nothing too awful, but its going to take some time to fix. At first, I had planned a systematic repair schedule, starting in the upstairs and working my way down. Yeah, right. That didn’t last very long, but at least we can see progress.

Let me start with the outside, and show you the house, land, and outbuildings. Here’s the front of the house.

The house used to have a porch, but a storm took it off a few decades ago. I have a picture around somewhere. I’ll scan it in and post it here in time.

Along with the house came six acres of land, a garage, a barn, a machine shed, and a pond.

Before you email me, I know the barn needs painting. Its on my to-do list. There are a number of inside jobs that needed done first. Before I could get approved for the house, I needed to fix some old water-damaged areas. The leaks had been fixed long ago, but the damage to the plaster around the chimney and windows in the two bedrooms upstairs were still evident.

The window frames upstairs were just way too damaged to be repaired, as were the plaster walls, so I replaced them. My friends Phil and Mike, and my brother Rich, helped me tear out the old plaster walls, put in new insulation, new wiring, and hang new sheetrock. Now the rooms look good and clean, but a bit sterile. It was good enough for the investors, though.

We’ve since finished the two upstairs bedrooms and now I’m working on the upstairs bathroom. The work shown above was enough to please the bank so the loan would go through.