This New House

This evening, we headed out to Westminster to look at one last “country” home, a modest mid-century rancher in the Colvilla sub-division. Basically, it offers almost everything we want: flat house, 3BR, basement, etc. Does it need work? Yes. Is it an overwhelming amount of work? I don’t think so.

Wallpaper mural in dining room is straight out of coastal Maine or Nova Scotia!

One of our favorite things about the house is this wallpaper mural in the dining room. Wonderful and kitschy! One thing we absolutely would not touch! Dining room wall aside, the house had an overall nice feel, with a big living room, a decently-laid-out kitchen and 3 decent bedrooms. The basement is largely virgin.

As with any 50+ year old house, there are some caveats. A portion of the electrical system is still on fuses (though the fuse box looks brand new!), and the boiler might need a little work. The bathroom would eventually need to be remodeled, as there’s an awful lot of really blue tile in there. And, the hardwoods are going to need some work once the carpets are pulled out. Also, there’s no attic or garage.

This is a retro-renovation just begging to get done!

Being snowed in, I started playing with the site a little … and then … a lot. Subsequently, a few things showed up on Facebook that probably didn’t make a lot of sense. Ah, well. I guess that’s life.

Anyway, new site, new name and all that rot. As mentioned before, our new site will be about our new house and our adventures with remodeling, renovating and improving. Hence the name, “This New House.”

We still need to see one more house before we make a final decision on where we want to make an offer. The problem has been two pounding snow storms this week that have dumped at least 4 feet of snow in the past week (with more on the way next week). I know that to some of you out there, 4 feet of snow is nothing, but to those of us in Maryland, it’s a Snowpocolypse, and that will make getting to the house we need to see difficult.

A few days ago, I made a comment on the what I felt about the future of blogging. I received exactly one response — on Facebook — which just goes to prove at least a portion of my point. That leads to my thoughts on the future of this site.

As some of you may know, we’re in the midst of selling our current home, and buying a new place. We are supposed to move out of our townhouse in Columbia before the end of this month (though I’m not exactly sure at this point how that’s going to happen). All of the homes we’re looking at are older homes, and will require some … updating. So, I’m thinking that the gerenm.net domain will be used to document our adventures in renovating/remodeling/restoring whatever house we buy.

Look for the new site to launch on or about March 1.

I’m beginning to think that blogging, in the traditional sense, is dying. With the advent and popularity of services like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, and other social networking sites, people seem to be moving away from blogs as a form of personal expression. People Tweet on the run, from wherever they are, or updated their Facebook status from the train or even their car! I know that even I, as much as I dislike it, go to Facebook first to post something these days.

The blogs that seem to get the most traffic these days are those dedicated to a specific topic — even if they’re not updated with daily postings. If the information is good, then people will visit. My own On30Guy blog site sees regular traffic, even though my last post there is over a month old.

So, what do you think? Comments are welcome here — or on my Facebook page.