yia yia's waggon

There Goes the Old Home

Here’s where I used to live:

F House

Oh home sweet home. I miss it. In the summertime I used the whole thing, but in the winter, I lived in the “bedroom” segment full time, it being small and easy to heat. It was closed off from the front portion and heavily insulated with draperies. It was heated with a radiant heat space unit and contained all the tiny kitchen appliances necessary. In the summer, the front half served as a guest bedroom for my two teens come to spend the summer with me.

In those years, I learned a lot about living small and designing a space that suits me.

Some of the things I miss:

  • Owning only what I need.
  • Easy maintenance.
  • Quick cleanup.
  • Easy to find things. (!!! This is a biggie.)
  • Ridiculously low utility bills.
  • Only paying RV space rent rather than full-house rent or mortgage.
  • The sound of rain on the roof.
  • Optimum temperature. Easy-to-adjust temperature. Most of the time.
Some of the things I don’t miss:
  • Space not optimized for me. For instance, storage cabinets that interfered with head and foot space and limited my mobility.
  • Not enough windows, not enough light.
  • Insufficiently insulated windows, requiring a lot of drapery and cutting the light even further.
  • All furniture and appliances built-in. Very little possibility for modification.
  • General brokenness. I had to duplicate some of the appliances because the built-ins were too broken for me to fix and were too big anyhow. The plumbing was a complete wreck and half the electric outlets didn’t work.
  • Bed too low to take advantage of the heat in the upper half of the room.
  • No air conditioning. Hence “most of the time” above. I made a swamp cooler out of a styrofoam cooler and a fan, but there were still some dog days when it wasn’t quite enough.

Here it is, heading off to the junkyard, being unable to move under its own power, and gracelessly crumbling away. This was just over two years ago. I’m still not used to living in a “real” house.

Bye Bye, F House