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Who are we? Well, we are an IT guy and a ceramics gal, caught up in a large project, attempting to fix and keep a 1930's farmhouse in central Oregon from being demolished. We've managed to keep it from being demolished, but now we are tasked with fixing it. The house had been used as a rental for several decades and was not in the best of shape, but we hope to remedy many of its issues and thus, this space to record some of the journey. We started this project in late summer 2021, and don't have an estimated date of completion, but we spend pretty much all of our free time working on the house for the time being. 

The IT guy is the majority of the brawn and is able to do a lot of the behind the scenes work. Unfortunately, he often gets little credit for the end results, but none of it could be done without him. He's a master of sussing out fixes to make things work when no one else would even try. He sometimes gets annoyed with the ceramics gal who likes to come up with unusual (and sometimes difficult/time-consuming) requests, but he's always game for the adventure of figuring it out, even if he gets a little frustrated with her (at times). 

The ceramics gal is the never-ending idea part of the team, who has to be reeled back in on occasion. Really, her goal is simply to make the house feel like home for this duo, however that comes about. She doesn't have an issue with getting her hands dirty either, but definitely counts on the IT guy for muscle (and sometimes guidance with how to execute an idea).

This house is not our first project house, but it is the largest project we've taken on. Sitting on about a quarter acre of land, the lot has had little to no care over recent years as the farm land piece has been parceled into other lots over time (or so we have supposed). The yard itself will be an enormous project, but we've started with the interior so that we will eventually have a comfortable place to live.

We spend a lot of time and energy attempting to reuse as many materials as we can - whether they come from the house itself or from other unwanted/unused sources, it is important to us to keep as much as we can out of the landfill. Sometimes, the landfill option is unavoidable, but if we can reuse something, we'll either use it ourselves or make sure it gets to someone/someplace that can make use of it.

As we've discovered from the get-go of this project, this house is full of surprises (as most older houses are). Just when we think we have it figured out, we realize that we don't -- but, that is half of the "fun" of this sort of project. 

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