inicio mail me! sindicaci;ón

Airstream karma

Our new neighbor Tom appeared at the door today. He’d been talking with the former owner of our home, who had driven by and spotted our Airstream in the driveway.

Tucson AS parking 1.jpg

The former owner was excited to see the Airstream, because she and her husband had also owned one and parked it in this very carport. In fact, they came down from Chicago in 1971 in the Airstream, to relocate into their new home. They informed the builder that they’d have the Airstream in the driveway and he arranged for them to have custom enhancements: an extra-tall carport, and an extra water and sewer inlet in the carport.

Is it coincidence that we happened to find and buy this particular house? After all, we saw dozens of houses and few were Airstream-friendly, and none had hookups under covered parking. And this one was built specifically to house an Airstream! I think it’s Airstream karma …

Tucson AS Jerry.jpg

So today we brought Jerry the handyman back to adjust the carport. The last ten feet were blocked off by a wall, forming a storage area. We asked Jerry to remove half of this space so the full length of the garage would be available for parking the Airstream. Three hours later, the deed was done, and our rolling home had a home of its own.

Tucson AS parking 2.jpg

Today we faced the stained concrete experiment and decided it wasn’t what we were looking for. I’m not against stained concrete, because it can be beautiful, but in this case we are going in a different direction. I’ll tell you about that in a few days.

We also had a landscaper come by for an estimate on some backyard plans. The bad news was the existing lawn. Even though it is dead on top, and we’ve deliberately neglected it, we’ve been told the grass will spring back to life when it gets some water during monsoon season. We need it dead dead dead down to the roots, so it won’t come back later and ruin our xeriscaping.

The proposal is to fertilize and water the grass until it greens up a little, then spray it with Roundup (which travels to the roots and kills it), then very expensively remove the top few inches and truck it away. No kidding. All this is estimated to cost $2,200. So needless to say, we’re looking for alternatives. It seems ridiculous to pay such money to get rid of grass, especially in the desert where the darned stuff shouldn’t be growing anyway.

And keeping in the spirit of demolition and destructions, tomorrow morning a crew is going to show up and remove all the flooring in the house, plus all the kitchen cabinets and one of the two bathrooms. It should be total havoc, exciting and terrifying all at once. This is the ugly phase of renovation, but soon enough we’ll turn the corner to making things nicer.

2 Responses to “Airstream karma”

  1. Randy Godfrey Says:

    I love that last photo in the post. The one looking at the back of the Airstream from inside the garage. It looks like the trailer is levitating.

    Good luck with the renovations. Hurry and get back on the road. Your home struggles are interesting, but the travel blog is what brings me here daily.

  2. Tom Says:

    An interesting note about your lawn and Eleanor’s allergies. Recently, I think it was Forbes’, listed their 100 worst cities to live for allergies. Surprisingly, a number were in the desert southwest. Per the article, a lot of people move to the desert to get away from allergens and then plant the same plants they are allergic to to remind them of the places they come from, which they do from an allergic stand point. Kind of ironic.