Of all the historic residential styles that can be found around Central Florida, the modest mid-century ranch homes are some of my favorites. There are many gems in the 1950s Orlando neighborhood where I live and one of the details I notice most often is the diversity of shutter designs. Some houses have them, some don’t. Some are your run-of-the-mill fake wood shutters, and some are absolute “Shudder Sunday” train wrecks…
So relieved! About a month ago, our AC drain line backed up, the shutoff failed, and quite a bit of water leaked into our return vent. I thought I caught it in time and vacuumed up the water. A week or so later, the floors in the hall and living room started buckling. That laminate flooring runs through most of the house. It’s not available anymore and we only had a few salvage pieces from when we renovated the kitchen.
It’s been over a month now since I moved my desk from the master bedroom, into our new office shed in the back yard. I’ve been dragging my feet on this wrap up post as, well, there are still a few details left to wrap up. Even without transom window trim, decking in front of the sliding glass door, or a rear gutter though, having 160 sqft of detached office/living space for our family of 4 has been a game changer.
I can’t believe it’s been almost 2 years since Amy and I moved from Atlanta back to our home state of Florida. We rented a place in Winter Park for our first 6 months and then in early 2017 (actually between Christmas and New Year’s) we moved into our cozy, mid-century ranch home in Orlando’s historic Audubon Park neighborhood. Unlike our epic “Pulley House” project in Decatur or our 1970s cabin house in Columbia, we haven’t really done much renovating.
When Amy and I moved into Decatur 5 years ago, the house we chose was filthy and neglected with an awkward galley kitchen, no working shower, a dying HVAC unit, an old roof and several broken windows. We dubbed it “The Pulley House” because there were climbing ropes hanging from pulleys mounted around a skylight that dangled from the 3rd floor loft all the way down to the 1st floor living room. Supposedly, they were for hanging plants. Supposedly.