Tenant Driveway
As mentioned, we have a tenant who rents a second floor studio apartment, which is actually the original house built in the 50s. The ground floor larger house was an addition built in the 70s. The studio is super cool – original unpainted wood, 50s kitchen sink and an old fridge. The property is quite large and “Old Florida” – a ton of trees (live oaks, palms, banyans, pines – all with Spanish moss draping from the limbs – or at least it was). Despite our real estate agent thinking we were nuts when we said, “we’ll take it!” ten years ago (honestly, it looked like a meth house), I’ve always loved the feel of being here and love the property, even if the house is – a good starter home.
I didn’t particularly care what the house looked like or how updated and functional it was, and it’s largely hidden from view by all the foliage. The house could eventually be replaced (but not yet!). Finding a country feel waterfront property was gold to me, and is a find that is getting rarer and rarer (and vastly more expensive).
And I still love it, although I may have been cursing its size and volume of trees over the past few weeks. When we were in the process of selling our home in Virginia and moving to California, our son quit college when his rental house burned down, so he moved in here.
I don’t have many before pics of the front yard as we don’t use it much. We did park there for a bit last year for reasons (the septic cleanout is there, so convenient; enough said about that). Eventually I got a pump so we could move the van to the river side (now really enough said about that). The apartment and the house have separate driveways and yards – essentially dividing the property in half. Like the kids, the tenant evacuated before Ian. When she returned, I noticed she was parking by the street and realized I hadn’t even checked the state of her driveway. I felt terrible when I saw what she’d been dealing with and that became my next focus area.
What’s left of that tree still needs to come out.
To be continued…