In August we bought a house on the north side of Santa Fe in a neighborhood called “Vista Encantada”. The place we are renting is fantastic, but we are eager to have a place to work on to make our own and that will facilitate our growing number of hobbies.

We have lots of plans for this place. To start, we needed to replace the septic system. The house was built in 1970 and is well maintained. Yet inspections indicated that something was wrong with the septic system even though there were no outward indications of a problem. To make space for the new leach field, we had to have the chicken coops dismantled and hauled away. Good thing we had declined the option to take responsibility for a brood of 5 or 6 hens on the transfer of the property. They were beautiful, but probably more work than we were ready for.

The bee hive stayed, however. More on that very soon. A bit further in the future we’ll reveal our renovation plans. There’s a walk-out basement accessible via a tight spiral staircase from the main floor.

During our final walkthrough before closing on the house I misstepped on these stairs. I mistakenly thought I’d reached the bottom, took two or three steps all at once on the inside of the spiral, and sprained my ankle. On our earlier visits I thought that the stairs were no big deal and that if we needed to go into the basement could go around outside. After the incident and our realization that some of our excitement about the house stems from the large space downstairs for projects, the stairs seem like more of a problem. Besides, the top of the spiral staircase is exactly where an entry closet might go. Our designer may have figured out how we can put in a regular staircase. As I said, more to come…

A little bit of background and first project