Posts made by author 'Paige O. Roberts'

Recently, I met someone who relocated to the area from Boston. She was younger than me; maybe in her mid-twenties. When I asked what brought her north, she smiled and excitedly told me that she just couldn't wait to get out of the city and give her dog a backyard to play in. She has no ties to the area, but started looking for houses and found exactly what she wanted, and went for it. I was touched by that answer, and also totally impressed by it. 

It's no secret that on average, people are waiting to buy homes longer than they did in years past. There are many reasons for that, but the trending delay in big life milestones like mar...

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I recently met some folks who moved to the area a few years ago, and were telling me about how they took part in a townwide survey-type project regarding well water testing. I don't know all of the details, but it sounded like they were invited to participate in a free testing as part of a research project regarding well water in their area. It sounded fairly simple; they had to collect some samples, send them off, and wait for the results to come back in a few weeks. 

One of my favorite parts of my house is that it has its own well and the water straight out of the tap tastes so good. I've never given much thought beyond how good it tastes, and never wondered why. But after talking to these people about their well water testing project, it got me thinking: I have never had my well water tested in the twelve years I've lived in my house. I know for sure when I bought it, there was some sort of disclosure regarding the well water testing and that the results didn't show anything abnormal, but I can't recall when that testing actually took place prior to me purchasing my house.

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When I was in college, and for some time afterward, I did a lot of house and pet sitting. I loved it; I can remember describing it as being paid to go on vacation. For weeks at a time, I would stay in these homes that had so many more comforts and amenities than my own: cable or satellite television, washers and dryers that weren't in creepy basements, dishwashers, and huge showers with stone floors and built-in steam settings. Some houses only had a few of these luxuries, but a couple houses I watched had them all.

One house in particular was especially fancy, in my opinion. It had a beautifully manicured lawn, with a century-old apple orchard on site. When the owner first gave me a tour prior to me staying there, we spent about two hours going from room to room as I learned the history of the property and the house. The home had been in her fa...

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A few years back, I looked into replacing my house's foundation. From my understanding of the history of my house, the foundation was repaired at some point in the 1980s. Otherwise, it's mostly in its original form—which is very, very old. I knew from the time I bought my house that the foundation would need to be addressed at some point, and I was motivated to do it sooner rather than later.

I spoke to some different contractors and they each laid out the most worthwhile options: lifting up the house and repairing or replacing the foundation in its same spot or pouring a new foundation next to it and sliding the house over. One contractor suggested these options, but then paused a moment before asking me, "Why don't you just build a new house?" I was surprised by this suggestion; I hadn't even considered just starting from scratch. I repli...

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I can remember—almost to the moment—the day I discovered my love for writing. I was in the third grade, and at the completion of a week of state testing, our teacher let us pick a prize from a table of knick-knacks. I turned in my test and walked up to the table and surveyed the loot: pencils, erasers, stickers, finger puppets, bouncy balls–so many fun little things to choose from. I was eyeing a particularly sparkly sticker sheet when my teacher said, "Hang on a moment. I think I have something you'll like much more." He walked over to his desk and returned with a red composition notebook. He was right. I liked that prize much more, and I filled that notebook from cover-to-cover.

Since then (and probably before then, too) I've had an unending love and appreciation for both reading and writing, and can...

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