Motorcycles Everywhere
That adventure prompted me to create the original Stew's Place site. Welcome to its second incarnation. The primary focus was the restoration of those original two motorcycles, but it soon grew to be many more. Even a dirt bike for Nick to tinker with! And like any proud papa, I must say he far exceeded any notion I had of what he is capable of. Read all about it in our motorcycle projects section.
Renovations
The content was soon expanded to include various renovations and home improvements over the years to our home in beautiful Wekiva Springs, FL, built in 1978. With the move to our wonderful Mount Dora home even more content was added. We've been here since 2014, so roughly ten years after starting the site, which had already expanded beyond the scope of content it was designed for, before adding all our Mount Dora adventures.
More Renovations
Years worth of adventures renovating and restoring our hundred year old house in the historic district. Built in 1925, it is typical plaster and lath construction, and the living room ceiling still bears witness to every major leak in the roof over the years. That's one of the few remaining "features" we have yet to tackle, if we ever do. We transformed every room, including the front, back, and side porches. We had to start with the side porch since it was falling off the house when we moved in. Read all about it in our renovations projects section.
Model Railroading
Our garden scale model railroad "empire" began on the pool deck of our old house. That was back in 2013. Ann found a train set for $50, again advertised in the Wekiva Treasure Chest. It was an older Bachmann "Big Haulers" starter set, the "Royal Blue", a B&O passenger train. It included the "ten wheeler" 4-6-0 engine, tender, two passenger cars, a bunch of indoor track, and the power pack. Everything looked to be in good shape, so we said why not?
There was enough track to build just an oval on the patio. We slowly started acquiring track and rolling stock and it grew from there. We expanded that oval to surround the pool, and from there, into the yard. By Fall of 2014 we had the track laid all around the side yard, including a water feature, complete except for the plumbing and pump. Then things changed...
Starting Over...
We bought our home here in Mount Dora with the idea that we could take our time fixing her up. Long story short, Fate had other plans for us, and we were forced to move much earlier than expected. All of that work on the first incarnation of the railroad was forfeit. We had to pull all the track back up and store it until we had time to plan our new pike here in Mount Dora. Read about it on our website dedicated to our Barkyard Railroad. Told you we were out of space for any more content!
We're starting over in more ways than one with this modernization of Stew's Place. All the original content will remain, eventually. It's a slow process to transform all those pages into a modern styled site, so it's going to take time. Meanwhile, to avoid all the inevitable "Page Not Found" errors we're bound to encounter, a "Coming Soon" page may occupy the final destination until the actual content is available. Please bear with me during this process. The original site will remain in place until the task is complete.