Blog in the Saddle Again

For two years, Eichler-Blog.com was active on the Web with fresh ideas, photos, and other things Eichler. Then, the last two years...nothing.

What might be suspected of passing fancy by some readers turned out to be just a logical life progression for the 30-something hosts of the site, Andy and Mary Krone.

"Life just got so busy," Andy said recently, the same day Mary made the blog's first new post since 2013. In it, they revealed the reason for the hiatus: a precious two-year-old redhead named Nadine.

"The large projects had kind of come to an end," Andy said of their busy two years after buying a late 1950s home in San Rafael's Marinwood subdivision, years spent largely "trying to get the house in some sort of shape for our daughter" to arrive.

It's not as if the young couple were lifelong fanatics of mid-century modern, driven to restore and blog about their Eichler.

"I'm a programmer, not a contractor," Andy conceded. "We bought here for the community and the schools first, then we sort of learned what an Eichler is."

The couple had been renting in Marin's Lucas Valley, he recalled, and "we couldn't really afford that area, but I liked how tightknit the community is."

"It's very Eichler, an Anshen and Allen," he said of the 1,700-square-foot, four-bedroom house they bought out of foreclosure in 2011,  Eichler floor plan 21. "It seems much larger though, with the center atrium...We got really lucky."

Like many bloggers, they started Eichler-Blog.com simply "to share things with friends and family: 'Oh, look at that.'"

Which, of course, their readers also could do, with a new post appearing regularly for two years. They tackled a variety of projects for their home, which was then "a complete fixer."

"I love to take everything apart," Andy said of his construction aptitude, which mostly stems from his life as "a tool fanatic."

Little by little the Krones restored their home and shared the progress with the blogosphere, each of them writing about half the posts. Then came baby, and the baby carriage, and, suddenly, time was scarce.

"You know, it takes a lot of work to write thoughtful articles with photos," he explained. "It's really easy to write one thing, but it's hard to keep it going."