New Roof = Dry Basement?

Here are some photos of the new roof that went on right after Thanksgiving, and also the beautiful decorative sheets of plywood on the porch (I'm sure the neighbors love us). We had a bunch of snow early in the season, so I couldn't take any photos sooner than now. All of the snow and then the thaw in December showed us how great the new roof is. One huge unexpected benefit of the roof is that it keeps our basement dry.

The roofers enclosed the Yankee gutters. I felt bad for eliminating this original feature of the house, but it was prohibitively expensive to have them relined and they were far beyond easy fixes that we could do (even if one of us was brave enough to go on the roof).

Happy Thanksgiving!

This fall I had the great idea that I would go back to school. Then Jude (the dog) decided that he would gallop around the countryside for a month. Then Chris and I both decided that we would apply for graduate school. All this while I am still working in NJ and living in a hotel three nights a week. My class is winding up and our applications are submitted and the dog is back, so hopefully we can get back to the fun stuff.

We got some motivation for house work just in time for Thanksgiving. I was thinking of picking up a used range and sticking it in the basement to use for bigger dinner parties. Chris suggested a wall oven next to our current range, I looked at craig's list and viola! A short drive and 25 bucks later, we have a second oven.

It's not exactly a showroom kitchen, but it really helped for cooking Thanksgiving dinner and I'm happy to have it.

New roof starts tomorrow. My favorite kind of work, things get done without me doing them. Plus, the added benefit that it stops raining in the kitchen!

We've Got the Funk... Seriously, not the good kind either.

Work on the house has been slow and frustrating. We finally got all of the parts for the kitchen island light fixture and Chris installed it last week while I was lolling around with a bad attitude. It looks good and it's nice to be able to cook at night, but I haven't solved the big hole next to the fixture problem. I need to get on that so we can zip the kitchen up and call it done. The hoosier style cabinet still has not arrived, we're going on 14 weeks for a 6-8 week lead time, so our dishes are still all on the dining table.

We had a roofer come and give us an estimate for new (cheap) shingles, epdm lining in our yankee gutters and new downspouts and it was a whopping $13,000, twice what we were expecting. Now I feel certain that if we don't do it the house will fall down this winter and if we do it, it won't matter if the house is still standing because we'll be living in a trailer park at the edge of town. This is a major cause of the funk, we have a lot of water problems and I wanted to at least stop the water this fall before working on the structural problems next spring. It looks like the best we're going to be able to do is dig a french drain and install new downspouts, and maybe I'll take up religion, although I'm not sure if it works for houses.

In the midst of all of this I have decided to go back to school, so projects are going to be extra extra slow and project money is being diverted for books and protractors and pocket protectors. Fun fun fun...

A Little Elbow Grease

For the last two years I have thought that the chandelier in the solarium looked dull and yellowed due to age. It's probably the only light fixture that remains that was original to the house, so we have never even considered replacing it, but it wasn't all that pretty. The previous owner was very energy conscious so all of the bulbs in this house were/are compact florescent, so there are many bulbs that we still haven't changed since moving in. One of the lights in the chandelier finally went out the other night. I dragged a ladder over and looked inside the chandelier and the scene wasn't pretty. We took the bowl of the chandelier off and immersed it in a sink of hot ammonia water and rubbed gently and viola!



It's all sparkly and pretty again! This is definitely going to be added to the spring cleaning chores from now on.

Hoosier Style Cabinet Update

Chris finally got some information on the cabinet that we ordered for the kitchen. It turns out that the factory lost every single purchase order on one day in May and it happens to be the day that we ordered ours. Their only recourse was to wait 6-8 weeks for people to start calling and then build the furniture. They said that they would put a rush on our piece, but we still won't have it before the beginning of September.

Here is a photo of the cabinet:

I looked at Hoosier reproductions, but they just didn't suit our needs. I think this will work out beautifully. We didn't order it in this two tone color scheme, ours is all one color and it will be a color called antique glow, not too red, not too yellow, a nice medium natural wood color. That is... if we ever get it.

Weekend Work

Since we are at a standstill on our current project we decided to work on our friend and fellow old house dweller Stephen S.'s house. He is actually selling this old house to move into a different old house that has a couple of barns and a babbling brook, so he is contractually obligated to finish a few projects before the closing. When I say a few, I mean more like 15 projects that require advanced woodworking skills and lots and lots of time. Since Chris and I are not skilled labor, we just painted clapboards while Stephen S. did the hard stuff. It was actually a very pleasant day. Much better than Sunday...

On Sunday we decided to take the cook nook light fixture down and paper the ceiling even though we don't have much light in the room without it. Chris would just have to finish his business in the kitchen before sundown. The cook nook is a perfectly rectangular area and we only had to cut around the light fixture, so it was going to be super easy and fast. Of course, it wasn't either of those things and we did eventually get all of the paper stuck to the ceiling, but it isn't our best work so I'll spare you a photo until it gets painted.

Here is a photo of Stephen's house:

Nice, eh? I've known him since 2001 when I first moved to Albany. He was my boss at the time so we stuck to polite conversation like the painstaking stripping of the entire house down to bare wood, reproduction of the porch apron, repair and reproduction of any missing or broken wood work, new storm sashes, new working shutters and of course re-painting the whole thing. I still think he was crazy, but you can't deny what beautiful work he's done.

No Progress. None at all...

We are now at the part of the kitchen project where time has slowed to nearly a stop. I am spending 8 hours a day on phone and email trying to get 1. Light Fixture Parts and 2. Hoosier Style Cabinet.

Unfortunately the light fixture situation has degenerated into me threatening to have 'my attorney' deal with them. I don't mention that 'my attorney' is my sister who practices criminal law and knows more about heroin than light fixtures or sales contracts. To back up my whole attorney thing I also call Visa and file complaints with anyone who has an online form, then I get back to the threatening emails. I like to write them two or three times before I send them out. My high school English teacher would be so proud. Finally, one of my threatening emails has gotten through and they vowed that they would replace the whole fixture if they couldn't get me the right parts this time. I'll believe it when it's lighting up the kitchen.

Chris has actually been handling the cabinet because it's a local vendor and he can go over there and intimidate them at lunchtime. OK, intimidation isn't actually necessary because they are super nice and they're trying to figure out exactly where the cabinet is and they've already waived the delivery fee and I'm hoping it takes a little longer and they'll throw in some dining chairs for our trouble.

Right now all of our dishes are on the dining table gathering dust and animal hair and you know that we're not wiping them off before we use them... even if we have company, and my mom and bonus dad are coming out for a visit later this week and I was hoping to get the dishes in the cabinet before they showed up so they would presume that said dishes were clean. Hopefully they won't read this before they show up.