Updated Photos

I guess you could call these 'after' photos. Meaning 'after' we moved in. We haven't done anything to the living room except put the furniture in it. Someday when we're very wealthy and have tons of time on our hands, we could fix up the ceiling and walls. The walls are covered with canvas and under the canvas is some very interesting wallpaper, and the ceiling has some mild texture treatment to camouflage some patches. I really love Bradbury wall paper and I would love to paper the frieze and ceiling, but that's going to have to wait until the wealthy part kicks in. This is the way it looks now:

Chipper Fest 2007

So this used to be the scene in our backyard:


Dilapidated garage, small pile of brush in front, HUGE pile of brush on the side. Unfortunately I didn't have the foresight to take a photo of the huge pile of brush, so you'll have to imagine it. I am guessing it was between 4 and 6 times larger than this small pile. When we moved into the house the perennial beds were very overgrown and there were rosebushes that a man could become entangled in and die. There were also horrible bayberry hedges with terrifying thorns everywhere in the front yard. Sometime last summer my lovely, but tough as nails mother in law Judy M. went to town with the nippers and wrought havoc on all that was thorny and bad in the yard and piled it in the back so that we could chip it and have all of this wonderful and free mulch. Chipping was fun, right?

Finally last weekend we got around to renting the chipper. It was going to be a fun and beautiful day outdoors. It turned out to be anything but.
This is a photo of the chipper, we'll call it The Mangler . If you look closely you can see the strained face that Chris is making. It turns out that when you put wood in TM it does one of two things. 1. It will wrench the branch (probably thorny thing) out of your hand practically dragging you in the hopper too, or 2. it will reject the branch entirely and it will rocket back out of the hopper and hit you in the eye. During both of the scenarios your hands are being vibrated so violently that you quickly lose sensation. This is good so that it doesn't hurt when a large branch kicks back into your hand. I don't mean to get bogged down, this is a story of courage and triumph. After 5 hours of deafening grinding and bodily harm, all of the brush was gone. Here is a photo of the spot where the brush pile was:
Inge is proudly surveying the good job we did. Of course she and the other wild dogs had to be in the house for safety purposes. And here is a photo of TM finally at rest and the pile of "free and fun" mulch that we made:
I would give this advice to would-be chippers. Take the brush to the landfill and on the way home buy some mulch.

The Worst Day Ever!

Last night while Chris and I were watching Dallas (best show ever made) I noticed that the back of the couch was wet. The couch that I was sitting on. I have been taking a lot of cold medicine, and I am blaming that, but I still don't understand how I didn't notice that this was happening right above my head:

And I also didn't notice that this was happening on the other side of the room:
We got a ridiculous amount of rain/snow yesterday and the ground isn't really ready to absorb all of that, so we were worried because we have a historically wet basement. Around 8 in the evening, we went downstairs and the floor was typically damp, no big deal, we thought we dodged that bullet. Until this morning when Chris went to feed the cats and found this:



Please try to ignore the general chaos of the basement and focus on the water. The 5 inches of water that is just sitting there like it belongs there. I was set to start a new contract 200 miles from here today, so I kissed him goodbye, wished him luck and headed on down the highway. This is where things get really bad for me. I dumped a whole water bottle in my breifcase all over my phone and computer, then I drove in monsoon conditions until I was 20 miles from NYC, then traffic completely stopped and I had conveniently just finished my second diet coke, and I sat there for 45 minutes moving approximately 1 mile every 10 minutes. Then I got a call from the new client. They weren't ready for me today. UGH! I had to drive another 10 miles south before I could turn around and that took me another 20 minutes and then I drove home. The whole ordeal took me 5 hours which really stinks, but at least I am home to help Chris deal with the basement. I borrowed one pump and bought another and am in the process of pumping it out now which seems to be going well. Hopefully we can clear out all of the water before another storm comes. We're supposed to be soggy for the better part of the next two weeks.

Another thing to mention is that one shouldn't expect rubber boots purchased at Ann Taylor to be completely waterproof for flooded basement situations.

The Before Pics

This is the condition of the house before we moved in. I'll try to post the photos as if you were taking a tour of the house. This is the 'Solarium' looking toward the front door:

These are the windows on the outer wall of the solarium:


Looking toward the dining room from the solarium:


The living room from the solarium:

The living room looking toward the stairs:


The living room from the stairs:


The fireplace, exactly as pictured in the Sears catalog:


The kitchen. The green walls are 20 year old wallpaper. I liked the color and even the pattern of the paper, but it was in bad shape.

The door to the right of the counter is the world's very smallest powder room. I don't have any photos right now, but I'm sure we'll get some eventually. It's so small, that when I threw a baby shower last year, the pregnant woman couldn't use it.

This is the problem wall in the kitchen. The refrigerator door won't open all the way unless it is slightly turned in toward the kitchen and there is no range hood. Also, in order to walk from the stove to the sink, you have to circumnavigate the island which seems OK until you're carrying a big pot of pasta with wet hot pads and your fingers are burning...

The dining room:

The bathroom is in surprisingly good shape. The fixtures could be refinished at some point and that weird tile that was installed to put in a shower could be replaced with more subway tiles, but neither of those things really bother me. Even the window in the shower (not pictured) is in good shape. It's really amazing how well the previous occupants of the house took care of it.

House History

Our realtor called me one day during our grueling house hunt and asked if I had any interest in seeing a Sears house. I said YES! Since this isn't our first old house, I had read the articles in OHJ about Sears homes and how charming and beautiful they can be.

The house is an Alhambra and it is a mirror image of the drawing in the Sears catalog from 1919. The house came complete with the bill of lading for the delivery of the house on three train cars as well as a letter from a woman who grew up in the house. Her father built the house as well as the two on either side (both are Sears homes), and it remained in their family until 2002.

The Hole

So this is what I meant by things are getting exciting. We had a big and terrible snowstorm on Valentine's day and water dripped from the ceiling for three days afterward. This is what the wall looks like now:You can see that we still have some moisture issues where the wall meets the ceiling, so we are going to have to take care of that before the new plaster goes up. The insurance adjuster diagnosed the problem as ice damming, and he didn't think there was any damage to the roof, but I'm not sure he was 100% right.

We had been planning a renovation of the kitchen for some nebulous time in the future when we will have tons of extra money, but this hole is kind of forcing the issue. The water damage is conveniently located where we would like to add a range hood, so at least that's helpful.

We have a sort of related issue with the ceiling in the rest of the kitchen. There's no water damage there, but it looks like this:

Notice the funky faux medallion treatment around the ugliest fixture ever? And the weird texture covering the rest of the ceiling? I want to move the fixture so it is centered over the island, so the ceiling is going to have to be smoothed out. I am still trying to figure the best way to accomplish this with my own minimal DIY talents.

New Paint

Since we realized that we had no hope of affording to have the exterior re-stuccoed, we decided to have the shingles painted instead and pretend that it was stucco. We (I) chose a color from the Sherwin Williams Arts & Crafts historic color pallette called Roycroft Brass. I am so happy with the results, but we haven't heard any comments from the neighbors. Not one comment and it's been painted for more than 6 months. I am guessing they're not so happy with the one pea-soup colored house in a sea of white houses. Oh well...