Preparing for work in the cold
I went to several NYC thrift stores looking for a pair of insulated work pants, without success. My dad, who is about 5" 6", now buys his jeans in the boys "husky" section in department stores. "Its great, I don't have to get my pants hemmed!" He told me. My last stop was KMart, where I got these $18. coveralls in the children's section.
My morbid disposition assumes these tags are to help identify bodies that are lost in avalanches. The last line should be the line to fill out next of kin.
Before and after photos
I was lucky to receive photos taken in the 1960s from the former resident I correspond with. Before/after photos always being a crowd pleaser, I took my own hack versions. Full disclosure: Some of the before images are Photoshopped to completely remove the people in the images.
Getting a bit off subject, my favorite before/after images are by Nick Stone, who takes photographs of WW2 post-blitz England and collages them with present day images.
More of Nick Stone's work can be viewed on his Flicker page, here.
Creepy books, third installment
The shopaholic in everyone can be nurtured with Ebay.
Getting the pipes inspected
At the suggestion of our inspector, we hired a plumber to inspect the mysterious open ended pipes at the swampy end of the basement. The guy brought his endoscope pipe inspection camera, and I watched the live feed with fascination on his attached Ipad as he pushed it through the lines, expecting something dramatic to happen. I was so transfixed with the equipment I forgot to take pictures. So picture a guy sitting on an empty plastic bucket pushing a hose through a pipe, scratching his head saying. "I don't know what these are." Not a good sign, but they don't go anywhere, so we can rip them out before we pour a new cement floor.
The camera looked something like this, but not as clean.
We had a few other mystery pipes looked at as well. In the end he told us the basement is probably wet because the earth is sloped downwards towards the house and the gutters don't extend far enough away from the house. We bought some plastic hose to divert the water as far as possible from the house.
Take THAT, foreclosure!
Under the crawlspace where those two American flag pillows were insulating the house we found this, a terracotta cut pipe filled with cement. We heard the owners in 1981 poured a little gift down all the drains before getting their house repossessed. The man that bought the house after them was a plumber, so he ran all new modern waste lines throughout the house.
Oh Craigslist, how do I love thee?
I am always amazed at the kinds of things I can give away on Craigslist. Every time we work on the house we rent a dumpster, so trash costs us money. More importantly, I hate being wasteful. I posted mismatched plates and dusty books, taken by a woman who needed them for a retirement home. A woman in her early 20s took the 1970s disco records for her aunt, who she described as a "record enthusiast". I was told by someone at the local law university library that I should throw out a collection of law books, only to have them taken by a lawyer who I can only assume was sentimental for old timey jurisprudence of a bygone era. Some hipster took a collection of 8 tracks tapes as well. Amazing.
Yes, someone even took all the encyclopedias.
Yet one mans trash may still be just another mans trash
On the second day of our visit we arrived to find these chairs on our back porch. We asked our next door neighbor if he had seen anyone dump them there. He told us he saw someone from two doors down bring them over. Two doors down is where the neighborhood gossip lives. You know, the type who starts talking shit about everyone around them two minutes after you meet them?
Not sure what his intentions were, but we gave them to another neighbor who is going to reupholster them.
Peeling back the many layers of the back porch.
Yet one mans trash may still be just another mans trash
Not sure what his intentions were, but we gave them to another neighbor who is going to reupholster them.
Peeling back the many layers of the back porch.
We started really tearing up the back porch during this visit. There are so many layers of floor and wall that the room will certainly be bigger when we are through.
Interior design throughout the ages. This is what was above the tub in the downstairs bathroom. Part renovation, part archaeological dig.
A few of the many layers of the floor.
Pete slaving away pulling up some fancy molding used as a spacer. If you noticed, yes, that is electric light. We had the power turned on. Our electrician bypassed all the code violating death trap wires running through the house and ran a temporary line for us directly from the meter.
The second signature found behind the wall
This is the second signature we found behind sheet rock. These names are two of the residents that lived in the house when they were children. What a great dad this guy must have been, engaging his children in everyday tasks, creating a time capsule and planting a bit of magic in their spongy little brains.
Evidence of another stove
Behind the tub and a few dozen layers of sheet rock and plaster, we came to this hole tapped into the chimney, used to vent out a coal or wood stove. This is directly behind the fireplace in the kitchen. This side must have been where the chimney was first used, which means the back porch is original to the house. The pathetic state of the mortar is unnerving, although I wanted so badly to clean out the debris in the pipe.
Evidence of a fire?
This wood was used as a spacer under the back porch wall. This is the second piece of wood we've found in a wall that sustained fire damage, the first one being the fence post top in the wall above the staircase landing:
Maybe these are from the same fire. These people put my scavenger skills to shame. Back in the 1900s, fire spelled opportunity. These guys flocked to free stuff like vultures to a warm carcass.
"Hey John, I heard the Smith house burned down."
"Lets go check it out, my wife's been bugging me to finish that carriage house.
Flora and fauna
We cant figure out how this happened, but some dumb bird built her nest and laid her eggs inside the wall in the maids bedroom, trapping and killing her babies in the process. The wall is sealed from the outside, so how she got in is a mystery.
Noteworthy debris
Found this Guitar Center card in a pile of papers. It has $11.37 still on it. Score!
The phrase "God bless you" has double meaning with this cross embroidered hankie.
I wanted to send this photo of exploded cranberry sauce in time for Thanksgiving, but its the thought that counts.
Throwing out the encyclopedias in the front hallway closet was quite a surreal experience
These acetate cross sections really take me back.
Cant wait to plug this in. There's a 5" floppy disc in there too.
