December 2015

Completing the porch removal

We finished taking down the ugly porch on this trip. It feels great not to have to look at it anymore. A few neighbors visited, everyone seemed to appreciate its demise. 

We completed removing the frame. Actually, Pete did all the cutting, and as usual I just took the trash to the dumpsterr. 

Oops! Neither one of us noticed the gutter on the right was attached to a cable. I'm not sure you wont notice either. Apparently I had the video setting on lowest of the low resolution.

Here is Pete just working out.......

..........and then finally getting some work done.

Before chewing away at the floor, this radiator had to be dragged inside the house. I would have helped, but someone had to take the picture.

 We plan to heat the house with these beasts. Local home owners we've spoken to have very strong opinions on their heating systems, and I've heard a lot of steam radiator bashing since we started this project. The house I grew up in was heated with these, we were only cold because my dad is so cheap. My current apartment has steam radiators, and I often close the valve because it is too hot.  I recently saw this radiator pin at the Tenement Museum. Its too heavy, just like the real thing. 

Construction Junction sells the more flowery decorative models. 

This is the  top layer of the porch floor, the laminate floor. Thankfully this layer was not glued or nailed on to anything.

  

There were more boards used as spacers under the top layer.....

...as well as some books and magazines.

Under all that crap was a plywood layer, followed by the original rotten floor

 
We got lucky with a few days of really nice weather, the December heat wave of 2015 was good to us.

We used sunscreen. Yay, global warming!

This sheet was completely stuffed into this hole. I was expecting something awful to be wrapped in it until I realised our groundhog was using it as bedding. 

Here's the uneven earth after a few days of hacking away at the floor. This was our groundhogs main residence. The structure was actually impressive. 

Here's an illustration showing a typical groundhog structure from Highlights Magazine, but not showing the human knee and ankle injuries they cause by walking into the holes. We plan to eventually catch and relocate him/her, so if you want to annoy a neighbor or relative let me know, and we will happily liberate the hog into their yard. 

We found this weird mealy stuff in the porch. This is what wood looks like when termites are completely through with it. Another reason I'm glad the porch is gone. 

Pete was so happy with this industrial strength wagon we purchased. I imagined he was having childhood flashbacks of pulling his Radio Flyer around. That joy turned into all consuming crankiness when he started dragging boulders in the rain. 

The rain did make working outside pretty miserable. The mud added quite a bit of weight to my boots. 

Every time we fill up a dumpster I think about how great it would be to throw a can of lighter fluid inside, ignite it, and add more garbage on top of the ash. This is what is left of the porch that didn't fit in the dumpster, and lighting up this pile would have been very convenient.  

Here are the completed progression photos.

The never ending cellar sog

In spite of getting the gutter cleared out on top of the problem side of the basement, it still gets wet when it rains. Suspects include the busted mystery PVC pipe,

the clogged drain on the basement floor, and the downwards sloping earth caused by the water eroding due to the clogged gutter. 

It doesn't look like much, but this was two days of shoveling earth in an attempt to slope the ground downwards.  I'm pretty strong for being out of shape, but moving dirt is the most strenuous task I've tackled so far.  On the next trip we hope to get the floor drain unclogged. 

No one lives here, jerk!

Taking a walk through the hood I saw this door tag from the imbeciles at the water company, the one that likes to charge people without providing actual water. 

Here is a full view of the house:

There is no shortage of bad press about these idiots, and this is just the icing on the incompetent cake.


Flora and Fauna

Apparently fireplaces are good places to start gardens. I left this seedling alone, I'll see if it gets any bigger when we return.

This nest was against the wall and the ceiling in the porch, its completely flat on one side, conforming to the wall it was sitting on.

Pete drew this portrait for our hosts children of the rat that ate our loaf of bread on our last visit . He's like the pied piper, this isn't the first time he's mesmerized children with his cartooning skills.


New Acquisitions

We really scored at Construction Junction on this visit. These chairs must have been just put out on the sales floor. They need a little work but they were only $10. each!!

We bought a few more silly Haunted Mansion style housewares. The chandelier was $15. I don't remember how much the sconces were.

Pete got Chopin's Funeral March on player piano scroll for our yet to be acquired player piano on Ebay. $10.

creepy books, seventh installment

To break up the long trip from NYC to the house we try to find places to stop along the way. Pete Googled "flea market" and found a random place two hours away from our our house. Its as big as a Target, and has everything. Antiques furniture, tools, housewares, books, and random crap you would find in a crazy old man's garage.  Even though we spend about two hours there each time we go, it never feels like enough time. 

We bought about 250 of these new spindles for our new porch. Because we purchased in bulk we got them for $1.25 each.  Knowing we are stopping there makes the drive a lot more tolerable.

Things left behind

We arrived to find this phone in our backyard. In spite of the screen being cracked and the phone being wet, I managed to extract some data.

Here's our little trespasser. From the mountain of photos on the phone, I'm guessing that this phone belonged to this kids mother before she gave it to him via a free upgrade.  Here are some of the marginally interesting images left behind.

???? What's the story with this house?

....livin' the high life

I'd rather not know what's on that washcloth.

Jeez, will you get that dog neutered? No one sterilizes their pets in this town!

Mamma's big night out

Here's mom wearing her sexy nurse costume, most likely at Halloween. I guess drunk Scooby Doo wasn't doing it for her, so she went clubbing and met "D"

Your kid trespassed on our lawn. I post the found photos. Now we're even.

October 2015

Tearing down the porch

We started removing the termite eaten front porch on this trip. Considering this porch an eyesore attached to the bigger eyesore that is our house, this was for me the most satisfying project so far. 

Here's what the porch looked like before we destroyed it. The white siding is aluminum. 

In keeping with the multi layer theme of the house, these are the cedar shingles under the aluminum. The dark brown squares were particleboard that were soggy and degraded. I guess they were used for spacers for the aluminum siding.

Under the drop ceiling was this beadboard ceiling. I'm sure this porch was pretty when it was built.

This is a small portion of that we salvaged.

 Maybe we will use it for cabinet facing in our kitchen,  like this:

....but not white. As most of you probably know, I am really not a fan of white.

 Photo from vintagemellie.blogspot.com.

We found some of the original moulding above the front door. 

Also evidence of where the original awning once was.

This must have been where the doorbell was.

A few clumps of this lead wool was found stuffed between the wall and the ceiling.

Here's a video of the project at mid point. We didn't have a lot of time, so we worked in the evenings. We were originally going to keep the windows to make a greenhouse, but we threw them away due to their poor condition.

Here's how we left the porch. It was frustrating not having time to finish it all.  I thought about our self appointed community leader calling our hedges an eyesore and then thought about her having to look at this mess. That made it easier to leave. It don't think she'll be whining about our shrubbery anymore. 

Some side by side progression photos. Can't wait to add to this!

We made $52. bux from scrapping the aluminum siding on the porch and from the bedroom.

That brings our profits to a sad $166.47

$52.80 scrap metal in October 2015

$62.30 scrap metal in July 2015

$11.37 Guitar Center gift card found in house November 2014

$40. box of uninstalled ceramic soap dishes sold on Craigslist

Thank you!

Before I continue, I would like to thank the fine men and women at 3M for providing these respirator cartridges, and keeping our lungs safe from who knows what. I felt much better once I pulled this this contraption apart to see what didn't go in our lungs!

The epic saga that is our water service

There was no water meter in the house when we bought it, only a copper pipe sticking out of the basement foundation. So naturally I was surprised to get a bill for water service for $200. 

We could not get a new meter installed until the outstanding bill was resolved. This took four months of phone calls to resolve. Luckily a completely different company was responsible for the meter installation. This was a great relief in the end, because I don't think I could trust company A to stir my coffee competently.

We had to visit the installation company to sign a form. This was advantageous in the end because we got a schematic of all the parts we needed to install. Off to Home Depot, where we lucked out and found the world's most helpful employee in the plumbing department. 

Thank you Frederick for being amazing! It was like having a hired expert. I was sure to write fan mail to Home Depot about this guy. 

I was so excited to finally see the meter installation man! I followed him around during the entire process, with cartoon hearts and stars popping over my head the entire time. If time permitted there would have been a red carpet rolled out right into the muddy basement with roped off cheering fans snapping pictures and clapping. 

"Is everyone this thrilled to see you?" I asked

"Uh, no." He replied dryly

My new best friend, working his magic.

Here is the meter completely installed. The plastic dome is the meter itself. It sends a wireless signal to a receiver attached to the outside of the house which is then picked up via GPS. That's how it's supposed to work, we'll see when we start getting bills for the morons at the billing company.

If you've been following this blog you may remember this unidentified thing we found in the house:

This is the tool used to open the valve at the water main. 

This is our water being turned on at the sidewalk, with a similar tool being used as the one we found.

Here's the big reveal, where we are all mumbling our approval in unison. 

I wrote a complaint letter to the billing company. I wasn't expecting anything. It was just a cathartic exercise.  Here are a couple of excerpts:

Doing some research I discovered that our case is not the only one where customers were overbilled. A couple in the local news received a $12,500. bill for one month of service, and then a shut off notice because they didn't pay it. Someone formed an activist group to reform the company, (whatever that involves) so we actually got off easy. We'll see what's in the mailbox on our next visit! It may have been easier to digging our own well for water.

Recent Acquisitions

creepy books, sixth installment

         

Pete usually throws away book dust covers, but this one is certainly worth keeping.

Flora and Fauna

This beautiful cat made an appearance in our backyard, walking closer and closer to us in a zigzag pattern before running off. If he's still around in the spring I will be scheduling him for his neuter surgery.

The gray cat is quite the little hunter, we found this skeleton in the front yard. There was deer cam video of him killing whatever this was, but I lost the footage. :(

The indoor nest we found between the wall and the ceiling.

One Loaf Less

I have to begin this story by saying our host Amanda is the cleanest person I know, constantly washing and scrubbing everything in the house. 

Pete and I bought a loaf of bread after a day at work, put it on the kitchen counter, and went to bed. When I woke the next morning to make coffee I found this:

Although I've never smelled marijuana in the house, I thought Amanda's brother came home with a bunch of his friends late at night, smoked a lot of weed, got the munchies and made sandwiches. Maybe our loaf of bread was somewhere else, misplaced in a cabinet. It was all really confusing until I turned and saw this:

Amanda had a rat in the house a few months ago, which she managed to kill with an electric trap. Before entering the rat hereafter he told his little rat buddies about Amanda's house, and now they were here for revenge and a good starchy meal.

I don't know why they left half a slice. Did I interrupt their heist at the very end?