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.