A few overheard conversations Pete had on the phone sums up this quarter.
"If you putz around long enough you get things done"
"Steph is a slave driver"
More things would get done if I was at the house, but most of the time I can only nag gently encourage from afar. I'm a real fan of writing lists and setting goals, so I've been trying to get Pete to write daily to do lists for the work on the house.
On a positive note eating at the house has been better with some additional appliances. Here's some vegan Cuban sandwiches with pea soup.
I hate your guts
We are done done DONE with gutting the house!! This is the front parlor, all stripped down naked and ready to be rebuilt.
Here's Pete looking for treasure in a drop ceiling. It is a bit sad that we wont find anything else in the walls now that there are no more walls.
Yuck! This was one of three walls in the house that was actually insulated. All loose fluff balls of fiberglass, it looks like the cross section of a natural history museum diorama, except a whole lot itchier.
I have a very obscure memory of our electrician running one of the old lines into the new circuit breaker box he installed four years ago to give us some juice while he installed fresh romex cable. I forgot all about this and cut the live line. I didn't feel a jolt, but the popping sound it made knocked me on my ass. That's the last electrical line I'll be cutting!
We found this hairy crack (har har) on the chimney after we pulled down the old mantle.
We're gonna have to get that looked at by a structural expert.
It doesn't look like it from this photo, but the original floor is in pretty good shape, so we will eventually restore it. After all the smashing and shoveling, de-nailing this floor was pretty relaxing.
Back Bathroom
Plan A for the back bathroom floor was to keep the original floor as our sub-floor. It became pretty obvious once we started peeling the layers back that this was not going to be possible. Too much rot, too many odd holes and we realized sub floor and a few joists will have to be replaced.
Unfortunately I spent a fair amount of time scraping this crap off the floor. Some linoleum flooring was once made with a paper backing.
From the school of Use Whatever You Have here's a piece of aluminum covering a hole in the floor.
After four hours of me scraping layers off of layers, I see this: Pete ripping the original floor off the wonky joists. Half the floor was too destroyed to use, even as a sub floor, so he pulled it all up.
A ten ton tub sat on these meth mouth joists, including the one closest to the foreground that has the chunk completely cut out of it. It was either divine intervention or a real anomaly of physics; how did that cast iron bathtub not fall through this floor?
This house has proven to us once again that it was the right call to rip everything out to see what lurks beneath.
One project Pete was really dreading was removing this monstrosity of an air vent pipe. Why does air need so much space? Ideally, this is a two man job, but Pete tackled it without killing himself.
Incredibly thick and heavy, this four inch diameter pipe went vertically through the house from the roof, making a left turn at the bathroom before continuing through to the ground floor.
"I don't want this thing shooting through the house like a missile" He kept telling me. He secured each segment before cutting it.
Screening Process
"Didn't the new windows come with screens?"
"Yea, I gotta put them in"
I know Pete understands the concept of screens, but apparently in his mind its one of those low priority tasks. I'm glad this critter got in (and out, hopefully) of the house. Leave your house open like this and you are basically restoring a barn.
How did this raccoon get to the attic? Just like this:
Martha Stewart says clean from the top and work your way down, so we gave the attic a serious cleaning. We swept and vacuumed every crevice. I really love this photo, it was quite a sense of accomplishment getting rid of all that soot and all those cobwebs!
We found two piles of these hand forged nails where the rafters and joists meet. Obviously the last guy who picked these up was building the house.
Its almost a shame the attic needs insulation and sheet rock, because I am crushing pretty hard on this raw look!
Bedrooms
Pete took a sledgehammer to the bricked up fireplace in the back bedroom where unsurprisingly it vomited 130 years of soot, rocks, and birds nests.
We pulled up the old wood floor in the bedrooms to discover-new wood floor? The original wood floors are in great shape. I don't know why it was covered at all.
Not sure why the floor wasn't varnished in the center. Was someone planning to lay a rug down in that spot and decided to save some money?
A bobby pin was left behind and varnished over.
Descending the staircases
Pete managed to get all three staircases in this disorienting photo.
As most of you know, Pete is having his grandfathers 1955 Packard restored, and the time is approaching where he will need a place to park it. We can buy a cheap small ugly garage now but small and ugly is not really my jam. Ideally, we would like to have a two car garage that Pete can use as a workshop. We have a kiln (for firing pottery) and a smelting pot and spin caster. (for melting and molding metal) All large heavy equipment that I don't think would fit down the basement stairs.
Also, I don't want to burn the house down.
Until we can buy or build that garage, Pete has been busting ass making the basement into a workshop.
Leveling the dirt basement floor is pretty rough. The soil and plaster never get any lighter. I worked with Pete on this area. The photos make the pile look so small, but I was pretty beat when we finished.
This is where the interior staircase will eventually be.
Playing rock or clod helped make the digging a little less monotonous.
Was someone trying to create a diving rod with this lamp cord or is this yet another dangerous code violation? How did the house not burn down years ago?
Finding this chain in concrete was pretty creepy until we figured it was probably just on the floor when the concrete was poured.
Instead of pouring a new concrete floor in the basement, Pete's been buying these paving stones.
Pete was impressed with this mortise and tenon joint. It was a part of main support beam removed from the basement when the house got its lift in June 2018.
The grain from this wood from the basement is so tight. How old was this tree when it was cut down to build our house? If you want a project, count the rings and get back to me.
Another nail-less piece of carpentry of yore is this original basement window frame. Held together with lap joints and hand crafted pegs.
We're number one 3914!
I'm pretty thrilled with our new house number. For the three people reading this that don't understand the reference this is the famous line from the Disney Haunted Mansion, "Welcome foolish mortals"
The biggest horror is that door-yuck! I'm looking forward to scraping/melting that old nasty paint off!
Flora and Fauna
Pete's been amazing when it comes to gardening! It's pretty impressive what a few well placed flowers will do for the yard.
He bought a few of these white garden urns and painted them black.
Fake flowers were placed on the perimeter while some wildflower mix sprouted.
I had to google the iris bulbs-are they dead or in a really ugly state of suspended animation?
For some instant gratification we planted these sprouts $1.50 for three.
This mount for the old mailbox was removed to prepare the soil for the flowers. This mother was really in there! Deep heavy chunks of concrete with two steel rods. With the effort put in you would think the British crown jewels were mounted to that 2 x 4.
Our first snake sighting, seen in that front flower bed!
We took this grass.......
.......and transplanted it in front of the front door after we built a slope to keep the rain away from the house. We'll see if the grass takes root or dies a slow brown death.
Our contractor Joe suggested we do something "creative" with the old 2 x 4 from the basement that he replaced. A raised garden bed is a pretty sad attempt at creativity. I put the leftover parts on Craigslist for free where they were claimed in about ten minutes. Maybe that guy will make something impressive with them.
This mini garden fence was bought a few years ago. Someone on Facebook said it looked like a graveyard, and we weren't even trying!
Here's some sprouted herbs transferred from pots. Bought at the supermarket- just to top off the low brow minimal effort I have no idea what I'm doing garden.
This is our little garden the following month. What's growing? No one knows.
I found these soft and delicate fledgling feathers on the concrete.
I found this feather too. I was impressed with that beautiful turquoise until I realized it was painted with our house paint.
Pete built this Flintstone-esque entrance to the one groundhog hole that isn't potentially destructive to the house. He's hoping this will be a welcoming addition to the groundhogs home, discouraging him from rooting around near our foundation.
Wasps made themselves at home under the a window in our back bedroom.
What looks like a piece of wood is actually the backside of a bugs nest, possibly a wasp?
Nesting Instinct
Last summer Pete bought several plastic dollhouses from the thrift store and made them into bird houses. He re-painted the Scooby Doo haunted house this spring.
He bought this Vampirina dollhouse and added the book from the Beetlejuice movie.
Castle Grayskull joined the neighborhood as well, with an emasculating pastel makeover.
We are looking to add the Sleeping Beauty castle as well, and the 1995 Barbie Dream House is structurally appropriate.
It was thrilling to learn that someone built a nest and dropped some eggs in the Scooby Doo house!!
We found this tree growing between a crack in the concrete in the backyard.
Pete liberated it with the sledgehammer
....but ended up killing it in the process. In spite of this tree missing most of its roots Pete re-planted it anyway. To my surprise, it actually lived for a while.
Found
Since we will no longer find things in the walls and floors of the house, (although there are some old sheets of found newspaper that I have not yet posted, I'm gonna try to steam them flat so I can post them.) I am amending this section to include random objects found in random places.
Pete and I took a walk in a small patch of woods three blocks from our house. It's a spot I paid no attention to until my dad asked me about it when we were looking at a google satellite map. An overgrown area with a winding path, all very quaint until I saw all the garbage.
There are so many piles of tires, and I certainly wasn't expecting the boat. Birds were chirping, there were beer cans everywhere.
We found this ceramic insulator in that area. I thought these things were only made in glass.
Found in our backyard on a pile of scrap wood was his thick cutting board I gave to Pete to plane down. As I write this we are trying to figure out when I gave him this task. I'm pretty sure it was a couple of years before we were married.
Pete's been pretty obsessive recently about oiling the cutting board he got me last Christmas. I think he's overcompensating because he's neglected this one for so long. It's like the guy who is a terrible father to his first set of children only to re-marry and become a great dad to his second set of kids.
The Stepford Hood
As you may have gathered, our neighborhood is not fancy. A lot of the houses are cookie cutter mid century ranch style, with some older houses like ours peppered in. Some streets are well maintained, others are really run down. Sometimes we just drive around to explore, I thought I was on a film set when we drove up to this:
This development is up a winding road with lined with beautiful flowering trees. Down below the houses are in pretty sad shape. I never understood why someone would pay prime real estate prices to live above a run down neighborhood. Is it that Marie Antoinette Let Them Eat Cake mentality?
Li'l Abner
Of all the owners of our house I am most intrigued by Abner Washington Bedell, the guy who owned our house for five minutes in 1896. William Duff, the owner before Abner, owed Abner some cash, and William lost the house in court. William's brother bought it back from Abner, paying him an extra $1000. above his brother's debts.
I was told the court documents for this time were destroyed in a fire, which makes me really curious about this part of the story.
Abner Bedell is buried about a half hour away from us, in a spooky sleepy town with grand 19th century houses and really narrow roads. I've written to a PO Box that's associated with the cemetery, and a couple of local historical societies asking for any info on this guy, with no response. If this plague ever blows over and things open up again I think in person visits may yield some results. There are a few more on line resources I can dig through as well.
Inspirations
The Gregangelo Museum, San Francisco, CA
Every great house is never really finished, (I keep telling myself) and Gregangelo Herrera has been working on this house since the 1980s. Also referred to as the Circus House, this house has 26 rooms, each named and themed, like the alien room and the tickle room. An art kook living in what looks like a pretty expensive neighborhood in San Francisco, it gives me pleasure knowing this guy probably pisses off at least some of his rich tight ass Google exec neighbors with the tours he offers to the public.
Performers are part of the tours, here's a squid in the shower stall.
A beautiful butterfly
The Sterling Collection
This (what I assume is) Bakelite television antenna looks to me like it was designed in the 1940s, but the first TV antenna was invented in 1953. What was once just utilitarian technology is now a classic antique!
Because a gift card wasn't enough.......
I was on the fence about posting this, because it has nothing to do with our house. Pete built The Cat Tree of Caligari for Mr. Sterling as a gift for giving us all of his magical antiques. The Cat Tree of Calagari is inspired by the 1920 German expressionist horror film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. A cornerstone in cinematic history, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari has influenced countless other works of art over one hundred years. Every ratty haired gothic tween first peeked into The Cabinet through the band Bauhaus, who used images from several old horror films, including this damsel in distress being abducted by the villain.
The sets on this film seem way ahead of its time.
The cat tree is about six feet tall, made of plywood with three carpeted rooms, balconies, and interior lights.
Pete printed this iconic image on to canvas and I made a cat nip toy to hang from under the top roof.
I don't know if this was intentional or just coincidence but I was pleased to see the black and white cat tree placed in a black and white room. The cats took to it right away. The bottom level was built for Mr. Sterling's "low hider" cat.
This cat was obsessed with the cat nip toy. Mr. Sterling removed it because he thought it was going to get ripped to shreds, and I didn't make him a replacement.
Poetry Corner
Disclaimer: A stack of dirty poetry was left behind by the previous owner, so if you aren't a fan of soft core pornographic musings, look away now.
