May 2021

Sometime in early 2021, I was visiting my father when his neighbor Phil stopped by. Phil is like Kramer from Seinfield, big on the pop in, except Phil actually knocks on the door. 

"What do you do all day? You're retired, you do nuthin. You need to go to Pennsylvania and help ya daughta with the house" Phil said to my dad in his perfect hybrid Brooklyn/Eastern Long Island dialect.

I got the impression this was not the first time Phil brought this up.

So with the perfect combination of pressure and shaming my dad agreed to spend two weeks with me working on the house. The last time I spent two weeks straight with my father was when I was 11 years old, before my parents split up. This trip was taking our father daughter relationship to a new experimental level. Seven plus hours in the car followed by two weeks together in the same house. 

I had a great time during that car ride, and the rest was smooth sailing.

Our friends Tim and Elise were paying a visit as well during the trip; I was looking forward to all the company!

Pete did such a great job setting up bedrooms for everyone!

My husband can make any place romantic and cozy!

Elise has a blouse her colleagues call the clown barf shirt. This is the blanket version of that shirt.

We were trying to get her to take it with her, but she left it behind.

The Last Big Dump

The first chore we completed was getting this crap into the dumpster. This garbage was from when Pete and Joe pulled the old porch apart. I thought gutting the parlor was the last demo project. There will certainly be a few others, although they will be smaller.

  Pete and I were concerned, Dad was being real enthusiastic, lifting concrete practically over his head before throwing it away. It was like he had some real personal anger against cement. 

"Shit, is he gonna have a heart attack?" I whispered to Pete. 

"Hey Dad, everything OK?" I asked

"Yeah sure" he answered casually

My second grunt task was shoveling out the mountain of wood shavings in the basement. I'm not sure how long Pete was gonna go before cleaning this up.

You can hide a body under there.

I often refer to my father as a bull, strong and still very capable at 76. I offered this list of chores for him to choose from. Although after day one, I should have eliminated the third column.

I was relieved he chose to pull nails out of the reclaimed maple floorboards.

I snickered under my breath as he shortened this longer board, just because it was longer than the others on top of it. The pile was too heavy to just pull it out or push it in, and it was annoying him. 

I figured he would get bored after a few days and move on to something else. He set up a work bench in the parlor, sweeping the floor before he started working.

He kept at it for the duration of the trip, finishing the job. Whoa

 

He put these pretty boards of birds eye maple aside. I'm not sure what we will do with then just yet.

I've become a big fan of The Second Empire Strikes Back on YouTube, about a couple restoring their 1889 second empire house in St. Louis. The house has panel doors with some pretty trippy pine grain patterns. 

After Dad finished pulling out all the nails he and Pete built this rack to hold the larger planks in place. 

 All the shorter pieces were stacked in obedient smaller piles.

A radiator was found under the pile! Another trip to the scrap yard in is the future......

These floor boards filled up a 15 foot Uhaul and made Pete cry for a month every time he spoke about moving them from Jersey City to our house. 

The Widowmaker Makeover

Wow! I was so relieved to see Pete repair the attic staircase. It was just a matter of time before someone fell through. 

This before photo does not capture the treacherousness of this staircase. There were several loose treads that Pete nailed down as a temporary fix, but it never felt safe.

 

 

Porch-Part Three

By May the railing and balusters were all cut. Here's everything roughed in, with the bat Pete surprised me with. Yay!🦇

These were temporarily installed so that it could be taken apart and each piece painted individually.

Here's Pete cutting the stringers for the stairs.

Here are the stringers installed.

Tim helped nail down the treads. I don't remember what was said, but Pete looks like a micromanaging bully in this photo.

Tim used his 3D modelling skills to design the compound cuts for the balusters on the steps.

I especially love the curve of the banister! 

Joe encouraged us to write our initials in the concrete footing for the porch stairs.

The person that finds this will probably think it stands for salt and pepper, especially since Pete used grain like dots to write it out.

Tim kindly offered to design our front/side wraparound porch. I told him about my idea of installing a hot tub on the porch. 

"I think a hot tub may be too wide for the porch, Steph. You should consider putting it somewhere else"

How dare you disrupt my absurd fantasy, Tim. Did Pete tell him to say that? When we actually have money to build the front porch I will look into just how big hot tubs are. Hmmpf.

Flora and Fauna

Many years ago I bought Pete a second hand down sleeping bag and hammock so he could sleep in his workshop when he had to work late. The old bag was way past her prime so I was encouraging Pete to just throw it away. "Lets save the feathers" he said. It seemed like a good idea.

Can you aspirate on feathers? This seemed like an aerated choking hazard. A few particles went up my nose. I think we managed to corral about 40% of what was in the bag.

We should have just kept the feathers in the sleeping bag, but it was ripped and stained. 

Here are the tulips Amanda planted for us.

Here is an actual peach on the peach tree! This is not an anomaly, peaches can grow in Pennsylvania.

 This bunbun hadn't learned to be afraid of humans yet. I was absolutely enchanted by this little creature!💖🐇

Tenants moved into our newest bird house. 

We decided to bring our cat Steve to the house. The plan was to keep him confined to one of the bedrooms to keep him from getting dirty. Steve thought this was a ridiculous idea.

After realizing he was slipping under the tarp meant to keep him confined, the second attempt was this sliding door.

The door kept him in for an additional five minutes. Our theory was that like a furry marine he jumped over the six foot partition that was installed at the bottom of the attic stairs, giving him access to the maids staircase and the rest of the house

After tarping the space he was slipping through, he found his way into the smaller attic above the kitchen. Tiny galloping footsteps were followed by desperate meowing when he couldn't find his way out. After all of this, we decided to give him free range after making sure nothing was at risk of falling on him.

 

I gained a new respect for Steve, he's pretty stealthy! 

Steve, having what alcoholics refer to as a moment of clarity.

After a hard day of  dust collecting 

 

We were all mesmerized by this nocturnal bird song! I thought it would be an easy task to identify the bird, but there are a lot of night singing birds. Figuring it out proved more time consuming than I anticipated.

Pete built a small fire pit in the back yard. We made smores with vegan marshmallows and vegan Nutella I found on Amazon.

 

New Acquisitions

This month's hoard is brought to you by friends and relatives, random antique malls, our contractor Joe, Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, and my friend Laura who is perpetually cleaning out her parents estate.

Paper

An undated bookmark from Mutz Drugs

This is the third Arm and Hammer pamphlet I've found. 

I guess this means you will be rewarded for your suffering?

Play Autobridge, for guaranteed motion sickness!

This is the second print I bought from Besse Pease Guttman, this ones a lot lighter on the symbolism than the first one I purchased.

Like 8 track tapes, piano scrolls were manufactured later than you may think. Here's a copy of A Horse With No Name from 1972. I thought this was Kermit the Frog singing when I first heard this as a small child.

I cant wait to hear this awful classic rock song adapted for piano.

Metal

This metal Eveready battery advertising sign is a reproduction, but too sweet to pass up!

The discs on this lamp base pivot. I guess candy or mints would be the obvious thing to place on them.

This toy sewing machine appears to be in working order

I have yet to figure out where this door pull is going.

We got this amazing fireplace insert from our contractor Joe. This exact model is published in a book on antique stoves I recently purchased, but it gives no information about it. Repairing that finial is gonna be tricky. Cast iron is not Pete's forte.

Someday this will be a bench again.

Ceramic and Glass

This thing that looks like a tiny glass butt plug has a patent number on it. I couldn't find any information about it online.

Candle holders with mirror reflectors. Pete made something similar from a cut out beer can during the Hurricane Sandy blackout of 2012.

Wood

These miniature appliances are perfectly appropriate.

When I asked Pete if he could repair the corner details of this oval mirror he suggested grinding out the broken bits and replacing them with bat wings.

We think this cute metal lined cabinet may be a cigar humidor.

It's too bad this is too small for porch skirting.  Gotta keep those groundhogs from digging too close to the house somehow. 

Yes, these are hideous. I am hoping they are beautiful under that paint. Maybe they will be a pretty changing screen for the guestroom, maybe they'll go in the next dumpster. 

My father gave us this pretty display table. It would make a great jewelry box

Elise and Tim offered us this antique toilet disguised as an end table.

I told her I wanted it, sight unseen.

These chairs were clean until Mr. Dirty Paws took a walk on them. These were listed on Facebook Marketplace by a couple who were gonna use them for the wedding they had to Covid cancel three times.

This gas fireplace was a perfectly timed find from Craigslist free.

We got these corbels from Joe. We plan to use them on the front porch. 

Sterling Collection

This beautiful amber bottle does not have any indication of what it contained, just this fantastic ship. 

I've seen other old bottles with the warning not to reuse them, as per the federal government. It reminds me of the mattress tags we are strictly not allowed to remove.

Inspirations

The website for the Talliston House claims it took 25 years to restore. 25 years to the day. That sounds a bit embellished, but I can look past the dramatics. Each room has a theme, a date stamp, and a story wrapped around it. John Tarrow has even written two novels that take place in the house. This guy cant help but attach a story to every part of this house. I don't know where the fiction ends and the facts begin when reading the descriptions.

This former council house in Essex, Great Britian was bought in 1990, completely gutted and rebuilt. It hosts tea parties, tours, and a bed and breakfast. 

Victorian Parlor, Wales 1887

The Haunted Bedroom Scotland 1911 

Kitchen, New Orleans 1950

The Starhouse, Malorian Starstation 2282 (?)

The Fountain Courtyard, Ireland 1933

The Boathouse, Norway 1986

                                                               The Cabin, Canada 1948

Poetry Corner 

This one gets a 2 from me on the raunchy scale. I would love to talk to this the woman who is the subject of all these writings. Was she into it, or did she split because he got to be too intense? Did she even get to read these gems?