November 2003
November 11, 2003: Well, we've definitely been busy in the couple weeks or so since our last update, but we haven't had much progress to report until now. Which doesn't seem to make much sense, even to us, but there it is...
We've continued to plug away on our siding and trim replacement and repair. We finished the last bits and pieces on the west side of the house up to the second floor (the third floor is another story altogether... we'll get to that further down the page):
and finally finished replacing the siding on the bay window tower:
We're thrilled to finally be done with the tower... if we never see another piece of siding that has to be cut at a 45 degree compound angle with the thick end of the siding cut against the fence and 1/4" to the side of center if it's salvaged and dead center if it's new, we'll be happy old house owners.
Of course, every time we think we're in the homestretch of this siding project, the project seems to expand, admittedly sometimes because of our own while-we're-at-it's, but also in large part, frankly, because nature and the house convene bi-weekly secret star chamber meetings at midnight to conspire against us.
On the while-we're-at-it side of the equation, after finishing up to the second floor on the west side, we had occasion to take a good look at the third story above the bay window tower:
The siding's a disaster up there, which is par for the course, and if you click on the photo above for a close up, you'll see that the sills on the windows are, quite literally, falling off. Also par for the course.
All that would have been routine to replace, but then we got adventurous, and decided to explore behind the plywood panels that looked like they might be covering where shutters used to be. At that point, we discovered that, in fact, the @#$% panels had nothing to do with shutters. In actuality, the original windows apparently extended to the end of those panels, and when the windows were replaced with smaller units, someone just slapped plywood panels over them, and then sided over them. In the category of Amazing-But-True facts, we actually can't blame this little piece of work on Bad Joey-- the change pre-dates him.
Now, we could, theoretically, just replace the sills and repair the siding, but unfortunately, this window happens to be one of the prime offending entry points for all manner of native fauna. Last summer and fall, we had an invasion of wasps in it, sprinkled with some ladybugs for good measure. It was gross, to be sure, but we swept up their frozen, pathetic little corpses after the first hard frost, and moved on with our lives. This Spring, we were more than a bit disgusted when we found a dead bird trapped in there, but dealt with that with relative equanimity. And then, the flies moved in.
The flies? They must Go. Must go NOW. Hey look, we signed on for an awful lot when we bought an old house, but we draw the line at being some kind of contemporary inspiration for some demented remake of a William Golding novel. Oh, sure, we're overreacting, right? ... Hey, they remade "Willard" with his freakin' rats, didn't they? 'Nuff said.
But, to either our credit or our detriment (you decide), our aversion to spraying poison all over our living space still outweighs our fear of B-rated horror movies. So, rather than spraying insecticide on, around, and in every crack in the wall and window, siding and trimming out the window, and then hoping we didn't fall prey to the next wave of opportunistic arachnids come Spring, we decided that we might as well just replace those two windows. Oh, and did we mention the current windows don't actually work? That was kind of a factor, too. So we've got to be off on a window hunt, and replace them before we finish the siding and trim on the west side third story.
Now, lest you think that concludes our sob stories of six-legged, exoskeletoned tenants who don't pay rent... Oh no. We're just not that lucky.
We figured we'd head off on a hunt for windows later this month, decided to call it a day with the west side of the house and tower, and go on to do some exploratory surgery on the north side of the house. It looked like a good time to figure out what kind of prep work we'd need to do to start replacing the siding on that side of the house:
Now, the sheet of water cascading down the interior of our powder room wall during a rainstorm a couple months back had clued us in to the fact that we'd need to do some serious flashing where the roof addition meets the side wall of the house, and really, we were fine with that. But otherwise, we thought the siding on the north side of the house looked to be in pretty good shape, and it'd be pretty easy to get done. Famous last words...
The photo above shows a rectangle of plywood on the second floor, which is the remnant of a former window located in what is now the master bathroom, and we plan to restore it when we gut and redo the bathroom after the holidays. So we won't bother with it-- the siding all around it is in great shape, and we'll install a window unit when we do the bath and trim it out on the exterior next spring before we paint. But the plywood rectangle you can see on the first floor, which was obviously a window in the kitchen at one time, has to go. Since we installed the "wall o' windows" on the west wall of the kitchen last month, the kitchen certainly isn't hurting for natural light, and our current kitchen plan calls for a fireplace and two built-in, cherry wood hutches on that north wall where the plywood is. So the hole has to be sheathed properly and sided.
Now, we'd seen bees going in and out of a small crack at the top of the plywood on occasion, so we knew we had insects in the wall, but we weren't particularly fazed by it. Really, at this point, what wall in the house haven't we had insects in?
But when we actually popped off the plywood sheet, we were genuinely shocked, and frankly, so were our newly-discovered tenants:
Whoa... talk about fodder for an Alfred Hitchcock flick... wicked nasty stuff.
But since we've no plans for beekeeping on the property, and these particular tenants, like all the others, are not paying rent, clearly they Must Go. Unfortunately for us, however, their surprise at being confronted with us turned to anger much quicker than our surprise at being confronted by them turned to, well, anything. So, lacking another reasonable alternative, we fled. Far, far away. Exeunt, chased by bees. Antigonus had nothin' on us...
Now, Shakespeare was no help whatsoever, because Antigonus apparently managed to ditch his bear as expeditiously as he ditched the queen's baby, but we weren't so fortunate. When we returned, our bees were still there. The weather was no help, because it was warm enough that the bees were still active. Certainly the Delaware Landlord Tenant Code was no help, because presumably any eviction notice served on the bees had to be translated into their native language, and it was impossible to find someone fluent in Apis Mellifera on such short notice.
Right. Ultimately, we decided the prudent course of action was to leave the north side of the house alone for a bit, and since we didn't have windows for the third floor on the west side, we figured we'd turn our attention to the south side of the house (the front). We'd done some work there back in September, and apparently concluded, based on our September 8 journal entry, that we were "mostly done with the front of the house, aside from waiting for a few properly sized scrap pieces to replace some odds and ends." And apparently we had the pictures to prove it.
Well, we have no idea what happened, except to posit that whatever drugs we were on when we wrote that journal entry finally wore off. Anyway, when we fled to the front of the house to escape our horde of big giant mutant nuclear Africanized killer honey bees, we realized that the front of the house needed quite a bit more attention:
We have no clue how we thought we'd get away with that mess above the picture window. Clearly it was the drugs, and they were guuuuud... Upon closer inspection, we decided that mess would have to go, and so would a significant chunk of damaged siding under the window, and also around the right side between it and the door. But in order to replace all that, the old trim around the window would have to go, and be replaced with new stuff that would match the rest of trim around the windows. A few hours and many curses later, you can roll your cursor over the image to see before and after:
We've still got to extend the sills on the bottom of window, and trim out the one on the right side of the door to match, but we'd about had our fill of trim at this point, and called it a day. If we've learned nothing else at this point in our old house renovation, we've learned that if you leave something be, it will still be there when you get back around to it. Whether we like it or not. So we'll deal with it another weekend, and don't worry, you'll be sure to hear about it!
November 18, 2003: As if we didn't have enough going on around here, the "18-month syndrome" has hit the house.
The 18-month syndrome is a bizarre phenomenon that has occurred in each of our home renovations to date, wherein approximately a year and a half into our occupancy of a property, we realize that we actually live here. And we're likely to be living here for quite a bit more time to come, and in order to do so comfortably, certain things have to happen.
See, when we move in to a property, the house is generally a total disaster (assuming it's fit for human habitation at all). So we move everything we own, except bare essentials, into a garage, basement, attic or whatever storage space is available on the property. That usually means everything goes into storage except clothing, toiletries, minimal cooking and eating implements, a kitchen table and chairs, one television, one couch and a few side chairs, and the beds. In the first year, as we finish rooms and get them habitable, we move stuff out of storage, piece by piece and box by box, into the rooms as they're done. During that year, we also hit discount furniture stores, auctions and tag sales, and end up acquiring pieces of ratty furniture that would be perfect in the house, if only they were refinished, painted, reupholstered, whatever...
What we end up with after the first year or so is a house about 2/3 furnished, and an attic/garage/basement or other storage space filled with stuff that came from our last house, or needs to be refinished/painted/repaired to go into the room it's ultimately intended for. Once we reach this point, the syndrome kicks in, and we realize that: (1) half the stuff we moved from our prior house either won't fit or won't work in our current house, and (2) we have to start doing something, anything, with the stuff we've acquired since we've actually moved in to the current house.
This process that we've experienced over and over has converted us into firm believers of the maxim that "Stuff will expand to fill the space available." And we expanded, this time, in a truly remarkable manner, into the space we had available. Time to get serious about de-junking. Seriously.
When you've got a full basement, an 800+ square foot attic, and an outbuilding that comprises a two car garage plus workshop, a one car garage, a two stall barn and a storage space, and, after all that, you're starting to trip over your stuff... it's time to pare down. Time to de-junk before you end up as one of those feature stories on the eleven o'clock news, where the "Action News Investigative Correspondent" goes to your house, which is piled so high, floor to ceiling, with boxes, old newspapers, and 30 years-worth of Tupperware containers with mis-matched lids that he can barely get past the foyer. And then the loyal cameraman following said correspondent trips over the stack of National Geographics from 1982 piled at the door to the master bedroom, and the camera angle goes all wonky, and we all laugh, because, after all, what else are you going to do about the eleven o'clock news?
Pathetic cameramen aside, we really don't want to end up on network news, or worse, on some Oprah feature segment where organized life expert Julie Morgenstern invades our house and manages to cram everything, including the spare armoire that's intended for the future master suite, into color-coded file folders. Or worse, a segment where Dr. Phil McGraw delves into our psyche to determine exactly why we've kept said armoire, and how it relates to our relationships with our fathers. Scary.
But really, the scariest threat of all is that, once again, the calendar year draws to a close and that dark, dread time once again looms near... yes, it is soon that the tax man cometh. And for those of you who were around for last year's scramble to find all our papers and stuff, and then to find a place to actually get all the stuff organized before tax time, you'll be sympathetic to our sincere and heartfelt desire never to repeat the experience, as. long. as. we. live. So we've vowed to get decluttered and organized before the Federal Government makes us.
To this end, we've sent off two huge loads of stuff to our local charity that recycles second-hand items (this organization should truly be blessed by whatever powers that be, because it actually picks up loads of stuff from your house), and we've scheduled a third pick-up shortly. We've also begun to drag stuff out of our garage to make presentable and send to its permanent home.
The first garage reclamation project was a dog-sh** brown china cabinet that we picked up at a thrift sale to convert to a bookcase for our daughter's room. She originally had a small, two-shelf bookcase, which she grew out of quickly, or more accurately, her books grew out of quickly (what is it with kids and their stuff?). Anyway, the before and afters... the original small stuffed bookcase, and the new bookcase, dug out from the garage and freshly painted white:
Before...
and after...
Ahh... all the more space to cram stuff in. Something tells us we'll be revisiting this very issue, say, sometime next year?
Then it was time to work on the dog-sh** brown parson's desk we've been using as a computer desk since we finished the studio, and have been planning to refinish in white since we finished the studio months ago. Yeah, we're way late in getting it done, and ohbytheway, we'll psychoanalyze our attraction to furniture attractively finished in dog-sh** brown, umm... later:
Before...
and after...
And finally, our latest acquisition:
Yeah, we know. The 18-month syndrome doesn't provide for us acquiring stuff-- it's supposed to be the impetus for getting rid of stuff.
But we were bad, and we hit a tag sale last weekend that contained this beauty, which we thought would be perfect as the storage piece for our master bathroom. The armoire's magnificent-- roomy, well-proportioned and well-constructed of solid wood. And the master bathroom demolition's on schedule so far, for six weeks from now. All's fine, except we may have run into a minor glitch. The storage space we've designated for the master bath has a depth of 17", and the armoire is 21" deep. Hmm... might be time to get creative.
And if we can't get creative enough? Well, we're not sure exactly what to do then. The beast is huge, and heavy. We actually called in a favor from one of our favorite neighbors to help us get it from the driveway into the house, and then across the entire house, and then up the stairs. After a lot of huffing, puffing, heaving, and some seriously tight measurements around corners and clearance for ceilings, we dragged that puppy up the stairs, plopped it at the top of the landing, where it's pictured (and where it sits as we speak).
We decided it's going to sit right there (inconvenient as he** to maneuver around, but puuurdy) until the master bathroom remodel starts in six weeks, and we'll deal with it then. But if we can't ultimately make it fit in the master bath? Well, we dunno... anyone got any suggestions for bribing manual labor? Look, we realize Jimmy Hoffa's never been found, but hey, that was a long time ago, and we're certain the playing field for union labor's changed since then...
November 25, 2003: We weren't supposed to be here.
Well, actually, we guess we should clarify that we weren't planning on being home this past weekend, because we were supposed to spend the weekend at a friend's house. We cleared our calendar, sent the youngest member of our construction crew to Camp Grandmom, and prepared to spend a fine fall weekend at the beach. But then plans got mutually mixed up, we had to take a rain check, and we unexpectedly found ourselves at home for the weekend, sans offspring, with no plans.
Dangerous combination. Possibly explosive even, except that fireworks are illegal in the State of Delaware. So what happens when two fools are let loose in their own house for 48 hours with a pile of power tools and nothing else to do?
Walls come down. And walls go up, and ceilings come down, and we plan for more walls to come down...
We started out focused and on topic-- that is, we knew we had to repair the siding on the third floor above the bay window tower, and in order to do it, we had to replace the windows. So we went window hunting, and found a pair that would work. So we went to work tearing out the windows, and exposing the framing to install the new windows:
Some days, you just have to laugh. Bad Joey, he's just a gift that keeps on giving...
If you look at the photo above, you can see the short vertical framing members that were the jack studs for the old windows. Now Joey, he found windows to replace the originals, and obviously decided that, even if his windows didn't quite gel with the dimensions of the originals... no problem. That's what hacksaws are for, right? So he just chopped away the original framing, didn't bother to install a new header to span the space (remember, Joey = headers optional) and just popped his windows in.
Now, to the house's credit, it didn't fall down. But we weren't about to subject it to Joey's mode of framing for another 30 years-- not that we don't trust the house (at this point, we're not sure that anything other than the Boer war, v.2, waged directly on the front lawn would fell the damn thing), but you know, we just have too much respect for it to subject it to further indignities. So we reframed the window opening properly, installed the new windows, and started trimming them out. Roll your mouse over the image below for the before and after views:
Much better. We installed some of the trim, but about halfway through, we realized it was 6:30 pm, and it probably wasn't the wisest thing to continue on, perched on our bay window roof in the pitch dark three stories above ground. So we called it a day.
The next day dawned cold and rainy, so finishing the exterior trim on the third floor window was out. But we realized, after about three cups of coffee the next morning, that we still had nothing better to do with ourselves, so we turned our attention to the family room. As you may recall, we've done a temporary re-do of the room, but we knew we'd have to come back to it, because there was just way too much that was still bugging us about it. Number one candidate? The dreadful dropped ceiling, which, as far as we could tell from preliminary excavations, had no reason to exist, except that Bad Joey had decreed it so.
We also realized that Christmas is coming, and the ceiling in the room was a bit short for our tree last year. Poor fat old artificial thing-- we had to mush the top branches down and bend them at all sorts of funky angles just to get the tree topper on last year. Now this year, we have to mount a rescue mission into storage, and straighten our pathetic shrubbery out. Either that, or call in a faux arboreal chiropractor... nah. Completely out of the question.
Still, we decided, rather than subject our poor tree to the same treatment this year, we'd just tear out the family room ceiling to accomodate it:
:
Never mind that a pile of family and friends are descending upon us for Thanksgiving in a few days... they're used to it, and really, we did a good job of sweeping up the dust and crud. And the unfinished ceiling will lend some sort of, umm, rustic element to our Christmas decor this year. And our tree... will be sooo happy.
Moral of the story? Happy fake trees aside, never let two fools with nothing better to do loose in an old house with a pile of power tools for a weekend.
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