Category: This Old House
Posted by Tricia at 9:02 pm
Two years ago today we were on the way home from the kids’ week of summer swim lessons and as was our practice at the time, I detoured to take a peek at the neighborhood we checked on regularly during our search for a new house. And to my surprise came upon a FSBO sign in front of this:
It had been vacant for a few months and was in need of lots of TLC but the bones were great, and the price was right. And despite all sorts of trouble and craziness during the purchasing process, we moved in (albeit only partially, and with scarcely any furniture) just a little over three months later.
Two years later the little house has indeed received lots of TLC from the Hornes (though of course we are still working on it!) and I think it shows. We are grateful for this blessing, this haven with a red door where we watch our family grow, experience the richness that is our life, welcome family and friends, live together, laugh together and love each other. We are thankful for this, our own home, sweet home.
Posted by Tricia at 1:35 pm
Early this morning alley workers arrived to rework some sections of the concrete behind our house which apparently were not soundly constructed during the Alley Rebuild of 2007-2008. They originally showed up this past Saturday, during the Bridal Shower of 2008 (more on that another time) and began the loud and smelly work of cutting through cement whilst 27 fashionably dressed women drinking champagne punch watched them with interest through the windows along the back of our house. The Bride-to-be of course appreciated the extra drama and excitement which this added to her special day. Thankfully she is my sister, and quite used to the antics and craziness which is life around here!
The timing wasn’t supposed to work out like this, but then you don’t get to plan these things. Three weeks ago we drew up a contract for a fence rebuild around our backyard. Our charming picket, while lovely to look at:
is pushing the 25 year old mark, and Jay has resorted to holding it together with rubberbands and scotchtape. So, it was time to say goodbye.
Today while the rather moody city workers laid rebar in preparation for pouring cement, who should arrive but our wonderful fence folks for their first day of work, and of course they needed to be in the same exact spot as the alley laborers. And the alley men were none too happy about it. I got grumped at by the foreman (who by the way had assured me on Saturday afternoon during the bridal shower, that all the pouring of cement would be completely finished on Monday and our fence guys could be back there working with no problems by the end of this week) who told me I’d best hold off on constructing my fence (but sir, we already had, they were supposed to begin construction on Monday, remember, but you told me not to?) or else. Huh. I told the fence workers I was sorry for the trouble, especially after I’d already asked them to postpone their work earlier in the week.
Regardless, the fence teardown commenced in the midst of the alley work and no one threw any punches (or bits of picket fence) that I could see. Heheh. About an hour later, our sprinkler service showed up to repair a line we unfortunately nicked while sodding part of the back yard a few weeks ago. They turned on the various sprinkler zones to verify the source of the leak, and promptly gave the fence workers a bit of a bath, which maybe they appreciated - it is almost 90 degrees out! Even so, I found myself apologizing yet again to the guys from Zarate Fence, as I feel they will be more than tired of this job before it’s even begun at this rate.
But as I write this, things are calming down. The alley workers are almost done with the cement behind our yard, and have moved just next door, and are making noise and such behind our neighbor’s house now, so the area is clear for fence work. The sprinkler dudes have repaired the nicked line and also informed me that our pipes are not really dug deep enough for sodding/planting purposes, so we’d best be careful when doing any future landscaping. Brilliant, but I regress.
Work continues on the fence, and in another week’s time, if all goes as planned (hah!) maybe we’ll have pictures of a brand spankin’ new fence to share with you. For now, I leave you with an early picture of the teardown:
Posted by Tricia at 11:29 am
Just so’s you all know: Josiah has a pretty sweet side to him too. When he’s not making messes and being ornery!! This morning I walked outside and found him doing this:
He was watering all the new little plants I put in last week! No one told him to; but he’s seen me go turn on the garden hose and sprinkle all these tender plants each day, so I guess he figured he’d take care of that chore for me today. What a helpful boy!!
For a bit of history, when we bought the house, this was the place the previous owners let their dogs sleep. It was a real mess, full of dirty hay (for dog bedding??) and looked like this:
Early this year after the deck redo was complete, I finally got down to the business of cleaning out the hay and other debris.
We pulled brick after brick after brick out from underneath the hay.
I had lots of good help.
And some folks who just wanted to play in the dirt, but hey that’s cool too.
After our hard work, it was at least free of junk, and tidy-looking. But since January, it has sat feeling rather lonely and empty.
Until last week: I visited a local nursery and got some advice on what to plant here in hopes that we could keep it alive despite mostly shade and no sprinkler system feeding this area. I wanted as many evergreen perennials as would work so as to minimize effort/expense in the future. Among other things I planted a jasmine vine which I am hoping will happily climb and bloom all over this cute little birdy trellis I painted black (I love my trellis!):
And a Japanese Holly Fern, a Gardenia, Curly Red Coral Bells, and some Purple Shamrock.
I have yet to choose a plant for the corner, where I’d like something that will grow somewhat tall, yet narrow enough that it does not cover the kitchen window and block light from coming in. I definitely want to put something evergreen here. If any of my wonderful, green-thumbed readers have suggestions, please speak up! I need all the gardening help I can get.
Looks like Josiah knows that, and it’s a good thing he’s jumped in to help with the efforts to keep my little plants alive and thriving. Let’s hear it for Mommy’s Little Gardening Helper!
Posted by Jay at 12:27 pm
Regarding that lake. To review. I took a shower that was lukewarm. I looked under the house and saw several inches of standing water as far as the eye could see (which was, admittedly, fairly limited given it is a crawlspace with ducts throughout). I checked the water meter, and there were no leaks. So I reached the tentative, and admittedly impossible, conclusion that we were leaking hot water, but only when the water was running.
We had a plumber come by the next day. Turns out the number one cause of death for plumbers is electrocution, so he would not go under the house with all the water there. But he also said it was too shallow and dispersed to pump out. And he said my hot water leak hypothesis was impossible. Instead we had a broken cartridge in our shower faucet and an unrelated incursion of water from the recent rains.
Our shower faucet is of the unknown variety, so I headed to Teter’s Faucet and ordered a new one. Then I jammed a screwdriver in the old one and broke it further before putting the whole thing back together. Now it is biased toward hot water instead of cold water as we await the arrival of our new cartridge… much better for showers.
About the water. It’s actually very good news. We already knew we had a moisture problem under the house (due to the cupping of our wood floors), and we knew roughly how much it will cost to fix (installing powered fan vents). We just didn’t know how bad it could actually get after 7 inches of rain. What does all this mean? That no new expenses were introduced into the mix. If we spend money to control the moisture under the house, it isn’t a repair, and was already known.
But what to do in the interim when we can’t spend the money? And how do we lose the water so someone is willing to wire up electric fans under the house? I had this vision of using these, attached to a fan sitting at the entrance to the crawlspace, and venting the moist air out a window. Then my brother-in-law Peter asked, “Why don’t you just turn the fan facing down?” Yes, well, why not indeed.
So, here’s what my plywood-form-with-weatherproofing-and-big-fan looks like. It works amazingly. We just opened a window and closed the door to the room. Two days later, there is no visible water under the house, and the dirt looks less like mud and more like, well, dirt.
Posted by Tricia at 2:46 pm
I stopped in a little consignment furniture store near our home this past fall “just to look”. And happened upon something I could NOT leave behind, no matter that it was near the end of the month, and after this purchase we had to eat beans for the remaining week left so that I could stay within the bounds of my budget. (haha, not really, but almost.)
This little chair and ottoman were hidden back in a corner - both pieces looked to be in wonderful shape except for a noticeable stain on the chair’s off-white slipcover, and the fact that the ottoman was missing its slipcover altogether. But they looked like “good furniture” to me, and the price was really amazing. I managed to wrestle the slipcover off the chair and was rewarded with a little tag that read “Crate and Barrel”. Not that I ever shop for furniture there, but I knew enough to recognize a good deal, as long as I could get that stain out. So, after talking the owner of the store down to $99 for the pair, and consulting a friend over the phone to make sure I wasn’t about to do something incredibly stupid, I paid for the pieces, ferried them home in my minivan and got my hunk of a man to lug them inside for me. (This was taken AFTER the ottoman got a replacement cover - don’t they look cozy??)
Like all good obsessive-compulsives would, upon arriving home I immediately got on the web to look up these pieces of furniture, since I knew I’d at least need to order a new slipcover for the ottoman part, and this is what I found: I had just purchased The Potomac Chair and The Potomac Ottoman. Which, it turns out, are really incredibly made - these are quality pieces of furniture…..with a pretty high quality price tag to go along with them. The combined cost of this chair and ottoman bought new, made my jaw drop. Wowsers. In fact, once I had done the math, I calculated that what I paid for both of them after tax, was the exact dollar amount (give or take a few cents) one would pay for JUST THE TAX on the purchase of these two pieces new. Snap!
Of course, I did have just a little more money to shell out before I was finished. But, as Providence would have it, Crate and Barrel were right in the middle of their big annual custom upholstery sale: perfect time to go choose a slipcover, and they still carried the fabric I needed. Plus a hundred other fabrics they also tried to sell me. After all, the saleslady reasoned, why not pick up a second cover for the chair and ottoman for the winter months!?! Hmmm?? Well, maybe next year. For now, I am content with my wonderful new spot for cuddling up with a book, or as is usually the case, and CHILD and a book. Nicolas and I often do his reading lessons here with the sun streaming in the window.
Oh, and in case you are wondering…Yes! that stain came out with lots of pleading on my part, and a nice long soak in Oxy-Clean. And even though off-white furniture may seem foolhardy in a house with all these kids, I for one am a pleased customer, and a proponent of the slipcover…I’ve only washed these once since originally getting them back in September, and they really look great.
So here’s to thankfulness for little surprises in the back corners of used furniture stores. Now to get some pictures up on that wall!
Posted by Jay at 7:11 pm
In April of 2007, the warzone-disguised-as-an-alley behind our house was blocked off and work gradually proceeded on replacing it.
I am happy to report that today they moved the blockade just past our house, giving us access to our garage for the first time in 9 months! Thankfully, I was optimistic (for no apparent reason) and reorganized our garage over the past month to ensure we’d be able to fit both cars in it the moment the alley was accessible. For those of you who don’t know me that well, this is a Very Big Deal.
Speaking of garage organization, one of my goals in this house was to not store anything in the attic. I’m not a big fan of the out of sight, out of mind consequences of stuff being squirrelled away in the attic, gradually accumulating over the years. But the Christmas tree and decorations presented a challenge.
You’ll see my solution above the car on the right. I put a shelf in a couple weeks ago as the Christmas decorations were coming down that fits above the garage door when it’s open. It holds the Christmas tree and several containers of ornaments and decorations.
Posted by Tricia at 6:49 pm
Ok, I am so not trying to turn this into a home-improvement blog. But there have been some fun things going on around here which I want to share. Many of our readers know that we did not buy our house for its cosmetic beauty, but because it was in a great area, had pretty good “bones”, and was in our price range. Frankly, much of it was pretty awful-looking when we bought it. But, we have been really thankful to be here.
So now, after many months, we have updated/improved/replaced many things which needed attention that were NOT cosmetic and which, while adding to the very important “soundness” of the home, didn’t do much to enhance the appearance of the house (think electrical, plumbing, gas lines, gutters). But this past week, we made the first profound improvement to the place cosmetically. And from the back at least, things are looking pretty nice!!
Here is a before shot of the back of our house. The folks who used to own the place let their dogs live out here (as well as several thousand colonies of fleas…which we have since evicted!), and they (the dogs, not the fleas!) did a number on the brick walls, back doors, deck floor. Ick.
Here is how the other side looked, complete with random trash and Christmas lights (it was August!) left by previous owners:
Here is the same spot now (with one lonely, albeit lovely chair which belongs to my lil’ sis):
The pic doesn’t show it well, but the deck is actually a darker color than the house, so there is a bit of contrast. Still working on my Photoshop (or, in this case, Picasa) abilities…..
Here’s another before (remember this, Jamison?):
And this afternoon:
From what our sweet next-door neighbor tells us, this deck is over twenty years old, so I don’t know how long it will last, but hopefully we have just prolonged its life significantly with this latest TLC. I am loving this space. If you’re in the area, come on over for a glass of tea and a chat on the deck. We can fight over who gets to sit in my sister’s adirondack chair!
Posted by Tricia at 9:46 pm
…is, it turns out, her amazing new dishwasher!! When our vintage model, a KitchenAid Superba by Hobart…quite the machine in its day, my mother tells me…and indeed, I think ours had seen better days…
gave up the ghost, I knew that ANYTHING would be a step up from washing all our dishes and utensils, pots and pans by hand. My month without a washer was helpful in demonstrating just how beneficial a real working dishwasher can be to the busy mommy of four. It was admittedly not a fun month, and I often felt as though I spent most of my waking hours in the kitchen, trying vainly to keep it somewhat tidy, while always staring at yet another stack of dirty dishes.
These past few weeks of having my new dishwasher has been a dream…I am very very grateful for this new convenience in our lives. I read a wee bit of the owner’s manual when we had the new washer installed (reading manuals is not my strong suit), enough to see that the company advises you NOT to prerinse your dishes before loading; only to scrape food from them, and place in the washer for cleaning. Never having owned a washer which would actually clean dishes that weren’t prerinsed, neither Jay nor I believed this would actually work, so we, being creatures of habit, loaded some well-rinsed dishes into the machine for its first cycle, and of course were pleased when they emerged an hour later, washed, hot and almost dry. And we were truthfully even a little surprised, especially since we couldn’t easily tell the hard-working washer was actually running….it was so quiet. (See? They have to put these nice little blue lights on the front so you can visually tell that it’s running, since you might not know otherwise.):
We had been very used to a lot of noise coming from the dishwasher, given that our previous model pretty much made it sound like a train was crashing through the kitchen every time we ran it.
Well, about a week later we got gutsy and decided to see if the new washer actually lived up to its lofty claims. It was hard for us, but we resisted the urge to prerinse our dirty dishes. Instead we loaded the arrogant machine up with rubber scrapers caked in peanut butter, a broiler pan with crusted fish that had been cooked on at extremely high heat, a pie plate with some scattered remains of chicken pie which had hardened nicely over it, bowls covered with dried raw egg on the insides, well, you get the picture. We threw them in, poured in the scant amount of cleaner we were instructed to include, ran the dishwasher through its water-saving, whisper-quiet cycle, and were truly shocked when everything came out clean and fresh the next morning. Clean. Dry. Spotless. Not even a water spot. Wow.
Well, needless to say, I am in love. I have never owned a dishwasher like this. I honestly didn’t know such a thing even existed, much less at a price the average middle class homeowner could afford. As God is my witness, if we ever decide to move from this house, I will uninstall this precious dishwasher from its place under the countertop by myself, wrap it in a comfy blanket, and carry it on my back to our new place of residence.
Here’s a picture of my new best friend (IMHO it hardly does the wonderful machine justice, but of course after all this blathering I must include a photo):
Posted by Tricia at 1:53 pm
“The splotchy blue wall is gone…
Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho, Hah!
Let us sing a happy song…
Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho, Hah!”
Many thanks to Abigail who watched over Josiah this afternoon on her day off so I could prime over this stunning (a little too stunning, if you ask me!) bit of color in Josey’s room.
Now to paint the nursery a more pleasing (read “lighter”) shade of blue….
Posted by Tricia at 7:03 am
Well, it looks like we made a very sound decision in purchasing the new dishwasher. Only catch is, it won’t arrive in time to save me from a terrible case of dishpan hands. Because it looks like ours has officially decided to stop working. Last evening the children on dish duty gasped in horror and called, “Mommy! There’s brown yucky water coming out of the front of the dishwasher.” Upon inspection, it was confirmed that the washer appears to be leaking its rusty innards out all over everything. Ew, and gross!!
I rolled my eyes at Jay and remarked that I guessed we’d be doing dishes by hand until early to mid October when our long-awaited new model will be in. He answered, rightfully so, that I was already pretty much washing them entirely by hand anyway, given the “washer’s” cleaning abilities had been mostly gone for some time now. And he’s right. We’ll probably save a nice chunk on our water bill these next few weeks if I am just washing things by hand, instead of first hand-washing it all, then running the dishes through the non-washing KitchenAid for a long, expensive rinse. Or we could just go to entirely disposable dishes for a time. But we probably won’t.
Truthfully, I know just how spoiled I must be to moan about going without this appliance for a few weeks, given that many people in the world today have never enjoyed the luxury of a dishwasher. I am hopeful that in the next few weeks as I am without one, that I may learn to really appreciate this help in life that I have usually taken pretty much for granted. Sometimes it helps to go without something for a time to realize just how thankful we should be for it when it is around.
Posted by Tricia at 12:35 pm
If the bed pillows at your house are anything like ours, they grow flat and floppy over time. Washing and drying them only seems to make the problem worse, and often adds “bunchiness” to the poor pillow. Soon, those lovely, cushy pillows on the beds start looking sad and limp on account of the pillows that are inside them, and they are no longer very comforting to sleep on. What is a lady to do??
Well, a friend of mine has the most clever way of utilizing the worn-out pillows: she stuffs TWO limp pillows into each of her decorative bed shams, thereby making them look plump and luxurious. What a great way to reuse something that seems past its prime! I tried this new trick today with several shams on our master bed, and can honestly say the pillows have never looked nicer!
Posted by Tricia at 7:45 am
Well, dear Readers, I hope I am not boring you with my minute by minute accounts of our work around here, but the progress that we have made on the house the last few days is so exciting. On Wednesday morning, in our third bathroom, none of the bathroom “appliances” worked. The toilet had died, the sink was out of commission due to a leak which was damaging the vanity cabinet, and the shower was as it was when we purchased the house, that is to say, minus knobs for turning on the water (but the previous owners did leave some handy dandy vice grips affixed to the stems),
and potentially installed incorrectly - we were awaiting the plumber’s test to see if there was a leak below the house, which was a devastating possibility. Despite our knowledge when we purchased it that the house had some need of TLC, the original inspection had not revealed that the shower might actually be unusable; if after testing, the plumbers discovered that it leaked under the house, all the tile would have to be torn out and redone, either a really major project, or a really major expense. So we awaited the verdict on the shower with some nervousness.
While we could certainly live with a nonworking bath for some time (after all, when we first moved in, we only had one working bathing place, and one working toilet), the combination of the mess in front of us along with the anticipation of actual overnight houseguests who were soon to arrive, spurred us on to want to fix the room up as best we could. As we told you on Wednesday, Jay tackled the toilet first.
After our plumbers gave us the glorious news late Thursday that actually the little shower was just fine, no leak, no problem, Jay set about to figure out how to attach knobs to the 1965 piping. Our plumber would have done it for $450, including parts, by replacing all the piping and valves in the wall (and leaving a nice hole in the wall to boot) but we were already paying them so much money for things we certainly had no business doing ourselves, that Jay wanted to try to do this job himself. He succeeded, with some unconventional methods, in getting everything working properly, so instead of the vice grips which had been left, we now have shiny chrome knobs. How fancy - well, compared to the vice grips.
Jay also installed a nifty extender to allow the shower head to be moved appropriately into various positions for people of differing heights. On Saturday, we all visited Lowes and found a pretty faucet to install in place of the nonworking and very corroded original one.
For about an hour, Jay sawed and fought with stubborn piping underneath the cabinet, and complained about rust particles in his eyes from time to time, but finally emerged triumphant: he had replaced the shut-off valves and hookups to the faucet underneath, and as the finishing touch to the sink, put in this lovely fixture.
I love the porcelain “hot” and “cold” knobs!
So on Saturday evening, for the first time since we moved in last September, Abigail was able to shower in her own little bathroom. She was so excited, especially because it felt “cozy” (read “it is very, very tiny, perhaps the tiniest shower ever built”), and because she could bring the showerhead down to a ridiculously low level, exactly even with her 8-year old height.
Now, because I am who I am, I feel the need to insert the disclaimor here that I don’t feel children need to enjoy a bathroom of their own, even if they are the only female sibling among three brothers. I have had conversations with many a person who insisted their children of different genders should not have to share a bathroom, and been admittedly horrified about such statements. It would appear that along with our general affluence that we seem to enjoy as a nation, we have somehow come to expect a number of things related to our and our children’s quality of living which are totally unnecessary. But that is really a topic for another blog, now isn’t it? And, perhaps you may think it’s all well and good for me to comment on not needing extra bathrooms for our children: after all, I am the mom whose daughter has that third bathroom!! But, I digress…..
When we set about looking for homes closer to school, a third bathroom, let alone one for Abigail per se, was not on our list of wishes - the idea never even crossed my mind. But this house ended up being the right price in the neighborhood we really liked…..and as you are learning, no one else wanted to deal with its host of “little” issues!! The split fourth bedroom and third bath it offered were appealing both for our daughter as she grows older and perhaps desirous of some more privacy than her three younger brothers are often wont to give her, and because we knew Abigail’s room would double as a guest room for any visitors, whom, we surmised, might enjoy the little bath off to themselves too. All in all, it has worked out beautifully, and we feel it is a huge and unexpected blessing.
Saturday night we were able to share that blessing with our very first real overnight house guests (not including some sweet little friends of Abigail’s who have been here for sleepovers). Here they are…come to stay at House of Horne: the famous Bloggys!!!
What fun we had visiting with them. They were of course perfect houseguests, and left the bathroom cleaner than they found it. Jamison is just that way, you know!! We were so delighted they could stay with us, and thankful for their visit which helped to prompt such a major fix-up of the little bathroom’s functioning parts. While we have aspirations of texturing over old wallpaper, and painting the room a much more appealing shade of something than what is currently on the walls (this brown glaze with beige trim was used in several places throughout the house - same as was in the entry originally), we are so glad to have a functional and usable bathroom. Hooray!!
« Previous Entries
