lisa September 8th, 2005
More than a year since the last entry. I have been putting off writing anything, because it seems too overwhelming to write about all that has happened in one entry. I know there are a few people reading this who have their own blogs. Take it from me – I have been blogging since 1998, and if you don’t keep up with entries, it is very easy to let things slide and then suddenly, you look up and it’s three, six, eighteen months later.
Anyway, things are still progressing as far as renovations go. We spent a long time last fall getting the house more weather-proofed: we put in a woodstove and all new storm windows. The woodstove hearth was a fun project. We built the platform with steel and concrete, and tiled the thing in blue slate. It turned out really nicely. Our experience with the woodstove was not that great last winter – we were hoping it would really take some of the burden off of the furnace, but that did not happen. We converted to natural gas a few years ago, and now with the price of natural gas even higher than heating oil, we’re kind of regretting it. I’m not looking forward to this winter – we may end up keeping the thermostat at 60 all season, if the prices remain high.
We’ve spent over a year trying to finish the upstairs hallway. We took down almost all the trim and sent it out to a place that had a dip tank to strip off the paint. That was last summer, and the trim still isn’t back up. We did get the floors refinished and Mark did a fantastic job with the stair banister, and the hallway walls are painted now. We also bought a really nice chandelier for the ceiling above the stairs. Eventually we’ll sand and finish all the woodwork and put it back up. Mark did a beautiful job on the front door, too – it is now natural wood, and he put a couple of coats of spar varnish on it.
My outdoor projects this year were building raised beds, putting in asparagus and blueberries, and tackling my irrigation problems. I bought and installed two rain barrels and laid a lot of soaker hose this year. The asparagus (var. Jersey Knight) have been fun to watch – they seem to be doing well. The blueberries (var. Bluecrop, Blueray, and Jersey) seem happy, too. I also grew lettuce (var. Buttercrunch) this year, for the first time, and it was a big success. My tomatoes this year were very early – I bought plants that were already in bloom from a local grower, and my first ripe tomato was in July! I grew Sweet Million (too prone to splitting), Early Girl (very prolific, on the small side but nicely-shaped), Better Boy (so heavy the plant fell over, even with multiple stakes and cages), and Jet Star (seemed weak at first, but has done okay).
We attacked the brush pile that had been building up for four years with a rented hydraulic 5′ chipper. I got some great mulch out of it, but it was a lot of work. Mark’s been clearing more trees, trying to figure out siting for the barn/garage/workshop he wants to build. He’s been busy looking at plans and even bought a small tractor to do some of the site prep. We started putting down a gravel driveway along the east side of our property to the barn site, but the tractor broke, so work on that has been stopped for a couple of weeks.
The last project to document is our front porch. We’ve had temporary stairs for almost two years, so this summer I insisted that we finish the porch and install the other two sets of stairs on either side. We are almost done with that project – probably in the next two weekends, we’ll be able to finish that up and then I can finally add another photo to the front page of this site!
This houseblog describes our adventures renovating a five-bedroom house built in 1890. The blog is not updated very often these days, but feel free to explore the archives!
