lisa May 14th, 2003
We got our electricity switched over to the new panel yesterday. What a saga this has been. We got the quote from the electrician last July, and we’re just now switching over. All the wiring has been done for months - we’ve been waiting for NST*R to come connect the weatherhead and they’ve been completely unresponsive. But they finally did the work yesterday.
Now we have working outlets on the second floor and in one room on the first floor. We have a contract with the electrician to do the finish work (outlets, light switches, etc.) but I wish we could back out and do the work ourselves. We might be slow, but at least we’re in control if we do it ourselves. With the electrician, we’re completely at his mercy.
So we have working outlets on the second floor, but none of the wall or ceiling lights are wired up, so we have to improvise with lamps, and we don’t have enough for every room. Plus, the study hasn’t been wired up, and that’s where the computers are, so as of yesterday, I have no working computer at home. I don’t know how long it will take before the study is wired up.
We’ve found a roommate to move in June 1st. The extra money from his rent will really help. And I’m looking forward to having another pair of hands around.
lisa April 29th, 2003
You know my huge, giant hydrangea that I had to move last November because it was in the path of the new gas line? The one that I really hacked the hell out of? It’s alive! It’s totally busting out all along the trunk and branches with buds! I’m so stoked.
And you know my trilliums? The rare, protected wildflowers that I was so excited to find in my back yard last year? The ones I was sure had been covered by a pile of dirt and rocks from the basement that one of the workers made last fall? They live!!! White and red ones! A big ol’ clump of healthy, happy trilliums.
And my daffodils that I planted? They are gorgeous and have multiplied exactly the way they were meant to. And the tulips I planted? Are about to bloom! And all the other perennials I put in last year appear to be coming back from the dead exactly the way they are supposed to and I LOVE SPRING!
I just spent three hours out in my yard and I’m so damn proud of my garden I could burst. The best thing about gardening is this sense of accomplishment. Triumph! Success! I can’t wait til later this year when I pick my first carrots and cucumbers.
lisa April 29th, 2003
We have walls! The plasterers showed up yesterday and put up all the blueboard. Today and tomorrow they will be doing the skimcoating and then they’re done. It’s a big milestone.
We’re still waiting on the electrician to finish his work, and waiting on the electric company to come and hook us up so we can go live with the new panel. Next project is the kitchen cabinets, but Sunday night at dinner Mark told me that he doesn’t think we’re going to have enough money to buy the lumber. We really need to refinance, but I don’t know if we can get an appraiser to give the house a high enough value without finishing the kitchen, rebuilding the porch, and finishing the bathrooms. I guess we don’t have much choice - we’ll only lose $100 if we get another appraisal and it’s not a high enough figure to do what we need to do.
lisa April 21st, 2003
We did a ton of work in the yard this weekend. I finished preparing the new bed in the front, and we rented a stump grinder and got rid of the stumps in the side yard, so now the property is cleared out from the house to the property line - an area about 80′ x 40′, I think. When we bought the house there were probably 25 trees there - weedy maples. Now there is just a lilac, a honeysuckle, and the big evergreens (arbor vitae and two pines). I am thrilled because it’s nice and sunny there and perfect for my veggie patch.
The whole backyard is covered in crocuses (almost done blooming) and scilla and glory-of-the-snow. I couldn’t figure out which type I had for the longest time, but now I understand - the glory-of-the-snow is lighter blue and opens upwards, while the scilla is a darker blue and cupped downwards. They’re both really cute.
My daffodils are looking pretty good, though I don’t know what happened to the paperwhites I planted the first fall - they bloomed last spring but I haven’t seen them yet this year. I bought three blue hyacinths at Home Depot on Saturday and now I want a dozen more because they are gorgeous!
lisa April 21st, 2003
We worked on the house all weekend, getting ready for the plasterers, who are coming Friday. I will be away all weekend, and when I get back on Sunday there will be walls and ceilings on the first floor! What a milestone. Paying the plasterers and the sprinkler guy (who will finish installing the fire sprinkler system on Monday) will take up the last of our money. From now until we refinance, we will be paying for everything out of pocket. I’m a little nervous - buying the wood for the cabinets is going to be awfully expensive, even if we buy rough-hewn and plane the boards ourselves. But I expect that we’ll muddle through. As long as neither of us gets laid off again.
lisa April 16th, 2003
I got 7 cubic yards of topsoil delivered this weekend, and I plan making a new bed in the front where the backhoe tore up the yard when they put in our new gas connection. I’m going to expand out into the yard so I have more area to plant sun-loving plants - I don’t want to put down grass seed. Grass is boring. And that topsoil will come in handy for the expanded veggie beds, too. I’ve started the cucumber now, and the tomatoes are getting big. I’m going to wait until the fall, I think, to try planting lettuce, since by then the tomatoes, cucumbers, and carrots will be ready. As for the broccoli, I should have put it in last month, but I’m going to go for it anyway next weekend and if my heads flower because it gets too hot, I’ll cut them off and get side sprouts.
lisa February 3rd, 2003
We had a fairly productive weekend - did a lot of cleaning and that felt good. It’s really hard to stay on top of it in such a chaotic environment. Plus the living room is full of woodworking tools and table saws and they get used a lot. The plaster dust everywhere doesn’t help. We’re getting a shop-style air filtration system and we’ve got a dust collector and if we used both all the time it would be better.
Anyway, the house is much cleaner today and I even did laundry. We’re running out of money and we still have to pay the plasterers to come in and put up walls. Oh, there’s so much work left to do. But soon, soon, soon - maybe by October? this house will really be livable.
lisa January 29th, 2003
Our upstairs bathroom is nearly done. We finished the shower stall a few weeks ago, which was great because we?d been showering at Mark?s parents? house for more than a month. The new shower is set up exactly the way we want it: it will be white tile with a built-in corner bench. We bought a fantastic showerhead system with a big main showerhead and an adjustable removable hand-held showerhead on a bar. We bought a nice chrome shower caddy and a great fan/overhead light/nightlight, and I found some nice sconces for the mirrored wall. Then we?ll have a custom cabinet with a curved shelf area and plenty of storage, and the floor will have radiant under-floor heating and black and white mosaic tile. We?re leaving the nice wainscoting and painting it gloss white, and the walls will be a shade of periwinkle blue. It?s going to be a fantastic bathroom and it will be cutomized just for us ? such a thrill.
Next will be the walls downstairs. There was some major work going on this week as the guys worked on the transition area between the living and dining room. There were pocket doors there, but they didn?t work and the whole support structure needed to be redone, so we took out the pocket doors and are leaving the area wide open. There?s a nice solid support beam there now and it looks great. The fireplace looks bad, because after we took off the nice wooden mantlepiece we discovered that the brick underneath needs to be completely redone. Mark is pushing to replace the fireplace with a woodstove, and I?ve agreed to do it as long as I still have a mantle around it and it?s not sticking out into the room. I?ve seen some that look pretty nice, like this one. But we won?t be able to afford to do that for a while ? not until we re-finance this summer.
Speaking of re-financing. We?ve figured out how much we need to have the house appraised for in order to re-finance and pay off the home equity line, and we have quite a bit of work to do before I think we?ll get it reappraised. Like put up walls downstairs. And rebuild the porch. And have a kitchen of some kind. Mark?s been aquiring cabinetmaking tools for a while and he?s pretty much ready to start building the cabinets, once we find a decent source for rough wood (so that it?s cheaper). We have all the appliances, just need to build the cabinets and I know that?s going to take a long time and a lot of work.
lisa December 15th, 2002
My fingernails are dirty from doing a little gardening - yes, even though it is the dead of winter, nothing can stop me! I went outside this morning and did some major cleaning up in the woods - using my nice loppers to cut down some volunteer maples and a bunch of burning bushes. Then I came in and mixed up some potting medium (peat moss and perlite) and tried out my new seed starting tray from Lee Valley. I sowed some gloxinia seeds from Park’s Seeds that I got in the mail last week. I got a lot of seeds from them this year and I’m really looking forward to trying to get all of them to germinate and seeing where to put things.
Seeds I will be starting this year: a shady wildflower mix, euphorbia, cupid’s dart, lavender, butterfly bush, foxglove (yellow), cyclamen, candytuft, poppy, erigorn, hellebore, and the gloxinias and a bird of paradise for inside. For vegetables I’m trying 2 kinds of lettuce, asparagus, carrot, cucumber, broccoli, and 4 kinds of tomatoes. Most of these seeds won’t be ready to start until February or March, but that will come sooner than it seems.
Last Thursday was my garden club’s annual winter party and yankee swap. I got a nice garden design book in the swap, which has lots of good ideas. Another thing I bought from Lee Valley recently was an irrigation system, because I am a big fan of making things easy on myself and saving water, too. So this winter I will be laying out an irrigation system and planning where I will put all these plants. I have ideas for where most things will go, but we still have to clear out some more trees so I have room and sun for growing.
lisa December 7th, 2002
We?ve been mostly concentrating on finishing off the electrical, putting in the garden window in the scullery, and putting down the sub floor in the kitchen. We got a dishwasher on eBay for $25. Mark?s been buying cabinetmaking tools for making the kitchen cabinets this winter. The insulation guys are coming tomorrow to do the icynene downstairs, which will help keep the house a lot warmer. We finally found a plumber and he starts next week. It was worth it to keep looking for a better deal.
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!