All posts tagged: historic home renovation

What price frugality?

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I blame the following on heat stroke. And pain. (Read in the tone of drained awfulness.)   One hour, two hours, three hours, four – I really don’t want to do any more. We scrape and we wash and we prime and we paint. We dangle from scaffolding until we are faint. Tibbit is hungry, Hamish is bored. The house is still green in one corner more.   The garage lurks out back, all peeling and grim. I think we’ll be painting when the stars go dim.   Twenty thousand dollars seemed a lot to pay. Maybe, we said, there’s a more economical way? Scaffolding, scrapers, and gallons of tint – Up to the soffits and bump outs we went.   Lamentations and griping, match blisters and pain. If only, I think darkly, we’d have days of rain.   (Sigh.)   Would we do it all over? When the end is so near? Oh God we sure would. Sweat equity wins out when the cost is so high. We’d do it again, and ask ourselves …

High places

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Miss Tibbit and I stood in the rain eating black raspberries off the canes in the backyard. I reached high, Miss Tibbit plucked the low ones with her front nibble teeth. Their pure, rain-washed fruitiness is soothing my stomach after a feast of lamb vindaloo and chicken xacuti, samosas and deep-fried paneer at the Taj Grill. I can hear the rain pinging on the steel frame of the scaffolding. We should be painting. Monsoon-like rains and passing lightening storms make it impossible. The scaffolding arrived a week ago on a big rig. It traveled across country for 22 days to get here. Twenty feet of bright yellow painted tubular steel and mini-girders. So cheery. So horrifyingly high. From July 2 to July 5 we spent the daylight hours perched on Level 1 (6 feet), Level 2 (12 feet), Level 3 (18 feet) scraping, washing, priming. The husband of each neighboring household came to see. From my aerie they all looked the same: wide legged stance, arms crossed over the chest, head tilted back, mouth a …

Rain Delay

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We lost the Mini to car fever yesterday. The WideEyedSpouse struggled heroically for months. Yesterday he succumbed. Yesterday, a bright sunny day perfect for painting a century home, we spent in the air-conditioned comfort of a car dealer’s showroom. The Mini stayed there. We left to rearrange the snow shovels in the garage to fit the new WideEyedMobile. “Tomorrow we’ll work on the house all day,” the Spouse said, staring dreamily in at his new ride. But. Rain. Guilt-less, feck-less, fancy-free we fled the Homestead with our Niagara Wine Trail Passports (thanks WideEyedMLB!) in hand and turned left and right for an hour or more, heading east and north into rural western New York. We crossed and crisscrossed the Erie Canal. We skirted Lake Ontario. We saw old houses tumbling down, fixing up, and hovering undecided in a state of quasi-repair. Trucks and Chevys from oldy-time hid half under tarps – rusty butt ends sticking out. Kids played in puddles, trailers huddled in clusters on abandoned farm fields. We breathed deeply of non-city air and …

Old House | Freedom Thief

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We had freedom once. We hiked. We rode mountain bikes. We visited antique shops and flea markets, clutching take-out lattes. We read the whole Sunday paper to fill the time before brunch. But our lives seemed empty. So we bought a house and fixed up it. Then we moved. Bought another house and fixed it up. Then we moved, to the biggest, oldest house yet. It must be painted. I do understand that there are professionals who do these things for you. For buckets of ducats. But the WideEyedSpouse and I sort of want to see what is happening on the house. Get a sense of coming maintenance. And, we want to run the 35 foot boom lift and stare down at the neighborhood from our lofty position. Yesterday we started. We scraped. I washed with pre-painting detergent. No, I’m ok, it only burned a little when it dripped down my arms and off my elbows. We painted. Creamy white. Deepest blue. We painted until 12 minutes after sunset, knowing that rains were coming and hoping for the …

Trash picking for winter lettuce.

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It’s more complicated than that title makes it seem. With some in-between formative steps. The WideEyedSpouse and I walk the Useless Little Black Dog and the Corgi for several blocks through the neighborhood every evening. This is terrible in the winter, mostly. It is nice in the summer, generally. It is ALWAYS great on trash day. Because we live in a neighborhood of historic homes filled with epic volumes of historic junk, someone is always prying something out of the basement or off of the house. I scored a china cabinet that reeked of basement mildew two years ago. It is now my garden tool shack in the garage. Elegant, efficient, free. From Spode to Spades. (I know, right?) The trick is to get there quick. Super quick because as I’ve noted before, Buffalo has an active trash picking culture. My amateur attempts are pathetic compared to the experts. We moved into this house and set up the garden four summers ago. I’ve been waiting for someone in the neighborhood to replace their generously sized …

Responsibility avoidance, Or, There are two kinds of spurs my friend.

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The grass in the back yard is long. Mowing has become critical. The new back stoop remains unfinished. The parts are in the garage, some assembly required. The new house colors, still undecided. Stripping the old paint, urgent. But it’s raining. 47 hundredths of an inch today so far in a long slow endless shower. Well now, that’s just too bad. All of the day’s chores were outside chores. Howsoever will I pass the time? I’ll tell you how, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and a lace knitting project. 178 minutes of men of poor moral character. Italian made cotton Tahki yarn in a peaceable spring leaf green, bamboo needles, and a simple leaf lace scarf pattern. A match made in work avoidance heaven. I knit three, and watched Blondie shoot Tuco down from the gallows for the second time… “I’ll keep the money and you can have the rope”. Slipped one purlwise, knit two and passed slip stitch over while Tuco caught Blondie in his hotel room… “There are two kinds of …

Home Renovation Made Possible by the 1970s.

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If Looking Glass had never recorded Brandy (my life, my love, and my lady is the seaaaaa), would I have been able rebuild and repair every half fixed house I’ve lived in for the past 15 years? If the Commodores didn’t make Brick House (She’s a brick-house. Mighty, mighty, just letting it all hang out), could I have boogied my way through edging uncountable ceilings on the top of a high ladder, among the fumes and echoes? How long could I have endured the paint striper chemical gloves without Carly Simon’s You’re So Vain (I bet you thought this color was pret-ty, pret-ty, you’re so tacky…)? The WideEyedSpouse hears the ocean rumbling and smells suntan lotion when we stream Big Joe Henry’s 1970s heavy show on New Jersey 101.5 or the itunes Best of the 1970s. The Spouse grew up in Ocean City, roasting in the summer sun, listening to pop music on transistor radios. Me? I hear sanders and smell sawdust because I grew up in old houses. I failed to learn from my youth …

I know I would paint better if I had a pair of Dickies painters pants.

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I own a nice brush. I bought quality paint. I sanded and primed properly. I’ve painted ceilings, walls, trim, floors in 5 different states, 6 different domiciles. Satin, flat, matte, semi-gloss, stain, paint stain, epoxy, and varnish. Interior, exterior, basement, attic, kitchen.You name it. I’ve painted it. And while I’m no pro, I can lay some paint. But you know what? I was standing in Sherwin Williams the other day waiting for my paint to shake and I saw that their Dickies painters pants were on sale. It was a really good sale, only $18. That’s a great price for any kind of pants, an exceptional price for magic skill infused painters pants. I didn’t buy them. Here we are, a little more than 24 hours later and I am commencing with painting the bathroom. I am all geared up in my ladies Carhartts and I am feeling ill-prepared. Queasy that I could do better. Don’t mistake the situation. The ladies Carhartts are good, solid pants. They lived in 3 states with me. They traveled …

You say that like beer would somehow impair my ability to be awesome.

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Actually, I didn’t say it like that at all. It was a simple query about the wisdom of the action being taken. We were having a rainy and cold Saturday evening. The husband was fussing with the 1920s ceiling light we found at Buffalo Reuse last weekend. It was tucked up in a back room of that cavernous, dark, and very, very grungy retail outlet for parts yanked out of “green” demolition projects. Stacks of tiles torn from bathroom walls (the husband is still fighting an infected cut from one of those), old toilets (I mean used toilets, really really used toilets), doors, windows, tin ceiling chunks, and other house bits are piled next to only slightly worn tanks of corrosive fluid. Anyway, the husband had just discovered that with careful use of Bon Ami he could remove the filth crust of nearly 100 years to make the molded milky glass of the light gleam like new. All that remained was to replace the dangerously inept 1970s era rewiring with new, legal, and safe wiring and …