Day 30!

August 21, 2010

We've officially had the house for 1 month, although it feels like MUCH longer. Before we do a "month-end review" (which I'm going to leave to Alok), we figured we'd update you with what happened today (or Saturday......the camera cord was accidentally left at the house and pics couldn't be added until Sunday).

Oh, but before I start, the good news is that despite last night's heavy rain, the roof didn't leak! WOO HOO!! Again, a big shout out to JDS Construction for doing a great job and really going above and beyond what was even in our contract. The bad news is that now we have water in our basement. Alok's hypothesis is that it is partially due to the lack of gutters (we get them in next week) and also the ivy growing on the side of our house. He can explain that one, but it's not good. Here is the water damage:

I have tried to rotate this about 4 times and it won't work. So just turn your head counter clockwise.

You can't see it too well, but it's there. Also here is the disgusting door from the outside that I've walked through before that is full of spiders/crickets (we're talking about probably 50+ in this area).... MRB this pic is for you:


Again, for some reason, they didn't turn out as well.

OK, so back to today. We got out of our little bit of working on the house funk (I blame washing walls) and got back to work. First, Alok and our neighbor moved everything out of the apartment. It was definitely worth paying for the help and they got it done in about an hour! (It took us about 4 to move it in). Here is the apartment now:


We also got our new washer/dryer from Sears. Here they are:

Alok pulling off the stickers

That was very exciting until the delivery people left and ran a "test cycle". Well, the test failed and we kept getting the error "check pump".... whatever that means. Unfortunately, Sears also didn't know what "check pump" meant and after resetting the washer twice, running a cycle that unknowingly ran for 5 hours, and spending hours on the phone, we now have water sitting in our washer (it's a front loader and you can't open it without it draining) and the technician will be out next week. Sooooo unhelpful/annoying.

Although that took up much of my day, we also started gouging out the walls, which is actually pretty fun. Basically, we have to make all of the cracks in the wall bigger/knock out any loose plaster so that we can fix them.


Alok showing me how this works

The only nasty thing was that hair fell out of the wall:



EWWWW!! Apparently, they used to mix plaster and horse hair. I have watched WAY to many scary movies for this and expected to uncover a dead body of some sort. No dead people/body parts were uncovered, but we did make some cool designs on the wall:







While I worked on this, Alok worked on demolishing the massive, ugly bookshelf that was in the main room. Here it is before:


Here is the demolishing process:





Alok also found a bunch of corroded batteries in behind part of the bookshelf

Here it is after:



Although we are finding that most things in the house are falling apart, we (of course) found that this was well constructed. And by well constructed I mean that they felt the need to put about 20, 2 inch nails in each board and actually have electrical work put in this thing. So, Alok not only got to dismantle it (it was beyond salvaging), but got to try not to electrocute himself in the process.

Guess what we found under the bookshelf? Of course, more painted grasspaper. Fun, fun. We also were able to get a good look at the hardwood floors underneath, seen here:

The oak floors that we will also uncover.

We also noticed that if you look at the ceiling, they actually built this monstrosity in and then re-plastered the ceiling. So, if you look up, you can see about a 1/2 inch gap between this area of the ceiling and the rest of it. Are we going to fix it? Heck no. At least not right now.

Gap between the ceilings

We also found some old molding under this shelf. You can see it in the picture above. The older molding is on the right.

It doesn't look terribly different from the molding in the picture, but there is a marked difference. We are going to keep it for now, although it doesn't look the same, so that when we have money, we can try to match the original wood work a bit better.

Oh, one last thing we found in the wall:


A hallpass from 1948! Pretty cool. (Pretty sure it says Betty Brown).

A few people who toured the house mentioned that we may have pocket doors under some of the wood. Alok decided to pop off the wood today to see what there was and look what we found.....


Alok checking out the possible pocket doors


Hardware on the door

Pocket doors! Pretty cool, huh? Above is the original woodwork/hardware. We were so excited and ran over to the other part of the room where we thought there may be doors and pulled off the wood and look what we found......

Alok checking out the other area


AHHHH!!!!


Mutilated pocket doors. I try to censor myself on this blog, but what jackass would do this? So, basically they not only painted them, but they actually took a saw and cut off the hardware/the whole front part of original door. WTH?! We can't fully pull them out because there is still carpet on the ground, but this should be interesting. We're excited that there is one original door, although who knows... when we pull it out, it will probably be painted or wallpapered or carpeted or something.

Big SIGH on that one.

Disappointed Alok then went out to work on the yard. We have this lovely ivy growing on the side of the house. See here:







Here's the issue, ivy not only destroys your house (paint, foundation, etc), but it also is growing through the screens in the kitchen:


Alok went on an ivy destruction path and took it out. Now here it is:





We only lost one screen in the process. There is still some more to get rid of and a bit of treatment to make sure that it doesn't come back, but we'll get to that later. He is waiting until he can kill that other piece of ivy so that it doesn't ruin the screen.

Oh, another thing is that we are going to want to sell two things from this house. One is this massive spiral staircase on the outside:


The second is this gas furnace thing (good description, huh?):


Since we don't have a craigslist here, how do people suggest we go about advertising these things?

Speaking of heat sources, we are most likely going to have to keep our massive, energy sucking boiler and not have air conditioning upstairs for at least a year. So, Alok decided to try to take a monkey wrench and temporarily remove the radiators downstairs so we can strip off the wallpaper behind them. He had no luck at all. Hmmmm.... suggestions? Oh, we also have a weird little gas heater in one room that we need removed for a bit, but we really don't want to mess with a gas line.... ideas?


Trying to remove the radiator.... not successfully

We also took out the nasty cushion that was on the window seat by the front door. If you remove it, there is just nasty-ness underneath. Really disgusting, but I couldn't get a good pic of it. Words can't describe...... Sigh. Oh, well. Now, if only I knew how to sew a new cushion.....

My mom trying to clean off that area

The Dempseys also came and looked around today and brought by their granddaughter (so cute!). They said that we have made a lot of progress, so that made us feel a little better. Nothing like some positive reinforcement!


Jessica