Happy New Years!

December 31, 2010

My wish for the new year: to be able to live in this house (and to not buy any more money pits). We'll see if that happens. So, Alok has been working on ripping out ceilings. Last night, he came home a bit early after leaving the front door open and having a bat come in and swoop down around his head. He got back to work today cleaning up the plaster:


The alien


The massive amounts of plaster he cleared out

Here is how the house looks now:

Foyer (apparently, that pipe was hooked to a radiator in the master bedroom. Since we've unhooked that, Alok said it swung down at his head like he was in Indian Jones when he took out the wall)


Foyer


Above the front door


Staircase. This plaster also needs to come down


Foyer again


Living room.... BTW notice the lack of all of the plaster on the carpet in the pics


Living room ceiling


Living room.... that dining room ahead is next


Living room


Old gas line for lighting, running by old wiring


Dirty Alok

We also found some new things in the walls. Here they are:


Bottle of bitters from Brown Drugs


Old cigarette pack


Old glove


Old shoe (I guess I could drop the "old..." that is obvious)


Envelope for the following letter


It is dated June 4th, 1888 and is from Russell Stevens to the Weems, stating he is sorry that he could not meet with them and Miss Brawner

Thanks to the folks at the Gardner Museum in Quincy, we now have more information on our house. Unfortunately, there isn't too much, but here is the history of ownership:

1896- Jesse E. Weems, Manager Pure Ice Company
1921- Silas J. Hauworth and wife Sara P., Vice-President of Noll-Hauworth
1928- Wm. Edwin Brown and wife Florence, President and Manager of Brown Drugs
1930- Still the Browns and also J.W. Edgan
1980s- Kaufmans

I also have a few articles from the 1990's when the Kaufman's owned the house. That will come later.

Have a Happy New Years!

Jessica

Anyone have some pledge?

December 27, 2010

Pretty much everyday, someone asks us when we are going to be able to stop destroying the house and start re-building/fixing. Right now, the answer appears to be never. Here is our foyer now:



The floor...oh no! The peach carpet may be ruined forever!


How the heck did this pipe get here? Also, doesn't it look like the staircase is detached from the rest of the house?


Looking at the ceiling by the front door, directly into the master bedroom


Some creepy handprints ;-)


Pipes. There was a place on the ceiling where I
asked the inspector if there was a leak. It was here. He said no. Yeah, right.


Crazy wiring


The living room


The foyer


Maze o' master bathroom pipes


The staircase looks like it's detaching.




Piles of lathe, among animal footprints. We need a dumpster.


Icicles... exciting!

Here's a video that I took of the house as well:


Jessica

The sky is falling, the sky is falling

December 23, 2010

Seriously, it is falling. Or Alok is getting one heck of a shoulder workout by tearing it down. Let's check out our lovely foyer/living room area:

Foyer


Foyer ceiling


Foyer ceiling... there was definitely water damage here


Close up on some of the foyer ceiling that still has to come down


Lovely front door/ceiling


From the living room into the foyer


Living room area (my brother is the dark figure)


View from living room into dining room- that pile is metal that was used to put one ceiling on top of another... and probably another


Another view


The pile of metal


The parlor area has been quarantined... notice the lack of ceiling (the lathe still has to come down)


Living room ceiling


View from the dining room into the living room


Pile o' moldy plaster

I think the pictures pretty much speak for themselves here. As does this one of my mom:


She was a bit horrified. We did find two things in the ceiling: 1) more mold (of course) and 2) a bat (all curled up in a piece of wallpaper that was in one of the ceilings- Alok was unknowingly rubbing his hand against it in the ceiling. He saved his new friend by putting him in a tree).

I also took a quick cellphone camera video of really bad quality for those of you who don't get motion sick:


That's about all for now. We are a few days late on the 5 month review (yes, we've had this money pit for 5 months now), but that will be coming as soon as I can remember to go to the house with a charged camera battery.

Jessica

5 month review (technically 5 months and 6 day review)

December 27, 2010

I missed the 21st, which would have been the 5 month-iversary of having the house. I think I've tried to block it out of my mind. I then failed to properly charge my camera when I went to take pictures.

Most of the work for this month is due to Alok's effort. For those of you who don't know, I'm a child clinical psychologist and am starting to get clients/work with agencies/start a private practice here in Quincy. So, although I'm not teaching for the month, I'm pretty much neglecting the house.

For this month, I also tried to incorporate pics from all the previous months so you could see the progress, rather than just having the beginning and now. Apparently, I didn't start charting the progress in this fashion until month 4, so we're skipping a few. I had high hopes of trying to seek out pics for each month, but that didn't happen for all of the rooms. Here we go (BTW, I obviously took the outside pics right before the snow):

Front of the house
(Some of these have our new roof... I apparently didn't get a complete before on some of them)

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Back of the house

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Garage

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FOYER

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Wow.... that is all plaster dust... oops
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Front parlor

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OK, it was too dusty to enter.... so imagine the same looking parlor with a ton of dust for the next few

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Front room

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Dining room

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Kitchen

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The apartment area

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Almost then (we didn't have a picture from before of this area, but this is right when we started in the apartment; the closet on the left is the one that contains the staircase):

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Nada
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Bathroom under the stairs

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Random hall to basement/apartment/foyer (skipped before):

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Basement (skipped previously)---> And now skipped here because I was too lazy to go downstairs/a bit creeped out today ;-)

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Stairs/Upstairs hallway/Hallway closet

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Master bedroom/bath

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Second upstairs bedroom (next to the Master)

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Hallway upstairs between bedrooms

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Upstairs hall bathroom

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3rd/4th bedroom upstairs (with bath)

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Laundry room

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The attic (skipped in month 5 because it hasn't changed!)

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5th bedroom/bath

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Phew! Congrats to those of you who made it all the way through!

Jessica