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dancerjodiI love weekends. I'm going on 1 year and 3 months out of grad school, and having a weekend with no homework still makes me squee!
Last night's costume presentation at the Museum of Science went really well. People were excited, we had a really good showing, and dinner with friends at the 99 afterward was fun (photos to come, potentially videos). We had less than expected staying at the house from Rochester - a Wookiee, a 7 months pregnant Padme, their 3 year old stormtrooper and only 2 more guys. I left them all this morning for ballet (more kick butt than usual it seemed, the teacher told me I did really well today), and at some point Brian will come home and we'll figure out what's going on tonight (I'm not sure how long the NY folks will be here, so we may have to miss a birthday party).
Its so nice out! I was going to go to the car wash and be lazy post the butt kicking ballet class, but the line was 15 cars long, sticking into the street. I came home, had lunch and got to cleaning the house a bit inside, washing my car for the first time in the driveway (I need to get some good soap, and a brush to reach over the roof with), and dragging some of a pile of trash from our back yard out to the front of the house. In our cleaning spree of the basement about 2 months back we threw all of the trash out the bulched, planning to rent a dumpster later. Given that we'll need to get one for our back porch remodel, I thought that we should throw out on the street now what we can (basically, everything but the old and large chunks of wood that have nails sticking out of them) and toss the rest in one dumpster later (when we do the porch job). The porch itself looks strong but the entire steps (the foundation of them and the step tops themselves) are quite rotted and need to go. Still, it should be a relatively simple and inexpensive thing to do, and I'll feel much safer after we do it!
Its always neat to see how fast our trash can find other homes after its dragged out to the sidewalk. We had an old broken tile saw from my Dad that just needs a part ordered from the manufacturer to work again. A contractor pulled up in his truck and said he'd be up for the challenge. I mean, the amount of times we'd need a tile saw around, didn't really support keeping one in the basement! There were also a ton of old pipes, new PVC pipes, Some weird long metal tools that seem like they may have been used for cleaning chimneys or something (old and in antique, seriously, they were stuffed up in our basement ceiling), an Etch a Sketch, and some huge cardboard boxes. I've been catching up on LJ in the living room on the couch and looking out the front bow windows that are open, and I've seen no less than 10 cars stop so that people to examine things. Technically I shouldn't be putting trash out until tomorrow night after 7 PM, but there is no way that yard was getting cleaned up at that point.
Related, I love the stuff you can find in old houses. There was an old shelf that had been screwed to the ceiling in our basement that Brian had ripped off and threw out in the back. Its actually assembled from old wooden boxes for Domino sugar, and for "rubbers" (a picture of a gloved hand on the box). They are old wooden crate style boxes, with the company logos, slogans and images painted on the side in black. How long has it been since you've seen goods packaged that way? There is an old door out in the pile that had been up between our living room and kitchen (we took it down when we moved in, and have yet to repair the holes in the door jam where the hinges once were). We'll have no use for it, and there are another pile of old doors in the attic still that we can pillage, so it went into the trash pile. I spent some time with a flathead screwdriver taking off the ornate, antique door knob and hardware, including the lock mechanism from inside the door. I'm not sure what I'll do with the thing, but they are so pretty, and don't take up a lot of room. I could also (if I wanted) have a locksmith actually craft a skeleton key to fit the lock too (I'm told that costs around $50 or so).
My last old house fun was actually discovering (I think) what the house was originally painted. Under the crawlspace of our den (where incidentally I found a ton of extra siding that we could potentially use to repair some damaged bits on the house), and on a corner of the house that's got some cracked vinyl siding there is in clear view a pinkish/tanish/brownish paint there. The shingles are quite old looking, and though not rotted and falling off, have taken a ton of abuse so I wouldn't be surprised if they are original shingles to the house, and if that brown was the original color (I know there has to be a way to tell, but I don't think I'm that motivated). Brian and I have been doing a lot of thinking of house colors since we'll be painting our porches soon. We want something that matches now, but would also match what we ultimately will want to have the house look like if possible, since there is no sense in duplicating efforts (at some point, WAY down the line we'll have it resided). Finding the potential original color adds something to consider in our thinking. I'm dying to peek behind a shutter and see if the siding has faded (i.e. if we take off the butt ugly shutters will there be darker shutter shaped rectangles and bleached siding around them). I'd love to just take them all off, because I really can't stand the color or those silly horse and buggy things that are riveted (rather than screwed) onto all of them.
Last night's costume presentation at the Museum of Science went really well. People were excited, we had a really good showing, and dinner with friends at the 99 afterward was fun (photos to come, potentially videos). We had less than expected staying at the house from Rochester - a Wookiee, a 7 months pregnant Padme, their 3 year old stormtrooper and only 2 more guys. I left them all this morning for ballet (more kick butt than usual it seemed, the teacher told me I did really well today), and at some point Brian will come home and we'll figure out what's going on tonight (I'm not sure how long the NY folks will be here, so we may have to miss a birthday party).
Its so nice out! I was going to go to the car wash and be lazy post the butt kicking ballet class, but the line was 15 cars long, sticking into the street. I came home, had lunch and got to cleaning the house a bit inside, washing my car for the first time in the driveway (I need to get some good soap, and a brush to reach over the roof with), and dragging some of a pile of trash from our back yard out to the front of the house. In our cleaning spree of the basement about 2 months back we threw all of the trash out the bulched, planning to rent a dumpster later. Given that we'll need to get one for our back porch remodel, I thought that we should throw out on the street now what we can (basically, everything but the old and large chunks of wood that have nails sticking out of them) and toss the rest in one dumpster later (when we do the porch job). The porch itself looks strong but the entire steps (the foundation of them and the step tops themselves) are quite rotted and need to go. Still, it should be a relatively simple and inexpensive thing to do, and I'll feel much safer after we do it!
Its always neat to see how fast our trash can find other homes after its dragged out to the sidewalk. We had an old broken tile saw from my Dad that just needs a part ordered from the manufacturer to work again. A contractor pulled up in his truck and said he'd be up for the challenge. I mean, the amount of times we'd need a tile saw around, didn't really support keeping one in the basement! There were also a ton of old pipes, new PVC pipes, Some weird long metal tools that seem like they may have been used for cleaning chimneys or something (old and in antique, seriously, they were stuffed up in our basement ceiling), an Etch a Sketch, and some huge cardboard boxes. I've been catching up on LJ in the living room on the couch and looking out the front bow windows that are open, and I've seen no less than 10 cars stop so that people to examine things. Technically I shouldn't be putting trash out until tomorrow night after 7 PM, but there is no way that yard was getting cleaned up at that point.
Related, I love the stuff you can find in old houses. There was an old shelf that had been screwed to the ceiling in our basement that Brian had ripped off and threw out in the back. Its actually assembled from old wooden boxes for Domino sugar, and for "rubbers" (a picture of a gloved hand on the box). They are old wooden crate style boxes, with the company logos, slogans and images painted on the side in black. How long has it been since you've seen goods packaged that way? There is an old door out in the pile that had been up between our living room and kitchen (we took it down when we moved in, and have yet to repair the holes in the door jam where the hinges once were). We'll have no use for it, and there are another pile of old doors in the attic still that we can pillage, so it went into the trash pile. I spent some time with a flathead screwdriver taking off the ornate, antique door knob and hardware, including the lock mechanism from inside the door. I'm not sure what I'll do with the thing, but they are so pretty, and don't take up a lot of room. I could also (if I wanted) have a locksmith actually craft a skeleton key to fit the lock too (I'm told that costs around $50 or so).
My last old house fun was actually discovering (I think) what the house was originally painted. Under the crawlspace of our den (where incidentally I found a ton of extra siding that we could potentially use to repair some damaged bits on the house), and on a corner of the house that's got some cracked vinyl siding there is in clear view a pinkish/tanish/brownish paint there. The shingles are quite old looking, and though not rotted and falling off, have taken a ton of abuse so I wouldn't be surprised if they are original shingles to the house, and if that brown was the original color (I know there has to be a way to tell, but I don't think I'm that motivated). Brian and I have been doing a lot of thinking of house colors since we'll be painting our porches soon. We want something that matches now, but would also match what we ultimately will want to have the house look like if possible, since there is no sense in duplicating efforts (at some point, WAY down the line we'll have it resided). Finding the potential original color adds something to consider in our thinking. I'm dying to peek behind a shutter and see if the siding has faded (i.e. if we take off the butt ugly shutters will there be darker shutter shaped rectangles and bleached siding around them). I'd love to just take them all off, because I really can't stand the color or those silly horse and buggy things that are riveted (rather than screwed) onto all of them.
