This pic makes me smile. I have to brag about my dogs for a minute. These are our two boxers. Coco (fawn) is 8 and Wrigley (white) is 2. This is the pic we had in our Christmas cards. I was threatening them with their lives to get this. They were cocking their heads from side to side trying to figure out why I was talking in this tight lipped, teeth clenched voice about going to the vet for shots if they didn't stand still for me. Wrigley is a terror and gets into EVERYTHING. Coco is the scaredy cat but tries to act tough when she barks at kids while sitting on the bed in the guest bedroom looking out the window. They are really great dogs and nothing is better than coming home from work and seeing those stubby tails wagging when you walk thru the door.




Ok - This was SUPPOSED to be a "small" hole!! After nearly 12 years without central air we decided to install a Space Pak central air system. www.spacepak.com Since we have hot water heat with radiators and no duct work we have been living with window units. It basically feels like staying at a bad motel - it's either too hot or too cold and the noise really gets to you after awhile. Maybe we are just too picky. At any rate I had the brainy idea that we could just convert the house over to forced air heat and central air. I would do most of the dirty work cutting out sections of the walls to run the supply and return ducts. Well - - I had two estimates - one guy said he would not touch my house for under 30K and the other guy said the custom duct work that would be required in the basement (due to the low ceiling) would just be too time consuming and he didn't want to get involved in a project that big. There are only so many heating and cooling guys out there willing to do this type of retro fit and I finally decided to abandon the whole idea. Then came plan B which was suggested by the second contractor. He recommended converting from steam heat to hot water heat and the installation of a Space Pak high velocity air conditioning system. The heating was completed in October (just in time for cold weather) The central air is still in progress. To save money I agreed to run the flexible 2 inch diameter (not including the insulation) ducting. I am nearly done running this ducting (it looks like flexible dryer venting) and of course it has not been without it's problems. The above pic was taken on the main stairway landing. You are looking at the Space Pak duct where it enters the kitchen ceiling. I will take more pics to show how this all works. There were other holes I had to cut similar to this and they are in the process of being repaired. Anyway I had to cut an opening in the wall to feed the tubing down and when I started cutting the hole with my saws-all the plaster just starts vibrating and coming lose. This has happened to me MANY times so I am used to it. The way the plaster came off sorta looks like the state of Texas - lol - hey - you have to find some humor in these things when you know what a pain it's going to be to repair it all.

This pic shows the ducting coming out of the 3rd floor crawl space on the 3rd floor landing. This duct is feeding down to the kitchen as shown in the pic above. The 3rd floor is gutted right now so that is really helping with the installation. I will be installing a total of 22 of these little ducts. As of right now I have all but 5 of them installed. Yeah!

This is a before pic (sort of) of the back part of the house before I added the deck. I say it's "sort of" a before pic because I added the fenced area for our dogs to "potty" a few years ago. There is a patio there also which we thought originally would be nice for sitting outside - but the height of the fence made you feel too closed in so the dogs just took it over. (you can sort of see them in the pic) There was a large, out of control, lilac bush there when we bought the house. I also installed the retainer blocks. A little over a year ago the time came to rip all of this out and put a deck on. We were somewhat limited with the size since the driveway wraps around.

Here is the completed deck. I'm pretty proud of it since it was completed designed by me and completely installed by me and my "favorite cousin" (the "favorite cousin" is a joke thing my cousin and I have going on - I'll refer to her as FC) Anyway - FC is a great help - she is willing to help out with anything. She works harder than most of the male friends I have and is always my first choice when looking for help. Plus she is cheap - a good mexican meal is about all she requires in return! You can't see it in the pic but the steps are now positioned so they come down by the garage door. It made more sense to move them there. I also had to redo the retaining wall since the orginal layout had them in a circular pattern. The dogs still have access to "potty" under the deck which is great.
The is a view sitting on the sofa looking towards the back yard. We spent alot of time out here this past Summer and I am really looking forward to Spring getting here. The dogs especially like to lay in the sun. This side of the house gets morning and early afternoon sun so the evenings are shaded which is ideal in the Summer. At some point I'd like to have an awning made for over the deck since we have to remember to cover the furniture when we arent using it since the cushions are fabric.

Ok - so here's the first pic I am adding to my blog. This was taken right before Christmas when we still had snow on the ground. I will have to find a "before" pic of the house. When we bought it (almost 12 years ago) there were no shutters at the second floor windows, the front door was painted white with a heavy white wrought iron storm door (no - it wasn't cool), the side lights on either side of the front door were spray painted white from the inside (yes - you read that right), the bushes were very overgrown and there was a plastic eagle in the peak of the porch roof (lovely). Oh, and the stone work above and below the windows was nearly all black. I tried everything to clean them, power washing, bleach, muratic acid - but finally my brother in law who works at a machine shop suggested trying part of a stone grinding wheel they use at the shop. Well - it worked fabulously. I would take a palm sized piece of the grinding stone and rub it across the stonework and it lightly sanded the dirt and grime away. It was like magic!

I'm sorry my pics aren't real clear - I like to take them without a flash since it gives more "mood" to the pic. This is our foyer just as you walk in the front door. We have a small vestibule with a door that leads into the foyer. To the left is the dinning room and to the right is the living room. Straight ahead is a doorway that used to be a closet under the stairway landing. I opened up both ends of the closet and replaced the solid door with a glass paned door (you can't see it in the pic) This gives us better flow thru the house now. If you enter this new hallway and go to the left you enter the kitchen and if you to the right you enter our breakfast room that is also located behind the living room. I installed the black and white flooring which is just vinyl. (some day we hope to replace it with marble) The stairway is painted black and white. It's an interesting story (I think) how that happened. After we moved in we had so much work to do that we decided to wait to carpet the stairs (that was the original plan anyway) So just to make it look more presentable I painted the stairs black and white. Well I didn't do alot of prep work since it was to be a temporary solution. After it was finished we decided we really liked it and THEN a year or two later I had to heat gun and strip ALL of it since there had been so many layers of paint on them. The end result was worth it. (I think) You can see the radiator in the pic - we originally had steam heat provided by a mamouth 60plus year old boiler. This summer we replaced it with a new boiler and converted over to hot water. So far out heating bills have been quite a but lower and the heat is more even.

So before you start thinking I have nothing left to do in my house - think again. This pic is of the 3rd floor bathroom. It has not been usable since we have lived here. When we moved in, at the advice of a plumber, we disconnected all of the fixtures since the toilet tank and bowl were cracked and there were no shut off valves on anything. There is a clawfoot tub but it's out in the hallway since, as you can see, there is no floor. I had to pull up the old floor because it sagged really bad and needed to be leveled and we also needed access to the plumbing. This is what it looks like today. There was plaster on the walls (well most of the walls) but it was not worth saving so we had a dumpster brought in next to the house and we gutted the entire floor. This allowed me to insulate since there was NO insulation at all. Besides this bathroom there is a bedroom and sitting room. It was probably a maid's quarters originally. If you look at the pic of the house from the outside, the bathroom is under the middle dormer with the two rooms on either side. Ok that's all I have time for tonight. I hope all of this uploads!

I wish blogs existed back in 1994 when we purchased this house. This is the first home we have owned and we had been looking for quite some time. We knew we wanted a fixer-upper. Some days I ask myself "what were we thinking?!" I found the home by accident actually. I had dropped my wife off at work on a Saturday and was driving home and decided to drive down a few side streets in an older neighborhood we like. Driving down one particular street I saw the "for sale" sign and stopped in front of the house. Judging by the appearance I could tell it was vacant and needed some work. I wrote down the realtor's phone number and drove home. I called the realtor later that afternoon and inquired about the house but instantly became disappointed when she told me the asking price. I told her it was a bit more than we were willing to spend but she was very insistent that we meet her the next day to see the house. She told me the sellers were very motivated as the house had been on the market for 6 months and had not had even one offer. Well - I should have known what that meant! So later that day I picked up my wife from work and drove her by the house. She LOVED it and beat on the dashboard yelling "buy me that house!" (my wife tends to get a little excited about things) The next day (Sunday) we met the realtor at the house. Well - I have to say I was somewhat disappointed with the interior. It had pretty much been untouched since the 60's. You know the routine - green velvet wallpaper - lime green shag - powder blue this and that. Half bath off the kitchen with the original toilet and sink. (but they weren't even close to be considered "cool") Steam heat with old cast iron radiators. Horrible kitchen. (I wont even go into detail about that room) At any rate we thought we could do alot with the house and a few days later made a very low offer. Our realtor later told us she thought there was no way the former owners would even consider our offer but as luck had it - they made a counter offer just 5K higher than our offer and within a little more than a month we had keys to the house. Now the funny part of all this is we told NO ONE we were buying this place except a few very close friends. We told no family members. (they would have thought we were crazy) To this day I still laugh about the first time my inlaws came to see the house. There was a section of flooring between the living room and foyer that felt "spongy." I thought "no biggie - when we rip up the carpet I'll just run some deck screws down to tighten it up." WRONG!! There was old termite damage to the subfloor. So the first visit from my inlaws was on the day I had cut a 3 foot by 3 foot section of the flooring out and you could actually see right into the basement. My mother in law's eyes got very big when she walked in and saw this gapping hole in the floor. Then she looked around and saw the rest of the house. It was obvious she was holding her arms as close to her body as possible so as not to touch anything. It was all so funny. At any rate we are approaching 12 years in the house now and I will try to go back and recreate what we have done and what is still left to do.