Blog Life Meets Real Life

One of the neatest things about publishing a weblog is getting to know people whose blogs you read and who read yours. Generally that acquaintance is sustained in cyberspace and that can be good in its way. But sometimes you get the chance to meet face to face, and that's best of all.

That happened for me this evening, when I was visited by Elaine and Dylan of Bless This DIY Mess and The Old House Web. They're fellow Pittsburgh area housebloggers (actually, they're Pittsburgh housebloggers; I'm the one who lives into the "area"), but we'd never met till now. This was one of those occasions when good things come out of not-so-good events like major surgery, for when Elaine found out I was going to be activity-restricted post-op, she promised to bring me her killer Mediterranean tuna noodle casserole. And tonight was the night!

I admit that she and Dylan might have gotten back to Pittsburgh earlier were my recovery not going so well . . . I had the energy, and a totally opportunistic lack of shame, to give them the ten-dollar tour of my own DIY mess. But it was irresistible to talk to a couple who know just what you're dealing with in renovating your house. Woodwork stripping techniques, the struggle to get the right color of stain when refinishing, second thoughts and redos of paint colors, dealing with uneven walls and floors, and all the other joys of working on an older house.

And really, guys, now that you've seen the Sow's Ear, I want to return the favour. Whenever it suits us all I'll make the drive down and feast my eyes on that gorgeous stripped and soon-to-be-reshellacked staircase of yours, the exciting glowing tin ceiling above it, and all the rest of your hard work.

Tonight, though, it was fun to have my transplanted black and white soapstone Victorian mantelpiece admired (as if I were the one who'd put it in, oh yeah!) and delightful to have my little town of Beaver appreciated. True, the neighborhood showed to special advantage this evening, with the neighborhood kids making a playground of half the lawns on the block as they ran around in the brilliant warm weather.

Elaine's cooking showed to advantage, too, when I dug into the reheated casserole after she and Dylan took off home. Tuna and noodles and red sweet peppers and antichokes, yum! My dog enjoyed it, too . . . the outer corner of it, as we were outside saying goodbye-- oops! And it was hard to keep the cats out of my plate: they know good as well.

So thanks, yinz guys. I had two big helpings with a bottle of Hornsby's hard cider. And in appreciation of your appreciation of my town and neighborhood, I took the rest of the bottle over and joined the next-door neighbors at the neighbors' on the corner. Sitting on their porch talking, we hung out and watched the kids play, till the full moon had risen high over the bluffs of the Ohio, the light of day was gone, and it was time to go in.

And to happily contemplate future meals of tuna casserole and how I hope my place will look next time fellow housebloggers come by.

Party Time

It's festival time in my side of Beaver, Pennsylvania.

Which is to say, it's the evening before the borough's annual Large Item Pickup Day. Up and down the blocks, homeowners are bringing their discards out to the curbs, and up and down the streets wend the cars and the trucks (some with trailers), their drivers on the lookout for something great to snatch up. Up and down the sidewalks stroll the neighbors, giving sidelong looks to one another's junk, and, ever so casually, pulling out the pieces they like and making off home.

It's a hoot. I have to think that the borough trash haulers get maybe half of what is put out. The rest of it is taken by other people and reused, repurposed, and recycled.

Last year I found and rescued a wooden screen door that, with a little work, will do nicely for the back of the house. This year, I spotted some rustic-built drawers that would have made fine outdoor planter boxes and some glass shelves, one of which might have done to replace the one my kittens broke in the bedroom . . . but alas, I am not allowed to lift things that heavy and I had to let them go.

My own curbsite deposit was a disappointment to the eager recyclers. There was the box of broken plaster from my 3rd floor Study ceiling. The neighboring teenager who is helping with my dog offered to take it out to the curb for me. As long as I was getting rid of things, I gave his family the air conditioner my POs had in the Study window when I moved in; I'd thought of advertising it on CraigsList but they've been doing me such a big favor with the pets it was right I should let them have it for free. The kid had to call a friend to get the AC up to his room, and when they were done, they came back for my junk.

Anything besides the box of plaster? Yes . . . much as it breaks my heart, I asked them to take the worm-eaten rustic hickory garden seat to the curb for me.

I had such hopes for that seat! It was going to be my perch in my little oasis in the back corner of my kitchen garden, from whence I'd admire my garden when everything was done. Nobody mentioned, when I bought it five or so years ago, that the maker had failed to treat the wood and it'd start falling to pieces in a season or two.

I moved it away from the garden corner a couple of years ago, because its back was keeping light from getting to the sand cherry that I'd planted behind it. The sand cherry was moved, and died, and was replaced by a hydrangea. Don't know if I thought I'd repair the seat and put it back once the hydrangea got big enough, but the rot got ahead of me.

Then last night, the bench back gave my senior cat just the boost she needed to jump up to the top of the fence. She was crouched on the neighbors' side, on the top rail, and contemplating jumping off into their yard, when I caught her at it. Their gate was shut, and I suppose I could let her jump and waiting till they got home to get her back: she couldn't go anywhere, after all. But I panicked and picked her up. Which I shouldn't've done, since she weighs over ten pounds. Ouch, Wennie, dammit, you're heavy! Ouch, I hurt!

Taking things all together, I told the boys this evening, yeah, the rustic seat can go, too.

And judging from the way it fell apart when they were carrying it through the yard, it was time and past time. I wonder how much of it the trash haulers will take. It looked like garden waste by the time the kids got it to the curb.

Unless somebody needed some firewood?

Heh-Heh-Heh!

About an hour and a half ago I was out in the alley, taking my dog to do his evening business.

While he was at it, I thought I'd wander over and see what was in the dumpster being filled up by the new owners across the way.

I took a keek and well, well, whaddya know! Bricks in the dumpster! A lot of them nice, whole, mortar-free bricks, too--must've missed them when the previous owner of the property let me haul off his brick pile last August. (Hidden in the leaf litter under the late lamented bushes, were they?)

And these fine, decorative-landscape-border-appropriate bricks were lying right at the edge of the dumpster, where even a shorty like me could reach them.

Hm. The previous owner said I could have all I wanted. And the new owners obviously don't want them . . .

So I did some impromptu, um, recycling. Four bricks at a time, carrying them into my yard and adding them to my pretty pile (I didn't have quite the nerve to load up my garden cart). I lost strict count at four dozen, but I'm pretty sure the final tally was a half-gross or more added on.

There are more bricks in there I might possibly be able to reach without falling in. But it was getting late, my animals needed fed, and even now I have wetted-down wallpaper waiting to be stripped in my 2nd floor hall.

But I am feeling ever so clever this evening! Don't know if I now have enough bricks to line both borders in my back garden, but I'm further on my way towards it.

Thanks to a little initiative and enterprise.

(Heh-heh-heh!)

Nosy Neighbor Update

The nosy neighbor being me, of course.

Here's the latest view of the current condition of the back yard of the house across the alley:

Trees, fence, the forsythia and spirea I so helpfully pruned and maybe overpruned for the outgoing residents last summer; the roses that grew along the other side of the garage; driveway paving, the rest of the old loose bricks I probably should've salvaged even though they still had mortar on them; grass and weeds and topsoil, too-- all gone.

Gone.

How much you want to bet that house has gone commercial like most of the rest of the houses on the other side of the block? And any day now the concrete trucks will show up and pour them a nice parking lot?

Only question remaining is, what kind of business? And how will it and its traffic affect me and my property?

The Shape of Things to Come?

This morning I looked out back and saw heavy equipment in the alley. My next door neighbor, I noticed, was in his yard with a saw, cutting limbs off his silver maple tree. Not long after, a section of his fence was removed and some sort of caterpillar-type construction machine drove into his yard, carrying an odd box-shaped thing. Were they going to get rid of the tree? Pull it out by its roots, maybe? Was the box how they were going to carry the limbs out of the yard?

I wanted to know, but had to spend some time minding my own business for a half hour or so.

When I looked out again, the box-shaped thing was in a ditch in the ground, a ditch that the caterpillar-track thing-- backhoe? ditch-digger? you tell me! had obviously dug.

So I put the dog on the leash and moseyed over.

"Getting rid of the tree?" I asked my neighbor.

"Yes, we certainly are," he replied. "But first we're digging up the sewer pipe."

"Storm or sanitary?"

"Sanitary. It's clogged with roots. Our toilets have been backing up the past two weeks."

"Oh, gosh, yes, I saw the plumbers' truck out front the other day! That didn't work?"

"No," my neighbor said grimly. "We have to do this."

Down in the hole, the workman was sheltered by the concrete and steel box thing, which turned out to be a device to keep the walls of the six foot deep ditch from caving in on him. Looking up, he saw me and said, "You live over there?"

"Yes."

"You're next. You've got a maple tree, too."

"I haven't had any trouble so far," I said dubiously.

"Just wait. It's coming. Those roots will work into your sewer line and you won't be able to roto-rooter them out. It'll happen eventually."

"Oh," I said.

"And you'd better get that silver maple of yours taken out soon as possible, too."

"It's not a silver maple, it's a sugar maple."

"Doesn't matter. It's a maple. It'll grow into your sanitary drain and clog it. You'll see."

I watched the excavation work a little while longer, then took the dog, myself, and a new and unpleasant idea home.

Really, don't I have enough to deal with around this house (which is actually a very sound house for its age)? Now I gotta worry about digging up my sanitary sewer line? With a machine that'd destroy all my back garden landscaping?

Buggeration! Absolute buggeration!

But--deep breath!-- I'm going to put panic and fears of imminent bankruptcy on hold. I've had no sewer backup problems whatsoever in the four and a half years I've owned the Sow's Ear. Whereas my neighbor and his family started having plumbing difficulties almost the moment they moved in (two weeks before I did). Heavy equipment is most likely not in order.

But going by what I read on other houseblogs, routine rooting out probably is. And I haven't had it done since I moved in. Didn't even think about having it done!

But I guess I'd better start thinking about it. And get some prices to see about having it done. That ditch in my neighbor's yard is enough to scare the cr@p out of me!

There Goes the Neighborhood

About a month ago, my next-door neighbor casually mentioned that they were planning to put aluminum siding on their perfectly good (and recently-painted) wood-sided house.

Nothing happened for over two weeks. And I began to hope that maybe he was just joking. Or had thought better of it. Or something.

But no. The reprieve was due only to the steady rain we had all through the first two or three weeks of August. And two weeks ago, the sun came out and the vandals arrived, in the person of a crew from a nationally-advertised aluminum siding company. They proceeded over the next week and a half to hack off window mouldings, corner boards, and gable-end barge boards and brackets. They covered over storey-line trim, rafter-ends, and fish-scale shingles. Everything that made the neighbors' house interesting, distinctive, and even charming was gone, either destroyed or hidden from view.

I was shocked at how hard I took it. It made me physically ill to awaken at 7:00 AM to the sound of the workmen's pry bars and hammers. It was heart-wrenchingly painful to look out my stair hall window and see the desecrating strips of metal rise higher and higher in my field of view (They started on the side facing my house. Wasn't I lucky).

And what a joy (*rolls eyes*) it is to look out my kitchen window and be confronted with bad butt joints in the aluminum siding and inept mitre joints at the alumimum window trim, where before I'd seen the lively texture of the line and profile of the wood siding. And have you ever noticed how aluminum siding manufacturers press this ersatz wood texture on their product? It looks like something that's come unsanded straight from the mill, that no self-respecting old-time finish carpenter would ever allow to be seen on his work. Damn it, if you're going to engulf your dwelling with tin, make it smooth and sleek like tin and get it over with!

I wanted to vent my frustration in blogdom while the deed was being done, but I needed a telling After shot to make the point. And I wasn't able to get that until today. Didn't have the nerve to do it while the workmen were still there. Did not want to be asked what I thought of their job. Much less did I want the same question put to me by the neighbors.

But I got out with my camera this afternoon. Here's the exhibits in the case.

Front of house, Before:

Front of house, After:

From the rear, Before:

From the rear, (almost) After:

So here you have it. What can my neighbors have been thinking?

By now my distress has flattened out towards dull, fatalistic acceptance. It helps if I keep my glasses off while I'm on that side of my house-- I don't notice the tacky workmanship quite so much. And I tell myself that if my otherwise sane, sensible neighbors wanted to renounce their cute house with its character and live in a boring metal box just like every other metal box up and down this wide land of ours, that's their business and their loss.

It's my loss, too. But here's one bright spot, I suppose: I no longer have the ugliest house on the block.

Oh, Tragedy!

Somewhere on this blog I've called my house "the ugliest on the block." But oh, woe, my next door neighbors are competing for the (dis)honor!

They've got a nice wood-sided foursquare. They had it painted a couple years ago, and I respected them so much for doing so. The painters who came didn't take the tongue-and-groove siding down to bare wood, so true, the texture is a little rough. And I've noticed the color has faded a bit-- obviously they didn't use the best paint in the world.

But it's not peeling or flaking that I can see.

Yesterday, however, my neighbor was out till dusk ceiling the underside of his open back porch with cheap-looking aluminum strips. Well, maybe he wants to keep the birds from getting in.

Late this afternoon, though, I came outside and saw that he and a friend were replacing the side door. I asked, "What's up?"

He said, "Oh, we're getting ready to put siding on the house."

"Oh," I looked blank. "You have siding now."

"I mean, aluminum siding. We only painted the house two years ago, and . . . "

. . . And instead of letting it gently fade or getting a crew out to paint it properly this time, they're going to shroud their dwelling in cheap tin. It's bad enough having the dirty wide asbestos siding on the house on my other side. Now I get aluminum on this. Damn.

Officially, it's none of my business. It's their property, to do with as they will. But visually and emotionally, it is my business.

I have to look at it!!

Beige vs. Green

When I bought my ugly house nearly four years ago, I was looking for a place that wasn't modern (meaning, for me, built before World War II). It had to have three bedrooms (one for me, one for guests, and one for a study), be at least two storeys (to make sure I got some exercise), and have a nice view out the front windows. And there had to be a yard, preferably with a fence, so my dog (Maddie, RIP April 2005) could run, and that yard had to be big enough so I could plant a garden.

I got the vintage: My ugly house is a sorta Arts and Crafts foursquare built sometime in the mid to late 1920s. I got my three bedrooms. I got my two storeys, and a third one to boot. I got my nice view. And I got my fenced-in yard, with enough space for a garden.

I also got a brick house that was in very good shape, even without considering its age. What I didn't get was a house that really looked the way "my" house should. Or a house that really knows what it wants to be. Or that I really know what I want it to be.

The interior trim is more or less Arts and Crafts as to profile-- but the last two sets of previous owners painted it. The POs-1 were keen on what they thought was Victorian style, so they stuck wooden gingerbread bits in all the Arts and Crafts openings. And they hung beige floral "Victorian" wallpaper everywhere except the two second floor bedrooms and bathroom.

When I was in high school and college I really liked Victorian. But that was then. Anyway, the house isn't Victorian. It's a 1920s foursquare. So why don't I clear out all this Queen Vickie decor and go for clean A&C?

Because of the black and white marble true Victorian mantlepiece imported by the POs-1, which-- alas for me! I fell in love with at first sight.

I'm surprised they didn't paint it beige. When they did whatever it was they did with the original wood exterior trim and replaced it with aluminum eaves and soffits, they went for a striking contrast with the beige brick-- and ordered it in beige. To give them credit, their color choice for the interior first floor trim was cream. But my POs soon took care of that. They got themselves some nice "mushroom tan" paint and redid it in-- you guessed it-- beige. And the wall-to-wall carpet they laid on the stairway and on up to the second and third floors? Got it again-- beige.

I hate beige. Beige drives me to catatonic sensory deprivation insanity. But I was moving here to take a new job. I had to settle on a house. And I walked into this one, saw the natural oak stair newell and hallway bench, and in my charming Midwestern naivete thought, "Oh, the woodwork must all be oak, just like back home. I'll strip it!"

So I bought the house, and I've been stripping yellow pine woodwork ever since. Hasn't taken that much work so far-- My POs-1 didn't bother to prime the trim first, and the paint has been very happy to chip off with a little persuasion from a razor blade scraper. It looks very scabby where the paint stuck, but even so, I think the dark woodwork makes the beige wallpaper (temporarily) endurable.

Shortly after I moved in I painted and debeiged my third floor study. I had the electrician in twice for some major rewiring. After a year and a half I finally got my kitchen stripped and painted and the cabinets rehung. And I've chipped and chipped at the stupid beige paint.

But frankly, I've been putting off tackling those stuck-on bits. I keep thinking there must be some way to do it without ruining the finish. And I haven't quite figured out the scheme that'll pull together the woodwork (once it's done) and the fireplace and oh yes, the ersatz wood floor I can't afford to replace and the brown metal insulated windows that mostly work but look awful, without putting me into bankruptcy court. Or that'll mean replacing all my existing furniture with Genuine Victorian. Which ditto.

So do you blame me if I've focussed most of my renovation energies on my garden? So with a few garden entries are how this blog begins, and I'll pick up on what I actually am doing (and have done) in the house as I go along.