Tuesday, July 22, 2008

At Work w/ Freedman - 7/18-7/20

Our budding-architect friend Michael was up from NC for a visit this weekend.

Here he is ripping the paneling off of our den.  Look, John's clothes!  This particular closet does, in fact, open in the next room over as well.

Tetanus is for kids!

The week before, we had all-new windows installed in the back of the house.  They're "low-E" windows, which sounds awesome even if you don't know what it means.

We're painting most of the house in modest, restrained colors, so it seemed like the lawn furniture could use a little punching up.

The Cedar Chest - 7/13/08


Jill's dad built this great cedar chest for us to store blankets, etc.  It's also a pretty great bench and/or TV table.

I don't have to tell you: this smells pretty rad.

Meal 1 in the New Place


Keeping things pretty simple at this point.

Our makeshift living/dining/TV alcove.  Note the sweet coffee table.

The Move-In - 6/27/08

Things aren't as finished as we'd like them to be, but we're all boxed up and moved out of the old place.

Kitchen stuff is piled particularly high.  How did we acquire this ridiculous amount of stuff?


Jill's art-school shot of our packing equipment.

Monday, June 2, 2008

More Demo - 6/1/08





The Walls Come Down - 5/29/08


Wallpaper Stripping - 5/25/08









Tha Dump - 5/23/08


Ah, Richard F. Burns Waste Transfer Center, land of my dreams.


After pricing out a couple of options (dumpster, hired waste removal), we went with the ol' "sling a bunch of stuff in a U-Haul and take it to the dump" option.  They weigh your van before and after you unload it, and you pay 80 bucks a ton.  Much cheaper, believe me.


On the minus side, it's sort of an ecological nightmare.


They also do some wood recycling, for what it's worth.

You just back your truck up to the wall and unload, after which a GIANT Volvo truck comes and smashes your trash in its claw.

The guys unloading next to us may have had the least inspection-worthy pickup I've ever seen.

Fare thee well, sweet carpet.

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Tuesday, May 6

There we go: a good establishing shot.

Our deluxe doorway awning. I will say that we're happy about this monstrosity when it's raining and we can't find our keys.

Finally removed every last scrap of drop ceiling from this room.

Random discovery: our kitchen light fixture is attached to a bungee cord, so that it moves freely from here....

...to here. Weird.

We took a calculated risk that this fan was indeed self-supporting and wouldn't tear the ceiling out when the drop ceiling was removed.

And, thank God, it worked.

Drop ceilings make an incredible mess.

Our kitchen has a strange keyhole arch leading to the living room; we're probably not going to mess with it now, but it's not our favorite part of the house.

Someone actually went to the trouble of putting stickers that say "Nautilus" on the stove light & vent. Who knows why.

The oven is pretty classic. Definitely works, and despite its vintage it was apparently used to store cereal for most of its career; the previous owner did all of her cooking in the basement.

Our back yard. Once we clear the vines and barbed wire away, I think it'll be pretty nice.

There appears to be some sort of primitive wind power apparatus attached to our patio. Maybe we'll try and get it working again...
This is the picture accompanying the encyclopedia entry for "gone to seed."

I'll tell you one thing.  Ain't no looters getting in here.

Basement stairway: 22 in. wide!  We've learned to walk sideways.

Yup, that's a wall made of doors.

This is a crawlspace in the back of the house.   I presume this is where our skeletons are buried.


Can't knock the labeling.

It's the traditional satin-covered horseshoe hanging up in the basement.  Wait, what?

The pastoral bliss of our vestibule wallpaper.   You can almost smell the hay, can't you?