Batman's House?

Yesterday, John and I both had the day off. We didn't really have any plans, but then my brother Jeff showed up at the door to work with Denny (our contractor) on the day's tasks. So, we quickly re-directed to working on the house for the day. We've both felt as if a lot of what was going on in terms of construction is well beyond our expertise. However, we were able to help today as Denny cleaned out what was in the part of the basement hidden behind what were the old stairs to the basement via the trap door in the kitchen. What came to light from looking through the new (temporary) trap door to the basement is that that original basement was literally carved out of stone. The walls and the floor are solid rock. Some crazy previous owner took a chisel and a bucket and dug out a 6' hole in the limestone.

It looks and feels like a cave down there... which is why it is apropos that Denny found three dormant bats there along one of the joists under the insulation. He found two bats previously when the chimney came down in the kitchen, and another in the upper rafters of the kitchen. Those two made since - there were obvious holes (mainly, the chimney) where a critter could get into our cozy cave for the winter. However... how did the bats get into the basement? John's mom said that bats can come into a home with as little as a 1/4" opening! From there, they must just crawl their way around, looking for a well insulated place to sleep through the winter. What amazing little critters. I just hope we don't find a half-dozen more flying around the house come spring... and then close off their entrance before next fall!!

No signs of mice or rats yet... keep your fingers crossed!!

Merry Christmas!

December 25th has arrived, and we still have snow on the ground. With all of the warm weather (40s the last 3 days), it was questionable whether Minnesota would have a white Christmas or not. It is our first Christmas, and it has been a good one so far full of new traditions. Some of it feels a little awkward still, but I'm sure it will become old hat pretty soon. We wish you all a very Merry Christmas!

Much love, Becky & John

Christmas cheer

First, an update. The heat is back on downstairs, and we have hot water. This was actually resolved late on Tuesday night. The end result was that half of our circuit brakers weren't recieving the right amount of electricity, and so they were pulling from the ones that were working. So, if you tried to do something stilly like run more than one thing at at time (AKA furnace and hot water heater), neither could get enough electricity to properly work. Our contractor completely replaced our box on Wednesday, and everything was (and is) working fine. Whew!!

Second, a bit of Christmas cheer (since we're a week away). I call it, the New Homeowners 12 Days of Christmas.

On the 12th day of Christmas my true love gave to me....
12 new outlets
11 sheets of 'rock
10 random hammers
9 gallons of paint (so far)
8 new circuit breakers
7 clean bandaids
6 helpers demo-ing (thanks Pat, Mike, Eric, Tai, Emily and Jeff!!)
5 trips to Menards (per project)
4 stacks of plywood
3 walls missing
2 full dumpsters
and a heating bill from NSP!!

-a much warmer Becky

Cold winter night

I was just going to be a "good wife" and do the dishes after I had my dinner. I swear, I didn't mean to cause trouble. Unfortunately, trouble came to me. There was no hot water. So, being a pretty handy person, I figured "it's cold downstairs and most of our hot water pipes aren't insulated - just let the water run." Three minutes later, no hot water, and panic started to set in.

I went downstairs to notice that it was quite chilly - 41 degrees in fact. (Panic rising.) I was the one that managed to reset the furnaces this fall so that we had heat, so I proceeded to do the procedure again to our forced air furnace. No dice. That's when I called our contractor. No heat on the 1st floor when we're expecting chilly weather and about 6" of snow in the next 24 hours is not a good combination. And a hot shower in the morning would be nice.

The contractor came back over, and has thus far detected that almost every circuit breaker is tripping/powering down the furnace - a fact that didn't used to be true. That and now we can't start up the dryer - something I did just yesterday. Somehow with all of the demolition, the electrical got Really Screwed Up. The problem is diligently being worked on at the moment. Cross your fingers for a hot shower in the morning!!

-Becky the popsicle

PS. We do have heat upstairs, so we won't freeze tonight... just maybe the pipes downstairs.

A clean slate

Wow. We have a clean slate.

When John and I were thinking about buying our house, we knew that we wanted to do some fairly extensive work in the kitchen, namely getting rid of the trap door. In order to do this, we wanted to knock out the back wall of the kitchen out to the outdoors (where there was already a foundation). That part hasn't been done yet, but in our contractor's words "you'll have a small gymnasium with new plywood floors on Friday." And I believe him.

We heard on Friday that the water to the bathroom sink, toilet, and tub was going to be capped off in order to remove all of said items. Today, we came home to the bathroom being GONE. Walls and all. And, as a result, the walls to one of our bedroom closets.

In essence, we have a completely open space in what was the original 1870's structure. All 200 square feet of it. By the time we open up the back wall, we have about 350 square feet of open space to play with. For those that don't know, having that much room to play with in an older structure is basically unheard of.

I, for one, am excited and overwhelmed by the number of possibilities that we have by today's development.

-Becky

John's comments

Hi everyone. As you probably don't know, I am part of a balance skills set group as part of work. Our job is to look at articles, summarize them, and share in order to develop a check off of sorts for all PTs in the system about balance. Well, I was writing one of my reports, and John decided to contribute his thoughts. Here they are. Enjoy. (Note, this is satire.)

"Now that Im done with this, I wanted to mention that PT is the easiest job in the world next to whoring. I think that you can tell people what to do, and they don’t do it….. THEN TELL THEM AGAIN….. until you are blue in the face is priceless. Its like getting paid to tell people that the sky is falling. That brings up another point. PT’s are overpaid. Seriously, getting 50 um Thousand a year is crazy…. Considering we fill in sheets and tell people to exercise. Now, not only do I think that we should give money back to patients and the HMO’s to save some healthcare costs, we should look into expanding the role of PT. How about we also lifeguard on weekends, and work in the Cafeteria at night. Expanding our job description would really be a benefit, AND we get to hand out food and save people from water. Thinking about it, maybe we could keep the money if we take on these tasks…. Whores don’t give back money if they have a quicky or love you long time. So PTs should have more quickies so that we can focus our attention in the cafeteria and the pool. Thank you."

The new and the old

What a fun day! Today we got to run errands - mostly Christmas shopping - which is always fun when it's about 10 degrees outside. However, the day has been capped off by picking up our first Christmas tree. It has been a few years since I had a tree of my own, and so I am looking forward to trimming it with lights and whatever goofy ornaments we both have here at the house.

We had a lot of help yesterday here at the house - our contractor and my Dad came to set a beam between the dining room and the kitchen. They also talked me through the placement of a metal beam under the dining room floor to support the ~2" dip that happens in the hardwood. As it turns out, one of the supporting beams for the floor has actually rolled about 45 degrees over the years, and therefore the floor is warped. The contractor seems confident that it can all be fixed and at least close to level between the rooms when he's done. Very cool.

The sheet-rocking of the dining and living rooms is getting close to done thanks to Pat and Eric's help. I found a bucket full of treasures from around the turn of the century (1900ish) in one of our exterior walls that I still need to dig through. Dad found an old school notebook that is dated for 1888 and 1889. And in the kitchen we found an advertisement for housing insurance dated 1870. Yes, we have an old house. We'll probably dig through our new found treasures and then donate them to the Historical Society to be preserved. I have to say that finding these items has made all of the demolition worthwhile.

The other really cool thing that happened yesterday is that John was able to get some spotlights put into the ceiling of the living room in our little alcove. Let there be light!!

A Beginning

Since this is the initial posting, I suppose I should start at the beginning. John and I have bought a house. On old fixer-upper. We're both 25, recently married, and homeowners - who would have thunk it!?! Anyways, our house is an 1875 Victorian (of some sort - to be researched during the cold winter months) in the West 7th neighborhood of St Paul, MN. We have a beautiful view from our front porch of the Mississippi River, and a power plant.

It is a 2 story duplex. On the first floor is the laundry, kitchen, full bath, bedroom, living room, dining room, and den/office/guest room. And it is ALL under construction at the moment. On the second floor is a eat in kitchen, full bath, and 2 rooms (2 bedrooms/1 bedroom and living room).

Since it's an old house, and has been rental property in the past, certain areas of been.... neglected. We've already done a remarkable amount to the upstairs unit, so it is livable - even if some of the walls aren't painted beyond priming.

Now, I must let all of you loyal readers know that this house was owned by an artist. All of the walls and celings had murals. In dark colors. And colors not normally found in nature. I can't tell you how much primer we have used in the house already to tone it down and be able to think about a color other than what is right in front of your eyes.

The real story of the house is in pictures. You should definitely check out http://jbhorton.shutterfly.com.

There is definitely more to write about, but I'm going to save it for a little bit later.

-Becky