Gimpy

Well it happened - someone got injured while working on the house (other than the crazy contractor who liked falling through our old kitchen floor), and luckily it was John. Yesterday while hauling the remains of the back part of the house to the dumpster, John stepped on a nail. I called the Fairview Nursing Line (one of the advantages of working for a big institution - free nursing advice), and we all decided he'd better go in to get a tetnus shot. He also got a prescription for a profolactic antibiotic, which he dropped off at his regular (non-chain) pharmacy and decided he would pick it up later.

John returned to the house to help the volunteer work crew haul the 40-ish sheets of plywood from the front yard to the back, and was by then limping pretty bad. A few more hours of standing work went by, we stopped to eat dinner, and John had a hard time getting from the kitchen to the bedroom by the end of it. And then the complaints of feeling cold came.

A note to the readers: John is NEVER cold, unless it's -40 F or he is sick.

Then the shivering began. I got back on the Nursing Line at about 10p, and by 11p we had finally gotten an on-call doc to call in the prescription to a 24 hour pharmacy. John is claiming he's not sick through a chattering jaw, and I'm throwing on my jacket to go fetch his pills.

As a result of all this drama (and that so much got done on the house yesterday - thanks everyone!!), we decided to take it easy today... and watched the entire Lord of the Rings triology back to back. We truly had a lazy day, feet up, snacking on what we had, and enjoying every bit of it.

John should step on nails more often. ;-)

Feeling a little... exposed

It finally happened this week. The back part of our house has literally come off. We have our temporary plywood wall, and then the open sky! Here's the view of the outside:

As you can see, our bedroom (the mural-ed wall to the left) is intact. The roof is entirely missing from the back of the 2nd floor bedroom's closet on.

Below, is our foundation that the addition is being re-built onto:


The red ladder was what we were using to get into the basement for a short while. Now, we can easily just hop right down...

Here's hoping it doesn't rain. Talk about water in the basement!

Discoveries

Yesterday The House Detective (an actual title given to him in the 1970's by the Pioneer Press), Jim, came over to help us learn a little more about our neighborhood and house. He is one of our neighbors from Smith Ave and has been here for 20 years. He's mostly an expert from the end of the Civil War until the early 1900s, but is generally enthusiastic. We discovered him (or he, us) at one of the neighborhood parties last weekend... one that we were going to bail out on, but are very glad we didn't!

What Jim discovered by looking through his old notes about the neighborhood is that our house has been rented out since the 1880s, mostly to families with 4-5 kids. (There have likely been 5-7 births in the house!) From an 1885 insurance atlas of the neighborhood, the home was a single story dwelling consisting of our current laundry room/kitchen/bath/bedroom/living room, with porches where the picture window is in the living room, and along the then front of the house (kitchen south wall). According to those same 1885 plans, we had a 1 1/2 story barn in the backyard... and one of the owners and his brother probably lived out there while he rented out the house to a family!

The addition to the house to make the 2nd story, as well as the 1st floor parlor/den happened in 1890. In the dining room wall there were a lot of items dated 1890, and so we're convinced that their placement in the walls was intentional. We will need to find the same insurance atlas for the early 1900s to see if our timing of the additions is really right.

We knew from looking at different parts of the house that there was a fire (there's still charred clapboards inside one of our closets)... from the tax records, we suspect that it happened in 1928 - there was a recording of $750 worth of repairs that year.

When I gave him the "grand tour" he also noted that the construction of our kitchen walls is highly unusual for a house - board and bat (vertical planks). I then showed him the wall between the kitchen and the bedroom downstairs, and he notices a little glimmer (he's over 6' tall)... and pulls out 2/3 of an old toy motorcycle!

I love learning new stuff! Now we just need to hunt down some previous residents to see if they have pictures of the house in its various stages!

(Almost) taking it all off

So, the next job on the list for our contractor is to literally tear off the back side of the house. Luckily, he's decided to put up a temporary wall before he does that. Here's the wall from the kitchen/bathroom....









And the view from the laundry room....

Random observations

I actually wrote this yesterday... but forgot to post it! Oops!

It’s official. On the local news today, it was announced that our Minnesota winter is 16 degrees warmer than normal. For those of you fussing, you’ll have to stop now. The bad news is, that normally we’ll have to pay to heat the house 16 more degrees. Ikes.

Also from the local news, a new machine that fills potholes with the labor of one person was featured. It will clean, oil, fill and compact the hole while someone sits inside the vehicle controlling the robot arm. Only in Minnesota is something like this featured on the news.

This afternoon I got out of work a little early because it was a bomb of a day (AKA, no work to do for the last hour). Luckily, my unofficial boss of the floor told me to just take off. The good news, I got to see some rays of sunshine while riding home. The bad news, I got to see a family of young children with toy guns on the train. I’m not sure whether this makes me conservative or liberal… but I strongly disagree with toy guns. Guns are not toys. Period. And to see kids from 2-8 years of age (my guess) pointing guns at each other and certain members of other races on the train, smiling and laughing while the artificial noises rang out… it was enough to get me disgusted.

There are many differences that have come out between John and I and our cleaning styles. We have had dishes piling up for a couple of days and John insisted on doing them. So, I let them continue to pile up. He has his own method of doing dishes – running water and scrubbing with a sponge. I, instead, empty the sink, let some items soak (especially when it’s been a few days) and then scrub them. John was being frustrated by a dried piece of food, so I suggested he let it soak a little… the look on his face told me to go and finish the laundry. And so, I did. J

By the way, where do guys learn the habit of leaving clean laundry in the laundry basket? I know that John isn’t the only one that would prefer to do it. I know his early home training was otherwise, but he managed to pick up the bad habit somewhere…

Oh well. That’s all for today!

-Becky

PS. We saw our first mouse tonight. Kinda surprised it took this long. Thank goodness for Decon.

Man of the house

As we approach our third month of marriage, I have finally "taught" Becky who is in charge of the house. Becky has claimed that its "our" house, but no more I say! Putting my foot down, I have reasserted my claim as man of the house. She has all these false claims to things that she says is "ours"..... when I was single, I NEVER used the word "our" in front of anything to discribe it. She uses it like an adjective! She must think its a game, try using "our" in front of everything. Take my saturn, its now "our" Saturn.... or my checking account.... it's now "our" checking account. Shes been using it on everthing! "Our" new stove, "our" christmas tree, "our" chocolate, "our" bills, and even "our" house!

Thats where I finally say enough is enough. I signed the purchase thing, and I was there to do most of the boring paper work. MY money went into the house before the marriage, now MY money geos into "our account." Its a clever smoke screen, but I have finally seen the way.... I need to reassert what is mine in the house. Now Oh sure, I did pick up that pile of clothes in the corner of "our" room that was driving her crazy.... but IT WAS ME THAT decided to do it! Oh sure I did take out the trash that was getting full, but I did it on MY TIME. I even did the full sink of dishes that she wanted me to do.... but as Frank Sinatra said it best, "I did it MY way!" Notice how I refer to the chores not as "our" chores, but as "my" chores..... maybe if I refer to the house as "my" that I can get rid of this "our" that appears everywhere.

It's beginning to feel like progress

I just wanted to take a few minutes to share what we were working on last night. We were given clearance to put up insulation in the kitchen, and we got most of it done last night... along with wiring 3 lights, multiple outlets, and roughing in the new kitchen sink. With the insulation in, the rooms are really starting to have some definition, even if it is a little fluffy at the moment.

Left, our dining room. We might be sheetrocking next...

Right, the kitchen facing west. The beam on the right of the picture is the bathroom corner.

The pictures really don't give you the difference in the feeling of the space. It's amazing what a little insulation will do. (Cross your fingers that next month's heating bill is better!!!)

Now it's starting to get exciting.

Aches and pains

We got our first winter heating bill the other day. It's almost half of our mortgage payment.

Ouch.

Granted, we haven't had insulation in the downstairs kitchen walls for nearly a month, and a hole in the roof where the chimney used to be. But still. Needless to say, we made a run to Menards this week to get insulation, and then back the next night because we bought the wrong width (luckily we discovered this before moving the 10 packages out of John's parent's van).

This weekend we are installing electrical and insulating like crazy. January is so far a warmer month than December, but there's still 24 days for it to get cold again. Becides, the sooner we insulate, the sooner we can put up sheetrock, tape, mud, sand, prime, paint and install cabinets. Yea, we're going to be busy in January.

On a happy note, the sun is out for the first time in 14 days! Hurray!!

Multitasking

The holidays are all about multitasking, and creating a balance between work and play. John returned to school today after a week and a half "off" - only all but 3 days of it (2 being holidays) were spent at his 2nd job. I still got my weekends off, plus 2 days before New Years, but spent most of my "free time" preparing for the holidays. Yesterday as the alarm went off, neither of us wanted to get up. We have been running on too close to empty for too long. We can't wait for our honeymoon in April!

On the plus side, we had a fabulous New Years party at John's parent’s house (sans the parents). Malicious Monopoly was played, and John won in the end.

A few days before we had a beautiful, wet snowfall. The next day, there was a huge flock of snowmen that arrived in the city of Saint Paul. I had a little bit of play time in with my errand running on New Years Eve, and so I took the time to photograph them in their beauty. Check out the Shutterfly link to see the whole collection.

Some good news... Part of the interior wall framing is done, so we have solid numbers on what kind of a space we have to play with for our laundry, bathroom and kitchen. We plugged it into a kitchen planner, and have a pretty good plan! Hurray! With any luck, we'll have insulation in that part of the house again by the end of the weekend. If we can only make it until then....