This article caught my eye, since my adorable husband has been pushing (and pushing, and pushing) for a deck out back. Don’t get me wrong – it’s that I wouldn’t enjoy a cute little deck. I just want a roof first. And some decent insulation. And all these things take time and money, two things we’re perpetually short on.
Teague wants a deck so badly that he went ahead and set a single post one day while I was at work. Sneaky, right? Because now, he’s that much closer to having it built. Nevermind that the neighbors think we’re idiots for cementing a big ‘ole piece of lumber into the yard.
We agreed (I think) that no deck will be built until the roof is finished; then, if money permits, he can build away. If you’re hot on having a deck too, this article sums up the quick and dirty how-to’s to get you started:

Build your own deck (via Lifehacker)

Yeah, that’s right…… we’re getting ready for demolition!

We love us some dumpster action; we’ve rented the big one 4 times in the past two years. It’s a lovely driveway decoration, don’t you think? Could be closer to the side of the house though… we may have them reposition it before this weekend.

Because, oh joy of joys, we’re planning to tear off the old main roof (which is leaking, and built up on top of the original flat roof) in preparation for a nice new built-up roof. The tear-off will no doubt be a total pain. We tore off some old roofing when we did our kitchen remodel, and the metal layer (which lays next to the wood decking) was rusted to bits and completely annoying to remove. That roof had leaks galore though; hopefully this one will be less destroyed, and will come up in larger pieces. Cross your fingers for us. Also, while you’re at it, cross your toes and hope for a dry weekend – so far it’s not looking so hot! We bought a gigantic tarp for the after-demo, pre-new-roof stage. It’s bright blue, so it’ll pretty much blend in with the paint color ;)
Shingle Dog Roofing has a great photo blow-by-blow that helped me to visualize the tear-off process:
http://www.shingledog.com/tearoff.htm

Additionally, I found some great information on the This Old House Web site:
Roofing and Gutters articles

To see what else I’ve been reading up on, you can check out our del.icio.us links tagged “roofing” here! And if you have any tips on successfully roofing this bad boy, as always, do share! Teague used to work for a roofing company so he’s all set, but I will no doubt be woefully unprepared when I set foot up there. Hence my internet research ;)

* Note: Yup, I’m stealing lyrics from The Parliament – you know – “We want the funk…….”

We’ve been trying to connect with our neighborhood more, and develop some pride in our little town. With that goal in mind, we hit up the Canal Festival this weekend. Unfortunately, it was not all I had hoped it would be; there was nothing too festive about it, and the 90-degree weather did not help. We went mid-afternoon, and despite the raging sun Teague managed to gulp down a giant sausage sandwich AND one of these monsters:

Canastota is known for two things – the Erie Canal that runs through it, and the onions that once grew in abundance on the farmlands here. I sometimes hear it referred to as “onion town”, and the term “onion picker” was apparently a not-so-nice slang term used to refer to locals. So there was no shortage of onion-related food at the festival. I guess farming muckland isn’t as glamorous as one might imagine. But nowadays, it’s a source of pride; there were bloomin’ onions, raw onions, and an onion soup contest complete with onion-topped tropheys. Yeehaw!
One of the funnier things I noticed is that no one thought to clean out the canal……. the “focal point”, one might argue, of the entire day. So plastic cups, bits of paper, and lots of grass clippings floated in the murky water…

I have to hand it to the planners though – it was organized, and enjoyable, and it got us out of the house for a few hours and away from our projects. Our town may not be the most happening place on earth, but it’s certainly got charm. I’m confident that one of these days people are going to figure out just how cool it is (and how convenient to larger nearby cities) and start migrating our way. Hopefully they will be house-folks, and will help save and maintain the cool historic houses we drive by every day. It may happen sooner than I think – we got our first Dunkin’ Donuts coffee shop a few weeks ago, and you know what that means!

One of our most visible garden beds has been, since day 1, a total weedy mess. Rumor has it there used to be nice flowers in there but the previous owners yanked them before moving on. I can verify this, since there were sinkholes all over the place where plants had once been.

Last year was torture; I kept eyeing it, wishing we could somehow wipe it out and make it better. But we were busy with other projects, and landscaping was not even remotely in the budget. So it taunted me, growing bigger and braver weeds every day. When spring came around this year, it once again filled up with a tangled blob of nothingness that made me flinch every time I drove up.

This year, I finally got around to making some improvements. But, always short on funds, I couldn’t go with a blue-sky approach. I had to be realistic, and frugal.

My plan of attack?
1. Remove ALL weeds. This allowed me to see what was salvageable.

2. Carefully remove the plants worth saving. Water them, and leave them out on the lawn to sun themselves. Dump the rest.

3. Till up the existing soil, add some new topsoil to give it some nutrients, and cover the whole thing with weed barrier.
4. Buy a few new filler plants (we had a leftover wedding gift certificate, hallelujah!) – I bought 2 potentillas, 2 salvia, 3 hostas, and a rhodedendrum.

5. Reposition everything, moving them around until I found the most aesthetic arrangement.

6. Dig, dig, dig – and replant. And water really well. Lay down a whole bunch of dark brown mulch to make it look purdy.
7. Stand back and take photos of the new and improved, nearly cost-free garden!

I forgot to snap a true “before”, but here it is near the end of the tear-out:

And here it is now:

Tada!

This is too funny not to share…….

Drug Stashes Found At Home Depot

Police are investigating Massachusetts outlets of Home Depot Inc. after discovering caches of cocaine and marijuana stuffed into merchandise at three local branches of the retail chain.

The investigation began after a shopper found 40 pounds (18.1 kilograms) of marijuana and three kilograms (6.6 pounds) of cocaine in a bathroom cabinet he had bought at Home Depot, said Lt. David Ricardi of the Southwick, Massachusetts, Police Department.

Read the full article

Our county is celebrating it’s bicentennial, and you know what that means – fun little fairs galore!

This Saturday (June 17th) our town is hosting “Canaltown Festival”. Activities include a parade, a flea market, live music, lots of junk food, and……. a historic house tour. Which one do you think we’re excited about?

The house to be toured is the 1820’s home of Nathan Roberts, an Erie Canal engineer famous for designing the “impossible” 5-step locks. The tours run from 10am – 1pm, and tickets are $7 – well worth it to any house voyeur, right?! You can purchase tickets at the Canal Town Museum
The festival runs from 11am – 7pm on Canal Street; if you see us down there, say hello!

Last year, we noticed a rather large hole under one of our sheds. Though it was obvious we had a tenant, we never got a good look at him. This spring, he (or she) has gotten quite a bit braver. Teague even managed to snap a few photos:

(Notice that our transplanted trees, at right, are still alive! A few are looking rough around the edges, but the pines are doing very well.)

Though some people see them as pests, I’m an animal lover without a vegetable garden so having a groundhog in my yard totally excites me. I’m secretly hoping there are a few baby groundhogs hiding under the shed, and that’s why we’re seeing more of our pudgy friend. According to Hinterland’s Who’s Who, babies are born in April or May and don’t start toddling around on their own for 5-6 weeks, so there’s a slim chance they’re hiding in there!
I found the burrow map pretty interesting – they dig spyholes! How cool is that?

Here’s some closeups – now, I need your help naming him or her! Any ideas?

UPDATE: After much futzing and hair-pulling, I finally figured it out. In Options > Reading, I changed it from ISO to UTF-8. Fixed! Damn it, why is it always something so obvious and easy that takes sooooooooo long to figure out? Anyway, feeds are fixed so all you subscribers should be getting posts now!

WARNING: This post is not at all house-related, and does not include cute photos or even a good dog story. It’s strictly technical, so feel free to ignore it.

One of our kind readers let me know that our XML feed is broken. As in, can’t subscribe, can’t find it, not even a snippet…. which means the site does not show up on Houseblogs.net, which is probably why no one is leaving me nice little comments. I spent a good part of the weekend trying to figure it out. I uninstalled all my WordPress plugins, cleaned up the header file, changed my permalink structure back to default, and did everything I could think of to get it to appear. Nothing worked. So now, I am at your mercy, dear readers. Can anyone tell me what the problem might be, and how to fix it?

I appreciate your help in advance….. I’m sure this is one of those “there is one extra white space on line 34 in your comment file” type fixes. Gah!

Now that we’ve got shiny floors, we’re doing our best to avoid scraping it. Which means moving things has become much more challenging and delicate. We used to just slide them across the floors, because they couldn’t get any worse!

Furniture rearrangement causes fights in our house, since Teague forgets I’m not a mindreader with bulging biceps and I get indecisive the minute we’ve got the couch in the air, so this Room Planner tool from HGTV could come in very, very handy.

Here’s a snapshot of the interface:

You’ve probably noticed that Teague’s father, Don, shows up in our photos a lot. He and Teague are a pretty unstoppable team. Usually, they’re working on our place. But as I mentioned in my recent post from Bar Harbor, while I was vacationing Teague was busy putting a new screen room on his parent’s charming little summer cottage. The “Farnsworth Residence”, as they jokingly call it, named after the previous owner who was obviously quite eccentric.

The two of them worked tirelessly for 5 long days, battling to somehow build and merge a level screen room with a very un-level cottage (soon to be jacked and somewhat straightened, but obviously never built with perfection in mind).

The results were fantastic – and especially exciting considering how many bug bites we all got. Now, the mosquitoes will have to look elsewhere for fresh blood.

So without further ado, some photos of the cottage and it’s brand-new porch:

And also, because I love it so much, a close-up photo of Don’s homemade arbor, which he elegantly pulled together from scrap lumber:

On the topic of outdoor living…….. we’ve been toying with the idea of a deck out back – not a monsterous one, just something to have a morning cup of coffee out on and maybe stop some of the dirt from tracking in with us. It will only be a few inches off the ground, and won’t have any type of overhead cover at this point due to budget and time constraints.

The problem is, I can’t seem to picture a deck that will “match” with the house. The ones we see around us are so modern looking. Anyone have any good inspiration for a historic-looking back porch/deck type thing?