Teague has been hard at work on the drainage for the new foundation wall. He was happy to find that our ’93 minivan had enough power to haul 1600 pounds of concrete home from the local hardware store!

Now that the concrete has been poured, we’ve got to sit tight and wait for it to dry out.

In the meantime, we’re still debating what type of windows/doors we want to put in the back of the kitchen. I’m leaning toward double doors on the back wall, because they would let in tons of light and it’d be a convenient entrance off the driveway and the backyard. Teague would rather have a single door with a window on either side, so we’d have more room for cupboards and counters. We’re also hoping to put a small window in the pantry to open that space up and make the exterior of the house more balanced. Tonight after dinner we’re planning to hit up Home Depot and price out our options. Fun! (Till we turn over the price tags, I suppose)

The house had some serious drainage issues when we bought it. All of the upper flat roofs of the house drained to the back annex that we are currently deconstructing. The roof of the annex had no rain gutter, allowing all of the run-off from ALL the roofs to drench the foundation and subsequently flood the basement. Not to mention the entire lot of the house is on clay, and the back lot grades in toward the house. I went ahead and installed a gutter/downspout system and that cut down tremendously on the saturation levels.

When I began to dig the footing trench I came across many underground water channels that began to fill the new “low spot” I had created. I was convinced from that point on that a pit and sub pump were in order. I dug a channel for the footing drainage pipe and tapered everything to a 30 gallon perforated drum that contains the sub pump. This will then be tied into the rest of the drainage for the house. We have had heavy rains for the past couple of days, plus a spring thaw, and the basement is dryer than I’ve ever had it! I think I’m on to something!

A special thanks to Daddio for helping me with only one functioning hand and also to my new best friend …..Drainage!

Here are some photos of the project:

Honest!

This has absolutely nothing to do with my house, but I thought it warranted a post nonetheless.

He’s at the University (where I work) giving a speech, and NBC needed a quick comment from him about the Pope. Our tiny office has an even tinier satellite uplink studio in it, so we can send live video feeds to tv stations nationwide. So, he used our studio to film a quick commentary. It was surreal to hear his distince news-anchory voice just a few feet away. A crowd of college student groupies followed him into our office, causing quite the disturbance. Who knew Brokaw could cause such a stir?

Thanks to our studio and the fact that Syracuse University has some very famous alums, I’ve had a few star run-ins. My favorite thus far? Jerry Stiller. He’s so small! And he was very, very friendly.

You may remember this pink and purple gingerbread Victorian from the neighborhood tour I posted a while back. It’s one of my favorites in town because of the incredible attention to detail. Everything about the exterior echoes certain design elements, right down to the flower trellises. It’s on the market now – the man who restored it passed away. I can’t help but hope that the next owner measures up to the last, and shares a passion for saving a bit of history.

Realtor.com had photos of the house, which of course I checked out the minute I saw the For Sale sign. But now they’ve done one better and posted 360-degree tours of various rooms in the house (including the kitchen!) – you can see them here.

Teague is my hero. He spent yesterday, his only guaranteed day off of work this week, digging a huge trench for the new foundation wall we’ll be needing when we extend the kitchen out 6 feet. He was out there past sunset – what a hardworking guy!
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So, though the framing hasn’t even started, my mind can’t help but wander to thoughts of our someday-kitchen. We went it to look somewhat historic, but above all it must be FUNCTIONAL. I’m sure we’ll piece out the renovation over years and years, but the brainstorming phase is my favorite so I dug up some good links….

Location Works is a website for, well, finding good locations for something like a movie or photo shoot. But check out their findings for period kitchens, and you’ll fall in love with this site! They also have sections devoted to historic bathrooms, bedrooms, etc.

http://www.locationworks.com/library/cat/19/13/s04-01.html

Kitchens.com has a “style matcher” for historic periods and the style choices that would follow into the kitchen. They even have a page devoted to Italianates, which surprised me!

Crabtree Kitchens, a UK based company, has an interesting portfolio of work including this Victorian-inspired design:

Ladies, the “But I have no upper arm strength!” excuse has just been blown to bits. It turns out a jackhammer isn’t as heavy as you might imagine…..

For weeks, we’ve been talking about getting rid of the concrete porch foundation that lingered outside the kitchen door. It was the last piece of the porch left standing, and we knew that making it disappear would be no small task. Teague tried breaking it up into smaller pieces with a sledgehammer and nearly broke his arm off. Luckily, our friends at Home Depot rent pneumatic drills.

On Saturday, the weather was gorgeous and I was motivated. Teague was working all day (sunshine means long, hard days at work for him) and I wanted him to come home to some major progress on the back of the house – like, no more concrete. But I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to hold a jackhammer up long enough to get much accomplished. All morning I puttered around the house trying to talk myself into it. I was afraid of failing; I hate to fail at anything. But I kept reminding myself that all I’d really lose if I couldn’t do it was a $50 rental fee. Finally, around 10am, I hopped in the car and drove down to Home Depot.

I rented a 60lb Hilti demolition drill, similar to this. It was about the size of a leaf blower, and plugged in to a regular electrical outlet. Holding it up wasn’t hard at all, and it made quick work of the concrete – even the parts that were over 4 inches thick. In fact, breaking up the concrete was the “easy” part. Carting it around the back of the house and heaving it into the dumpster was much harder! It felt like the concrete was multiplying – I had no idea how much of it was actually hidden there. Check out this pile and then roughly double it (I tried my best to distribute the concrete evenly throughout the dumpster):

I broke the concrete into chunks small enough to push over the top of the dumpster. Since the dumpster is on the opposite side of the house, I carted it over with a wheelbarrow like this:

It was the most physically exhausting day I’ve put in at the house thus far. The dumpster is now full, the neighbors think I am insane, and my back and arms are screaming in pain. But it was worth it – when Teague came home that night, the concrete was GONE. He was very surprised! Best of all, I faced my fears and tackled something I thought I couldn’t do (and didn’t fail).

The comparison photos:

It has become evident that since we’re already planning to rebuild the back wall of the house, we could extend the kitchen a few feet while we’re at it. The back annex we’re removing butts up against the kitchen – all that seperates the two is a false wall. At some point, a few feet were added to the kitchen and the back annex area was built on; a seperate roof covers part of the kitchen and all of the annex.

The concept is both exciting and scary. I’d love a nicer kitchen, but am nervous about how it will affect our other projects (and our social lives, or lack thereof!). We have to decide quickly, since we’re already knee-deep in demolition and can’t go much further without picking a route.

Here is a craptastic layout of the two rooms right now – I don’t have exact measurements with me, so this is all from memory:

(click for larger image)

The Pros:

• The kitchen is small, so extra space here would be nice and would help resale value should we ever have to part with the house
• We’d have room for a little eat-in kitchen and more storage/shelving space
• The closet can be used as a pantry, and the door would already be there. We wanted to reclaim this as a pantry anyway, but would have had to cut a small-ish door and it would have been awkward b/c it’s right between the gas line and the current back wall.
• It would make the door on the right less awkward. Right now it’s tucked away in the back
• We’re probably going to want to add on at some point down the line anyway…. meaning, more disruption and work later if we don’t do it now

The Cons:

• We don’t have money for a full renovation and we have no idea how much it will cost to add on 6 ft of space
• We have MANY projects that need our attention, and adding space will add a considerable amount of time to this project. That means more time spent with only the NYS hazard insurance and less progress on other parts of the house.

Those are my thoughts……. would you guys like to weigh in and help us decide?

Hallelujah, I might actually be able to sleep at night – the insurance fiasco is OVER!

Well, not exactly over, but temporarily taken care of in that “at least we won’t have to default on our mortgage and lose the house” kind of way.

After many, many phone calls to various insurance companies, both local and national, we decided that our best short-term option was to go with what’s called Hazard Insurance. The policy is written through the New York Property Insurance Underwriters Association, which was set up by the NYS government to help out folks like us. This is the policy you get when voluntary insurance companies want you to fix three thousand and thirteen things in 45 days or less before they’ll promise to insure you.

Our NYPIUA policy will cover the bank’s investment in the house, and we added some coverage for our personal possessions. They don’t cover much, but it’s better than nothing. There is no liability coverage, unfortunately. As soon as the house is insurable by a private company, we will move to a better policy.

A note to folks trying to get this type of insurance…… it’s not as easy as it looks. No private insurance company wanted to write us one of these policies, because they don’t get any commissions from it. The NYPIUA itself never bothered to call me back, even though I left 5 polite-yet-frantic messages. There is an online application form, but you have to be an insurance company (“producer”) to submit the application in full. Teague’s mother ended up pulling some strings with her insurance agent, who was kind enough to write us the policy and only requested that we consider him when the time comes to get a better policy. Thanks to the both of them for helping us out of a tough spot!

The weather has been our enemy since November, when we first moved in. We’ve known nothing but snow and cold in this house. Winter left us with astronomical utility bills, blankets on our windows, and an ever-growing pile of exterior repair work to be done.

This weekend it was almost (gasp) spring-like. I even heard birds chirping early in the morning. The sun was shining on Saturday, and armed two layers and a sweatshirt I worked outside WITHOUT A COAT. After being bundled up in scarves, gloves, and winter jackets for the past 4 months, it was quite freeing.

Poor Teague had to work all day Saturday and most of the day Sunday, so I threw on my iPod for company and did my best to be productive. On Saturday, I cleaned out the back room. You may remember that it was filled with debris, including a rotted floor and ceiling, an old sewing machine table, creepy kids toys, and craft supplies. Here are some “before” photos:

I Sawzall-ed through a section of clapboard underneath a windowsill so that I had an opening to chuck stuff through, and went to work removing EVERYTHING I could get my hands on. By the end of the day, the only things left were a floor joist and some tin ceiling I couldn’t reach.

On Sunday, I got to work pulling parts of the back wall off. This was a delicate process, since we’re trying to salvage the clapboard. I got about 1/2 of the wall removed before big wet snowflakes started to fall.

Here’s what the back room looks like right now:

(click for larger)

That big sheet of plywood might be a repair done to a rotted wall….. the round piping you see coming out near the roof was water drainage for the whole house. Probably the cause of all the rotted wood!

Don and Teague held a strategy pow-wow yesterday to decide the best course of action for this project. So now we’ve got a solid plan of action. Let the games begin!