Heating System Installed

I installed the heating system for one of the second floor rooms on the "cottage" side of the house. We opted for a traditional form of heating system that wouldn't cost too much money. Since all the walls of the cottage are brick including the inside wall, my options were very limited, but I think I have the perfect system:

My Latest Creation

Still working on the resident house and I must say that it has never looked cleaner! For years I had piece of wobbly laminate counter top sitting on top of the dishwasher. I dismantled the frameing when I sanded the floors sometime around 1999 and never put it back because I always meant to replace the counter top. Well I finally took care of the problem. I made a mold and poured a concrete counter top. It was a small piece, 27" X 26" so I made it in the basement and polished it in the back yard. I got this done last week between orgaizing the basement and the attic and dusting everywhere. I tried to be a little artistic and made two triangle shaped inserts using broken glass as the aggregate but they didn't come out the way that I imagined. I thought more glass would be visible after the whole thing was polished. It doesn't look bad but may have been better without the inserts. Here are the pictures




and for all you house porn addicts, here is the rest of the kitchen from assorted angles!

When Asbestos was Cool!

We are having our neighborhood yard sale this weekend. The woman across the street was showing me a bunch of items in an old suitcase and this caught my attention. You don't see many of these around, do you?

Pitchin' the Hood Again!

Next week is our third annual Walnut Hills Yard Sale Event but this year I've added an open house day. The idea being that we have much foot traffic and drive through traffic for three days which gives plenty of people the opportunity to see "Open House Sunday" signs in the yards of those properties participating in the event. We have never done anything like this before but it really makes sense for a neighborhood to host an annual OPEN HOUSE DAY if you want to promote the neighborhood and reduce the number of "For Sale "signs dotted about the streets. We produce a map with all the yard sales and open house locations listed to make navigation about the area easier for visitors. The map works really well for the yard sales. People tend to migrate to the streets with the largest concentration of dots first and then to the area with the next highest cluster and so on. I am hoping to get between 10 and 20 open houses for the day. We are close to the lower number at present, which is good for a first time event. I expect a bunch of realtors will wait until the last minute before they sign up. Just like waiting until the week before a listing expires to try to sell your house!

Such Class!

If you drive along Wayne Avenue where it intersects with Edgar Avenue and look at the front yards, you will see this. I can't say if the chairs are there to support the dish or if the dish holds up the chairs. I'm waitng to see if a big screen TV appears in the front yard too.

I guess it could be worse. There could be a used washing machine strapped to the pole!

Flour Power!

I've been cleaning up the residence basement and was wondering what kind of paint had been applied to the walls. It is flat, white, thick and textured with sand in a few locations. So I looked in the old "Household Hints and Discoveries" book from 1909 and found this recipe for cellar paint;

Slake enough lime for a pailful of whitewash. Mix half a pint of flour with cold water to a smooth paste, thin with scalding water, and boil until it thickens. Pour this boiling hot onto the whitewash and stir vigorously.
Or use boiled rice strained through cheese cloth. Add a teacupful of the strained rice to a pailful of slaked lime. Cover cellar walls twice a year or oftener with whitewash, to which add copperas at the rate of 2 pounds to a gallon. Apply whitewash freely, removing all shelves, etc., so as to cover the entire surface of the walls.

So, what do you think I did?

That's right. I made me a batch and went at it. (Without the iron sulphate of course.) In fact I have made two batches. It works really well. It goes on like a gooey paste and dries to a brilliant white. It covers stains pretty good too. I don't know about painting my basement twice a year since this is the first time I've done it in 14 years. One more thing, I can't tell if I like the whole wheat or bleached all purpose flour better ...

The Crap in Our Back Yard

These two pieces of crap sit behind the "Old Crack House". The windows are all broken and the plumbing and furnaces have been ripped out. The back doors are open or the boarding is busted out and kids play in them. They were built around 1915 or so as two woodstove houses by Leonard Volkenand, who lived in our place from 1904 until his death in 1937. That means they were heated with a stove upstairs and one downstairs. They were problem rentals for us when we bought the place and in really bad shape. When the owner died they were left to her daughter who inherited another 7 just like them. She evicted the tenants for humanitarian reasons (nobody should have to live with that many fleas) and has done nothing with the properties for the last 4 years. She hasn't paid the taxes either. Her daughter lives across the street and won't do anything about them. She won't even cut the grass. We would be happy to get these and demolish them and expand our back yard but we run into a problem. The county sold the tax liens to a bank in Florida. The liens total $12,000 and the cost to demolish these will be about $8000 and the two empty lots are worth maybe $6000 because they are too small to build on under the new zoning code.
There is a program that the city offers residents to acquire abandoned property and get the delinquent taxes forgiven. Taxes have to be two years in arrears for the property to qualify. Basically we would fill out an application form and deposit $1000 with the city. This is used to force a sheriff sale on the property. The first sale is for the taxes owed. If there is no sale it will be put up a second time with no minimum bid. If nobody buys it, the city acquires it and then gives it to us and keeps the $1000. If someone buys the property we get our deposit back. Since the liens keep getting sold to this bank in Florida, these properties taxes are no longer in arrears so we can't attempt to acquire the properties. So they will sit empty and vacant for another 5 years or until the city sends out the demolition crews to tear them down. They add that bill to the delinquent tax bill so the problem perpetuates itself until the bank realizes that it is sitting on a very expensive piece of crap that they will never be able to sell or collect on.

I mentioned this problem to our mayor last week. The information entered her right ear, ricocheted off a couple of brain cells and created a foggy glaze over her eyes. She looked in my direction and said "You need to talk to the county auditor." Now I'm willing to do that but my thought is "Yeah right, like my two crappy properties matter to the county auditor! Do you think he's going to make a call to the bank in Florida that got bilked by him for a couple hundred grand to recall $12,000 in liens?" She said that this is a county problem, not a city problem but the truth is that it IS a city problem because there are many other houses like these within city limits.

My experience in this town is that the city administration does not communicate with the county administration. I think it is a political party thing which is so stupid in this day and age because our governments are supposed to serve "We the people ..." and the people in the city of Dayton are getting served poorly as a result of our elected city leaders not being willing to work with county elected leaders because they aren't members of the same political party, even though it would be the right thing to do.

I'm pretty certain that if the right person investigates this, they will find at least 50 or even more properties about the city in a similar situation. At least nine being owned by the above mentioned lady. If the person investigating would happen to work for the city and would approach the county auditor about this problem then these bad property liens could be swapped out for good ones that have more recent delinquent taxes. This would free these real crap properties up to be acquired by residents who care or land banked by the city planning department.

I have spoken with people in the planning department, the building inspection division and economic development since and will get the opportunity to present this at a neighborhood housing committee meeting that I attend next week.
I am so fed up with the way our city government doesn't work as effectively as I KNOW it can that I went to the board of elections and asked what I need to run for mayor next year. The gentleman behind the desk looked me square in the eye and said "A prayer."

Drugs By Mail

While I was reviewing the 1874 edition of the Dayton paper to find Samuel Edgar's obituary the other day I came across this ad.

Painless Opium Cure

The only successful remedy of the present day. Cures without pain. Restores the nervous system to a healthy condition. Send for paper on opium eating, consequences and cure. P.O Box 475 Laporte, Ind.

This brings to mind several questions.

Do you suppose he sent you a free sample with the paper?

I wonder if they had problems with people cutting the canvas flaps on buggies and stealing the banjo, harmonica or sheet music left sitting on the passenger seat so they could pawn it for the price of a postage stamp?

I wonder if they referred to these people as poppy heads?

I wonder if opium dens were privately owned or if they were rentals or abandoned property?

Do you suppose there were ride by shootings or people who would break into your home while you were at the market and load wagons with all your belongings so they could afford to order a years supply of opium from the Professor?

I wonder what his cure was?

It is kind of funny that the guy selling the stuff is named Meeker. The dictionary defines "meek" as "patient under injuries; long suffering."

What I've Been Up To.

I've been working on the resident house for the last few weeks doing all those small but time consuming jobs that I would have done years ago if we had never bought the "Crack House." Things like re-tiling behind the sink and putting in the baseboard molding that has been leaning against the wall for at least two years.



Then there was the threshold that had to be made because we were tired of kicking up the tiles as we entered the bathroom.



I also made this access panel to cover the hole that lets you shut the water off to the bath tub. I used some left over oak flooring for this. The top part of the frame is glued to the door cover and not to the wall. As such, it acts as a handle to slide the door up to expose the hole that it covers. I was pretty chuffed with myself when I made this.



Then there is the garden. This has been neglected for years and was quite a mess. I have managed to get about two thirds of it under control but still have to tidy up those raised beds in the back.



As you can see, Elizabeth needs to learn how to park. This vehicle is very much like her dads old van. The battery is removed and the thing isn't running. I wonder if I could con someone into paying me $125.00 to tow it away?


I have rebuilt the framing around the dishwasher in the kitchen and have to make a concrete slab to replace the crappy laminate section of counter that doesn't match the rest of the counter. I also caulked the edge of all the ceiling molding and countless other gaps that have been visible since I moved here 14 years ago!
I also started sorting out the crap in my basement. There is still much to purge. It is sad that you finally get a place to look how you want it to right before you try to sell it ....

The Demise of Samuel D.

I was at the library today and did something I have been meaning to do for many years. I pulled the microfilm for the October 1874 Dayton Newspaper to review the obituary for Samuel Edgar. The original owner of the Old Crack House. Samuel died from a paralyzing stroke. Several days before he died this appeared on the front page of the newspaper;

Serious Illness of S. D. Edgar

The many friends and acquaintances of our venerable townsman, Mr. S.D. Edgar, will regret to learn that he is suffering from an attack of paralysis, from which it is feared he may not recover. He retired on Sunday evening, apparently in his usual health, and yesterday morning, when a member of the family went to summon him to breakfast, he was found lying on the floor in an insensible condition. A physician was called, when upon examination, it was ascertained that Mr. Edgar had been stricken with paralysis. His left side was completely powerless and up to yesterday evening he was in an entirely unconscious condition, unable to speak or recognize his friends. The physicians who visited him yesterday regard the attack as necessarily fatal.
Mr. Edgar is one of the oldest citizens of Dayton, having been born and reared on the farm on which he lives, seventy eight years ago. (This should read sixty eight years ago). By industry and economy during his long life, he has amassed a large fortune, and although suffering for several years with partial blindness, he has been able to superintend his extensive business affairs, and up to the time of his sudden prostration was unusually active and vigorous for one of his age.

Then a few days later this obituary was published. I learned something new about good old Samuel! Can you say "Moonshine?"

Obituary - Death of an Old Citizen

Mr. Samuel D. Edgar, whose serious illness was announced in Tuesday's Journal, died Thursday morning after remaining in the unconscious condition from the time of his first attack Sunday night. Mr. Edgar was one of the oldest citizens of Dayton, and was highly esteemed by a large circle of friends and acquaintances in the city and country. He was born March 25 1806, on the farm now in the corporation, on which he has resided until his death. His father, Robert Edgar was a native of Staunton, Augusta county Virginia, born in 1770, where his father lived, and was killed by the Indians in 1790. After the death of his father, Robert emigrated to Ohio settling first at Cincinnati, and removing thence to Dayton about the year 1796. In the year 1797 he was married to Mrs. Margaret Kirkwood, and took up his residence on the grounds now occupied by the Holly Water Works buildings, where he lived two or three years, and by hard labor earned the money to purchase eighty acres in the eastern part of the city at two dollars per acre, which is still the Edgar farm, on which Samuel D. Edgar lived all the sixty eight years of his life.
When he arrived at the age of maturity Mr. Edgar commenced working for himself, and with the aid of his father, who furnished a small amount of capital, started the first distillery in the county, which he worked a few years and made some money, which he invested in real estate in the city. He afterwards became proprietor of a large amount of property in the eastern part of the city and was one of the proprietors of the Dayton Hydraulic Company which has added so largely to the manufacturing interests of Dayton. He was president and superintendent of the company for several years, and after retiring from the position, devoted the remainder of his life to the improvement of his farm, on which he resided in a pleasant suburban residency on Wayne Street in the suburbs of the city. He was one of the stock holders in the Wayne and Fifth Street Railroad Company, and was the first president of the company, and was one of the most active members of the company, contributing liberally of his means to secure the success of the enterprise. During his long residence in Dayton, Mr. Edgar has enjoyed the considerence and esteem of a large circle of friends. Although almost incapacitated for business for several years past by partial loss of sight, he has been able to be about until stricken down by his late illness, and always had a friendly word of recognition for his numerous friends. In the management of his business affairs he has been a good citizen, contributing his means literally to many public enterprises in the city. He was the father of four children, three of whom survive him, all married.

I used to believe that Samuel inherited his fathers farm as he was the eldest surviving child at the time of his fathers death. It turns out that this was not the case. He was given 40 acres for a farm and the 80 acres that included a stone quarry a couple of miles up the road by his father in 1832. He added to the farm over the next several years. His younger brother was given the rest of the farm, about 100 acres. When the younger brother sold a prime piece of real estate in 1857 Samuel made arrangements to buy the remaining 90 or so acres from him, borrowing money in order to acquire the property. I suspect he was actually trying to preserve the family farm as the city limits started to encroach on his property line. Had he lived a few more years, our neighborhood would look a lot different.