Why I Have Been Busy Part 2

There is a woman who lived across the side alley from us who is now 93 years old. She lived in her house since she was four years old. I used to visit her every so often and often sat in her living room talking about stuff. She is as sharp as a whistle and would call me every so often if she had a question. She told me some stories about Leonard and Susan Volkenand who lived in our house from 1906 to 1955. Leonard being killed by a car while crossing the street in 1937. She remembers Polly the parrot that used to shout from the porch at her. Polly died in 1936. Last August she called me and asked if I would be interested in buying her house.

The house was built in 1900 by Leonard Volkenand. He lived there with his wife and daughter for at least 4 years before moving back into our house to take care of his father. He ended up buying our house from the father's estate in 1906. The next owner of the house was the uncle of this woman. I think the uncle moved in with his first wife as early as 1905. By 1915 or so the ex wife was living 4 houses down and the new wife was in the house. The uncle and 2nd wife adopted her after her mother got sick and died around 1925. Her older brothers were raised by her father. She was rather short and frail so it was deemed best that her aunt and uncle raised her. Besides, they had no children of their own. For the next 89 years that place was her home.

The woodwork is in absolute original condition. The original shellac on the doors and trim. Most doors have their original skeleton key. The pocket doors between two rooms work and look great. The floors are wood and the staircase is unusually wide for this style of house. The wallpaper was put up in 1940 and the very small kitchen was remodeled in 1960. The basement is full of old washing equipment and canning supplies. The date on the jars of cherries on shelves down there says 1939. There were even a few small lumps of coal in a crawl space under the front room.

The place needs some work, but nowhere near as much as the Old Crack House. Bathrooms need some up dating and there are some spots of old water damage on the walls where a chimney used to extend through the roof but has since been reduced below the roof line that I intend to repair but leave the work as an obvious repair rather than remove the wallpaper. This place is truly a walk back in time. Most of her furniture predated the wallpaper.

We bought the house in October. Since I told her we didn't mind if she didn't get all of her stuff out, well, some stuff got left behind and we have to dispose of it. Much of it some old clothing and some glassware, some books and papers. There were some interesting finds in the basement and attic that I will disclose at a later date but just to be fair, after buying the house, I gave her another $800 for stuff left behind because some of the items had a value. Including the cedar casket in the attic! Here is an old photo of the house that I was given 10 years ago.

Here is what it looks like now. White is so boring don't you think?

Why I've Been Busy Part 1

It's the end of May you say! What have I been doing for 5 months? Well, lots really. Not so much work on the Old Crack House. Though I have been purging stuff that is still in boxes from the big move 5 years ago that I haven't looked at in all this time. Kind of like Christmas all over again going through those old boxes. Comments like "Oooh, I haven't seen that in years." Or "I wondered where that got to" are often heard. I got a bunch of old stuff out of the basement as well but there is still a lot more that needs to go. So here is the real story as to why I have been busy but there is more to come that you will either be thrilled with or you will think I am crazy, but that will be explained later in part 2 or even part three of this saga.

Some of you may know that I was the Mayor of Dayton for four years. Turns out that I did a good job and no one seems mad at me. I lost in the primary last year. We have non partisan primaries for local municipal seats but it turns out that the voters did not understand that and so in a primary with an independent up against two Democrats who do you think came out to vote? That is correct, mostly Democrats. We had the lowest turnout ever so I lost. That is OK though. I only spent $2,000 of my allotted budget of $10,000 and pulled 23% of the vote. The two Democrats spent $100,000 and $264,000 with the highest spender getting about 50% of the 9900 votes. She went on to spend another $250,000 to win the general election where only 16,000 people voted and 9200 were for her. So now people are getting mad because the new administration is doing silly stuff without anticipating the unintended consequences of their actions. They are not strategic thinkers beyond their own self interests and it is obvious to many.

So, it seems that people want me to stay involved so last July I pulled petitions to run as an independent for county commission. Turns out that in Ohio, independents are held to a much higher standard than party candidates. I need to get a petition signed by 1% of the number of voters in the jurisdiction that voted in the last governors election just to get on the ballot. Party candidates need just 50 signatures. I needed 1852 valid ones. By December I had 1000 signatures. I would require around 3000 to be safe. So when the weather finally broke after a bizarre winter I had to get signatures and cajole a few others into helping me. On May 5th I turned in 2881 signatures and that was more than enough to get on the ballot in November. I was certified just last week. Now I am catching up on all the stuff that got neglected. There is a lot more to the story as to why I  have been busy but you will just have to wait. The next part is house and history related. Like I said earlier, you will be thrilled or think I am crazy.

More Stuff

For years the hallway door to the dining room looked like this.I really needed to put molding around the door frame to cover the brick. Well, finally in 2013 it happened. So this

now looks like this!

This year the wife wanted thresholds in the doorways. She got tired of looking at the "Greatstuff" filled gaps in the floor between the doors entering the dining room. So I went to the basement to seek out some old pieces of wood that were wide enough to make thresholds. Here are the results

 

Amazing what you can do in 30 minutes with a plane and a piece of wood. Of course the shellac added a few hours to the process but now I have thresholds! So, how is the house coming along? Slowly, very slowly ....

The Crap in My Back Yard (Long Overdue Update)

Do some of you remember back in April 2008 when I wrote a post about these two houses across the alley from me?

Remember how I said I was so mad that I was going to run for mayor? Well, that happened and I won. Made some significant changes here in Dayton, too. I even made the national news a few times and I'm still news in Eastern Europe because of the "Welcome Dayton" initiative to embrace immigrants and facilitate their success in America.

Well, I told you in June 2012 what happened to those properties and that we were going to acquire them. Eventually we were able to get them. It took almost a year because I would not accept the deeds for the two lots until they were showing on the tax record as being vacant lots. Otherwise I have to pay taxes for a developed lot and taxes are collected a year in arrears.

The view from my kitchen window now looks like this.

Now, before you go out and start buying up vacant lots around where you live, let me tell you that you have no idea how big a city lot really is until you have to cut the grass! We have acquired some more property on our block as well but that is another, way more interesting tale to tell. You will just have to wait for the details. Now in order to fix some of the faux pas associated with these property transfers I am going to have to run for county commission this year. So guess what I am doing? That is whole story waiting to be written too. The process is skewed to the two party system. Winning that would reduce my house blogging ability again but to get some time back I see a riding mower in my future ......

The Late Summer Project.

Several years ago, right after buying this place, I had to rebuild the front porch and balcony because it was collapsing. So I reused some old porch flooring that we salvaged and got the edges painted but never got around to sealing the wood properly. It looked pretty good at the time but ten years later some of the boards were warped or rotting out so it was time to address the porch properly.

Here are some rotten boards on the edge of the deck and below you can see that I had to remove a section of the ceiling because it had rotted out.

This became my late summer project. I wanted to get the lower porch restored before Halloween. I bought pressure treated tongue and groove porch floor boards and a piece of pressure treated plywood to replace the ceiling section that I removed. Also bought a combination of pressure treated lumber and cedar boards to do some extra trimming. I also had to get the heat gun out to strip the layers of paint from the ceiling.

The flooring started to be replaced after stripping all the paint. You can see that below.

Then the plywood got cut and some cedar boards were used to fix the ceiling.

 Posts and rails were painted and then installed after the porch floor was painted.

Now it looks like this. Still some major painting to do but the upper level is ready to fix in the spring time. I just bought a ceiling fan for that upper level as well. It has only been waiting 12 years to have one installed!

Now while all this was going on I got sidetracked a little and started to strip the wood around the main door. to the right of the porch. In 2010, after tearing the porch off of that side of the house it looked like this.

A friend of mine gave me a bunch of old trim years ago that was taking up space in my basement. I decided to use two sections of it to put above the door. You can see by the beige paint that originally there was something there. After a little bit of painting, the front door currently looks like this.

With being mayor and all, this process took about 8 weeks. So, now I am free from those chains it looks like I will be busy this year getting a lot more work done on the house!

Let There Be Light

I have always wanted beaded shades for our dining room chandelier. After a while I realized that if I wanted beaded shades, then I was going to have to make them myself. So I bought a whole bunch of glass beads and eventually sat down to make some shades. I need four. I made two so far. Each one took the better part of a day to make. I am not completely happy with them. I like the colors but I would like them to be two to four inches longer. Here is one for you to look at.

When I have four days to spend making these I will be happy to let you know! They definitely add a cool dimension to exposed bulb fixtures!

I'm Baaaaaaaaaack!

Hey everybody, guess what? I am no longer the mayor so I have some freedom back for a short while. That means that I can do some long overdue updates. I can fill you all in on some of the changes in the "hood" since 2005 and my new project that has a direct connection to this one! Just have to get out and take some pictures for you all to enjoy. Stay tuned, you don't want to miss out on this!

Getting Plastered Slowly

The basement walls are slowly getting plastered. Very slowly ... This wall here is where all my leaks are when it rains for several days.

It looked like this

and then like this after a few applications of plaster over several days when I had some time.

Here is another outside wall that will need quite a bit of work. I discovered that these walls were built with

mud between the stones and not mortar while knocking off the dead plaster. In fact, after loosening a few stones and seeing some daylight through the wall it prompted me to install some galvanized pipe through the hole so that I can hook up an outdoor faucet on this side of the house when I am in the mood to tackle a little plumbing. This could be a while ....

Anyway, my door is made, which is the reason why this whole project began in the first place. My cats can expand their territory and confine their wayward toilet habits to the basement where house guests would not be inflicted with their gastrointestinal dysfunctions!

"How's that house coming along, Mister Mayor?"

 I get asked this all the time. My reply is "Slowly." However I have managed to get a few things done this month. Since most days this month it has been over 90 degrees Fahrenheit, not much is getting done outside the house. So I have focused on getting some things done inside. For some reason I got inspired to paint the front porch side door. Now it matches the screen door at least.

 Having completed that project I became inspired to get the back door finished. This required a bit more work. Two windows and a median strip were busted out several years ago when some yahoo thought they would find something of value in the house. I also had to finish stripping paint from the door. It took about two days to get done but it now matches the screen door in the back.

The next project that I took on has a unique story associated with it. It began several months ago when one of our cats decided that it was easier to poop on the floor than in the kitty litter box. Several months later the cat still craps on the floor and I am tired of walking into a house that smells like cat poop. Time to move the litter boxes to the basement except there are five rooms down there and a cat could get quite carried away exploring some of the nooks and crannies. This means I need to make a door to stop them exploring four of the rooms. It doesn't pay to be a perfectionist. Most people would just frame in the opening and make a door. However I have visions of one day having a plastered basement that doesn't leak when it rains and is nicely whitewashed the way it used to be about 100 years ago when people cared about their houses. Since I had four bags of mortar laying around, some polypropylene fibers and two buckets of slaked lime I decided that I was in the mood to do some plaster work. Unfortunately I have no before shots because limestone walls look like .... well ... limestone walls. Here are two pictures of the area of wall and the doorway that I have been working on. Next step is to mix some cellar paint and apply before framing in the door. I bought the wood for this already so you may see pictures very soon!

Finally I got around  to making something. Years ago, and it may have been as many as nine years ago, I bought a 3/4 size bed frame at an auction for $20.00. A 3/4 sized mattress costs the same as a full sized one and the bed is smaller so I figured that one day I would turn my bed frame into a bench. Well today is the day! I got the seat boards this week and cut, sanded stained and shellacked them today. Just have to lay a support across the center and my bench will be complete. Just another surface for Elizabeth to pile toys on ......

Good Riddence to Bad Rubbish!

This is interesting. If you have been a follower of this blog since before 2008 then you know full well what prompted me to run for the position of Mayor in our great City of Dayton, Ohio. If you haven't followed this blog for the last 4 years or longer then you can read the post here and a follow up post in 2009 here.

What happened to those houses? Well an interesting thing occurred. Someone from Chicago decided to invest his daughters college fund in tax liens for a quick return on his $100,000 investment. He bought a bunch of tax liens from that Florida investment company holding the liens on many city properties and then made a trip to Dayton to see what he had invested in. Once he realized that he had just wasted his daughters college fund on a bunch of useless property he held on to them all for one year and then negotiated with the City to give them away so he could get a good tax write off. So in December 2010 these two houses became the property of the City. I made it known that I would be interested in acquiring the parcels should the houses ever be demolished. I even had the wife call three demolition companies this year to get a quote on both houses so that we could negotiate something with the city to make them come down. None of the companies responded. I suspect they felt the houses were too close to the neighboring ones and they had enough demolition contracts already with the City that these two properties were not even worth quoting. Well, the City ended up contracting them out for demolition with one of the three firms we called as an extension of an existing contract. They know I am interested in the lots so that may have been a factor. I came home on Monday evening to this.

 By Wednesday the lots looked like this

 and this.

Now, just to be clear, I pulled no strings to have this done. I wouldn't want anyone to think that I am trying to take advantage of my position to improve my own neighborhood. After all, I have been in office for two and a half years and could have pressed for this back in 2010. These two houses have blighted my entire block for over 10 years. Now they are gone and I can reclaim some of the land that was once an original part of the Edgar and Volkenand homestead. Hopefully I will get a phone call asking me to cough up some money to buy the lots in the next few weeks. I will gladly hand my money over to the City for this! Of course it now means that I will have more grass to mow ......