We have had a little bit of excitement here in the last two days. It certainly explains some of the nocturnal sounds emanating from our third floor in recent weeks. Yesterday I was up in the attic area because I needed to measure some things relating to our roof (which is an entire series of posts that will be forthcoming) when I heard some unusual ruffling sounds. Walking towards the noise I heard a hiss and found myself looking into the eyes of a black cat that isn't one of ours. Upon a little bit of investigating, in a nearby box standing on its side there were a pile of kittens. They are about a week old. The cat is getting into the house via a hole in the roof of the fire escape. Don't ask me how it gets on my roof. I can only assume it climbs up the fire escape. We left the cat some food and water in the hope that it doesn't abandon the kittens.
Of course Elizabeth is excited. The wife and myself are not.
This morning Elizabeth and I went up to check on the kittens. There was only one in the box. This meant that the mother cat realized the box was not a secure location and was moving her litter. Possibly outside the house.
The wife and I were excited. Elizabeth was not.
A few hours later Elizabeth and I went up to see if the last kitten had been moved. It had. Now I was really excited .... until we heard a ruffling noise on the other side of the room in an area that is pretty inaccessible. Upon closer investigation I could see the mother cat with her kittens in a spot that I don't even want to try to get to right now.
Elizabeth is excited .......
Anybody going to need a kitten in a few weeks?
From log house to farmhouse. Farmhouse to townhouse. Townhouse to apartment house. Apartment house to crack house. Crack house to our house. Our house to our home.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Friday, May 21, 2010
Selling Dayton
Now I am a tiny bit bias but, I believe Dayton, Ohio has more to offer than many other places and I have been to or through quite a few of them. We have some of the most affordable housing in the nation. Our cost of living is below the national average and we are sitting on the largest aquifer in the United States if not the world, so we will never run out of clean fresh water.
With as few posts as I have been making lately I still average 150 hits a day on this site. So I am using it to make a sales pitch to the world with our Greater Dayton Plan which was unveiled this week.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
More Steam Punk Light Fixtures
Click on the image to go to the web site.
I got an email solicitation from www.schoolhouseelectric.com this evening. Guess they thought I might blog about them!
Monday, February 22, 2010
Steampunk Your Light Fixtures
Those wonderful people at Rejuvenation Lighting sent me another catalog on Saturday. I grabbed it and took it with me so that I could look at it in the car as the wife drove us around to the various places we needed to go.
They have some new lighting fixtures! The most interesting to me were these. If you click on the picture it will take you to their pendent fixture page showing this and several other fixtures.
Industrial Victorian caged pendents. I'm thinking one of these might look good in the stairwell to the basement!
They have some new lighting fixtures! The most interesting to me were these. If you click on the picture it will take you to their pendent fixture page showing this and several other fixtures.
Industrial Victorian caged pendents. I'm thinking one of these might look good in the stairwell to the basement!
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Surviving the Winter
It is cold here! For those who have not been following the saga let me remind you that our primary source of heat comes from two wood pellet stove inserts. We have four furnaces from the days when this place was four apartments but none are hooked up because they all vented out of chimneys. They are all 80% efficiency furnaces. The main part of the house has no attic insulation either. We have been struggling with getting the temperature on the first floor above 60 degrees and on the second floor it hovers around 62 degrees. We have had to resort to a few different strategies. One is the traditional method
This raises the temperature as long as there is wood inside the house to fuel the fire. Unfortunately, at night when the fire goes out, so does all the warm air. Right out the chimney. We wake up to 56 degrees on the first floor! We have curtains up between some less used rooms and the main hallway to keep the warm air contained. That hallway is very cold!
We bought a "Heater Fan" for Elizabeth's room.
This is a Reiker brand fan and cost us $269. It was installed by yours truly the day that it arrived. It maintains the temperature in her room between 63 and 65 degrees. It is still not enough so I went out and bought this
50 bags of blow in insulation. I get to borrow the machine for free except that you get it for 24 hours with a 20 bag purchase. I negotiated 2 days since I really didn't have to buy all 50 bags at once. I have to go back to pick up the machine when I have some time because it took 4 hours to make two trips to the big box retailer and haul those 50 bags up three flights of stairs to the third floor!
The plan is to spend New Years Day blowing this stuff into the floor of the "attic." Fortunately we have many floorboards already ripped up so this should be a relatively easy task. When done it should give me an R-value of around 26 between the second and third floors. That will keep some of the heat in and reduce our pellet use - I hope. We bought 4 tons of pellets in September. We have used 3 1/2 tons almost. I have one ton still from last year. Looks like we need to buy another 4 tons. It makes me wonder how they heated this house around 1890. I know it had a coal furnace but one would have to shovel coal in it constantly throughout the day. I have to fill the pellet stoves first thing in the morning and last thing at night or they will run out of pellets causing the temperature to drop.
So now I am running around doing some last minute rewiring of the bathroom before the insulation goes in because it will be much harder to do it after Friday. Stupid stuff like moving a light switch so that it isn't behind the door when it opens. Of course, when I installed the switch the first time we didn't have a door or a toilet for that matter! So now I have to come up with something to hook the original switch to. I'm thinking wall lights but that means more wiring!
This raises the temperature as long as there is wood inside the house to fuel the fire. Unfortunately, at night when the fire goes out, so does all the warm air. Right out the chimney. We wake up to 56 degrees on the first floor! We have curtains up between some less used rooms and the main hallway to keep the warm air contained. That hallway is very cold!
We bought a "Heater Fan" for Elizabeth's room.
This is a Reiker brand fan and cost us $269. It was installed by yours truly the day that it arrived. It maintains the temperature in her room between 63 and 65 degrees. It is still not enough so I went out and bought this
50 bags of blow in insulation. I get to borrow the machine for free except that you get it for 24 hours with a 20 bag purchase. I negotiated 2 days since I really didn't have to buy all 50 bags at once. I have to go back to pick up the machine when I have some time because it took 4 hours to make two trips to the big box retailer and haul those 50 bags up three flights of stairs to the third floor!
The plan is to spend New Years Day blowing this stuff into the floor of the "attic." Fortunately we have many floorboards already ripped up so this should be a relatively easy task. When done it should give me an R-value of around 26 between the second and third floors. That will keep some of the heat in and reduce our pellet use - I hope. We bought 4 tons of pellets in September. We have used 3 1/2 tons almost. I have one ton still from last year. Looks like we need to buy another 4 tons. It makes me wonder how they heated this house around 1890. I know it had a coal furnace but one would have to shovel coal in it constantly throughout the day. I have to fill the pellet stoves first thing in the morning and last thing at night or they will run out of pellets causing the temperature to drop.
So now I am running around doing some last minute rewiring of the bathroom before the insulation goes in because it will be much harder to do it after Friday. Stupid stuff like moving a light switch so that it isn't behind the door when it opens. Of course, when I installed the switch the first time we didn't have a door or a toilet for that matter! So now I have to come up with something to hook the original switch to. I'm thinking wall lights but that means more wiring!
Saturday, November 07, 2009
Update
News will be slow for a while. In case anyone didn't know, I am the Mayor-Elect of Dayton Ohio. The race has been described as the "Big Upset" locally and may be national news very soon. I am an Independent candidate. I won the election on a budget of $17,000. There was no special interest money donated to my campaign. The incumbent spent at least $120,000 and had the full backing of the Ohio Democratic Party as well as the Montgomery County Democratic party. Six of the nine political mailings done by the incumbent were negative about me. I had no money for mailings. We went door-to-door. I had the backing of the voters of Dayton which trumped the political machine.
If the incumbent had read this blog and understood the enormous task that this house presented, maybe she would not have underestimated my capabilities.
Update;
The incumbent spent $134,000 and had an additional $60,000 in-kind donations. My money expenditures were $17000 and I had an additional $5000 in-kind. You don't need big money or a whole lot of support from a political party in order to win a mayoral election. Working smart and good timing can beat money and an established name in the political arena. Even a two term incumbent, democratic party super delegate.
If the incumbent had read this blog and understood the enormous task that this house presented, maybe she would not have underestimated my capabilities.
Update;
The incumbent spent $134,000 and had an additional $60,000 in-kind donations. My money expenditures were $17000 and I had an additional $5000 in-kind. You don't need big money or a whole lot of support from a political party in order to win a mayoral election. Working smart and good timing can beat money and an established name in the political arena. Even a two term incumbent, democratic party super delegate.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Back to Brimfield
We were on vacation last week. We decided that it would be cool to visit Maine and on the way back, go back to Brimfield. Maine was beautiful. I have never been to Maine before. We went to Belfast and spent a day in Acadia National Park looking for starfish and sea urchins with Elizabeth. Since we are home educators, much of this trip will get logged in as science. On Wednesday we drove to Brimfield, Mass.
If you have never been to Brimfield, it is an experience. This year marked the 50th anniversary. It all began in 1959 when an auctioneer opened his property up to 67 dealers to sell their stuff for a few days. Now it has grown to 21 different fields along a one mile stretch of road with some 5000 dealers. If you go to the link above you will see an aerial photograph that will give you an idea of how big this show is.
This year I had the privilege of running into someone that I used to work with in my Pittsburgh days some 15 years ago. Jack Dill is an auctioneer that I worked with for about a year and a half. He now has his own business. He bought an old Victorian house back in 1994 and proceeded to renovate it. He has been selling at Brimfield for 25 years. It is because of him that I knew about this place. Here he is in action!
Elizabeth was in her element. She collects Wade figurines and had discovered an entire box full of the things when I took this photo
We also discovered a great craft item for kids when we went to one local restaurant. They are called wikkistix. These wax covered pieces of string can be used like pipe cleaners to make things. Here is a photo of my figure (on the right, in a pike man's pose) and Elizabeth's figure which is about to stick a pie in my face!
But alas, vacation is over. Today I cut the grass, weed whacked the back yard and made a dash to Home Depot to get the wood paneling to fix my termite infested kitchen wall. Tomorrow the craziness associated with running for mayor begins. Only six weeks to election day and then I get my life back!
If you have never been to Brimfield, it is an experience. This year marked the 50th anniversary. It all began in 1959 when an auctioneer opened his property up to 67 dealers to sell their stuff for a few days. Now it has grown to 21 different fields along a one mile stretch of road with some 5000 dealers. If you go to the link above you will see an aerial photograph that will give you an idea of how big this show is.
This year I had the privilege of running into someone that I used to work with in my Pittsburgh days some 15 years ago. Jack Dill is an auctioneer that I worked with for about a year and a half. He now has his own business. He bought an old Victorian house back in 1994 and proceeded to renovate it. He has been selling at Brimfield for 25 years. It is because of him that I knew about this place. Here he is in action!
Elizabeth was in her element. She collects Wade figurines and had discovered an entire box full of the things when I took this photo
We also discovered a great craft item for kids when we went to one local restaurant. They are called wikkistix. These wax covered pieces of string can be used like pipe cleaners to make things. Here is a photo of my figure (on the right, in a pike man's pose) and Elizabeth's figure which is about to stick a pie in my face!
But alas, vacation is over. Today I cut the grass, weed whacked the back yard and made a dash to Home Depot to get the wood paneling to fix my termite infested kitchen wall. Tomorrow the craziness associated with running for mayor begins. Only six weeks to election day and then I get my life back!
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
It's Been Awhile .....
Sorry for the delay in posting. You would think I was running for mayor or something ....
What has August brought us. Let's see. Lots of rain has caused much havoc and our bathroom ceiling finally produced a black hole where there once were mushrooms growing out of the wall and ceiling. I have made several trips to the roof with tar and flashing in hand to reduce the effect of the rain. At one point during a severe storm, I emptied three five gallon buckets of water in 7 minutes.
I have been chopping wood. The back yard jungle has been cleared to some extent and needs much more work. There is so much wood debris. We need one of those chiminea things so we can just burn most of it. I'm tempted to take one of our wood stoves outside. In the meantime we have lots of termites back there. As long as they stay away from my kitchen I don't care. What we really need is an anteater for a day or two. A couple of goats would be good too. I wouldn't have to cut the grass.
Now let's talk about the raccoon that has been frequenting our attic. Several nights in a row we have been awakened around 4 AM by something going "BUMP" in the night. On the third floor no less. After investigating the first time we heard it, I found a raccoon climbing up one of the structural joists. After a few prods with a long stick the thing wouldn't budge so I told it to leave quietly and went back to bed! Two more nights it returned and it sounded like the thing was having a relay race around the central chimney up there. So a couple more trips to the roof to plug a few holes and we are back to sleeping like babes except that the dumpsters at the Dollar Tree store are emptied at around 4:30 AM every other morning which is a violation of the noise ordinance I believe. The driver of that truck bangs those things so loud that the whole house shakes. Maybe they need a raccoon to keep them company.
What has August brought us. Let's see. Lots of rain has caused much havoc and our bathroom ceiling finally produced a black hole where there once were mushrooms growing out of the wall and ceiling. I have made several trips to the roof with tar and flashing in hand to reduce the effect of the rain. At one point during a severe storm, I emptied three five gallon buckets of water in 7 minutes.
I have been chopping wood. The back yard jungle has been cleared to some extent and needs much more work. There is so much wood debris. We need one of those chiminea things so we can just burn most of it. I'm tempted to take one of our wood stoves outside. In the meantime we have lots of termites back there. As long as they stay away from my kitchen I don't care. What we really need is an anteater for a day or two. A couple of goats would be good too. I wouldn't have to cut the grass.
Now let's talk about the raccoon that has been frequenting our attic. Several nights in a row we have been awakened around 4 AM by something going "BUMP" in the night. On the third floor no less. After investigating the first time we heard it, I found a raccoon climbing up one of the structural joists. After a few prods with a long stick the thing wouldn't budge so I told it to leave quietly and went back to bed! Two more nights it returned and it sounded like the thing was having a relay race around the central chimney up there. So a couple more trips to the roof to plug a few holes and we are back to sleeping like babes except that the dumpsters at the Dollar Tree store are emptied at around 4:30 AM every other morning which is a violation of the noise ordinance I believe. The driver of that truck bangs those things so loud that the whole house shakes. Maybe they need a raccoon to keep them company.
Monday, July 20, 2009
TERMITES!
Bastards!
Super Bastards. They ate the pink styrene!
Oh well, we needed an excuse to re-paint the outside of the kitchen.
Super Bastards. They ate the pink styrene!
Oh well, we needed an excuse to re-paint the outside of the kitchen.
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Laundry Room Blues
In 2006 the laundry room looked like this.
You can read about the progress back then if you search the archived posts from around July 2006.
This morning the room looked like this.
I spent a couple of days putting the tile down and getting the room painted. We decided to use up some old paint that we had left over rather than buy a new color. So we ended up using three colors since we didn't have enough of any single color to do the entire room. Two walls are the same green color that we used in our bedroom. One wall is dark brown and one wall and the ceiling is a pale yellow color. Not bad considering that I started on Friday and today is Tuesday. It's not like I'm running for Mayor or anything important like that ....
Last night when I was painting, Elizabeth wanted to help me with a paint brush but the only brushwork was cutting in the edges which requires a steady hand. So I promised her she could come out with me today and help me paint out some graffiti on this old building. All in a days work!
You can read about the progress back then if you search the archived posts from around July 2006.
This morning the room looked like this.
I spent a couple of days putting the tile down and getting the room painted. We decided to use up some old paint that we had left over rather than buy a new color. So we ended up using three colors since we didn't have enough of any single color to do the entire room. Two walls are the same green color that we used in our bedroom. One wall is dark brown and one wall and the ceiling is a pale yellow color. Not bad considering that I started on Friday and today is Tuesday. It's not like I'm running for Mayor or anything important like that ....
Last night when I was painting, Elizabeth wanted to help me with a paint brush but the only brushwork was cutting in the edges which requires a steady hand. So I promised her she could come out with me today and help me paint out some graffiti on this old building. All in a days work!
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