Let the Sun Shine In!

The work on the roof project has begun. The first phase involves removing the front porch in the front of the house and the fire escape in the back of the house. Yesterday the front porch came down and today I ripped up the floor of the porch. I also have to get the roofing supplies from the back yard to the third floor of the house.

Here is a picture of the house without the front porch. It hasn't looked like this since around 1906. That was the date on a piece of newspaper stuffed into a cavity by the window trim that was covered by the porch. I found it interesting that the porch was put on before the house was painted red.



The pile of wood from the demolition.



After the fire escape comes down I will rent a dumpster and invite all those people who volunteered to help me over for pizza and beer so we can transfer the piles into the dumpster! The work on the gutters and the slate will begin after that.

I am going to be installing the faux slate shingle instead of real slate. The main reason being that it can be installed with regular roofing nails instead of copper or stainless steel nails and I am less likely to break the tiles. They also come pre-shaped so there is no specialized cutting to be done. The total cost so far for the tools and supplies has been about $8200. Remember, I was quoted $43,000 to do the job. I predict that the total cost will be between $10,000 and $12,000 after renting a dumpster and buying a few more tools if I can't borrow them or rent them.

This is going to be a tough job and probably time consuming. I will know in a week or so as I start to work on the back section of the house. It could be worse though. Last week we were in Belfast, Maine where I took this photograph. I have to admit, we have our fair share of abandoned property in Dayton but this is proof that someone, somewhere is worse off than you!

The Saga of the Roof

The local newspaper reporter contacted me last week because they want to run a story about me having a light schedule for the month of September as the mayor. Here is their story;

http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/politics/dayton-mayor-lightens-schedule-in-september-to-fix-the-roof-on-his-home--874524.html

The rumor that the reporter got was that I would be on vacation for the month of September. This is not true. I will be fixing my roof! I will be attending commission meetings, school board meetings, attending my regular morning news appearances and doing a few community related events. Weather will dictate if I attend the office but I have worked from my home for so long, I really don’t need to be in the office in order to much of what my job entails. I can communicate by phone from home and I can access my office computer from anywhere in the world and so email communications can be addressed.

Now for the real story that needs to be told. The slate part of my roof and the box gutters need to be replaced. The slate was put on in 1890 and has outlived its usefulness. The dormers and aluminum windows that were installed in the 1960s were not installed properly and the shingle that was used for flashing has deteriorated. This is specialty work. Box gutters and slate roofing is an art form that requires craftsman skills. We had five companies look at the roof and gutters. Four refused to do the work because it was too specialized for them. Including one guy who employs Amish workers! The fifth company quoted me $43,000. Not being a person who is put off by hard tasks I did the research and calculated that I could do the entire job myself for about $10,000 and still have some really cool tools to show for it at the end.

Since the newspaper plays on the aspect that roofing is not as specialized as mayoring let me describe and show for you exactly what I will be doing since, after all, it has been indicated that I will not be working hard.
Firstly, this fire escape has to be removed. It is already in very poor shape and removing it is likely to be more dangerous than replacing the roof.



This porch needs to be removed. Once gone I will make the decision to either replace with a smaller porch or to not replace at all.



Here is a view of the gutter from the back of the house. It is fortunate that the trim is actually made of metal. As you can see it is failing and the wood has rotted out.



Here is an interior view. I have been jacking up this part of the roof for the last three weeks so that I can put some struts back in. The original posts were removed about 40 years ago and since then the roof has been sagging.



People don’t know what box gutters are. Here is a picture of ours. You can see they are in bad shape. I will be replacing the tar, rubber and rusted metal with copper. Making copper gutters from sheets is an art form that I am willing to learn. Of course there are some areas where the wood base has rotted out and needs to be replaced. That is an art form as well.



I am posting this article because I want people to realize that this is no vacation. In fact, given the choice between being in an air conditioned office working the phones, meeting citizens, making speeches at dinner events OR doing hard physical labor 40 feet above the ground in hot weather crafting a roof that should withstand 100 years of brutal weather, most people would chose the former. However, I am not like most people. I am not afraid to do what it takes to get a job done right for the least amount of expense. Fixing this roof myself is worth $33,000 in real money to me. If you add income taxes that I pay out, it would have cost me over $50,000 to pay the only company willing to quote me a price. That is more than I make as mayor.

I look at this way. I am saving a piece of history by fixing this house properly. I am investing in my future stake in the city and I am showing people that I am not afraid to get my hands dirty trying something new.
One day the editors at the local newspaper will realize that. What is that old saying? Extra ordinary people achieve extraordinary things ....

Life on the Edge!

I have been doing some garden work lately. Albeit rather slowly since I no longer have a life outside of work!
I went and bought some metal edging. Couldn't buy it in Dayton. I had to drive to Lowes in Springfield, Ohio. None of our local big box retailers carried the stuff. Any way, I have been at this project for at least three weeks. If it would stop raining on the weekend I might finish it.
Here are some pictures of the progress.






The cool thing is that we figured out what to do with all those surplus sign stakes now that the campaign is over.

I didn't have to buy any tomato stakes this year!

The Kitten Saga

The saga of the kittens is both happy and sad. The sad news is that the mother had 6 kittens and only two are left. The mother cat was too young and inexperienced we figure. This was probably her first litter. She divided the litter after we found her in the attic.
At one point all but one kitten had been removed from the attic. We found two on the ground in the fire escape at the back of the house. Both were in poor condition and covered with flies. We managed to save them though and energize them with this



Who would have thought you could by formula for kittens? We removed the one from the attic and had this trio for a day.



Deborah and Elizabeth took it upon themselves to be feeders of kittens. At one point hey had the little black and white one on the grass in the yard and the mother cat came up and swiped it away.

We don't know what happened to the first three kittens of the litter but we found the decapitated body of one of them under a bush about ten feet from the opening of the fire escape. A day later we found the decapitated body the black and white one in the same spot but the former body had disappeared.
We can only assume that the mother or one of the father cats had killed the litter off. I don't understand the ways of cats and don't plan on studying them at this point.
There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth but Elizabeth got over it. She got her first dose of how cruel life can be.

The two remaining kittens were fed every morning and evening and any time in between if we were able to. They really needed attention every 2 hours but that was impossible. They weren't going to die though. After about a week our mail delivery person rang the doorbell and told us that her neighbor fosters cats for SICSA (Society for the Improvement of Conditions of Stray Animals). After a phone call we were also informed that the neighbor was currently fostering a nursing mother with four kittens. Within a day or so after that our two abandoned kittens were placed in a home where they could learn to be cats. I would like to thank the federal government (via the USPS) for their support in relocating these two orphans. When and if we ever catch the mother we are going to get her fixed and release her. Maybe I should issue a Mayor's Proclamation. I certainly need to cover that hole in the roof of the fire escape before I have a case of Deja vu!

Things That Go Bump in the Night!

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?

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.

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!

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!

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!

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.