Restoration In Progress

Yard/Trash

We started all of this 3 weeks ago by cutting a swath through the front yard. This weekend we finally managed to get to the last of the yard that hadn't been touched. Everything is still wild around the edges, but you can actually walk through any part of the yard now. One would be advised to keep an eye out for the garden spiders and the black widows, though.

There is also the small issue of inherited and accumulated refuse and debris. On the alley, there is the foundation of a 2 car garage. When we got the place, the garage area was already filled with what looked like most of the garage that had been there and a bunch of random garbage (40 oz. bottles, lumber, pages from an Atari 'Basic' manual, food stuff, underpants, etc) . Clearing the house and porches have added to the pile, as has the yard work. The pile really is awesome -- the pictures don't really capture the scale.

There are also 4 stinking trash cans on the second floor porch that we're not too sure how to remove yet...

We had initially intended to rent one of those giant bins to fill and have the garbage hauled away, but found a service that would haul the stuff for us and which seemed to be cheaper. Thursday they sent a guy and a truck out, but the guy was scared of the garbage (and maybe snakes) and so the trash is still there. Carter, a friend of Ronni's, has agreed to haul the garbage for a very agreeable price, so we might actually be rid of this pile.

The Kitchen Begins!

The kitchen will be the first room that we work on making into a room as we want it to be. We hope to get started in the next week or so and have this finished soon after we move in. The very first steps were taken this past weekend when we pulled out the current sink and appliances and pulled off some panelling and the linoleum. This was a job that had a few really disgusting moments...

At some point in the recesses of time, the bottom half of the walls had been covered in wood paneling and then painted chalky white. Over the years, the space behind the panelling had become home to many roaches that lived, loved, and died there. The brown streaks that you can see in the pictures to the right are residue from the roaches. This is, of course, gross. Ronni swept up many many dry crunchy carcasses (think 'peanut skins').

The stove was greasy but mostly ok to deal with. The refrigerator, though, was a horror. When the last tennants moved out last February or whenever, they neglected to empty the fridge. And, though the electricity has been on, the fridge has not been plugged in. The mayonaise and ketchup and jelly and whatever that was on the plate under foil had all turned into new, more disgusting versions of themselves. The 'crisper' drawer had an inch of some 'juice' that was absolutely vile (and some got on me -- there was gagging after that...). We hustled the fridge out into the back yard and I knocked the doors off so that no neighborhood kids could play in it (?!?)*.

On Friday we drove up to IKEA to scope out cabinets and other kitchen stuff. We have started to put together an idea of what we would like that blank, dirty room to be.

86 Another Wall

Back when the house was split into a duplex, a wall was added at the top of the stairs that replaced the banister. We began to remove the wall this weekend and the difference in the feel of the space and the light was immediate.

Posted by john m at September 10, 2003 3:24 AM

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