We've had a number of fire pits at the house, one that was too near the tree line (too many bugs), one that is now the shallow end of the pool (difficult to keep alight), and the chiminea which is still at at top of the garden. With the hot tub we wanted to have a fire pit close so that you could jump out of the tub and sit round the fire.
There are plenty of nice fire pits for sale, but we wanted something a little different. While certainly not original (Google search) I think the washing machine fire pit looks great.
Getting the tub out was fairly involved (the machine came from the transfer station) and involved judicious use of a 5lb hammer and an angle grinder. I painted it with high temp black paint, but even after one fire it's showing indications that it didn't stick to the enamel very well. I'm going to continue looking out for a stainless drum. There's sand in the bottom to help protect the metal a little.
Leveling the surround and ring (lawn edging) was also a longer process on our slope. There's still some more earth work I need to do for safer seating.
The fire flickering through the the hole pattern looks great and the steel radiates a good amount of heat. The holes and the shape also really seem to create a chimney effect to take the smoke higher.
I want to build a spark catcher so that we can leave it to die safely overnight and to grow some grass around it I guess.
Even before we moved into this house we were aware of the structural issues - it doesn't help that the house was built badly to start with (vertical walls anyone?), but the lack of maintenance combined with badly installed gutters resulted in considerable rot in the wood structure where it meets the foundation. In some places it wasn't even a case of rot - the wood was long gone - taken away by water and insects attracted to wet wood.
I could have patched just a few places, but it would have been just that, so I decided to replace a 30 foot section - of course this meant I had to deal with supporting the house while I effectively completely removed one outside wall.
So, with summer in full rage, I supported internally and started yanking out rotten timbers. It was a horrific, dirty, sweaty job. For half of the span they had used a rim joist that was pressure treated. For the other half, it was mostly gone - in many places I could see outside from the basement before I removed anything.
Finally, over a period of weeks, I completed it - everything fully replaced with pressure treated lumber, and, all the doors and windows upstairs still worked - nothing had dropped. I also had to replace lots of structure above the basement where water splashing from the deck (broken/missing gutters) had got behind the siding. I'm very pleased to have got this done - it was by far the biggest house job I've done.
We have been plagued by deer flies over the last few weeks - they will dive bomb your head and, given the chance, bite huge chunks out of you. Luckily the internet had a solution (what can't you find on the web?) - deer fly traps made out of blue buckets and sticky goo. You have to move around, so the buckets can go on a tractor, on a stick, or on your head... We caught about 80 in half an hour.
The downstairs bathroom (should there be an apostrophe after downstairs - the bathroom belonging to the downstairs? Who knows? Not me. Anyway..) was decorated with a fantastic pineapple motif wallpaper complimented by old brass fixtures.
When we pulled the paper off the prior decorator had signed the wall - last papered in 1983. Figures.
We repainted the walls and the vanity, changed the vanity hardware, replaced the taps with some I got from Freecycle, removed the medicine cabinet replaced the lights, added some agapanthus stick on stencils. Tada.
The video starts with the two London Underground signs we had in our old house as well. The Underground leads to the basement, the Gentlemen sign, obviously, to the bathroom. High brow comedy, that.
Mozzies are dreadful this year, despite the re-emergence of the lesser spotter bacteria helicopter, but then they always are, plus all the rain... As we spend lots of time outside I spent late winter trying to work out how to solve the issue of the bugs. Eventually, I'd like some sort of screen room, or enclosure like you get round pools in Florida, but for $40, this seemed like an idea worth trying - a mesh canopy that fits over a sun brolly.
It's okay, it has a water filled tyre (tire) around the bottom to tension the sides. It leaks. When I went to take the cap off to refill it, the whole stopper assembly pulled out. Duct tape I guess. Can't look worse than the sink can it?
In a moment of genius inspiration (unlike aforementioned sink), I found an old umbrella by the side of the road (well, by the side of someone's house attached to a patio table, but I digress), and removed the canvas, strung rope between the sticky out rods, and put the mesh over that.
This allows me to see the stars/bats/fireflies above my head, but also should help the tipping over that was caused by strong winds hitting the canvas, even when it was down. We'll see.
Spring just arrived here, expected to end Tuesday. Ha! New England joke. Not very good. That said, up and down, wettest March, warmest April 8th ever, late frost in May that did for some of the seedlings in the garden. Snakes, frogs, and fireflies are about.
Bugs around - including this Whitespotted pine sawyer - the most common beetle to be confused with the Asian longhorned beetle which is decimating nearby towns. Also, this spider which I think is a Nursery web spider of some sort.
Don't know really what to say about this. Got a new sink from Freecycle to replace the old one that was slightly cracked. Made some assumptions about fit, completely broke old one trying to get it out.
Turns out that the old one was a slightly different shape to the new one. Okay. Don't really know what to now. Dammit so much.
Spring in New England brings the usual wide swings of weather - perhaps more so this year - the record breaking rainfall, plus the record breaking heat (91 degrees in early April...). The winter migrators are arriving back. We have a breeding pair of Eastern Bluebirds in the yard (male on the left, female on the right), plus a Sharp Shinned Hawk (see dreadful video), who was trying to catch a tufted titmouse near the bird feeder.
Seen a lot more raptors this year, from the common Red Tailed Hawks to Turkey Vultures. The bats are back out as well.
Courtesy of 4+ inches of rain on top of frozen ground and snow, we now have a lovely stream running through our property. Shame that we have to cross it to exit the driveway. I am looking forward to the salmon leaping through the yard to reach their spawning ground..
With our house being positioned as it is on the road, and my feeling that I really am the king of the fiefdom, it's only natural that when the snow plows make 7 foot snow banks, I turn them into castle ramifications, complete with knight and princess...
When you enter our house, you are confronted with numerous doorways, one of which led away to the bomb site that is our office (we focus as much energy on cleaning the office as we do our bedroom, though I try not to leave my bra and panties on the office floor).
Rather than actually clean the office, we felt it much better to just close the doorway off. Of course this does have the added benefit of making the space more private when we are trying to work. The design inspiration for the hall came from a magazine - stark white walls, off-color trim, and a rough wood shelf as a focal point. A few years ago I pulled a six foot slab of wood out of the Thames (in London, duh), and schlepped this massive, water-sodden piece 2 miles back home, knowing I would use it for something like this.
I even managed to find the same shelf brackets as the magazine had (thanks Google image search). A slap of paint all round (including a grey accent wall), plus some high-rise, non-health and safety approved stair painting - bob's yer uncle, etc. etc.
The plastering was much better than when I had tried it previously - as long as the sun isn't shining at the right (wrong?) angle, it almost looks perfect - just don't run your hand over it. Floor tiles still look crap, but hey, what you going to do?
Despite the fact that our dog is the most submissive creature in the world, she clearly has a keen sense of something (hearing, smell, dog aura?). She barked in the house late last night, which is very rare for her. We went out onto the deck to be greeted with this:
Despite the fact that there was next to no light coming from the house, it was plenty to reflect in the demon eyes of the beast - they just sat there staring at us. I went up to the stone wall to see it slinking off, not particularly bothered by my presence. Yellow eyes would probably mean coyote as compared to fox - it was certainly dog like in its movements.
*Ok, this is a Photoshoped picture - no way my camera was picking anything up in the dark, but it was just like that. Promise.
As is typical (and annoying) of a US house built in the sixties, there are next to no overhead lights. Instead, receptacles (plug sockets) are turned off/on by a normal light switch. I've already expressed my dissatisfaction with the wiring design in this house and the lounge typifies this - there are no lights at all, and we have two switches, separated by 8 feet, that both control a single receptacle between them.
But I digress. To solve this issue we clearly needed table lamps/free standers etc. (but not uplighters, which are banned by Kirsty). After the ice storm I had collected lots of birch that had been damaged. One of the ideas was to make the logs into table lamps. With the addition of some light kits from the AS IS section of IKEA, I was able to knock three lamps out, two table lamps and a free-stander. I drilled a hole through the middle of the smallest lamp with a very long drill bit and two clamps, otherwise known as my feet. Unsurprisingly the spade bit would regularly get bogged down, and instead the 14" long, 4" diameter log would spin at 3,000 rpm. Needless to say, my ankles, which were in the rotation zone of the momentum-rich log, suffered greatly. Equally, I managed to let lots of the magic smoke out of the drill's motor.
For the next two, the wires were just stapled down the back - much easier. I'm actually really pleased with the results - K said she would easily have been happy to pay over a hundred each for similar ones. Mine cost $18 each - most of which was the shade.
There were only two things on my "must absolutely do before winter" list, plenty of "should do's", but only the two "must do's".
One was the wood stove: done. The other was buying a tractor with snowblower. Why a tractor with a snowblower you ask? So glad you asked, let me tell you...
My driveway is too long to do by hand, and too annoying as it's pebbles. I'm not going to pay someone to do it ($70 a storm if it needs doing twice, and you're dependent on their schedule/ability to not knock crap over). Also, if you plow, you end up with mounds of snow that last weeks after the rest of the snow has gone. They have snowblowers that do the job, but they're expensive, slow, and have a pretty small cut.
Enter the lawn tractor with snowblower attachment: faster than a snowblower, sat down for snow driving fun, and a wider cut. In short, more fun, more fast, and I now have a tractor to cut the lawn and haul crap around on (I already have a trailer for it) . I bought it second hand, so I hope it doesn't crap out on me, but it looks the part. It had better have a beer holder...
Finished the poker holder - it's a railway spike from an old local railroad. To hold it I had to drill a 3/4" hole in the old brick fireplace. To do this I had to buy two hammer drills (one broke) and a set of large masonry bits. I cheaped out and bought crappy drill bits that wouldn't hold properly in the chuck. That was annoying.
Remember my square foot garden? I certainly didn't save any money this year. June and July were so wet that the plants were all really far behind where they should have been. The peppers flowered twice, but didn't produce anything I'd eat, and I'm not even fussy. Basil and cilantro (coriander) ended up being so late we bought seedlings from the store. The tomato plants produced a solid three tomatoes (they were good). The corn got going until we had our first frost and died off. The salad mix seemed to be a mix of the most bitter leaves anyone could find, though I did let the arugula (rocket) go to seed so that I can grow just a patch of it next year. The snap peas were good, but bountiful they were not. By far the only real success were the cucumbers: they were literally (okay, not really) coming out of our ears - big ol' juicy ones - at least 30 I would say. The onions are still out there - doing what I don't know. And as for the melons..
To cap an up and down week (wood stove tiling, dishwasher), what better than a good old smoking tree story? Kirsty came complaining of the lights in the kitchen being out - no circuits were blown. This got even more confusing as it would appear more than one circuit was out. I asked her to try the stove - when she turned it on she turned on the rest of the lights... Great.
Actually that made it easy to diagnose - one half of the circuit board was not being powered. The stove, being 220v has to bridge both sides of the circuit board (110v each) to get the voltage it needs, so switching it on re-powered the dead side. The power comes into the house on two 110v lines - I wandered over to my neighbors, but they had everything working fine. That's when I paid close attention to the wires from my pole - only to see that where they went through the v of a tree, the tree was smoking. Being the electrical genius that I am, I figured that this was probably an abnormal situation. As I like to get to know my local emergency peeps, I called them up, knowing they would also expedite the appearance of the power company. One police car, firetruck, and electrical company later - plenty of power, no smoking trees, and no money (power company's) leaking to earth. Oh, and we had an inch of snow combined with the largest snow flakes I've ever seen.
Apart from the trials and tribulations of the wood stove (see below) this was quite a week - I was inside, literally, the dryer twice with a seized bushing and a misplaced belt to fix. Then the dishwasher stopped filling up with water. When this happens one of three things has gone wrong - stuck float switch so the dishwasher thinks it's full, broken float switch, or faulty fill valve. The first is quickly checked (nope), the others there was no way I was fixing them on a 20 year old dishwasher.
People wanted ridiculous amounts of money for second hand ones on Craigslist so we were looking at a new one for at least $400. Enter stage left: Freecycle. Freecycle is an email distribution list that has local chapters where you can post stuff you don't want anymore - I've got rid of loads of stuff on it (air conditioners when we moved back to the UK), and received loads of stuff (air conditioners, and bizarrely the exact same ones, when we moved back to the US). When someone posted a microwave, stove, and 2-year old dishwasher on freecycle the day after mine went tits up, I was fairly keen to get them. As there is considerable competition for anything decent I didn't expect to get them. Short story, we did - the dishwasher was the one I was going to buy new minus two years, the microwave worked (as compared to our old one when you had to increase the suggested timing), and the stove was much nicer. All came in white so we have matching appliances.
Of course, as is the norm with this house, the install did not go smoothly - to power the dishwasher they had punched two holes in the wall, spliced into an existing wire, then just wrapped the wires with masking tape: The holes in the wall and elsewhere provided great mouse habitat (which I see on a regular basis). Had to fix all that up before proceeding with what is an annoying and awkward job at the best of times. Still, mustn't grumble, a great dishwasher, good microwave, and an upgraded stove for nada, zilch, nuffink, is worth some scraped knuckles and swearing under my breath.
This, by far, has been the largest single item project that I've done. Months in planning and execution, a ridiculous amount of learning, and, as you'll read later, a ridiculous amount of itching.
I wanted to heat with wood, mostly because I'm cheap - I've already proven that wood can be come by for free. I hate using oil, with all the environmental aspects, the dependence on the middle east, the fact that our boiler is horribly inefficient. Combine this with my love of fire (pyro), and our experience during the four days without power after the ice storm when we only had the wood insert for heat, pretty much meant that the first time I walked in this house I had already decided where the wood burning device was going.
We spent hours debating wood insert, free standing stove, looks, chimney facing, stove type, liner, hearth type. I spent hours soliciting help from the forums at hearth.com, and hours of help from friends and family during the collection of the stove, moving it, installing the liner, and tiling.
One of the biggest issues we faced was the install of the liner. It came in rigid sections that you pop rivet together as you drop it down the chimney. Due to poor engineering and the way that I held each of the completed sections as I riveted a new one on, I managed to drop three sections fifteen feet into the lounge. Luckily it was survivable as we had a rope to pull it back up and re-rivet. As I had already planned on supporting it from the bottom I had no real worries about any damage I may have caused to existing rivets - the pipe looked perfect still inside.
The final piece of the puzzle was the mosiac tile we had chosen - we wanted the stove back further than we were allowed if using any combustible material nearby - therefore we used metal studs, special insulation, etc. However, the mosaic tile comes in sheets 12 inches by 12 embedded on a glue and mesh - a quick propane torch test determined its (in)flammability. Easy solution: embed it back to front, wait 'till the thinset dries, peel off the mesh, quick sand, bob's your aunt, etc.etc.
At least, that's how the test strip went. Turns out they use different amounts of glue so some mesh was impossible to remove. Hours and hours of pulling on the mesh with pincers was required, only to then discover the mesh was fiber glass... Eventually we had to give up and resort to sanding, coating the entirety of the downstairs in fine fibers...
Eventually though, we are very happy with the result. Some more work to do, but we're ready to go with FIRE:
This baby milk snake was out by the swing set. Glad I didn't weed wack (strim) him like I managed to with an eastern ribbon last week. With the ring-necked snake (also a constrictor) that I failed to get a picture of, this brings the number of different types snakes to five.
You may as well also see this video of a scientific experiment involving a garter snake and a Dunkin Donuts' straw.
Not many posts recently - started a business, kids back at school- it's been kind of busy. Still, plenty of time for a quick rant. We are putting a wood stove in - hence the wood spreadsheet. I have a knack of combining over-thinking things with procrastination, an example of which would be the installation of the wood stove. Unfortunately it's not as easy as just wanging a stove into the existing chimney. First choosing the stove was an epic task - insert/free-standing, height above hearth, metal/enamel, steel/cast iron, rear vent/top vent, clearances...
Even once we had the stove chosen, we then had to think about the chimney liner. Modern stoves are so efficient at burning wood (complete burning of gases, minimal air flow up chimney) that the large flue that's great for open fires would cause the stove to work poorly. Not only that, the large flue would remain cold which would be great for creosote (a byproduct of burning, especially wet wood) accumulation. Too much creosote + not enough cleaning = chimney fire. Now most chimneys are not built properly with required air gaps - with this house it's almost a certainty, so a chimney fire, bad enough as that is, could easily spread to the wood structure. That's bad, in case you didn't realize.
To solve these problems you install an appropriately sized, insulated, stainless steel pipe down the existing chimney. Right size = correct for airflow, stove works properly, burns wood efficiently with less creosote. Insulated = liner stays hot. better draft, less creosote, but most importantly, if you do have a chimney fire, the chance of it spreading to any surrounding catchy-fire stuff is minimized. Sounds like a good idea? Yes, so much so that it is a building regulation. Unless you're in some bizarre situation and there is no other way of doing it, you HAVE to put in an insulated liner to conform and be safe.
So what happens when I go to "Ye Olde Stove Shoppe" (seriously, that was the name)? "You could put an insulated liner in, but I wouldn't bother", "I just dump mine into the existing chimney flue", "It's your money". I then had a chimney sweep come round - "I won't put insulation around it - it gives off gases that poison you" (well yes, maybe if you use stuff not rated to be around chimneys). Shop after shop, sweep after sweep, completely saying the opposite of the code and what the experts say who both sell stoves, manufacture liner, AND participate on internet forums to help non-experts out.
Everyone who I spoke to locally was completely uneducated or willfully negligent in understanding current thinking. Of all the trades I've had experience with, these people rate the lowest. Seriously, your job is to stuff a brush up a tube, so easy the Victorians used kids, you'd think you'd have some time to do some reading around the subject. Obviously not.
A quick video of our kitchen - pretty pleased with the result considering we were only in for about $300. The largest category of expense was replacing the 37 door pulls...
Kirsty painted the trim in the kitchen, which meant the walls looked crappy, which meant the cabinets looked crappy, which meant the holes in the ceiling looked crappy (fair, I suppose), which meant the back splash looked crappy, so we did the kitchen...
Pics to follow soon when I get round to taking them, but here's one from before.
As an interesting side note one of the holes in the ceiling was covered by a smoke detector - maybe they were going to hardwire some in? Disappointing if that was case as that circuit was connected to a dimmer switch. Still, considering the quality of wiring in this place, I wouldn't be surprised....
Apologies for the lack of updates - no fantastic excuse that I'll bore you with. Maybe in the spirit of this post you can pretend I was growing a limb back...
The timber wall at the front of the house is failing, due to poor drainage of the gutters, lack of dead-men to anchor the wall backwards, and simply age. We had already removed several of the oak railway ties that were in danger of killing the kids, but Maurice and I tidied up one side of it considerably, and replaced a couple of steps that were completely rotten. Not a bad job, and certainly one that will do until we replace it with a stone wall at some point. While it may not be clear, this is a picture of the completed job....
Very nice snake that looks like it was dropped by a bird onto the road. While non-venomous , it will bite humans, but unfortunately not this one, who was either very stunned or nearly dead. It was able to wrap its tail round me when I was rescuing it to take it to the wetlands at the bottom of the garden, but I have my doubts for its survival.
When we first moved in, during the last throws of winter, you could physically feel a draft coming down the stairs from the attic door. This was partly solved by weather-stripping and a proper latch to keep the door closed properly. However, the last time I checked, the R-value of 1/4 inch plywood is pretty poor. As there's no hope of staining the deck anytime soon thanks to the weather (summer solstice indeed!) we made up an insulating box from solid insulating foam that will accommodate the ladder when folded and keep some of the heat in (and out during the summer).
I don't know who was more surprised - Kirsty when the stoat dropped its freshly killed lunch (chipmunk) at her feet, or the stoat who suddenly found itself in the presence of humans and down one lunchtime snack. After running away, it reconsidered its loss, and darted back, grabbed the limp chipmunk and scuttled off. Needless to say, I did not get a picture in time.
Now the guttering is complete, it's time to move onto the deck. It difficult to tell if it was ever treated, but judge for yourself if it needed pressure washing...
I looked outside last night to see the field covered in tiny pinpricks of light. There must have been fifty plus fireflies out there. In some parts of the US they synchronize their flashes in the first few weeks of June - mine weren't completely in step, but there were periods when it looked like the flashbulbs at Fenway Park when Ortiz steps up.
Also, it turns out that they are impossible to video. Sorry about those 22 seconds of your life you'll never get back.
This picture may not look like much, but it represents perhaps the most significant piece of work completed so far. See that dry corner, despite the fact that it's hammering down with rain? For forty years the back of this house has had rain splashing back onto it because of missing and malfunctioning gutters. I Have just completed the guttering round the kitchen kick-out - annoying because of four 45 degree angles that I had to cut miters in the guttering for. This is the first time since the house was built that the bottom two feet of siding, and consequently the wood structure behind it, has been dry during wet weather.
Being the country gentleman that I am (or at least I think that's what was my friends call me), one has undertaken to become self-sufficient in the vegetable front. Unfortunately that may require some rationing of food, and possibly the loss of some of the weaker members of the family. Still, can't win them all.
As I am far too lazy to actually dig a garden, and have little requirement for 45 lettuces all ready at the same time, I am doing the Square Foot Gardening method. Basically, fill a 4' by 4' raised bed with a special mix, divide into 16 'plots', and plant in this ultra-compact, easy to weed and water alternative to row cultivation. Results so far, with all but three beds from seed: We'll see if this produces more than one meal's worth of food, that is assuming I don't forget to water them/they die from other causes (lupus?)/the deer eat them (pick one or more options). I also wonder if while the concept is great of organically grown, locally produced (about 20 feet from my house) produce, I will actually have spent more than just going down the supermarket. Probably time for a spreadsheet....
