Front Improvements

Here is the last of the projects that I completed before the Internet connection was up and running. Notice the mailbox, new railing and the fact that the numbers moved to the other newel post!

Concrete project update

So we were wondering how we were going to get rid of all the concrete that we had pulled up from the side and back of the house. Tara called the Westminster streets department, and was astonished to discover that our trash people will pick it up! Amazing, the trash services around here are just incredible. I keep expecting Homer Simpson to lead them down the street singing ‘The Garbageman can!”

Anyway, here’s the latest pictures from our concrete abatement project:

Here’s the SE side of the house. I’ve removed the sidewalk from the old entrance to the basement to the last slab before the porch. I would remove that slab, but it may well be holding up the porch itself.

Here’s the sidewalk that was killing the maple in the backyard. The maple may be well and truly dead, but at least the damn concrete is removed.

This photo was taken this afternoon from the same location as the ‘before’ picture of the backyard below. Notice we’ve pulled out the fence - and, today, the old hot tub frame!!!

Phone Lines

The phone lines are a mess. Someone recently decided that rather than unplug the wires running between different rooms, he’d (or she’d) simply cut the wires and twist the exposed copper together! That meant that once we plugged in our phone, we had no dial tone! I dug through our nasty dirt, cob-web infested basement until I found this: our punch-down block.




I actually took this picture on our first night because our flash light was out of batteries and the camera’s flash was the only method of exploring the deep dark crevases of the nasty-ass basement.

Concrete

These are the ‘before’ pictures of one of our major early projects: concrete removal.

This is the ‘before’ picture of the back yard. I took this standing on the steps that lead down from the porch into the back. I’ll keep taking pictures from this location to show the updates.

This is how the back yard looked when we bought the house. The fence separating our yard from Mrs. Reese’s (a fabulous retired lady who has lived here since 1948) yard was completely rotten. The side walk running along side that fence has contributed to the death of the maple in the picture, and something must be done about that horrible hot tube frame and deck!

This is the start of the project: remove the side walk on the right hand side of the yard, the fence, and turn this back yard back into something beautiful.

Along the Southeast side of the house, there is a small sidewalk whose width takes us right up to the property line. In the middle of that sidewalk, there is an disused entrance to our basement, which we are having walled up and back filled shortly. But, just to the south of that entrance, there is this ‘depression’ in the sidewalk, which is collecting water and causing some sagging in the structure of the house. In the middle bedroom on the second floor, the sag comes to about 1.25 inches. We need to create a new drainage channel to flush that water to the street. That’s where I come in. I need to remove this sidewalk so that when Mike (our contractor) walls up the old entrance and backfills it, we can lay the new drain. So, lots more concrete destruction to go!

Inet up and running!

We have achieved connectivity! Today we received a visit from a pleasant Verizon technician (really!), who figured out that the problem with my DSL connection was a bad card at the local central office. Once the card was replaced (and an hour and a half had passed by), the connection is up and running. In fact, the wireless network is allowing me to recline in our middle bedroom in relative comfort of an air-conditioned 72 degrees. Yes, I’m sitting on an air mattress in a bare room surrounded by the suggestion of tater tot aroma, but given the conditions of the last few weeks, that’s pretty darn good!

Mystery

This light switch is located immediately inside the front door. When we were looking at the house, the second switch in from the left was blocked due to the previous owner’s passion for, shall we say, a *lot* of paint. Anyway, when we arrived, I immediately took off some of the paint and flipped the switch. Nothing happened. So, if anyone happens to know what this switch does, I’d love to find out.

ARRRRRRGH!

Day 12 in our wait for our stuff to be delivered by United Van Lines. We heard today that they won’t be here until the 15th or 16th! That’s another 8 days for a total of 20-21 days! Can you believe it? They originally said 4-8 business days. The expected delivery date is 3 times that long - and they still expect us to pay! If a pizza place said that it would be a 10-15 min. wait and showed up 45 min. later, would they expect you to pay? Unbelievable.

Arrival

Yes, we have arrived in Westminster. In fact, we’ve been here for some two weeks waiting for our stuff. It seems that United Van Lines has been, well, reluctant to deliver our belongings. In the meantime, we’ve started a few projects that I’ll be updating from time to time. The first and most terribly exciting of which is pictured here.



Impressive ain’t it?