Spring

Turns out there are a whole lot of tulips in our yard. I got here too late last year to see them, but wow - they are nice!

Then (1905) and Now (2009)

Specifically, summer of 1905 or thereabouts (the pictorial history was published in 1906, reprinted in 1991 by the local historical society, and the photography was taken for the edition, so we're talking the previous summer, I figure).


Here's a shot as close to that as I can make it. Notice the back porch where today's sunroom should be (which matches the historical plans I've found so far) and the fact that the carriage house had already been built (which contradicts the tax records). I had been assuming 1909 for the carriage house, but it looks as though they'd already built it by 1905.

The porch and trim were brown! I don't care for that myself; I prefer the white they show today. There's no railing on the front stairs, and no wall around the yard, and their gardener was clearly better than mine.

But what really amazes is that the house is basically identical, but today's massive sycamores had not yet been planted. Wow.

South side yard, before and after

The yard cleanup crew has moved beyond the back yard between the buildings, and is now encroaching on the main house. I don't have a really good before picture, but my picture of the south side from May shows a little of the now-absent disorder.

The lumber is from the remains of a dog fence that I took out yesterday. I started unscrewing the 2x4 cross-pieces, and the whole neighborhood ended up helping rip out the 4x4 posts. They were all pretty excited yesterday; the alligator that lives across the street had escaped and everybody got on the news.

Back yard, before and after

The top photo is the one my sister took the day we closed, in March. The bottom one is one I just took right now from the same spot. My kids have done most of this work you see here. We took out several bushes (and now I wish I'd taken an intermediate picture with the leaves on the bushes), pruned the lovely Japanese maple, and raked all the crap out of the dirt. Now we'll seed some nice grass and there we go!

Hydrocortisone cream

As sure as night follows day, plant contact dermatitis has come into my life again. It doesn't matter how careful I am, except that by being excruciatingly careful I can minimize the exposure.

None on my face: win!

I'm pretty sure using Roundup first was a mistake, for the record. It doesn't seem to have killed any part of the plant except what was directly sprayed, but the dead leaves, dry, have a tendency to waft gently down from the tree you're pulling the vine out of, and adhere to your (given the weather) sweaty skin.

Toxicodendron radicans

Common poison ivy. I had a lot of it. Now I don't.

Yeah, so, it wasn't on the plan - it was an impulse task.

It really is a lovely plant; I had two truly colossal healthy specimens in particular that I would loved to have kept if they didn't, you know, make my skin come off. As it is, I admired them in their proper place: the dumpster.

Porch

I thought I'd share one more picture of the outside of the house, before getting down to brass tacks about the house itself.  The main house was built in 1890 by a local industrialist.  At some time later, this porch was added -- it's similar to some other porches on the street, so it must have been all the rage at the time.  Also at later times, the dining room and sunrooms were added, along with the upstairs bathroom, then the present kitchen addition and blue room, along with the back stairs and the stairs to the attic.  The carriage house was built in 1920, according to the tax records.  The final addition was the mudroom in back, which features the only fully functional door.

From 2003 to February 11, 2009, it was used as a boarding house, effectively, for very low-income people.  The ministry in question has fallen on harder times in the recession, and has shrunk from five houses to two; three were subject to foreclosure, and this was one of them.  Very low-income renters (some actually paying no rent) are hard on a building, but the damage they do is largely superficial.  While there's a lot of dirt involved, the basic structure of this house seems to be just fine.  No leaks in the basement, a new roof (or at least, a new layer on the roof), and no broken windows.

So while I certainly have plenty of work ahead of me -- it could be worse.  It could be far worse.

South side

The south side of the house may be its best presentation right now.  The front (the east) needs some work, as there is some rotting of the wood on the porch.  But on the south, everything is in pretty decent shape!

Heat is going to be problem #1.  The foundation is drafty, the floors are drafty, the windows are drafty -- and the furnaces are broken, the ductwork largely removed (leaving big drafty registers from the basement).  So after cleaning, and replumbing the shattered frozen CVPC pipes, and getting a working kitchen assembled, I will be working with my good friend Mr. Urethane Foam to start plugging up every possible gap in the foundation.

There is a missing window in the east side of the basement, which is now an opening to the crawl space under the porch (the porch is a later addition to the original house).  There are actually two, but one has been bricked up.  The one that hasn't been bricked up is wide open, allowing cats into the house.  (Said cats have contributed greatly to the poor air quality, I can assure you.)  Along with the cats, I'm pretty sure it's letting a great deal of cold air in.  And that's just the biggest opening I've found so far.  There will be more.

There's a lot to be said for proper insulation.

Intro

So hi. I bought a house in March, and I'm now actually present on site. And as promised, I'm blogging it, and to save us all a great deal of headaches, I'm blogging it using code somebody else maintains, as opposed to writing my own. Again. Because between the paying work and The House, I think I can identify writing my own blogging code (again) as an unnecessary distraction.

I have lots of photos now, although they're still in my camera. So you can't see them until later.

I saw the house for the first time on Saturday evening, after driving from Miami. The air quality overwhelmed me immediately. But today, I ripped out my first carpet, and opened lots of windows, and by golly, it already smells better in there.

More later. I have lots of updates to add -- I should have set this up on Saturday, in retrospect. But at least I've started.