A Job Well Done

The roof is completed!  We have a brand new, absolutely smashing, charcoal-colored roof!  It is truly a sight to behold.  I know I am biased, but this really is lovely.  (It's a roof...Jill).  I know - just  roof to you, but a world of safety for us.  No more drip drop on our heads, no more worries about rotting roof boards or animals getting in to roost.  We're done with that for now.

Here's the back - much better (and neater) don't you think?  You didn't think that was all OUR mess before...did you??  Actually, during the roofing, a big dumpster took up a large part of the driveway, and we were able to toss a few eyesores in.

If you look real close in the photo below, you will see one of our feathered friends trying desperately to get in the roof where they had a nest.  I feel bad forcing them to find other real estate, but you know - the rent's going up here, and they need to move on!  

The flowers are starting to bloom in our neighborhood.  May is almost here, and I couldn't be happier with our roof (I can go on and on about it).  However, it is time to move on ourselves to our next project.  This one will be part landscaping, part weatherizing.  You see, we can't make up our minds about how to do our windows in the living room, but we know we need them done.  And the front walkway is cracked to pieces from the past winters, and needs replacement.  I will keep you posted on what gets the next dibs.   

Guttering for Attention

Who knew gutters could be so exciting?  You should have seen me when the gutter guy showed up.  You'd think I had just won the sweepstakes.  John just shook his head and laughed, You really enjoy this, don't you?".  Well, yes I do, in fact.   I promptly grabbed the camera and ran outside.

This truck pulls up, gets into position, and starts pumping out aluminum in the shape of gutters for our house.  It starts as a flat roll in the truck, and then rolls through a press or bender to be shaped accurately for the length of the roof span.  

The gutters look fantastic on the house don't you think?

All shiny and new.  I hardly recognize that that is OUR HOUSE in the photo!

I loved watching the gutters go up, all with new downspouts.  We are currently searching for soda or juice bottling companies in the Boston area to get used barrels to be made into rain barrels.  I know we can purchase them, and have located some nice ones for $65 each, but free sounds so much better!  Supposedly, with heavy rains, the barrels can fill pretty quickly, so you want to get several and 'tie' them together.  Not having to run the hose during the summer for the garden sounds pretty good to me, though I'm sure the kids will be disappointed about fewer water fights at watering time!

I love our new roof.  It's looking great.

This is the beginning of our second journey into major house repair.  We decided to hire the roofing company Veritas, owned by Michael Portanova.  We hired them a couple of times before, when this roofing fiasco first began.  They were able to do some patch-up jobs for us, but the problem was much bigger than any of us knew.  

When we returned from our trip to Maine this week, we came home to several men on the roof, ripping it apart, sending the debris down to the yard below.  A dumpster had been delivered, much to our tenants' dismay (at 6:30 AM), and all sorts of cloths had been tacked to the bottom edging of the roof to keep everything going down where it needed to go.  This picture is from around 3pm, Wednesday.

We were quite grateful that there was a second entrance into our house since this is what we tried to go through:

I was a little freaked out to find all the mess - pretty sure the roofers would leave it for me to pick up.  There's just no way they could get every last piece.  But John assured  me that they do this every day - they know how to get it all up efficiently.

Rounding the back of the house was quite something.  Again, I felt a little panicky because I saw all the mess and worried that they would leave it (They don't).  This is at about 4pm on Wednesday afternoon.

It's quite a feeling - knowing that we will not have our indoor irrigation any longer.  Everything will be sealed up, tight as a drum (in fact, some of the roofing areas will actually have rubber installed, just like a drum!).  All the gutters and fascias will be replaced, and eventually we will invest in rain barrels to collect water for the plants.  What a relief.  What a true gift we have received to get this done.  

I will post more pictures this evening to capture what has happened today.

Redo, Rehab, Renovate, Recycle, RETHINK?

Have you visited our living room this past winter?  Our wonderful friend, Jennie, will attest to how chilly it can get, even on a warmish evening.  Those blasted windows let in so much 'fresh' air that you have to sit with a sweatshirt (hood up) and blanket just to carry on a conversation without chattering.  And that's after we attempted to plastic the windows.  And it was our friend Jennie who came up with a possible solution to our window problem: restore your windows! These folks talk about fixing the problem windows and adding a new storm window.  The idea is that the amount of space between the storm and renovated window has more insulating properties than your typical replacement window with 1/4 inch insulating space. Sounds good, but we'll see.  They come out next week to look at what we have and I'll keep everyone posted.  We love the idea of recycling windows rather than replacing, but honestly, there's only so much chattering we can do each winter, not to mention our dwindling social life due to the drafts, so this will have to be better than glorified storm windows.  

Anyone out there have any experience with this yet?

Gardening by Numbers

I have this wonderful ability to get carried away with planning.  I get so carried away that I get overexcited, then overwhelmed as I plan my little heart out over the house projects, work projects, life projects, anything to keep me busy for the time being.  Lately, future garden projects have been filtering through my mind - especially when I walk from the car to the front door and notice that fewer and fewer plants are coming back each year after the winter.  How many times have I walked this walk thinking, "A row of roses would be great here.  Oh and how about a nice bench and stone path here.  That railing needs new paint.  The Rose of Sharon is leaning farther - we need to prune it and stake it back."  Enough. Take a breath!  

This year, I vow for a change.  Each day, as I walk to the front door, I look over the garden and give each area a number.  Each little flower bed or 'project area' gets a number, not to signify their importance, but to separate them from the 'whole'.  And each area must be small.  If it is a large garden area, it gets more than one number.  The idea is to keep each area small enough to take care of (dig up, plant, move, prune) in part of a day.  Next, I will note down those numbered areas and make some safe, simple plans.  The Rose of Sharon?  That's number 4.  All I need do to cross #4 off my list is stake it back to the house to keep it off the pathway.  There.  All done.  I typically consider my yard in its entirety, rather than in small increments.  Taking #4 off my list is a big deal.  It leads to another number (maybe #5, or maybe not), but I will take on that next number when I'm ready.  If I look at the yard as a whole project, I get easily overwhelmed with it's enormity.  Taking it apart makes it more digestible and exciting.

I realize this is the same with other life projects.  Some projects need to be completed in order, or in smaller amounts of time.  A garden can be left to unfold over months or years - not so the project with looming deadlines.  But how do stress and procrastination serve us over these projects?  Can't we also take them apart in small pieces and accomplish the same task?  Is it wrong to feel a sense of pride at completing the smallest task toward the greater whole?  Somewhere it must have been decreed that stress and anxiety was the way to go for those of us on deadlines as so many of us continue to work this way, even though it makes us sick.

Back to my garden and the feelings I was getting while walking to the front door.  I vow to develop my number plan to take the anxiety out of coming home to undone projects.  And when stress comes knocking at my door, I'll tell it to 'take a number'.

Roofing the roof over our heads

So we have this leak.  Several, actually.  We are blessed with a drip irrigation system in our living room for all our beloved plants.  And in the sunporch, during really big storms, our bunnies have a built-in shower.  And sometimes we even hear this erie sound in the kitchen of 'drip.  drop' over the fridge - but we don't see anything until it collects so much up there that it literally pours out onto the floor.

After a couple years of trying to find the culprit and some generous support, John and I have finally decided to throw in the towel and hire a roofer.  But to get to that place, John and his father tried many, many, many ways to fix this leak.

First, it was the hose and rain trials - you know - if it rains, look in the eaves and wait to see if the water comes in.  If it doesn't rain, get the hose and do the same thing.  I tried to collect all that wasted water, but it was no use.  Then there was the 'cut a hole in the kitchen ceiling and find where the blasted water comes in' experiment - John's father's idea.  Many days we arrived home to find his father's legs hanging from the ceiling as he tinkered around in there, looking for our problem.  Then there was the bandaid solution.  John and I got so tired of the problem, that we went up on the roof and painted the weak spots with roof tar.  Not able to reach the spots way up, the tar was...yes...*ahem* poured down the roof.  (sigh)

  

Now I have always loved the houses of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, don't get me wrong.  Gingerbread at Christmas is lovely.  But I think something's wrong to have it dripping down the back of our Watertown home.  

I can tell you how much fun it is to show prospective roofers this art as we round the back of the house.  They look up and shake their heads.  I tell John, "I'd like to see them write a sonata on their day off".

We have talked to at least 3 roofers so far.  One got the address wrong and looked at our neighbor's lovely slate roof, and called to ask why we wanted a change.  Another crawled through the eaves and gave us what is probably the most thorough estimate ever.  A third had seen our roof in the past and just updated his estimate to today's rates.  It's like a needle in the haystack - or like trying to find that elusive leak.  Will the roofer we hire take us to the cleaners?  Or will they just do the job and charge a decent price?

All this focus on the roof has made me care for this house all the more.  Many of you have heard me complain for years about how it doesn't suit us.  But get someone out here poking at all her weak spots, and I get kind of mother-y toward her.  This might be therapeutic after all!

Keyspan to the rescue

Aren't they beautiful??  We are the proud parents of two new Munchkin hot water boilers!

We have just come through our second major investment since purchasing this house.  The first was redoing our 2nd floor living room around 5 years ago.  This week, we had both hot water boilers replaced by Keyspan.  It was a 3-day event, with mud being tracked in and out of the house, and all manner of banging, clanging and freezing temperatures that you can imagine.  But in the end, we were able to move away from this:

You can see where the firewall was being burned through in the forefront.  This grey unit was installed in the 60's apparently, so I figure it served everyone pretty well.

It took alot of courage to put out the amount of money it took to get these boilers replaced. Knowing that our tenants were using space heaters for heat really sat poorly with us, not to mention the hundreds we spend monthly on our own heat.  So out with the old and in with the new.  It has made an immediate difference.  Or perhaps I just think it has - I compare to how long it took to get the house warm in the recent past.  Just yesterday, I actually had to turn the heat off and open a window, it was so warm.  We feel blessed that we were able to do such a good thing for our home.  Let's hope the inspiration to take care of other issues will remain for a while.

Here We Go...!

Time for a new blog - this one about our own home and how we are going about repairing and rehabbing it.  We have lived in this home for 9 years, having moved to Watertown, MA from a short stint in Acton, MA, and previous to that a sweet little house in Ossining, NY.  Working in the immediate vicinity made it impossible to pass up purchasing this 2-family home in a family-oriented neighborhood.  The street is wide and almost tree-lined: but Mayberry it is not.  Our neighbors are kind, generous and wonderful, and the crime is almost non-existent.  Our children can play all around and never have any problems.  There is a park across the street, and a school nearby to spread out and have fun.  

The house itself has been a monkey on my back for years.  I have always envisioned myself living in a dainty victorian or vast farmhouse in some quaint New England town.  As you can see from the picture, trooh (the roof over our heads) is neither of those.  However, for the most part, it keeps us warm (drafty windows challenge that) and dry (rain comes right down on us in 3 spots) and safe (no disputes there).  And being that we work in the neighborhood, it is a valuable investment for us.  And besides, our children adore it, even in its run-down state.  Kids are so great.

For years, we have tried to get our energy going to repair some of our house.  Lack of funds and experience has kept us slogging through the simpler plumbing, electrical and carpentry tasks without being able to hire out for the more involved jobs.  The roof has leaked for years, but re-roofing comes at a steep price for these tall victorians, and we have had to wait.  John and his father worked on and off for over 2 years to locate and fix the leaks to no avail.  The driveway needs to be replaced, yet my neighbor who shares it with us is determined to have it redone when he demolishes his home to build fancy townhouses (terminally pending approval by Town Hall).  The rock wall in front is beginning to lean forward.  Before long, we will have our own little avalanche of front yard into the street - hey! more landscaping space!  The front walkway is being carved into iceberg-shaped islands with each winter freeze, so that I now can look down into the earth holding the home intact.  The living room windows let in so much cold air - even covered in plastic - that we have to wear coats in there on the coldest winter days.  The boilers, just replaced this week, and the reason this blog was born, were so unsafe we had to shut one of them down and switch to space heaters.  There are several more projects, big and little, but I think I have captured most of what ails us here at 'trooh'.

I have published this blog to document our rehabbing attempts, trials and tribulations.  By publishing to our friendly community, it will hopefully keep us on track to keep slogging away at the small stuff, hire out for the big stuff, and possibly provide our friends with some comic relief at the same time.  And advice will always be welcome!