(Lack of) Christmas Lights

The City of Grafton didn't do a whole lot of decorating this year because of all the sidewalk construction, but the other folks downtown sure did a good job. The storefronts are Christmas gorgeous and there are plenty of beautiful Christmas trees with high visibility. For instance, the Taylor County Historical Society Museum has a Christmas tree lit up in each of the three lower stories of their turret. Talk about eye-catching! And coming across the bridge (on 119North) into town, Taylor County Supply has their tree where it can't be missed.

We had good intentions. Really, we did.

We wanted to put up at least a simple strand of lights to signify progress and activity at The 123. When we pulled our Christmas decorations out at home, we went through each string of lights and fixed the ones that didn't work. We put up our tree and saved out one string of lights to take to The 123 to hang around the Main St. windows. The lights made it into PC's truck and a few days later, when he stopped down at The 123 to do some more clean-up work, he hung them around the windows. Before he left, he plugged them in.
And they didn't work.
Ugh!
He tried replacing and wiggling light bulbs, but nothing worked.
Another few days went by and he stopped at the dollar store and picked up a small box of mini-lights.
Another day or two and the box made it's way into my car.
Several more days (and several trips to The 123 when I totally forgot about them) went by and I finally got them out of the car and took them into The 123 and promptly forgot about them (duh).
Finally, on Christmas Eve, I unboxed them and hung them around the windows on the same small nails that PC had used for the first strand. The string of lights that I hung up was not hung with the greatest of care -considering the height of the windows, the shortness of myself, and the pile of bagged quickrete that sits on the floor too close to the wall to get a chair in to stand on and too far away to stand on and reach all the way around both windows. What I mean is, they were very far from perfect, but they hung evenly in both windows and I was satisfied and pleased to actually have some sort of decoration up.
When I left, I forgot to turn them on.
So, I went back and plugged them in.
I left, again, pleased with myself for finally turning on the lights.
As I drove away -again- I glanced at the windows and to my dismay only half the light bulbs were lit!
Argh!
I did not stop.
Instead I hope that half a strand of Christmas lights is better than nothing.
And considering the stripped-down state of the soon-to-be-constructed coffee shop, half seemed appropriate.

Rain

Last week we had enough rain that there was some serious -though thankfully short-lived- flooding.
No problems with all the rain at The 123, but click here for a picture of the driveway at our home.

Snow

Remember the volunteer sunflower from this September post? It's still there and PC sent me a picture:

It's looking kinda' drab.

Here's a shot of the west side:

Next winter this will be a warm, welcoming place to come in and wrap your hands around a warm mug of coffee and shake the winter chill. I can't wait!

Heat!

I know you can't feel it, but you can imagine it:

And the cold air return:

Fall Colors

This is the view from the the front door - looking west down Main Street:

Or, more accurately, this was the view on November 18th. Now it's snowing and has been for a couple of days.

Here's another one from the same day standing on the side walk in front of the B&O Caboose:

Gas! Finally!

If you're wondering why I'm so excited about gas (not the deviled egg variety, but natural gas for the furnace), then go to this page with all entries labeled 'gas' and start at the bottom to get an idea of the loooong process we've gone through in order to get the gas turned on.

Yesterday morning one of the local gas company guys (Thanks, Mike!) came and turned on the gas! In order to leave it on, he had to see not only the pilot light burning, but also the burner lighting up and the blower kicking on. I had a pack of matches and a long skinny stick ready and waiting for the lighting of the pilot light.
The burner kicked on a couple of minutes after I turned up the thermostat, but the blower would not blow. I know it worked; I felt it blowing hot air on Friday when the HVAC fellow came to inspect it. However, it doesn't count if the gas company man is not standing there to see it.
From the back of the dusty furnace room, Mike flipped the furnace breaker off and back on and the blower started right up. Yay!

Maybe I'll take a picture of one of the floor registers. However, you'll have to use your imagination for the hot air blowing your hair back from your forehead because I haven't figured out how to get that effect from this blog yet.

It's On! Woo-hoo!

The gas is on!
The furnace works!
Yay!

Just wanted to let you know.
More later....

Getting Closer!

Look! It's a shiny new gas meter!

It's hooked up to The 123!

We have a few more hoops to jump through, but it looks as if we will finally have gas. Monday. Hopefully.

Other good news: the furnace works!

Coffee House Design (and gas line - still!)

As of this weekend, the gas line wasn't hooked up yet, so I'm not sure what's going on with that.

The kids are back in school today, so everyone is feeling well again.

Now that the first floor is completely gutted, PC and I are trying to figure our layout for the Coffee House innards: the kitchen, the counters, the workings, etc. We have come to the conclusion that in order to get it right (meaning efficient and welcoming and building/health code approved), we are going to need some help.
We'll proceed with the utility fixes and get started on the ceiling while we start reading up and asking advice on restaurant design. I've been in contact with a Coffee House consulting company who can give us a hand with the coffee service aspect. Now I need to do the same with the food service side of things.

Gas Line...Ack!

I just started a post, and then I lost it. I have no idea where it went and I looked for it everywhere.
Anyway, I will try again....

When you walk into the Grafton 123 (when we open sometime next year), you can feel safe. Very, very safe. At least from any type of gas leak or gas explosion or any other type of gas-related accident. The safety standards required by the gas company are strict!
We passed the pressure test! Yay!
I did not get a picture of the highly-sensitive pressure monitoring seismology-looking equipment. Sorry, but I've been home all week with a feverish 7 year old. Poor kid has been anywhere from 99.0 to 103.8. Fortunately, with the help of a wide variety of Gatorade colors, he has been well hydrated. (Have you seen some of the new Gatorade stuff? They have Gatorade Rain and the Lime flavor is kind of a pale psychodelic green that puts me in mind of black cauldrons and eye-of-newt. When I see it outside of the Gatorade bottle in a clear glass, it makes me want to scream, "Don't drink that!")
Today I called the doctor, but with no openings and no other symptoms and the large intake of Gatorade, they told me to call them back if his fever spikes again. So far so good, though. It hasn't been back up since early this morning and he's eaten twice and switched from Gatorade to apple juice and a glass of milk.
He looks like he's finally kicked whatever nasty bug got him. Thankfully.
So, anyway, the gas line gauntlet is not over yet. They are going (maybe did already) to hook up the line to the curb box and install a meter. We have to get a licensed HVAC technician in there to inspect the furnace before they will turn on the gas. And if the furnace doesn't pass inspection or the pilot light won't stay lit when the gas gets turned on, then they'll turn it right back off.
Rigid. Safe.
Safe is good, but I have to keep reminding myself of the safe part.

Gas Line, cont.

So the pressure test to check the new line and new pipes entering the back of The 123 was Wednesday. Really, it's a 24 hour pressure test so it was Wednesday and Thursday. The test was complete with a fancy seismology-looking box with complicated circle graph paper and several arms with red pen tips on the ends.
Really.
However, I did not get a picture.
But, not to worry, because we failed the test.
So we get to do it again. Fix the leak, and then the gas company will come back and do it all again. Next week.
I will be sure to take pictures of the weird looking contraption.
Argh.

Gas Line

Here's the link to the original post about the need to replace the gas line.


This was a lot faster than digging the trench by hand:

A friend with a tractor and the small back-hoe attachment came over and dug the trench and backfilled it in about a half a day (Thanks, Junior!).




Here's the view from the street above:

Here's a picture of the required plastic gas line:

Remember the Curb Box that was such a problem to locate?
Look right below the yellow line painted on the stone:

Here's a close-up:

It's not really a box at all, but a plain-looking shut-off valve. The reason it was so hard to find is because it was so far below the surface. And this is after they raised it!

The painted yellow line was so we didn't lose it again.

There are a few more updates that need done before we can have it pressure tested. However, that should be done by the end of the week and then we'll be able to get a meter hooked up and start checking out the furnaces....

It gets worse...

...before it gets better.

PC with PPE

Here's PC with Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) strapped to his face:

This particular PPE makes a normal breath sound exactly like Darth Vader sweating his way through a lightsaber duel.

All the insulation and general dust from tearing down, ripping out, and hauling away has the air pretty thick with stuff you'd really be better off keeping out of your lungs.

Fortunately, this phase of deconstruction will be over soon.

Fyr-Fyter Fire Extinguisher

PC found this 'Fyr-Fyter' in one of the little storage closets in the back of the 1st floor:

And, even though 'Fyr-Fyter' is an oddball name, this water-filled fire extinguisher was still fully charged. Because we didn't really believe it, PC pulled the pin and squeezed the handle and sprayed it all over the floor (sorry, no pictures of that) and then, to empty it, he took it outside and sprayed down the parking lot, too (sorry, no pictures of that, either).

What's really impressive is this:

Can you read it? It's March 6, 1969! And it still works!

And look where it came from:

It's from the Grafton Fire Department.

It's good to know that the Grafton Fire Department is reliable.

Another Sink Drain

I thought the other drain was probably the tool wash station for the dentist's office.
Maybe it was, but that didn't stop this drain from collecting it's share of tools, too.

Notice that this trap is plastic. The other one was stainless steel, which dates it as an older part.
If I had to guess, I would say that the original drain for this sink was stainless steel, too (all the sinks were installed at the same time). All those tools getting lost down the sink finally clogged it up and the newer plastic parts were used to rebuild it.

That's a lot of tools.

Here's a link to the original sink drain post: Lose Something?

Novel Excerpt

For those of you who asked, I posted an excerpt of my novel, Vultures, over on my other blog: MK Stover.

The above link is to the blog itself, but this link will take you directly to the novel excerpt: Vultures, Chapter 2.

I'll also be posting updates on the Amazon Novel writing contest progress over there.

Problems with pictures?

I'm having trouble viewing the pictures on the sidebar. I uploaded two new ones. The first is simply the front face of 123, similar to the old picture. The second is a picture of the '1890' Cornerstone. I can't see either one.
It may be my internet connection, but I'm not sure.
Can you see them?

Morning Glories

I love volunteers. Especially volunteer flowers:

This beautiful pile of morning glories volunteered on the hillside where the jungle used to grow.

First the sunflower and now these; I wonder what other interesting seeds are waiting for an opportunity on our hillside?

Here's a close up of one of the blue blooms. It's snuggled in among a bit of English Ivy (the darker leaves):

And one more:

I was standing in the parking lot for this one. The bright blooms sit on top of the rock wall.

Pictures

I think there's something wrong with the profile picture in the sidebar; I haven't been able to figure out what to do about it.

Since I can't fix it, I will update it with a new picture that I will take today.

AND - yesterday I noticed a new flower. I'll get pictures of those, too.

Writing

I have neglected this blog for the past week in favor of other, older, writing projects.

Since I allowed it to prevent me from updating this blog, I figured it was appropriate to post that information here, because, even though it doesn't have anything to do with construction (or deconstruction), I actually do my writing -physically- at The 123.

My office is on the second floor and I spend as much time there as possible during the week when the kids are in school. It's been amazing how much writing I can actually get done without the distraction of laundry and dirty breakfast dishes; I always suspected I could, but now I have proof.
I love my office :)

Go here: MKStover.com for my website. I don't have much content up at this time, but I do keep it updated. I post information about current writing projects and I will continue to add to it.

This past week, I have been working on this: Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.

I was on the internet looking for the NaNoWriMo website (more about this in a minute) and this Amazon Novel contest appeared. So, knowing that this was something I should do, I signed-up, got a registration number, and was given 7 days to submit a manuscript.
That's a tall order, isn't it?

Good thing I already had the novel written.

I wrote Vultures in bits and pieces (with occasional phases of mania) over the course of a couple of years. It's been collecting dust now for at least the last 18 months, maybe even closer to 2 years. I had worked on it for a very long time and I was just not sure of the overall effect. I queried an agent once about it, but she was not interested (at least she responded) and I just pushed it out of my way and went on to other things. Not very persevering, huh?

So last week I opened the Vulture zip folder on my hard drive, pulled the printed copy out of the file drawer and sat down to read it for the first time in a very long time.

I'm glad I waited that long. The time away from it gave me a new perspective; I was able to approach it as a reader and not the writer. That helped tremendously (and the time gap helped sever the emotional attachment -but maybe that's too much information).

Anyway- for the last 7 days I have been (maniacally) proofreading (again) and cutting (again) and editing (again) this old manuscript. I was surprised to find that there really wasn't all that much wrong with it: basic grammar issues and a couple of small chronology problems.

*Thanks to my family for helping with the week's volatile overtime work schedule*

I will post more information about this as it progresses.

As for the NaNoWriMo: that's short for National Novel Writing Month. The idea is to crank out 50,000 words in November. I've known about this Novel writer's craze for several years, but I think this year I will participate to get a jump on my next novel. I'll post links to this, too, as Novemeber approaches.

More Weird Stuff in the Parking Lot

It's not the first...

(Click HERE and scroll down to the second sunflower picture for a link to the first post about weird stuff in the parking lot.)

...and I'm sure it won't be the last weird stuff in the parking lot.

Actually, it's a good thing because it means progress. The first floor is about 85% gutted.

Does anyone need cabinets for their garage?

Rainbows over Grafton

If you look closely...

...you can see a second rainbow just above the first.

This is the view from the roof looking east along Main Street. The big building at the furthest point is the Willard Hotel.

While there's not much on the web about this building, here's a link to Grafton's Memorial Day Celebration, The Spirit of Grafton, that gives a bit of information about places of interest.

For a great collection of Grafton pictures on the web, this is probably the best site up: Grafton

The best collection of Grafton & Taylor County pictures -anywhere- is housed in the International Mother's Day Shrine on Main Street in Grafton. You could almost see it from the picture above, but it's on the same side of the street as The 123. They are currently open for visitors Tuesday-Saturday 10am-6pm. It would be a great place to bring your mom. And next year is the 100 year anniversary of the 1st Mother's Day (as they put together their schedule of events, I'll keep the links on the sidebar here updated).

Lose Something?

PC's been dismantling the sinks in the old dentist office and this is what he found in one of the drain traps:

They're jammed in there good and tight, too.


Now that we're on the subject of weird things in sink drains....

The kitchen sink trap upstairs had a mouse in it. The only reason we know this is because the p-trap was rusted through. When we turned on the water to that sink for the first time, there were no leaks in the water lines, but when I looked underneath the sink, the trap was leaking, but I couldn't tell from where until I started poking things with my finger. When I poked the bottom of the sink trap, my finger went right through. Fortunately, I did not realized that the furry scum was a dead mouse; PC told me later when he took it apart to fix it.

Sunflower & Curb Box

I asked if I could borrow it, but they didn't think that was a good idea:

This is the gas company digging for the 'curb box.' A Curb Box is not a box at all, but a small round access to a shut-off valve. It's an added security to prevent gas leaks. Of course, the gas is turned off to the building because there is no meter; there's a cap on the line. The curb box allows the gas company to shut off the gas going from the main line to where the meter should be. Because we have to replace the line from the meter hook-up to the curb box, the gas company had to actually find the curb box. Theoretically, the metal detector should have found the round cover of the curb box, but after unearthing a spark plug and other miscellaneous items buried just a few inches down, it was time to try something else. So, after several attempts with different tools (that I didn't really understand, but they were designed to trace the pipes running underground) -over the course of several days- it couldn't be located. That's why the backhoe is here today. They actually had to dig up a pretty wide area (as you can see from the picture) to find it. I think they had to extend the pipe by a foot or two also -to get it up to ground level- but I missed that part; I just got here as they were finishing up today.


Even if I could use the backhoe to dig the trench for the new line, it would have only been useful for about half of it. The rest of the line, as the hillside drops down toward the building, gets pretty steep and at the rear of the building it wouldn't have fit at all; there's a rock wall -apparently it used to be a part of an oven (I'll get into this more later as I start filling in the history of the 123)- that creates a tier in half of the backyard.


Here's the northeast corner where the gas meter used to sit (actually two gas meters: one for the first floor dentist office and one for the second floor insurance agency, but we only need one):

You can see the jungle greenery already starting again. The lighter color brick at the upper right corner of the picture is -or was- a window. It was bricked in probably about the same time as the first floor was redone for the dentist office - about 1969.


As for digging in the new gas line: if we use machinery at all, it'll have to be a very small trench digger. Or perhaps just shovels and elbow grease. And sweat. Fortunately, if what the backhoe was digging up is any indication, the ground is not too hard and the dirt is very pretty from all the years of jungle-growth.


And, speaking of the pretty soil... (Click here to read about the jungle, including mulberry trees.)
Here is a picture of a new leaf that is growing out of the mulberry-tree stump:

All the leaves are not shaped like this, but it's the most interesting shape of them all. I googled images for mulberry trees and I am pretty sure that's what this is, though I didn't spend enough time to figure out which species.


While I was outside taking pictures of the gas company dig, I saw this:

This is a volunteer sunflower at the northwest corner. It's up on the hillside on top of the first rock wall. The pipe to the left of it is the gutter drain. You can see the old screen door that I left open when I came out the back, although I am actually down in the parking lot to snap this picture.


I was tempted to leave out this next picture, a wider angle, just because this one shows some duct work in the parking lot:

But, I suppose duct work as a temporary parking lot accessory is not such a bad thing; we're not finished gutting the first floor yet, either, so there will probably be even weirder things in the parking lot before we're through.


And one more:

The fellows from the gas company are on the upper street just finishing up. I'm still standing in the parking lot. You can barely see the little yellow head of the sunflower between the drain pipe and the duct pipes, but this picture starts to give you an idea of the hillside/rock wall tiers of the back lot.


Enough for now....

Gas Line Replacement

The gas line has to be replaced. From the back of the building where the meter would be -if there was a meter- all the way up to the street has to be ripped up and updated.

I thought we were doing pretty well by getting the gas meter put back in so we could test everything and get the heat going in plenty of time so there aren't any freezing water pipes, but it's not that simple. Unfortunately.

Once the gas has been turned off to a building for more than a year, the gas company comes and reclaims the meter. That explains why it's missing. And why the pipes froze.

Because the meter was reclaimed, the entire system has to be updated and certifiably inspected before they'll give us a meter. While this gas company protocol seems a bit extreme, I have to keep in mind that it is designed to prevent explosions. So that's probably a good thing.

The lines, right now, are steel. I always thought steel pipes were fine. Apparently I am very out of date and now plastic is required.

It looks as if we have some digging to do.

Water

“Turn it off! Turn it off!”

This was me yelling from the stairway while water rained down on my head from the ceiling. Crap.

We were just testing the system to make sure there were no leaks.
Ha.

When PC first turned on the main valve, putting pressure to the old system that hadn’t seen water in a while (At least a winter of freezing weather. Or two. Yikes.), the usual hissing-charging sound echoed through the first floor; even with all the dentist office divider walls still up, the sound reverberated through the ceiling tile.

First, I ran around the first floor to all the sinks -every little room had one- and turned off faucets. If the faucets kept running, I reached under and turned off the valves. Whoever did the plumbing 40 years ago for the dentist office had the foresight to take the time to put a shut off valve on every hot water line and every cold water line underneath every sink (thank you, who ever you are). There were several leaky (okay, really: uncontrolled pour-y) faucets, and though I was scared to trust the shut-off valves, there was only one that did not do its job. Not too bad for 40 years worth of sitting there and waiting to be called into duty. With PC's help, this only took a couple of minutes, but with that hissing (potentially leaking or pouring) sound coming from over our heads, it felt much longer.

Everything was off downstairs, but the overhead sound didn't slow. If anything, it was louder. I headed out to the used-to-be-the-reception-area and through the first doorway, intent on making the next turn and running up the steps (22 of them, remember?) to see what I could turn off up there. It was that momentum that kept me going, not even noticing the little waterfall that had started down the bottom few steps until I was right in the garden-hose-with-good-pressure-sized stream pouring on my head. Crap.

I had to back down out of the stairwell and yell down the hallway before I heard the pipe-clunking that I knew meant it was off. I went back to the stairs and squished myself against the wall to avoid the slackening downpour. I had a passing thought about the usefulness of the blue rubber ridged anti-slip stairtreads that were tacked to each riser, and how, hopefully, some day when most things work, I'd be able to remove them and refinish the old wood.....

It was the toilet. It had been dry for so long that the gasket between the tank and bowl rotted (How does a toilet get this black with no water in it? I tried not to think about it.); water was still seeping from beneath the tank and tracing the porcelain in a thin line to the carpet.

***Allow me to pause here to opine the carpet*** (Wait a second - am I even using that word right? Opine? It just popped into my head....going to look it up..... Alright, it's a verb, but it doesn't give an example of how to use it. It means to harangue, preach, orate, or lecture. Which is fine, but I don't want to direct this lecture to the carpet; I want to harangue (criticize, tirade)about the carpet. I'll leave it like it is, but I'm open to grammatical correction.)
Back to opining: You'd think it would've just been the same as the rest of the blue commercial-grade carpet (minus the padding), but no, it's in a category all its own. I vaguely remember stuff like this from childhood, but I'm not sure if it was ever popular. Maybe, but if so, it was popular for just a few people (ha.). Or maybe for just a very short time. Like, until the people who liked it regained their senses.
It's blue and green and shaggy. Need I say more?

Enough about the carpet. All the stuff on the second floor stays just like it is (minus the leaks. and the refrigerator.) until after the first floor is up and running as the 123 Coffee House and the third floor has been redone so I can move my office up there without plaster falling on my head.

Water. Yes. Water. Bottom line: the toilet leaked. Badly. I tore it apart and got the repair parts and put some of it back togehter, but I will have to say (and Thank You) that PC, though much bigger than myself, crammed himself into that little bathroom to reset the tank and bolt everything down. After the carpet dried out (Shag carpet doesn't take as long as I thought to dry out. Synthetic fibers, probably.), of course.
Once the water worked, the black came off (and out), but I'll spare you the details.

It took three (?) more turn-on-the-water attempts before I didn't have to yell "Turn it off!" any more. Now, the bathroom works just fine. As long as you don't want hot water. The tiny kitchen sink is still on the to-do list (Tiny kitchen. Not tiny sink. Though it only has one bowl, the bowl is large. And it was black. But now it's white. Oh, right...sparing the details...).

It’s been almost two months since we first turned on the water, but I thought it deserved mention. I suppose I can't complain too much; if I were 117 years old, I'd probably have a few leaks, too.

All the utulities will get their post (we've touched on the electric, and now water). Or two. Or three. Right now we're dealing with the gas lines. It may get more than three posts. Or four. I'll be sure to take pictures. Crap.

A New Door and Amazing Bricklaying Historical Engineering

Right now, the Grafton 123 Coffee House is just a concept. We are in the process of gutting the first floor. Because the first floor was most recently a dentist's office, the floor plan does not fit our needs. Neither does the entry. The street face of the building is narrow and because we have the wide-open parking lot side exposure, we've decided to put our main entryway on the west side. Plus, the improved access will make renovation easier:

You can barely see the door outline in the picture above, but you can see where it'll be located in the wall.

This one shows a closer view. You can see the steel header that they have cut and bolted into the brick wall and the vertical outline cuts:

The small hole in the center of the door was a test cut. The brick wall is actually three bricks thick. Because it was built 117 years ago, the brick was laid in the old style, as its own support rather than a facade. Most of the rows of brick are laid horizontally with the long side out, but every 7 rows are laid with the short side out so that they can cross two rows below them. By staggering the turned-brick row from both sides of the wall, everything gets tied in pretty tight. Pretty amazing really. Look at this picture:

While you can see the turned rows, you can also see that the mortar joints on the outside of the wall are messy. This is because it was originally built up against an existing building (I'm not sure how long it's been gone) and the mason couldn't 'strike' them.

According to John, our friend the mason who helped with the door layout, it's called 'striking:' where the excess mortar is scraped down to a thin, clean line. In cold weather, apparently, it can keep it from freezing before the concrete sets, but mainly, I think, it just looks nice. And professional.

This is view from the inside:

You can see the mess and the existing reception desk still leftover from the dentist office. Opening up this new door will make it easier to haul stuff outside. You can see the brick down low on the wall under the hole, but up higher it's an old wallboard that was under the dentist office paneling.


Here's a view out the peek-hole. My husband, PC, is on the left and John, the Mason, is on the right (even though you can barely see them because of the bright sunlight outside):

I'll try to remember to take more pictures of the destruction mess...

The View

This is the view looking out across Main Street. I'm standing on the upper street, but even down a little lower, where the outside deck will be, the view is amazing. Eventually, the roof deck will be even better.

The 123 - More Pictures & Progress

Looking from the back of the building, that huge rounded clump is the probably-mulberry tree. If you look close, you can just barely see PC's while t-shirt there by the corner of the building.

We had to climb through it (PC threaded the really long extension ladder up through it and using a combination of ladder rungs and limbs, we were able to get on top) to inspect the roof. Let me take a minute to say that the view is SPECTACULAR! (Someday in the next few years there is going to be a deck up there….before I get too off topic, I’ll stop, but I’ll write more about the plans for the third floor and roof later).

Here's a picture of the roof, too:

Look at all that stuff growing up there! The poor old 123 was being attacked from below AND above! I have not been back up there since PC cut it all away from the building (I’m not sure the ladder goes all the way up!) so I don’t have pictures from that high up. You can get a pretty good idea from the backgrounds of the other pictures.

Sadly, just about everything is gone, but it had to be done to prevent further damage to the 123. With building health as the number one priority, however, it will get landscaped again when we start building decks back there. Yet another project to write about….

For those of you who have been reading past posts: The electric had to be remounted onto the back of the 123. The vines and growth –ironically not our jungle, but the neighbor’s overgrowth- had pulled the weatherhead out of the brick and that had to be fixed before they’d turn the electric back on here at the 2nd floor. So, yep, I have electric up here (as you could tell from the scary-no-more refrigerator pic).

More on the 123 later…..

123 West Main Street - Pictures & Progress

This is a picture of the front (south) of 123 W. Main Street in June. It was our first visit with the realtor. Though I'd been looking at the outside for several months (with a very tiny, vague thought of ownership), this was the first time we went inside.

Check out the trees right up against the rear of the building! The roofline is a jungle.

After the sale closed (July 24), the most pressing need was to yank all the greedy green vine feet off the side of the building.

That's my husband, PC, in the white shirt, and our oldest son, PR, is taking a break on the tailgate.

Some of the worst foundation shoving plants, though, were not the vines (though the vines were certainly in the competition), but the trees: two kinds in particular.

The first has a very odd name: Tree of Heaven. While I am certain there must be trees in Heaven (what paradise could be without trees?), this one doesn’t have enough redeeming qualities to make it into any type of nirvana. It looks somewhat like a sumac tree, but its leaflets have a little ‘thumb’ on the bottom (I’ll remind myself to go take a picture), whereas a sumac’s leaflets are finely serrated.

Its immensely rapid growth rate may –perhaps- redeem it in some way, some where, next to the foundation of a 117 year old building is not such a good place. For that matter, next to any foundation is a bad idea.

After speaking to the previous owner (two owners before ourselves), I believe that all this growth was kept off the building before –about- 1995. So 12 years of growth. These trees were every bit of 40 feet tall! 40 feet in 12 years! It speaks well for shade. However, the roots found a firm hold in the small strips of soil right up next to the brick walls and just kept digging –through the dirt and the rocks and the cut-stone foundation and the brick. Bad for the foundation.

The wood of the Trees of Heaven (Hell) is spongy, soft, and pliable. I don’t know of any use for it. It also made it a bit tricky for PC to cut them safely. And (as if they needed another strike against them) they stink. Subtly stinky for most of the year, but when they go to flowering, they STINK. Like garbage. How appropriate.

So I didn’t feel too bad about helping to hack those out of there, but there was another tree back there that I was hesitant to axe. I wasn’t quite sure of its identity, mostly because it was too gargantuan, but I’m almost positive it was (note the past tense) a mulberry tree. !. See what I mean? Mulberries are supposed to grow on bushes, right? Well, yes, but these had far surpassed the bush stage and had been residing in the tree category for a very long time.

(Okay – I’ll dig out a picture of the leaves, if I can, mostly because I’m still not 100% sure of the identification. I’d appreciate any input here: botanist or backyard mulberry tree grower. Thanks.)

This is the west side view before beginning to clean-up. Those small trees (closest to the street) are new Trees of Hell, er...uh, Heaven. They are only 10-12 feet tall.

More in a bit...

Refrigerator of Death:

It doesn't look so bad with the lights on:

Dirty: yes.

Evil: no.

Refrigerator in the Dark (Or Stained Carpet & Screwdrivers)

This small three story brick building was built in 1890, one of the oldest –the oldest?- surviving storefront on Main Street. The building is only 18 feet wide, but it is 54 feet deep. Those are the outside measurements, so the inside is slightly smaller; I can claim about 800 square feet of interior space on each floor. Eight hundred square feet is not very big by today’s standards, but I suspect in 1890 it was pretty large – especially considering it was the first structure of its type in the city, not yet dwarfed by larger buildings.
This second floor must have been an apartment, relatively recently occupied (sometime in the last 10 years?). A commercial grade blue carpet with thick padding covers the floor in the two big front rooms. The back two rooms, smaller, are not padded and the carpet looks to be a grayer shade of this same blue, though it may just be from the stains that inhabit that area (the smallest room – the fourth room back from the front is –was- the kitchen). (There is a fifth room, though it’s only accessible from the stair hallway, not through the kitchen: The Furnace Room. It’s dark and scary back there, but more about the dark in a bit…).
While this level was relatively clean, black cobwebs had taken up residence on the baseboards and window and door sills. They are very thick and stick to the broom bristles – and to my hand when trying to get them into the garbage bag – ick. The refrigerator – a little old electric ‘ice box’- was covered in a sticky black soot, but I haven’t yet taken the ketchup-crusted (at least I hope it’s ketchup) bottom cover off of the front to see what’s living underneath. It was bad enough that it wouldn’t open. I pulled at the handle (remember the old ‘death-trap’ latching handles?) and could hear the latch moving, but the door would not come open. When PC came up and tried to open it, he pulled so hard he pulled it out away from the wall and then just kept dragging it. Nothing. Screech and Dozer – in their dark-is-scary-and-I-don’t-like-spiders-voices- decided that there must be something in the refrigerator: spiders? a raccoon? a dead body? Severed heads lined up with eyeballs open and staring (yes, that was it!)?
Did I mention that it’s dark in here? In there where the refrigerator sits in the fourth room away from these front windows it’s very dark and the stains on the floor look darker in the beam of a flashlight. There is no power to the second floor. It just doesn’t work. The wiring looks to be updated like the first floor, but nothing. At least not yet; PC has an appointment with the power company – he’ll meet someone here and they will inspect their lines up to and including the meter. After that, we’ll get an electrician to inspect all of the wiring on the second floor (Each floor is metered separately, so that’s been a good thing). In the meantime it’s awfully dark – did I mention that?
To put the Jeffrey Dahmer rumors to rest I armed Screech with the brightest flashlight and Dozer with the biggest screwdriver (think crowbar) that I could find. I grabbed a reasonable sized screwdriver and we climbed the steps to the second floor (there are twenty-two of them! – steps, not floors). Really, what happened was that I started up and Screech and Dozer stood at the bottom arguing about who would go next. When I was about halfway up –beginning to disappear into the gloom- Screech decided she was next because she sure wasn’t coming up last – something might get her from behind. We all made it to the top at about the same time. (Okay – I admit they moved faster after I let loose a deep evil laugh that echoed pretty well in the stairwell. But I had a good reason– it was getting dark and Screech had the flashlight, though she mostly used it to shine all around herself and into all the dark corners to make sure nothing was sneaking up on her or there were no giant spiders or creepy dead hands –or heads- reaching for her. Not the best choice for a designated flashlight handler, but it was one way to get her up the stairs.)
After running the flashlight over every wall, carpet stain, ceiling and double-just-to-make-sure-inspections of each corner and the trim around the doorways, Screech stood with the beam of the flashlight on the refrigerator door. At least until Dozer moved into the light. I backed him off a few feet and he tensed up, drawing his giant screwdriver back like a baseball bat. I jammed the flat blade of my screwdriver into the crack of the door and silently prayed for an empty refrigerator – an odd wish, but entirely appropriate to the circumstances. I mean, what if – just if – there was something bad in there? I was willing to bet we could go down the stairs a helluva lot faster than we came up (I would try to keep us all from rolling down those twenty-two steps, though I sure wouldn’t slow us up any if, in fact, the refrigerator was a gruesome serial killer storage bin).
The first attempt to pry only resulted in a sucking/cracking noise as the old seal started to give way. I didn’t smell anything rotten (or formaldehyde-preserved) so I felt a little bit braver.
“Dozer, you’ll have to pull on the door handle while I pry, okay?” With the latch undone it only took sliding the screwdriver between the seal and the door in a couple more spots for it to come open. I couldn’t see Screech’s face behind the light, but Dozer’s eyes were wide. I had the first view and was thankful to see nothing but the old wire shelves and egg holes. I pushed it all the way open. I’m not sure if they were relieved or disappointed.
“The refrigerator looks pretty good, but what about the freezer?” I asked, grabbing hold of the metal door at the top of the ice box compartment.
“Ahhh, Mom…..”