Beebe -- our 1935 Bungalow on Baker Street.

[Lily left the valley]

A nice wall clock will turn up. (I know you have walls without even asking.)

I'm sure it will. We're not in a rush to add another clock just yet.

[Lily left the valley]

Aaannnd a knock at the door for the wind chimes. I tried to go through the list of what I could remember when she was still here so I could save her another trip if necessary, but she said that was all. Time will tell. There's not much more that I picked up on Monday, so there's only so much more she could knock for left.

Today was supposed to be a serious working day since Sean was off, but he was tuckered. We did some minor garden bed clean up, and bought a new plant that I'll post about in my Park Ave thread.

Next week, he has a whopping two days off, so hopefully one of those days, we'll get to some of these things that are best done with two folks involved. There are certain projects I am getting itchy about again, and have been trying to distract myself working towards finishing the unfinished ones. There's also a few we were supposed to do together that I can do alone, it will just take longer.

I actually have started to consider making a photo album for myself that shows finished projects, so when my brain starts screaming about everything that needs to be done, I can stop what I'm doing and look at those to shut it up.

It's funny, how differently folks go about their progression paths. It still amazes me that some folks (for whatever reason(s)) can go years sometimes without project-ing. I don't know how I could manage that. Then again, I'm the sort of folk who keeps odds and ends bits and picks up freebies that fill a need, so even in the worst of financial moments, I can still do something, however small.

In thinking about focusing on one room of late, and the office came out ahead of the kitchen. I think once fall rolls around, I will start to focus on that so there will be at least one room that is "done enuff", and it's one of the rooms I spend the most time in awake, so it'd be noticeable. I've read about folks doing things like this so they have some peace of mind when faced with long term work, so I'm hoping it also does the same for me.

Since August is now counting out its days, I've been trying to get organized for the work I'll be doing on the front slope and strips on either side of the house later this month and September. I'm also trying to decide which bits will just have to wait until next year.

I also need to contact the MassSave folks to find out if the insulation discount covers Roxsul. If it doesn't, we're not going to wait to get the first layer and the sill fill done before our scheduled assessment. If it does, we're going to pray to whatever power is listening that we don't get hit with an early winter. That reminds me. We'll be needing to order oil by September. I also need to start calling a few places about a yearly tune up for our boiler.

[awomanwithahammer]

In thinking about focusing on one room of late, and the office came out ahead of the kitchen. I think once fall rolls around, I will start to focus on that so there will be at least one room that is "done enuff", and it's one of the rooms I spend the most time in awake, so it'd be noticeable. I've read about folks doing things like this so they have some peace of mind when faced with long term work, so I'm hoping it also does the same for me.

My living room was awful, and I found it very demoralizing to walk in and realize how much was left to do. So I decided to do my public spaces first so at the very least I could come in the front door and see a completed project. It has helped me psychologically, although I still know how much there is left to do.

[Lily left the valley]

No knock at the door today, so that's good.

I did straighten up the dining room a bit since that became the dumping ground for both some bits we'd picked up recently at PYCA and also from next door. There's a clear path to the parlor door again. Some day we might even set up the table and chairs in there.

One thing I did manage to snag that was needed was an extension cord since it was the right price and I would love to clean up the attic one of these rainy days. I don't know whatever happened to other cord I thought we still had, but one more cord won't be a burden space wise even if I finally find that one later.

It's been a while since we've had a smaller kitchen, so I've been finding challenges as to where to put everything neatly. I've been looking into some built in type storage methods, and I'm at least planning to make more permanent variants of some of the vertical racks I've used before that were good enough at the time for things like cooling racks and cookies sheets even if they were a bit too wide for the job.

One puzzle is our pizza stones (yes plural, we have two). At the last apartment, the lower cabinets in the kitchen proper had pull out shelves we used for them, and I noticed one of the local hardware stores has a sale on the sliders this week, so I might do something similar. I need to measure out inside the cabinets and start sketching what could go where soon. Rain showers are predicted for Saturday, so that might be the day, as I could easily work on that during showers and spend the rest of the time in the gardens when it's between the wet stuff. It's been annoying at certain moments that we still have a half dozen boxes of kitchen stuff packed.

Tomorrow, I am finally going to pick up the parts to fix the leaking sink in the first floor bathroom. It will be nice to have at least one drip bowl removed.

The stove...has been driving me crazy that I haven't fixed it yet. Part of why I've been hung up on the kitchen is all the boxes that drifted into the kitchen and have made it impossible to move the stove without clearing out the kitchen. Which wasn't easy to do with the chifforobe still on its side until I could reattach the wheels we took off hoping it would help it fit up the stairs, which of course ate up the space the boxes used to sit.

So although I have yard stuff I plan to do this weekend, I am determined to finally get the stove fixed if only to make sure the parts I bought will work or not (the fellow at the local shop was a bit concerned they wouldn't be good enough for an electric stove.) Because if not, I have to start calling a place or two in Worcester for the correct parts. Going on five months and still not having fixed that is bothering me, especially the having to bake in the toaster oven which really limits my baking.

So we'll see how much actually gets done this weekend. The weather should be good today and Sunday, so I hope to have a few things tidied up in the yard by Monday. The showers on Saturday should give me reason to focus on a few indoor bits. Time will tell.

My living room was awful, and I found it very demoralizing to walk in and realize how much was left to do. So I decided to do my public spaces first so at the very least I could come in the front door and see a completed project. It has helped me psychologically, although I still know how much there is left to do.

Good to hear. We typically use the side door into the dining room, and since we already know the lino under the fake wood vinyl might not be in good shape, I'm not quite ready for that yet. The office will be far less work, so that weighed in heavily in the decision making.

[Lily left the valley]

Today was mostly errands. One minor annoyance with Gardner is the utter lack of bike racks available. So I set out on foot to do a round about town with my backpack and my metal water bottle for shopping both in South Gardner and Gardner proper. South Gardner can be a bit heart pounding walking wise because if one doesn't take the currently closed bridge over the train tracks, the other path closest to our house is by way of a circle that comes off of a busy state E-W highway with no pedestrian crossing signals built in, although there is a sidewalk on the eastern side. My timing was early for rush hour, so no near misses today. Shy of four hours from setting out on my walk, I came home with:
- some filler groceries until we make our next regular trip

- some half off spring planting bulbs (at $1.50 per pack, I'm betting half will be good after cellar storage)

- Barkeeper's Friend (finally!), graphite powder, and oil for some of the old garden tools at our TruValue

- two new pairs of socks from the local sports shop--I found out the shop opened around the time of the earliest Wigwam socks

- licorice bits and a milk chocolate bumblebee from the local candy maker

- and last, but not least, the remaining cash balance for items obtained from next door.

I did also get a sense of the spray paint they have at Tru-Value, and next time I'll be taking one of the craft room blinds with me so we can match a color for the steel cabinetry we got from next door. They are in fairly decent shape, just worn with some low base surface rust. It'd be great if we could get those done and out of the garage this month.

Oh, and I also scouted some of their bird feeders, and had a great brief chat with the salesfellow about bird related stuff. I had told him I found a recipe for making suet, and he was keenly interested, telling me they like to stay as organic as possible.

I saw my neighbor's car in the driveway as I was walking home, so I knocked on the door to even things up. She told me now her son wants the wire pickets, but she's a bit displeased because she had promised them to me for free. Right about when we got to that part of our conversation, one of her daughters arrived and joined in, saying worse comes to worse, they might just throw them over the fence and then no matter what...they're ours.

I hadn't noticed before, but earlier in our conversation she pointed out the two pear trees they have out back which are definitely bearing fruit, and she offered some of same (woo!). She laughed when she told me they were supposed to be a dwarf variant, but they grew much taller than they expected. We were looking out there partly because of the pickets and also my telling her the progress with the Oriental Bittersweet. That's when I found out those trees the bittersweet had invaded are barely 40 years old! I was amazed, given their height. She was fussing they might need to come down, and I assured her they were solid enough, although there were a few smaller ones within the canopy that lost the competition and were mostly dead, so those could go without much loss.

While we were looking out the window, she told me how they used to have a full garden out back until those conifers shot up like that. So that's when they pared down to the two smaller beds still there, plus kept the pear trees. As she once again lamented that she hadn't lopped the tops of the Rose of Sharon--3 intertwining with another plant I know I know the name of, but I'm a bit tired and it's slipping away from me at the moment, I saw my first actual hummingbird here in Gardner. I told her the story of the hummingbird like moth, and she fretted over having taken down the hummingbird feeders. I pointed out to her that this one seemed quite content to still be feeding on the (Camilla?) flowering bushes backed against our garage, so she shouldn't worry.

We also talked about what an emotional time it is, getting the house ready for sale. It sort of made me wonder if in forty or so years, Sean and I might be considering something similar or holding fast to our "we'll leave feet first" notion.

It was a lovely chat, and I'm glad to have these moments with her, brief as she will be in our lives as our neighbor. She really is a wonderful lady.

When we did our evening watering round, Sean and I had a lot of discussion on the impending slope changes, and I reminded him that the coupon for the concrete repair supplies expires this weekend, so we best get it so I can start fixing the steps in plenty of time for Halloween. I'll still need to eventually do the finish coat, but we'll see how the bigger holes patch up before then. Sean also realized today for the first time that the left stair rail when you face the house didn't set at a perfect 90°, but I showed him how I think we can pry that up and dig out some dirt on the one side to fix that. Not sure if it will work, but worth a try. More on the conversation in my Park Ave. thread which I'll post soonish.

[Lily left the valley]

I debated whether to put this in my gardens thread because it involves living things, but decided since I found both in the cellar, I'd post them here.

I was doing laundry this morning, and noticed a white something or other by the exterior exit door from the cellar. The light closer to there is broken (the fixture), and I couldn't see it well, but I figured it to be a bit of trash that must have been trapped within the odd neoprene wrap of the door, so I picked it up.

Oops. Turns out it was fungi. That's when I got the camera.


I don't ever recall seeing something like this outside, and we have a lot of neat fungi I've been meaning to take pictures of but haven't yet. The texture of the stem was really interesting...almost like untwisted licorice, but no where near as firm as the candy. Then as I looked at, turning the thing in my hands, I noticed it had a creature on it, and then felt bad I had destroyed its home.


I was having trouble taking a close up since I only had the flash to go by, and I was debating if I should just leave it down there, but thought it might be best to put it in the backyard shady area since that would most replicate the environment I had found it. So before moving it there, I took this image on the upper sill of the exterior cellar door and....it's a wee snail!


So even though this was a neat find, it reminded me I should put effort this week into finishing the regrade around that section of Beebe.

The funny thing is, I had just joked to Sean yesterday that maybe we should just put moss down in the cellar since we have a dirt floor. He then surprised me by saying, "sure". So now I'm actually thinking about it.

[Lily left the valley]

While we were eating dinner, I thought I saw something bounding across our yard. This caught my attention because something has both been digging in the back of late and leaving "presents".

Well, it was not what I was expecting. A young kitten, that was very human friendly but no collar. She even let me pick her up before she got bored being petted and wanted down. A total purr box of a cat. Our neighbor to the west was cleaning her pool, and I finally managed to get her attention to ask, "Is this your cat?" Yep, it is. Pretty little thing. Hopefully I won't be chasing it off for hunting, as I watched it run up and down a few of our tree trunks while we observed it. It is like a mix of a tabby and a bengal. Gray, with the bengal like markings instead of just all tabby spots/stripes.

Speaking of cats...the collar with no tag ginger was under my car again today, and when I approached it started mewling like crazy. Then when it saw Sean, it took off. Not sure what the deal is with that one, as I haven't seen the collarless ginger in a while.

I think I may have mentioned there was something on CL that I was eyeballing, but wasn't sure Sean would like or that it would be available. Well, he did and it was, for only $35. We picked it up tonight.

The address sounded very familiar when I finally managed to catch her on the phone. It was the same lady we bought the cabinet doors from! It stuck out of the back of the PT a bit, but not a long drive home anyhoo. It's in the garage because it was dark and we need to dismantle the filing cabinets/shelving pieces that make up what was my desk before he got me the steel case. So there's no room for it inside yet. I'll be breaking the file cabinet/shelves desk down tomorrow while he's at work so we can move his new old one indoors. The little desk he used to use is up in the craft room so he can work on his miniatures and model stuff up there.

The top shelving bit in the pics below did not come with the desk. That was a later addition and was not part of the deal. She also had no idea where the key for the middle was, but she's got my number now if she finds it as they keep going through things.

[Lily left the valley]

Sean is off today, and it's either been drizzly, or outright raining. So, work inside was the day's plan.

We did make one interesting discovery today. Similar to 42 (the very first house we tried to buy), it appears that the closet in the downstairs bedroom that we use as an office used to be a shared closet with the hall. (With 42, the share was between the living room and a back bedroom, so more an S passage due to door placement, where this is an L.)

I don't know how I didn't notice this before. They did absolutely nothing to seal the edges on the backer board they installed for the separation, and it's evident that the base and hook trim goes straight on through. I'm a bit glad of that, since it seems they didn't notch the trim itself. It also explains why the upper trim on the back of the hall closet didn't match the sides. We think they may have put the board in between the two sections when the downstairs room started being used for a bedroom for privacy. Otherwise, it would likely be plaster like the rest of the closets here, and the trim would have been cut to fit each side.

We immediately decided to take it out and open it back up. This will make our secret passage even cooler because it will have three egresses (library, office, hall). I'll be doing that later this week. I already took out most of the office side hooks and clothes pole that we can use elsewhere. The hooks here are really neat. They look like a thick wire hanger twisted to give them strength and a weighty feel even though there is space between the wire, with a screw thread fabricated on one end of the wire that you put into the wall. We have them in all the bedrooms, and they seem pretty sturdy so far. They are great for hats and caps. I left a few in that closet for laptop bags to hang from. One of the swing arm hangers' mount screws are stripped, so I'll finish that later, but the rest are already upstairs for our bedroom.

We decided that I will box in the part of my closet where the bath vent pipe is, and put in an access door there just in case at any point in time something manages to get inside the attic/roof and decides to explore into my closet. With the wall there, they won't be able to get through and nest in my clothes or shoes. That will also give me a point to hang the other end of the clothes bar, so I can actually hang clothes up without having to deal with making special bracket mounts on the sloped ceiling portion. So far, I'd mostly been using the smaller closet in the guest bedroom for my hanging clothes, especially the longer ones. When I finish the frame work, I won't have to walk across the hall to get dressed some days. We likely will use the same backer board that is in the downstairs closets currently, though I will need a bit more to extend under the eave.

The reason we were in the closet in the first place is we were trying to finish unpacking office stuff because I'd about had it with the boxes all over the floor and not knowing where anything is. We also decided that even though it made sense to put the empty boxes that belonged to computer stuff in there, there's plenty of closet space upstairs, and then we could build in shelving in that closet to store stationary extras and move the filing cabinets into so we can bring Sean's new old desk in, which we might still manage tonight, but he'd rather wait until there's no rain which means it may have to wait until another day. As I was writing the sentence below, the rain started up in earnest again. So that answers that.

The white bookcase (a freebie chipboard) we were going to put in the closet, we now instead set up in the library instead. The library is a real Frankenstein of book cases right now, but it's helping us stay on budget while getting stuff out of boxes--both of which I am happy about as is Sean.

We still have some cleaning to do in the library tonight so we can unbox more books and some magazines. I'm still a bit frantic because we found some of my LPs in a box in there, but we have yet to find the rest. The parlor is still jammed with mixed boxes, so hopefully the rest are in there somewhere. That's the next room to tackle, as I want to use it as a selling room for stuff we are listing on CL. I can't do that just yet because there is no room to move around, and we still need to get stuff out of there so we can put some stuff in there that's being sold. Sort of like that hand held slide the tile game you'd play years ago to make a picture.

We also brought one of the cabinets we got from next door inside and off the side porch today. Short term, we're setting it up as a coat closet in the dining room. It already has shelving built in and a clothes pole. Not sure where that might go after I do the mini closet built in along that wall, but that's a long way off to worry about. Though I'm thinking it'd make a good cabinet in the cellar or craft room.

We have been making slow but steady progress in clearing out the dining room. I finally unboxed my still not put together portable workbench, only to realize I'd taken out the directions to put it together. My dad had one like this years ago, and they're pretty simple so I might be able to figure it out without them. I'm sort of hoping so, because we have no idea at this point where they are.

We've also started sorting through the smaller bits from next door we picked up and putting them where they belong. I swear the sisters put a few things in the one bin we had without saying anything because I don't recall putting them in there.

Our anniversary is next Friday, and I would really like to eat in our dining room. Time will tell.
More to do tonight (the library stuff), but dinner beckons.

[Lily left the valley]

{snip}

I'm using this quote notice so you know I sent you a PM about an item you were looking for prior. Not sure if you still are or not.

[Lily left the valley]

Welp, time has kept flying by since our Anniversary on the 25th.

I've been battling my annual summer cold that once again was kicked in high gear thanks to my forgetting my "supermarket" sweatshirt. I was chilled to the bone after a much needed major shopping trip, and I was pretty much toast just after that.

The temperature up here has been crazy cool. It's been feeling like fall for over a week already. I'm not kidding. A friend of mine a bit south in CT was shocked when I told her what the temps had been like lately, since they're not getting anything like that at all. The coming days will be even cooler before it gets back around to where it was earlier this week:

So this has hastened a lot of garden oriented work, as the plants are basically crying uncle if they're not something that enjoys their show time in early fall weather. I'll write about that more in my Park Ave. thread much later tonight (I hope).

Time spent on the house itself, though, has almost entirely been emptying boxes and getting the parlor cleared out because I have had it with not being able to find things I know we have, and now my Floor Manager understands my feelings quite keenly.

We did finally work our way further down our original six things list, which is now half way done.

A lot of finding places (usually at unexpected times) that desperately need cleaning, and then starting such, as well as just trying to give homes to everything we've been slowly unpacking from the mixed boxes.

We did have some leather goods that were in storage for a spell, and they all have mold, so that's been a slow but steady side project trying to get that cleaned up, as I am allergic to a lot of kinds of mold.

Although I did get caught up with the threads I was subbed to, I'm now way behind on being current here at the District. I hope to get that remedied in the next week or so.

Oh...and we picked up some furniture the other week. We officially have an actual dining room table (as opposed to an old wood fold out card table) that was a mere $40 from CL, and five lovely chairs that need a bit of restoration from PYCA. We also picked up a wood office chair with a frozen rusted wheel I'm working on that is in really good shape. Once I get that working, we can take Sean's Staples office chair (was mine before I got the neat MCM one, he goes through those things like cookies), and put it at his desk in the craft room.

Still haven't found any spare storage disks for the better camera, but still looking. Will buy some rewriteables soon if we run out of boxes to check. I'll take pics of the new old stuff eventually.