First Snow!

Jake is out shoveling as I type (nice division of labor, eh?). Check out 83 Durant in the snow! This afternoon we discovered that we couldn't get up the hill to our house with the trusty Corolla -- time to put on the snow tires.

Today was also filled with other Nordic-type things: we went to Ikea! That place is nuts. We purchased two bookcases, so I guess that's what we're doing for our Friday night excitement.

mouse hotel

The mousetrap leashes have kept us from losing any more traps (there's still one MIA). But the traps have proved poor mouse catchers. I first tried three leashed traps baited with peanut butter. After a day, the traps were sprung and peanut butter free. I decided to switch bait.

Rex Dart suggested hot dogs instead of peanut butter. We don't have any hot dogs in the house, and I absolutely will not let these mice trick me into buying them groceries. So I used some bacon, delicious thick-cut dry-cured bacon from our CSA. (When killing rodents, I choose to use only ethically and sustainably produced meats.) I also went in for a temporary trap surge, up to seven. Result: I think perhaps our mice don't like bacon. Foolish, foolish mice. Only two of seven traps were sprung, no mice caught, and none of the bacon looked eaten.

Here's the new plan, the Mouse Hotel:

mouse hotel
Originally uploaded by Jake Bridge.

(In theory) the mouse walks up the gangplank and across the tightrope to get some delicious peanut butter. But the peanut butter is in the middle of a section of plastic water bottle that spins freely on the tightrope. The plastic spins and the mouse falls into the bucket. Then we'll find the mouse a new home at a nice golf course a few miles from our house. I'm pretty sure mice like golf.

I believe I got the idea for the mouse hotel long ago from Paul Kalil. As you may guess, the internet also has many bright ideas for catching mice. Here are some favorites:

Humane Mouse Traps . They have mouse test-subjects and videos!

Out of my league.

Clever trap. Cute drawing.

I heart the built-in!

Mom has been keeping very busy cleaning and re-arranging the lovely things on the built-in cabinet in the dining room.

She even polished the silver! See how it gleams!

WHHHHHAAAAAT? (Part 3)

There are many oddities in the basement. Today's installment features the oddities of the chimney. First, there is the very bottom of the chimney, where you will find this tiny door. Behind the door is a bunch of dirt & leaves & such. We cleaned all that stuff out today.

Oddity number 2 is the holes in the chimney. We know they had a wood stove down here at one point; this was clearly where it was hooked up to exhaust out. But why fill the hole with a sweatshirt? Why not something more permanent? Why not sweatpants? I suppose it is a nice touch that they used something red that matched the red chimney; perhaps they thought no one would notice. Today we pulled out the red sweatshirt, assessed the hole, and then shoved the thing right back into the hole. I think we need a more serious fix -- some insulation and a metal cover -- to take care of this. But at least we know what's in there now.




So neither of these items are exactly huge mysteries; however, I still have a serious question about the chimney, and perhaps chimneys in general. Why don't they fill up with water? Ours has nothing up on top. I even put a mirror inside the bottom hole, and you can see all the way up to the sky above. So why doesn't that little door at the bottom fill up with water (it was filled with old leaves!)? I've seen other chimneys with a thingy on top, but ours is open (we can see this because we can access it from the flat roof). Anyway, the mystery of the chimney is my big worry of the day. Are we going to have a chimney full of water or snow?

Several Small Projects

We've been busy here with Mom propelling the completion of several small projects. Jake added a new shelf into this cabinet in the kitchen, making it much more useful for all the stuff we need to fit in there. In the shot of the finished shelf, you can also see our terrific new work light, which arrived for Christmas from Ernta Claus. It's just what we needed!

Jake also fixed the front of this small kitchen drawer. It was broken when we moved in, and we haven't been able to use it. Now it's a helpful home for various bags.


Jake also installed a new shelf over the radiator. It fits nicely here, and holds cookbooks and such. Check out the bookends!














While Jake worked on the shelf, I worked on organizing some of our tools and home-fix-it equipment, which was in a sorry state of disarray. It still is, but somewhat less so. I found several baggies of various pieces of hardware, which I organized and put in my favorite old school tupperware cups (that we have never used). I then used my favorite label maker to create labels. This worked for about 3 seconds, when the labels popped off. With the added adhesive powers of the hot glue gun, they stayed on, but I'm not sure that these little containers will really be the final resting place for the screws and nails and such.

WHHHHHAAAAAT? (Part 2)

We're slowly cataloging the many oddities of 83 Durant. Here is today's mystery: the plugged hole in the floor of the upstairs bathroom, as portrayed here:

It's a mystery, wrapped in an enigma, plugged with red plastic. It's about 2 1/2 inches in diameter, and a little more than an inch and a half deep. It's right in the middle of the floor in that area (yes, we have hardwood floor in part of the bathroom, which is also a bit odd in itself). I thought it wasn't a big deal until the other day I got the heel of my shoe caught in it. Anyway, we need to find a way to plug it so it's not quite so hazardous. Therefore, I am instituting the first contest of the 83 Durant Street blog. We are looking for both creative and useful answers to these two questions:

1) What is this hole? Why is (was) it here?
2) How should we fill/plug/otherwise deal with it?

Please use the comments section! We appreciate any and all contributions. Your prize will be immortal glory in the blog-o-sphere, and our eternal gratitude, of course.

Oh, in case this helps: the hole is near the hook-up for the washer/dryer that was (at some point in time) also in this bathroom. We've found both a dryer plug, and the washer water hookups in the wall. We have not, however, found a vent for a dryer. So perhaps that's what's going on here. Another thing: there is no radiator in this room. Every other room has a (steam) radiator, but there isn't one here. Instead, there was an electric heat element under the sink. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to work, so we're using a portable electric radiator, which warms things up nicely. Anyway, these pieces of evidence may help in figuring out the answer to #1. Or they may not.

It's curtains for 83 Durant!

Behold! Jake's fabulous Christmas Eve Dinner! We had a wonderful meal, and a wonderful Christmas, opening the many, many packages under the tree. Many of those packages will soon lead (and some have already led!) to projects here at 83 Durant.



Mom helped us choose, iron, and hang some nice new white curtains. They are now featured in the kitchen (picture on the left), in the office (picture on the right), and in the dining room. They are rather lovely, bright white with tiny pin tucks.

We'll put up the dining room ones tonight or tomorrow morning, with more pictures to follow, of course.

Jake continues to fight the good fight against the critters.

We also had a massive Home Despot trip this evening. It involved tying full sheets of plywood to the roof of the car. That was all very exciting. We have more shelving plans. So many projects....

escalation Surge

escalation
Originally uploaded by Jake Bridge.

The mice are far from being defeated. Last time they stole our traps, but we're not going to give up. The stakes are too high and the consequences too grave. If we lose our nerve, if we're not steadfast in our determination to catch these mice, we will be handing the attic over to an enemy that would do us harm.

I remain convinced that the best tactic in this fight is judicious application of superior technology. So here's the latest: traps with leashes. Steal these, jerks!

[update: My original title was behind the military buzzword times. Here at 83 Durant, we don't like to behind any times at all, so that's all taken care of.]

Last minute preparations for Santa

We put up another wreath today on the front gate to welcome any gift-bearing visitors. Sadly, this picture highlights the fact that the fence is in serious need of a paint job. Perhaps Santa's elves will take care of that?



Mom is hemming the green velvet curtains on the sliding glass door in the kitchen (see previous post on those curtains). She also washed windows and sweeped the floors. We're pretty lucky to have her as a house guest!












All the presents are now wrapped and under the tree! Very exciting!!

Christmas Eve at 83 Durant

All is well here at 83 Durant. Jake is making a very festive meal for this evening:

turkey
filling (but not actually filling the turkey)
mashed potatoes
sweet potatoes with pineapple
braised cabbage
chard gratin
home baked bread (from the NYT recipe)

gingerbread & whipped cream for dessert

It is all very exciting! Pictured here today is a leaf of chard that has caught the Christmas spirit.

Not a creature was stirring....

We have a bit of a situation here at 83 Durant Street. It's a critter situation. About a week ago, we heard some scratch scratch scratching coming from somewhere around the pantry. Later, we heard it in the wall and the ceiling above the office. We have see no signs whatsoever inside; however, it's clear that we have a mouse in the house. More specifically, a mouse (OK, so we're hoping it's a mouse, and just one mouse) in the walls. What to do?

We got some of those old school snappy Victor traps. Jake placed three upstairs, in the attic. We baited with peanut butter, as we hear that is popular with the young mice these days. The next morning, Jake popped his head up into the attic, and made a rather shocking discovery:

two traps are completely GONE.
one trap was sprung, with no peanut butter left.

So we have a situation. We should note that the traps being GONE means, at this point, that they can't be seen from the attic hatch. We're not sure where they are, but we also haven't done any looking around up there. They have definitely moved, but whether that is because they sprung & moved, or whether a little creature decided to take the trap home to build a nest, we don't yet know. We just haven't had a chance to get up there and look around. Maybe tomorrow. Or maybe Monday, you know, to be in the Christmas spirit.

In any case, we haven't heard any of the scratching sounds since the day we set the traps. Perhaps we just haven't been listening at the right times. And still no signs of them inside.

83 Durant Ready for Christmas!

We've re-arranged a few things for my mom's visit (she arrives tomorrow). She'll be staying in the downstairs guest room (formerly the office). The futon is much more comfortable than the air mattress. So the futon is now in what was formerly the office, Jake's desk is now in the front room, and the yellow chairs from the front room are now in the pink room (where the futon used to be).




The stocking has been hung by the radiator with care.







And there are waaaay too many presents under the tree!

"I can't imagine why we'd need those screws."

The laundry room saga continues. On Monday, I discovered a small leak on the floor by the new washing machine (see previous post). Said washing machine was only at its ONE MONTH anniversary, so I was totally freaked out by this development. A call to Dracut appliance informed us that we're still completely under warranty, and we were quickly set up with a very nice repair guy for today. The leak was a bit of a fluke; we haven't been able to replicate it. Repair guy re-balanced the machine and we think all is well.

Meanwhile, while repair guy was in the laundry room, I turned off the dryer by opening the door. The load was done anyway, so I didn't think anything of it. A few minutes ago, I went downstairs to dry the latest load, and discovered that I had broken the dryer while the repair guy was here looking at the washer. The little latch in the door was broken, thus the dryer would not turn on because the door wouldn't stay closed. I called my in-house repair guy, also known as Jake. We unscrewed the door, and discovered that no, I did not break the latch -- someone else had broken it and repaired it with duct tape. So we did the same, and put the door back together again. Figuring we may well have to dis-assemble and re-assemble the door again at some point, Jake pushed the two pieces back together, and uttered the immortal line: "I can't imagine why we'd need those screws."

So they're sitting there on the window sill, while we wait to see if the dryer notices. So far, so good. Stay tuned.

WHHHHHAAAAAT? (Part 1)

This is the first of feature I am sure will contain many, many parts. There are some strange things about our house. Unsolved mysteries, curious solutions to unknown problems, and general thing that make us go WHHHHHHAAAT? Why did someone do that to our house?
A brief list, so you get the gist:
-- a lightswitch (kitchen) that does not seem to turn anything on or off
-- cloth stuffed into the side of chimney in the basement
[Also, said chimney appears to be load-bearing. -jb]
-- a beautiful wallpapering job in the bedroom, sadly marred by bright pink paint seeping through due to lack of primer
-- pipes in odd places, like the bathroom ceiling
-- mysteriously lowered ceilings (downstairs bathroom, I'm looking at you!)
-- holes in odd places in the wall (what could they have hung there?)

These are just a few; we are constantly finding more. Here is today's WHHHHHHHAAAAAT? moment:



Yes, that is a piece of a pencil jammed behind the outlet box. This outlet is in the kitchen. I had been annoyed that the little outlet cover didn't seem to quite fit in place, so I took it off to see if I could get it on a bit tighter. After seeing this, and realizing that the outlet sticks out because of the pencil, which I can only assume must have been put there for a reason (though unfathomable) I just put the outlet cover back on. No mystery solved.

Our Charlie Brown Christmas Tree

With many thanks to Eric for the idea, here is our Charlie Brown tree in the front yard:

Quickie Winterizing & Beautifying Solution

We have a big glass sliding door off the kitchen onto the "L" porch. It's lovely when the afternoon sun comes in and warms the place, but it's a bit chilly once the sun goes down. Solution: Target (R)! A cheap, long curtain rod, and two long, sage-green velvet panels later, and a little bit of handiwork with the drill (which I love), and we have a warmer, fuzzier kitchen!

Holiday Decorating at 83 Durant

We've done just a little bit of holiday decorating. Here's a nice shot of 83 Durant at sunset.


After this afternoon's tree acquisition (see previous post) we set it up in our tree stand (left by previous owners!) and added 400 white lights. I found a string of pink-purple lights from long long ago, and thought they would look pretty awesome around the window, framing the tree. So long as we're gonna have a pink room, we might as well do it up.

Thermostatic Adventure!

Today we finally installed the new programmable thermostat we bought a while ago. We even got a rebate for it from the gas company.

Here you'll see the snazzy old-school Honeywell. It was a bit of a challenge to remove it (Jake perhaps will update here) but with the help of someone else's blog, we figured it out. The next challenge was "which wire is which"?



To our great relief, we finally got it all hooked up. And no one was even slightly shocked!

Of course, the old thermostat was round; the new one is not. So you can see some of the quite charming wallpaper that lies underneath the pink paint here. It's sorta tan with both black and white trees on it (or at least that's what we could figure out from this patch).




Jake here. That old thermostat was a monument to simple design inside and out. Inside was just a mercury switch on a heat sensitive coil. No batteries or circuit boards. No bothersome labels telling you which wire was which.

After removing the old thermostat, we had a white wire and a black wire. The new thermostat has plugs labeled Rh, Rc, W, Y, G. The manual for the new thermostat told us what those plugs are for, but the manual for the old thermostat, being nonexistent, had nothing to say about the wires. In the end the winning combination was white to Rh and black to W, but I suspect that the reverse would have worked as well.

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree

Today we got our first Christmas Tree! It's a Blue Spruce, also known (to me) as a "pokey tree" (we really needed gloves to carry it!).

It hails from Martin's Tree Farm in Methuen, MA, a nice cut-your-own establishment.
http://www.martinstreefarm.com/

Here is our tree in its original, natural habitat.



















I think we're gonna need a bigger sled!



















Mush!

Happy Thanksgiving Hiatus

We're busy in Seattle & Sequim, so posts are on hold for now. We hope 83 Durant Street is OK while we're away. Fingers crossed during our first long visit away from it!

Happy Thanksgiving to all our readers!

Meet Our New Washing Machine

Last week, the washing machine (left by the previous owners, and probably about 15 years old) started leaking. This happened the morning after I had a dream in which our house started flooding. So now I'm psychic, which is pretty handy. Anyway, we've been searching for the right washer. We got this one at Dracut Appliance, a local business about 2 miles from here. They were very nice folks. Today they delivered and installed the washer, and right now, at this very minute, I am doing the first load of laundry. So far, so good. Fingers crossed.




Someday, we will get a plumber here to set up some supply lines and extend this drain pipe so that we can put the washer on this drain area. It looks like the previous owners started this project but didn't finish it. It's not high on the priority list at the moment, as projects go.

More nano-projects

The energy efficiency guy from the gas company suggested that we put some insulation up on the hatch to the attic. So today I made nice with the pink panther, using my ever trusty staple gun.

Also, we had some drainage issues in the driveway. Pile of leaves were getting stuck in the drain pipe, shown here. Check it out, we finally found a grate that fits right in there.

A gutter needs a tree like a fish needs a bicycle

On Friday, we planted a tree! On Saturday, we got new gutters. Perhaps one day, that little tree will grow to fill our new gutters with leaves.

We're so relieved that the gutter guys finally showed up. There is a new gutter on the driveway side of the house that we hope will alleviate some of the basement window leakage, and a new one across the back porch (off the flat roof) that we hope will help the condition of the ground in the backyard.

The tree is an apple tree. It should produce this old-style apple called "Ashmead's Kernel." We bought the tree (little more than a twig, really) at Cider Day.

let there be light!

Oh how I love the cordless drill. This evening I put up a little halogen light fixture that we bought at Home Despot last week. It has two light settings, which is nice. The counter area under the cabinet, beside the fridge was a little dark. There was already a light under the cabinets on the other side. Unlike some other projects, this one was OK to take on at 9:30 at night. I did manage to drop one of the screws behind the refrigerator, which meant pulling out the fridge (and then cleaning behind it) which slightly lengthened the project. But not too much. And now, light! See how it shines on my cordless drill?

The painting is complete!

Here's the house with the door and everything done.