Merry Christmas!

Lucy slept through Christmas morning, which was just fine with us.

The Sufjan Stevens Christmas album has been getting lots of play around here. I'm partial to his version of "I Saw Three Ships", but I can't find a link to that online. Here's a nifty little animation of a different track:



I can also recommend this John Fahey Christmas album. There's not much Fahey Christmas on youtube (exception: a weird instructional video involving Auld Lang Syne), but here he is in 1978. You gotta love youtube.

Farm Theme!

We finally put up the blik decorations we got a while ago for Lucy's room. Her walls now feature chickens and sheep! We're not sure yet how she feels about them, but we sure do like them!

Long time, no blog

I haven't managed to blog in over a month, for reasons that can be summed up in one word: Lucy. I have her in the Baby Bjorn right now, where she's alternately sleeping and nursing. I'm taking a break from grading to do a long-awaited blog update.

Obviously, things around 83 Durant have changed enormously. Every room in the house is in complete disarray. We did manage to get a Christmas tree while Jessamy was visiting. It's pretty funny looking, but I like it.

In other repair news, we had to get a new kitchen faucet after my mom discovered a substantial leak running under the sink. We didn't know how old the faucet set was, so we ended up getting a new one installed (back on December 5th, for future reference). The faucet head pulls out to be a sprayer hose, a feature we like a lot.


We had another kitchen failure this week: the oven stopped working. We were a bit distressed by this, particularly when Jake discovered it when he was about to put a batch of cookies in the oven, and while we had a whole chicken in the fridge that we had planned to roast for dinner. The stove is pretty old, but we like it, and in any case, we weren't exactly prepared for such an expenditure or the researching of the right stove.



So we did the usual: turned to the internet. If you google "Magee Stove" you'll find very little useful information. You will find this hilarious link, which is to a letter to the editor of the MIT newspaper announcing the candidacy of a Magee stove for student body president. Follow the link -- it's really funny.

Jake thought this link from a do it yourself message board was promising, and he actually called a guy's home phone number to ask for help. Jake will hopefully fill in the details here about the exchange, but after a few back and forth phone calls, the guy talked Jake through how to fix the stove! It was awesome!

That's all for now. I imagine our home projects (and the blogging about them) will be slowing down. We'll try to keep getting the pictures up on Flickr for your enjoyment! Happy Holidays from 83 Durant!

Weather

Eating at home again

P1000899.JPG
Originally uploaded by Jake Bridge

We're all back at home today.

We bring you... Lucy!

Did I mention that we had a baby? Well, here's the official blog announcement.We had a baby! We had this baby! She's wonderful and healthy.

Lucy Margaret Bridge

Right now, Bridget and I are in Boston and Lucy's back in Lowell. This stinks. We're hoping they'll let us return to Lowell and Lucy tonight, but right now we just have to wait, and wait for the tests.

UPDATE: All is well! Bridget aced her blood test and is going back to Lowell.

Everybody's in good hands. The good folks at Saints are reportedly fighting over who gets to hold Lucy next. And they've set aside one of her blankets for us to take home to Carter so we can get him used to her scent.

Here are Lucy's stats: 8 lbs 6 oz, 20.5 inches, 3-0 2KO.

And here's some very early footage:





Mom, watch this only so many times. Sleeping's good for you.

Re-Arranging and Decorating

We got a lovely new piece of furniture for the pink room today -- a TV cabinet. Thanks, Tony & Stacy, for passing along this great piece! It does wonders at hiding the clutter of the TV-related stuff!

We moved things around a bit in the pink room to make it all work. Check out the room:

This is no doubt the last time it will be this neat, ever. As you can see, Carter is enjoying it all. He does seem a bit confused by all the activity around the house. Just wait til later this week, pup.

Here are a few more shots of the finished baby room. It too is probably the neatest it will ever be:



We'll let you know when there's something to know!

Decorating

Today we added a few special things to the baby's room. First, for something old: a mobile -- it happens to be the one from my own crib! I really love the retro plastic barnyard theme:

And here's the something new: this nifty cable wire setup from Ikea (it's called "Dignitet"). It will provide ample room for hanging artwork; for now it holds cards and some other decorations we're going to put on the wall eventually:

Countdown to New Arrival

We've had very little time to blog, or do much that's bloggable, lately. Our regular readers will want to know that we head to the hospital on Monday morning to start having the baby (no word yet from said baby on how soon he/she will arrive after that). We'll keep you posted. We're relieved to note that the room is ready for his/her arrival. Check out our crib:

And thank you to Tony, Stacy, Adelaide, Zoe, and Emma for passing it along to us!

Jake also got a Diaper Champ today -- someone had put it out for free and he spied it while walking Carter. Score! We love hand-me-down baby stuff!


UPDATE: We discovered the next day that the Diaper Champ came with an unexpected accessory: some dirty diapers. No kidding. So it got a thorough washing. I mean, it's going to be filled with dirty diapers eventually, but we thought we'd wait until they actually belonged to a resident of 83 Durant. No need to import dirty diapers.

We also got this nifty lamp at Target, since the only fixture we had was the overhead light.


So we're (mostly) ready for our new resident at 83 Durant.

Storm Door Installation

Today Jake installed the second of the two storm doors we bought at Lowes' a while back. It's on the door that leads from the pink room to the "L" porch. It looks great, and it seems like it went a lot more quickly than the previous one. Carter even helped with the installation, if by "help" you mean "took a nap on the instructions."



Now that the heat is on, this storm door should help keep us toasty and energy efficient!

Oh, and by the way, HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

New Room Available!

Guests now arriving at 83 Durant have the option of staying in our newest room!

Here's the area outside the closet, where we have the changing table. My Uncle Paul salvaged this from the Sudbury dump! Awesome!

The lovely blankets on top of the changing table right now are handmade gifts from Mary and Marlow. Thanks!

Here's inside the closet, where we've put a cheap-o cube shelving unit for now:


Here's the window and the curtains that Aunt Florrie made -- thanks Florrie!


My grandfather made the rocking horse for me, and the little rocking chair was mine, too.

We'll be getting the crib and a shelf up there in the next few days. We have a few decorating plans, too. It's so nice to have the room done before the impending arrival.

Here's a slideshow of this room's history.

Demolition in Progress
Originally uploaded by Bridget Marshall

New Additions and Status Update

No, not THAT new addition yet. But we did get our new glider/recliner, in preparation for the new addition to the family. It is wicked comfortable. Check it out:


In other news, there have been no further night-time noises from the critter, so we are hopeful that he/she has found a different home. We never got the traps out, but haven't heard any more signs since that one I mentioned in the last post.

We haven't posted much lately, as it has been a busy time. Jake has been working away in the bedroom, and I've been staying out due to the toxic mix of lead paint and new paint and whatever else is up there. But it's coming along and looking quite nice!
This is the area by the closet. You can see that it kinda looks like two different colors of yellow, but it's just the way the light is hitting it; it's really just one shade of yellow for the whole wall.

Here's the area by the entry door and built-in:

And here's the slanty ceiling/wall by the window:

Jake is up there right now painting the trim with glossy white paint.

Uninvited Critter(s)

We awoke at 4 am to hear a sound. There is something in the wall. Is it a flying squirrel? A mouse? Something even more scary?

It seems that it was either in the front wall of the house, or perhaps even under the floor of the second floor. It was scratch scratch scratching away. It makes me wonder if that busted electrical outlet was actually caused by some critter gnawing. Grrrrr.....

So today Jake will break out the traps and head to the attic. Stay tuned for more updates.

Electrifying Goodness

No big updates recently; our jobs and my exhaustion have kinda kept us from doing much around the house on the big projects (or from blogging about them). This week, we did have our next-door-neighbor, Lisa, the licenced electrician come by to fix some stuff for us. She has been great!
She re-installed the lighting fixtures in the baby's room, including the overhead light in the main room


and in the closet.

Let there be light! She also dealt with the electrical cord that was sticking out inside the built-in, as you can see in this before and after pair:


































We also had a new problem -- the one outlet on the front wall of our bedroom blew a month or so ago. It was the one we used to power our bedside lamps, alarm clocks, and the air conditioner (perhaps that's why it blew). It wasn't just a fuse or circuit-breaker issue; it seems that it was one of the outlets with older wiring, and somewhere along the line, the wire fried. Lisa couldn't find the specific spot (without, say, ripping apart all of the walls) so we decided to cover that outlet completely and have two brand new ones installed.
Here's the old one, covered up:

And here's one of the new ones:

These are heavy-duty receptacles, with 20-amp (instead of only 15-amp) service, so we're good to go for plugging in all our power tools and air conditioners and whatnot.

Putting in the new ones involved a lot of fancy professional electrician kinda stuff, so we were very pleased to have an expert. She set things up and strung new wires from the basement, up through the wall by the chimney, overhead through the attic, and then into nice new heavy-duty outlets in the bedroom (one for each side of the bed). It's great, and now we don't have to worry about plugging in the air conditioner. [On a side note, I cannot believe that we still need an air conditioner in October in Massachusetts!]

While in the basement, Lisa showed Jake some of the fascinating wiring in our house. Most of it is more recent, and all of it looked safe to her, but it's really quite the wiring museum down there. Jake has some pictures, and he can probably elaborate further on our little piece of electrical history.



Other than that, we need to get back to finishing the baby's room; that's on the list for next week. Jake has primed all the trim, and also painted the ceiling with the ceiling white color (it has a name, but I forget what it is. Weirdly, it's not just "white.") The room is looking a bit creepy right now, with white on every surface. It's like some weird optical illusion:

Update

Things have been busy around 83 Durant, and we haven't been able to make a lot of progress since our carpenter left. Jake has finished caulking holes and edges in the trim, and has mostly finished sanding the trim. I don't have any pictures, becuase it's really too toxic for me to go in there right now. Hopefully he'll be able to get some painting done this week, but it has been hard to fit in project time with our work schedules.

Jake switched out all the air vents on all the radiators in the house, so that's a nice thing to have done before the weather turns. The new vents should make things a bit more efficient and hopefully a little less bang-y. Now we're trying to figure out crafty things to do with the old vents.

Other than that, not much to report. I can't wait to get the baby's room finished so we can move all the baby stuff up there!

Baby Room Carpentry Complete!

We're thrilled to announce that our carpenter, Bill Champagne, finished up work on the baby's room today, and it looks great.

He put the door back on, so now it's a real room! We'll need to strip and paint it, but it fits nicely.


He put in some new red oak flooring in the area where the built-in once was. It's very nice. We just need to stain and varnish it.

He also dealt with the mess at the bottom of the original built-in, adding some baseboard and molding at the edges, and putting in plywood for the floor area inside the built-in.

And we're very pleased that he was able to restore the original built-in to its original glory, with new shelves and sturdy shelf brackets. This, too, will get a good paint job, and we're also going to ask our electrician friend if she can run the wires through the wall instead of through the built-in.


It was a tricky job at several spots, such as around the original trim of the window and door. Since the drywall is much thinner than the plaster and lathe, there was a big gap around the edges of the door and window frames. Bill fixed this with small pieces of wood. It looks great:


Here's the new piece of baseboard by the closet, including the base cap molding on top.


So now it's our turn. Remaining tasks:
--sand all the trim to get a smooth surface for painting
--paint the radiator
--paint the ceiling
--paint the walls
--paint the trim
--get electrical taken care of (overhead light and re-run built-in wire)
--move in all the baby's stuff (finally!)

And then we're ready!

Carpentry Madness!

This week our carpenter has been here working on a few jobs, including installing the trim for the bedroom. So far he has accomplished quite a lot! He has re-installed the original trim around the window:


He has replaced the large piece of baseboard that we busted when we were doing demolition:


He has also started on a promising solution for the mess where the built-in once was. He's going to put in some new flooring, and has already ripped out the bungled up old stuff. You can also see here that he is fixing the problem with the baseboard and molding around the bottom of the original built-in:

And here's the top of the old built-in:


He'll be back next week to continue the job. We're very pleased with his work!

Jake has also taken up carpentry, and is installing new storm doors. Here's the U-G-L-Y (and broken, and highly ineffective) storm door for the door off the kitchen:

Here's the inside view:

As you might be able to see, the lower window doesn't fit, and the thing is literally held together with tape. The latch handle is broken, and sometimes it doesn't stay shut. We also don't have any screens for it. It's time for an upgrade!

We ordered the doors (custom of course, nothing in this house this old can be found in a "standard" size) from Lowes during the Massachusetts tax holiday. Plus there's the energy-saving tax credit. Woo hoo! After some struggles (which perhaps he will detail here himself) we have a LOVELY storm door (in "cranberry") installed. It lets a lot of light (via the window) and air (via the screen) into the kitchen. And it should provide more energy efficiency for the winter.



Of course, the most important improvement, according to one of 83 Durant's residents is the Dog Visibility Factor (DVF). Carter is really enjoying being able to see in and out (the old door was too high for him).


The pink room has a door to the back porch that had no storm door at all. It was a serious point of cold air entry, as we discovered back during our infrared report. We have another door -- much like this one, but white instead of cranberry -- that Jake will install soon.