The Flowering of 83 Durant

There was once an ugly brown vine thing hanging over our fence. We thought about ripping it out, as it just looked like dead vine. But a neighbor said that it had lovely white flowers on it, so we left it to see what it would do. And there it is, with really spectacular white flowers blooming on it! They're covering the (otherwise rather ugly) fence, which is great. My aunt said that it's a clematis, and a well-established one.

After the forsythia bloomed all yellow and lovely, the color moved on to this next bush. We don't know what it is, but we like it:



We also noticed three green bushes with tiny white flowers on them. We wondered what they were, until a few days ago we noticed some interesting details. Check out the photo:


We think they're blueberries!! That would be awesome. (Feel free to comment if you think they're something else -- go ahead, crush our dreams of blueberries in our yard.)

Today I did a little bit of front yard clean-up and pruning while I waited for our roofer to stop by with an estimate for fixing our messed up gutter. He was across the street, giving an estimate to the agent of the people who want to buy the brown house directly across from us (where Dmitri and Junior and the duck live, sadly). He came over, as did the lady, and the lady said: "Our home inspector was here on Friday and pointed out some problems with the roof. Then he pointed to this roof (pointing to our house) and said THAT'S what a roof should look like." It was most gratifying to hear this.

Yard Work and Questions for Readers

Today we joined millions of Americans celebrating Memorial Day by doing yard work. We didn't do a lot, but we did accomplish a few things. I started by trying to mow the back yard. Here's the situation:


That grass is tall. Too tall, in fact, for our humble push mower. It couldn't do a thing. So we went to our friendly neighborhood Ace and bought a cheap weed eater.
It did the job.

We had one large, ugly pile of debris in the yard from the demolition of various fences. Jake split it up -- one pile for wood, one pile for metal, and also hacked down a fair amount of the wood to more reasonable sizes.

This brings us to READER QUESTION NUMBER ONE): How does one fix (or get fixed) the power cord to a power saw, if, say, one might have used said saw to cut through said power cord? Please feel free to suggest your answers in the comments. FYI, we are quite aware of the hilarity of this situation. And the danger.

So now we have two piles of junk. We're hoping to find a scrap metal/scrap wood place so we don't have to just throw them in the trash. The piles are now on the other side of the yard, and it's somewhat less unsightly. Here's a before and after:





Carter seems to enjoy this new spot, but he also seemed to enjoy crawling under the pile. We think he needs a doghouse, which perhaps we can make for him sometime.

Next problem: the hose by the garden (in front of the kitchen). It's a mess, as seen here:
And here is our solution:


The hose roll-up thing (with seat!) is a nice addition, but you might be wondering about that blue bucket. The problem is that the faucet drips. And it's this weird frost-free kind.

Which leads us to READER QUESTION NUMBER TWO) Does anyone know how to fix such a faucet? We can turn off the water from the inside. Jake tried turning that little screw in the center of the plastic handle, but it didn't seem to do anything other than hold on the label. It's a NIBCO Frost Free. (I'll try to get a better close-up image of it soon.) We're leaving it alone for now and hopefully the bucket will do its job.

And finally, here is our READER QUESTION NUMBER THREE) What should we do with these hydrangeas?

They are definitely getting new growth on the lower parts, but the woody stems look pretty ugly. Some of the old woody stems seem to have new buds and growth on them, while others seem thoroughly dead. Should we cut these off? Does anyone have any expert pruning advice for hydrangeas?

Finally, as an advance thank-you for all the thoroughly helpful comments I'm sure we're about to get, here is our 83 Durant Cute Overload photo:

Those are two of our neighbor kids and their duck. That's Dmitri, Junior, and Big Bird. Or, as we like to call them, Junior-Junior, Junior, and Junior Duck.

83 Durant Garden Party Edition

These awesome flowers have sprouted up in front of the house. When I was a kid, we called them gear shift knobs. I like them a lot.

We've just had a lovely weekend here at 83 Durant with many of our Western Mass friends coming out for a visit.

The garden is looking good. Check it out:


There are lot of little sprouts popping up. We decided that the large leafy thing that sprouted on its own was a weed (not rhubarb, as we had hoped) so Jess dispatched with it quickly, as seen here:


Here are some of the ladies relaxing under the deck. You can also see our two lovely hanging baskets, which we bought at the Northampton Farmer's Market.



We moved the grill to the front yard and had quite a lovely time -- thanks to all our guests!

Plumbing Project #3

Once again, we let the professionals do their thing. It seemed wise, given that this job involved a new hook-up to the drain system as well as soldering. Open sewers and open flames are two things I really don't think we want to try working on without proper supervision & heavy-duty "do-it-yourself" insurance.

The problem: the washer hookup


Our nice new washer was hooked up in a rather Rube Goldberg contraption sorta way. Check it out:

The series of hoses seemed ripe for bursting, and the drain into the sink was less than ideal.

WIth the expertise and kindness of My Reliable Plumber (that's really their name), we now have this:

I'm very pleased. The washer now sits in what was once the floor of a shower. It makes for a backup drain system, and also a much more stable floor (hence less vibrating) than where it was before.

83 Durant Garden Edition, Part Deux

Here you'll see a photo of our garden. If you click on the photo, you'll get to a flickr page where you can see the details of exactly what all is in there!

83 durant garden
Originally uploaded by Bridget Marshall.

We're excited to see how this goes and how much comes up. Jess has warned that we have an obscene number of tomato plants. I'm hoping to make a lot of tomato sauce and can and/or freeze it. I think we're going to buy a chest freezer for the basement. We've been needing a place to keep our chests.

83 Durant Special Garden Edition

Look, look, look at our glorious garden!!!

Today we had some wonderful help here at 83 Durant to create our garden! We're so grateful to Jess and Stephan for coming out from Northampton to show us how to do a garden up right.

First, there was the turning of the earth and the adding in of "Moo Doo." It was a dirty job, and the ladies had to do it.



Meanwhile, the gentlemen were out back, breaking stuff. Actually, it was stuff they intended to break. Jake and Stephan further demolished the ugly fence at the side of the house. Amazingly, there were no injuries.

Now there's a lot more light on the side of the house, and a lot less ugliness. There is, however, a rather large pile of formerly-fence stuff out in the back yard that we need to deal with.

The hostas are growing like mad. I am a little bit afraid of them.

What if they try to take over the world?

The boys also put in some great steps leading down from the garden to the rest of the yard. They look awesome.


This is the shopping cart we borrowed from the street. We find it hilarious.


We used it to transport the rather heavy slates to the lower area of the yard. It may be pressed into service in the basement in some manner; we're not sure what to do with it yet.

At Jess's suggestion, we'll be doing a regular 83 Durant Street Garden feature. Stay tuned. We'll fill you on on the details of what we planted after we get some rest.

Yard Luxuries

Today I came home to find that Jake had installed some lovely additions to our yard. Jake had set up a few of the solar-powered lights that we bought at Costco today. They're quite lovely:

The tulips have been popping up like mad, as have the other flowers. Such nice surprises. We have a bunch more of the lamps (15 total) to put all over the place.
He also hung the hammock (from Target) under the deck. It's an awesome spot:

Of course, a photo of an empty hammock doesn't really show the tremendous joy that such a thing brings. For that, I give you Carter in the hammock:

Peg Board!

Those of you familiar with my organizational urges will understand my JOY at the installation of our basement tool pegboard!

We actually relocated this piece of pegboard from its rather inaccessible location back in the furnace/hot water heater room. Now it's a lot easier and more useful, right above this bench where we do various tasks (mostly Jake works on bikes). I'm so pleased!

In other weekend updates, yesterday, while I was planting some grass seed in the front yard, a bunch of the neighborhood kids came by (as usual). This time, there was a new one, a little boy who told us his name was Joshua, and looked/sounded to be maybe 5 or 6 years old. Joshua was wearing a polo shirt and shorts, at least as well as I could see through the picket fence (he wasn't much taller than the fence). He informed me "I'm Superman!" and started shooting laser beams or something at me (I wasn't sure of the specific technology, only that it made the sound "bbbshew bbbbshew shew shew). Next thing I know, he is ripping off his clothes, proclaiming "I'm Superman!" and lo and behold, underneath his mild-mannered polo shirt, there was A SUPERMAN COSTUME. Seriously. He then ran down the street, perhaps to thwart evil in another yard. It was all pretty awesome. I'm hoping his super powers will help the grass grow.

Painting the house

Today we saved ourselves $1250 by working for about two hours. We opted to paint the new cedar shakes ourselves rather than having the roofing company do it. It really didn't take long at all.
Here's before:

And here's after:

(Yes, we do plan to remove the newspaper and painter's tape.)

Roof 2.0: the Saga Continues

Today the guys worked on the front door overhang roof. Once they got started, they realized it was a bigger job than they thought. The old (and non-functioning) wooden gutters AND the fascia boards were completely rotted through, so they had to rip them off completely.

What you see here is what the door overhang looked like AFTER we had it painted last October. While it looks pretty nice here, in truth, they painted and used a TON of caulk over some very rotted work. This is lame, and makes us even more annoyed with the painters we hired. At the very top, the nicely cut part that looks like moulding is actually a wooden gutter; you can even see a tiny tube on each side (back near the wall of the house) that was supposed to drain the water.

Sadly, all the nice trim (gutter) had to come off entirely. The guys said they had no idea how they could have made these wooden gutters back then -- all with handtools no less. Here's one of the wooden gutters after they pulled it off the house:


Wooden gutters look really great (when they're not rotten), but without proper care, they rot out completely.
After removing the gutters, they replaced the rotten fascia, put up a roof cover, and then added copper trim. Here it is now:

It looks pretty nice, and the copper trim matches what's around the flat roof and the ridge top on the slate roof. It still needs some paint a few touch-ups to make it look just right. We're sad that it doesn't have the nice trim, but the copper does look pretty good. There's also a rain diverter on top so that the water goes over the sides, not right in front of the door.

Here's the work-in-progress on the side of the house. There was once a wooden gutter here, and you can see that they've put on a new 8'X2' nailer board.


At the point where the flat roof meets the rest of the house, you can see this nifty little hole: exactly the sort of hole that would allow certain flying varmints easy access to the main part of the house while they came in from the protective cover of the rotten wooden gutter:

And here's the repair, as well as a nice shot of the copper!


Here's the work in progress on the front part of the flat roof, where it appears over the kitchen door. This is actually the one place where the wooden gutter was salvagable.


And here you can see it with the copper on, as well as a small fix to the wooden gutter -- the addition of a downspout. It turns out that the house and/or gutter has settled, and this end of the gutter is actually lower than the downspout a the other end, so water was just sitting here (hence, the rotting).


We also found out that on the back of the house, there were once two windows of the same size, whereas now we have one window (into the bathroom) that is smaller. I had wondered if there was a window there at all, so now we know.

Here's the look of the new shingles. They're not quite finished, but very close. They have been pre-primed, and we're going to paint them ourselves since this area is accessible. You can also see the copper trim around the window.


And check out the chimney flashing upgrade! It looks awesome!



And here's the damaged wooden gutter before:

And after the addition of a downspout so it will actually drain:


The guys will be back tomorrow for a few small tasks and cleanup; we're nearly done!

Roof 2.0

The roofers arrived at 8 am and set about making a lot of noise. They're ripping off the cedar shakes on the back of the house, and pulling up all the gravel and underlayment. In doing the latter, they discovered that the rotted out areas of fascia are actually old wooden gutters! Those places where we suspected the flying squirrels were entering the house, and where we stuffed a bunch of steel wool, were wooden gutters that had been covered over by the last roof job. This is interesting, in that it adds to the theory that all of the house was built at the same time, since the wooden gutters there match the wooden gutters on the front part of the house.

So here's some of the progress so far:
These shots show the windows and shingles and a bit of the gravel roof before:



And here they are now:


Here's the (recently repointed and capped) flat roof chimney before (also note in the right corner of the picture, you can see the wooden cabinet door (the previous owner's solution) toped with a bucket (our solution) covering a hole in the roof):

And after:


And here's the vent pipe from the downstairs bathroom before:

And after:


Here's a bigger shot of the roof surface:


And check this out:


Our roof is from Carlisle, Pennsylvania! My hometown!

Of course, there's more to be done. First of all, there's this mess:

And they have to put the metal drip edge around, and also take care of the front door overhang and bay window roof. But they did a lot of work in one day!