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!