Dumpster Day

Remember a couple of months ago when we cleaned out our garage and it looked like this?

Well, here’s how it looked last weekend:

Somehow our gabage came back tenfold. And we accumulated a bunch of things that we’ve never owned before — a snow shovel, a wheelbarrow, a couple of Ariondack chairs that we need to store until spring.

That towering white thing in the middle? That’s our dishwasher stacked on top of our fugly old oven.

We like to utilize vertical storage space. There’s also a lawn mower, a weed whacker, another shovel — according to Bradley, one can never have too many shovels.

There’s an overabundance of recyclables because our town only collects recycling once a month. Annnnd they refuse to collect recycling if they think something isn’t sorted correctly. For the last 3 months, we’ve had a standoff with the recycling people because they think we don’t know the difference between glass beer bottles and aluminum cans. Currently the bane of our existence:

Aluminum bottles. Shaped like glass bottles. What is this world coming to?

They confuse the hell out of our recycling collection people. Because of those bottles, they’ve refused to pick up our recycling 3 months in a row. And we keep schlepping it back to the garage in hopes that they’ll figure it out. So far, no luck.

One the other side of the garage:

Piles of wood from past demolitions, an old ceiling fan, a moped and random cement supplies.

Our garage isn’t the only place we’ve been stashing garbage. We put a pile of wood from our dining room demolition under the hideous trellis in the back yard. Here’s Bradley digging them out from under a giant pile of leaves:

There is so much we hate about that trellis. It’s poorly built. It’s ugly. Its only purpose is to support the grape vine. That’s what all of those spidery branches are — they’re part of the grape vine that I was so geeked about when we first moved into the house. Fresh grapes! Stuffed grape leaves!

Turns out our grape vine doesn’t actually put out any grapes. And it’s the location of a ginormous ant hill. Most of the big branches are rotten and full of ants inside. Plus, it’s waaaaay too high-maintenance for us. Are you seeing that pile of leaves? Sorry neighbors. We’re way too busy sprucing up the inside of the house to rake leaves. The grape vine and its accompanying trellis had to go.

While Bradley sawed, I raked.

Jabba supervised:

She went to the vet earlier that day for her annual shots, and she had a horrible allergic reaction to them. Poor little peanut. We had to rush her back to the vet to get a shot of Benadryl. She spent the rest of the day wrapped up like a burrito where we could keep an eye on her.

Aside from a couple of trips to the vet, we spent the entire day loading our dumpster. We booked it for 2 weeks, but it took us one day to fill it up:

Here’s how the garage looks now:

Still a little messy, but at least it’s a contained mess. Most of which, by the way, is the recycling that just won’t go away.

The back of the house looks way less scary with the trellis gone:

We don’t miss the grape vine either:

We’re chomping at the bit to start renovating this part of the house. Right now it makes our house feel like a shanty. It’s an ugly tumor on the otherwise quaint old brick.

The window on the left is to the half-bath. The windows & door on the right are to the laundry room. We’re not really sure what’s going on with the mix-and-match siding:

And the contrasting stairs:

Either way, we won’t get too used to it. We plan on gut renovating those two rooms inside and out. New siding, new windows, and all. We’re counting down days until our self-imposed spending freeze is up. Then we’ll order supplies and get down to business.

We’ve been super busy at our casa — so busy that we’re really, really behind on posts. We’ll be back every day this week with updates. Promise. Stay tuned!

Blogging From The Flood Zone and How “A Cat Peed On My Drywall” Saved Our Basement

Hey, peeps! We’re not sure if we’ve ever mentioned it on the blog, but we live 6 short blocks away from the Susquehanna River. You know. The one that’s on the news right now for severe and record-breaking flash floods. Eeps!! In our area, the big emergency is that a part of that dike (aka the running trail Bradley and I love) has washed away. It’s not a good situation.

Before anyone panics (ahem, Bradley’s mom), we should go ahead and mention that we’re safe and sound in a very elevated area about 20 miles away from our house. We’re OK, really!

We were both at work in New York City, totally clueless about what was going on, when I received a text message from a new friend who lives a few blocks away (thank you, Jhane!). She let us know that our area was being evacuated and that roads would be shutting down soon. I called Bradley right away and we basically went into panic mode.

The smart thing to do would have been to say in NYC, but our cat was home alone. We knew we couldn’t live with ourselves if something happened to that cranky old turd, and we could have been stuck in NYC for up to a week due to road closures. So instead of doing the smart thing, we did what we thought was the right thing: we both left work early, jumped in the car and rushed home to rescue our feline friend. (Big thank you to our understanding bosses!)

When we got home, we noticed right away that there was a funky odor in the air. We ran to the basement to check out the situation below ground level and found this:

Sorry about the bad photo. We only had time for iPhonetography. That’s standing water in our basement. I guessed it was about 3 inches, but it went over Bradley’s ankles when he stood in it, so it was really more like 6 inches. We could hear it pouring in through the walls — literally the sound of a running faucet turned on high — and we flipped out.

We knew there was a sump pump in our basement (you can see it sticking up though the water on the top left hand side of the photo above), but we weren’t sure if it actually worked. It’s in a totally random location and there are no plug-ins anywhere near it. It’s been off ever since we got the house. Bradley ran an extension cord down to the basement, plugged in the pump and — yay! — it hummed and turned on. He ran the drain pipe outside, but it was pretty short. Still, it was pumping water out and that was better than nothing.

While the pump did it’s thang, we rushed upstairs to move everything from the first floor of the house up to the second floor. We’ve been complaining about being forced to live out of boxes, but they came in pretty handy last night. We just schlepped everything up to the guest bedroom — even the couch. The heavier stuff (like our brand new media cabinet and our bed) stayed downstairs, but we elevated them. We have a twin-sized daybed that was sitting in our dining room, and once we carried the mattress upstairs, we had a platform that we could stack a bunch of things on.

While we were carrying things upstairs, we couldn’t help but peek in the neighboring houses, and a lot of people were just hanging out and watching TV. We starting questioning whether we were overreacting. But, whatevs, this is our first flood. We took the paranoid first-time-homeowner route, and we don’t regret it.

After everything was off the floor, we went back downstairs to deal with the water pouring in through the walls. Once we took a look around, we could see that water was dripping in through several spots, but the faucet noise was coming from one dime-sized hole in the wall.

We had a quick brainstorm of all the things we could possibly shove in the hole to at least slow the water down. Cork from a wine bottle? Didn’t have one. A rag? Wouldn’t do much. Silicone? Not with the amount of water that was pouring in. And then, Bradley had it: “Rope!!” Uhhh, rope? “Didn’t you tell me that’s what shipbuilders use?” Oh. Em. Gee. YES. It is. Sorta.

A couple of weeks ago, I got all caught up with reading A Cat Peed On My Drywall, a renovation blog based in Nova Scotia. They mentioned an old shipbuilding technique for filling in gaps between wood planks — you just take a length of rope and shove it into the cracks. They were using it for insulating their cold wood floors, but I shared the post with Bradley because their floors ended up looking super cool.

Maybe it’s because I told Bradley it was a shipbuilding technique (he’s way into anything that involves building anything), but the whole stuff-rope-in-it thing stuck in his head. Standing there up to our ankles in mucky water, listening to the Niagara Falls version of basement leaks, it sounded like a really good idea. The rope would get wet and expand, which would at least slow the flow of water. It sounded logical in a crazy kinda way.

Bradley grabbed some rope, a hammer, and a fat nail. He used the hammer and nail to bang the rope into the hole. It took about 15 minutes and a lot more rope than we originally thought, but eventually, the water stopped. We were so geeked! Once it stopped, Bradley quickly applied a bunch of caulk around the area. We’re not sure if it’ll hold until the worst of the flood is over, but the rope is in there so tight that it’s not coming out for a while. And it’s better than nothing, right? (Thanks for giving us the idea ACPOMD! Love your blog, and a belated congrats on your pregnancy!)

Once the leak situation was under control, we went out to the garage and moved all of our building supplies and tools up to the garage attic. Everything that was too big to squeeze through the attic entry was raised up on cinder blocks.

The entire ordeal — getting everything moved upstairs, pumping the basement, sealing the leak, packing food and clothes for the evacuation — took about 5 hours. We decided not to wait until the morning to evacuate and left at 1am, exhausted, but feeling pretty good about all the prep work we did.

Even though the building we’re staying in is way above flood levels, they’re still expecting power outages in the area and the roads are shutting down. We woke up this morning and ran to pick up some rain boots for Bradley:

He was wading around in the nasty basement water in flip flops, and he was shivering from the cold the entire time. We figured we might as well get ‘em now, just in case.

Next stop was the grocery store where we stocked up on enough food to get us through a couple of days. We saw a lot of people stocking up on frozen foods, refrigerated goods and fresh meat. Super weird. We’re definitely not experts in emergency preparedness, but we thought we should get things that are shelf stable, just in case the power goes out. We grabbed some bread, crackers, peanut butter, canned beans, canned soup, brown rice and some fruits & veggies that don’t need refrigeration. We also grabbed one small package of chicken breast. If the power goes out, it won’t be a huge loss. We have access to a gas grill, so we’re all set. We also stocked up on bottled water and we have candles, lighters and flashlights ready to go.

After that, we hit up a cheap diner for a little pre-flood calorie-bomb action. Nothing says comfort food like breakfast for lunch:

L to R: pancakes, coffee, bacon, scrambled eggs. There was also some toast, but it hadn’t arrived yet. Best $11 we’ve spent in a long time…even though neither of us could actually finish that grotesque amount of food.

Now we’re both lounging around, waiting for the flooding to hurry up and happen.  And hurry up and end, hopefully. It’s the waiting around that’s driving us bananas. We’re not sure how long the evacuation will last, but we’re pretty sure we won’t be doing any renovating this weekend. We still have a ton of Labor Day weekend projects to share, though, so stay tuned for those. And if you’re in the flood area, stay safe and stay dry!

The outside of our house.

Our new camera finally arrived, and we didn’t waste any time putting it to use. We have a lot of pictures of the guest bedroom and hallway to share, but we’re still working on those posts. We didn’t get into Brooklyn until super late last night, and it’s been work-work-work ever since. Also, it turns out that writing about putting up sheetrock is as boring as actually putting up sheetrock. Yiish. Give us a couple of hours to work that one up.

In the meantime, we’d like to share with you the reasons we moved from Brooklyn to the middle-of-nowhere. A lot of our friends think we’re insane for moving to a small town, and double-insane for buying a fixer-upper. They they don’t understand why we would keep our NYC jobs and drive back 3 hours to sleep in a friend’s closet just to show up at the office 2 days a week.

We think this makes it all worthwhile:

We start seeing those rolling hills about an hour into our drive, and both of us get super excited.

By the time we get up into the hills, we’re in a completely different state of mind. We’ll roll down the window and breathe in the fresh air, and marvel in the greenness of everything. Everything is so lush.

Everything is so quaint and quiet.

Sorry. It’s quaint and quiet and cute. Did we mention there’s a trolley? Even the word itself is cute. Trolley — instant cuteness.

But the most important reason we moved out here is this:

The minute we saw her, we knew she was The One.

Sure, she needs a coat of paint, and we’re not crazy about the white screen door, but we still thought she was stately and classic. She had presence.

Even now that she’s all naked without her ivy.

Once we stepped inside and saw the original details, we were smitten. Check out the front door from the inside:

Ignore the pup. That 90lb attention-seeker isn’t ours. We were dog-sitting for a friend, and Paulie wouldn’t get out of my door shot no matter how nicely I asked. He’s pretty geeked about his 5 minutes of internet fame.

To give a frame of reference, those doors are so tall and neither of us can reach the latch up top to lock the door. I’m 5’5″ and Bradley’s 5’10″ (and Paulie’s a bit over 4′). We need a chair to get way up there:

It was love at first sight. And that, overly-judgmental friends, is why we became part-time New Yorkers and full-time small townie homeowners. For those of you who requested a peek at the outside of our house, we hope you enjoyed the pics. Coming up next: that brick wall we were exposing is done-zo and we have the before-and-afters to prove it!

Bye Bye, Brooklyn!

It’s official. We’ve leaving Brooklyn. And we’re not leaving it for Queens.

We love New York. We loathe New York. We think that makes us typical New Yorkers. For years, we took the good and overlooked the bad. We paid an absurd amount of rent to live in teeny-tiny apartments with absentee landlords. We ignored creepers on the subway. We attempted to sleep through police sirens and fighting couples and crying babies and car stereos. We were in a cycle of moving to a neighborhood, watching it become filled with annoying hipsters, and then moving to get away from them. Or we’d get really stressed out by our jobs and our lives, and we’d fly out to the Caribbean to unwind (only a 3 hour flight from NYC!). It was all worth it, because we love New York. And then one day, we were kinda over it.

It became harder and harder to justify the amount of rent we paid for an apartment that was literally falling apart around us. The creepers were suddenly everywhere and more annoying than ever. Our neighbors brought home a screaming newborn. Our ‘hood suddenly became the next hot thing, and all the annoying hipsters we had just moved away from were all over the place. We thought about going to the Caribbean again, but it seemed like a really temporary fix.

That’s when we decided to move. Bradley was already spending a few days a week in Pennsylvania for work, so we started looking for houses in the area. Luckily for us, we happened upon a fantastic realtor — Daniel Young at Century 21 Killian— and he nailed it. He had us at “It was built in 1881.”

We love the look of old brick houses with their tall ceilings and wood floors. A back yard was non-negotiable. We didn’t want a cookie cutter house in the ‘burbs. We’d rather have something with character, even if it means doing some serious remodeling work. So, most importantly, we wanted a killer deal.  The less the house cost, the more we could put into remodeling it.

Fast forward to a couple of months later, and we are the proud owners of a 130-year old fixer upper. She’s all brick, with tall ceilings and hardwood floors lurking underneath some really hideous carpet. There’s a small backyard, which is perfect for our small dog. She needs some serious work, but we’re up for the challenge. I’m predicting a lot of trips to Lowe’s in our future!