Moments like this make it seem all worth while...

June 30-July 15, 2000

This years summer vacation. I drove up Saturday by my self. My girlfriend's family came up the day after. Her mother Fatima and father Joaquim, her sister Caçy and brother-in-law Mark, their children Marco and Miranda, Martin; Marco's friend and Jordan; my girlfriends nephew. I started work by tearing down the ceiling in the kitchen. There was a fiber tile ceiling nailed to furring strips of 6" wide tongue and groove boards  nailed over what appears to be the original plaster ceiling. The plaster was just a brown coat with wall paper adhered directly over it. No finish coat of plaster or paint. The original plaster seems to have a lot of sand in it, some animal hair, maybe horse and a little lime. By this point it is the consistency of pudding. It is very soft and crumbly. The ceiling plaster was not in too bad shape. We only knocked down about 4 square feet of it so we decided to leave it up there. The tongue and groove furring strips were just wide enough to allow mice free travel across the ceiling. The space between the fiber tiles and the old plaster  ceiling was filled with little nibbles of ceiling tile, mouse feces and saturated with mouse urine. The odor was over powering in the 80-85°F heat. I hope that they do not like the taste of sheetrock and the fact that the new ceiling will be screwed directly onto the old plaster will keep them out of the ceiling.

My girlfriend and her family arrived around 2:30 pm. My aunt thought they were late, but I know the way they travel. I thought they were right on time. I spent the rest of the day getting them settled in. My girlfriend made a slight mistake by pulling into the road works' oil yard which is about 600 feet up the road. There are a couple of weather beaten sheds there. I hear my girlfriend's parents were panicing before the mistake was explained to them. I wish I had thought of that. That's really funny!

The next morning we got up about 8:00 or 9:00 am and went to a breakfast at Martha's. After watching another performance of Marko, the remorseless eating machine, we drove by the Orne bridge on our way back. After dropping the rest of the family off at my Aunt's  house, Mark, Joaquim and I went back to my house to work. We finished the last of the demolition including removing the last of the ceiling furring strips. We removed the cabinet that was over the stove and the last piece of molding that was behind the cabinet. We also removed the masonite and the peg board that was behind the stove. The kitchen is basically 20'x12'. We figured that 5 sheets of 12'x4' 1/2" sheetrock would cover the ceiling. The original plan called for removing the paneling on the south wall of  the dining area and replacing it with sheetrock. We also planned to replace the short section of wall on the southern most part of the west wall. You remember, the wall that the plaster popped off of when the house was jacked up and leveled? We figured that that would take another 5 sheets of 1/2" 8'x4'.

After a little planning and decision meeting, we made our material lists and headed off to Pick~N~Shovel. Joaquim stayed behind to work on the electric while Mark and I went to buy the sheetrock. I was hoping that the 12' sheets would fit in the back of the Explorer and we could carry the 8' sheets on top of them. No such luck. The extra 4' of sheetrock would never make it in the back of the truck, so we had to tie the 12' sheet on top of the roof. That means that we had to make another trip for the 8' sheets. Oh, well, I guess we're lucky that the hardware store is only 10 minutes away. From about 12:00pm to about 5:00pm we got 3 of the 12'x4' sheets screwed up to the ceiling. Joaquim on a ladder on one side and me on a 5 gallon pail on the other and Mark running around sinking screws until the sheet would stay up by itself. We also managed to rough in the electric for the light fixture above the dining room table with a light switch near the door to the living room. Enough work done, we grabbed the family and went to Hidden Country for dinner.

The next morning we roughed in the electric for the ceiling fixture that is going to be over the kitchen area and we put a light switch near the door going to the garage. After we hung the rest of the ceiling sheetrock, Joaquim and I went back to Pick~N~Shovel while Mark stayed behind to demolish the south wall of the dining area. While Mark worked on the sheetrock, Joaquim worked on the electric and we all helped wherever it was needed. The final score is that in 1 1/2 days, we sheetrocked the entire ceiling, the entire south wall of the dinning area and about 10' of wall next to the door that goes to the living room. We got electric to the ceiling fixture over the dinning area with a wall switch next to the door to the living room and a ceiling fixture over the kitchen area with a wall switch next to the garage door. We also managed to get 120 volt power wired into 2 outlets in the base board in the living room between the two windows in the front of the house and in the outlet next to the front door. We also powered up the outlet under the picture window in the baseboard in the south wall of the dining area. Mark also managed to get 1 coat of spackle over the sheet rock. Not bad for about 12 hours worth of work.

That evening it was raining. I had hoped to celebrate 4th of July with my girlfriend's family and fireworks and a cannon salute. However, as the light started to fade, I took the boy's out shooting. Marco and Martin knew the drill, so I concentrated on teaching Jordan the basics of firearm safety and rimfire rifle marksmanship. I think overall he did the best. I know that he was right proud of the target. I sent him home with it to show it off. I hope he grabs the American Rifleman magazines I am sending to his brother. We'll make another fine upholder of our constitutional rights yet.

After they went home Tuesday morning, I took a good look at the remains of the plaster wall that was underneath the paneling behind the stove. It was wavy and loose. Underneath the peg board we found the remains of some kind of opening about 24"x24" just above the wainscotting. I made the command decision. I removed the old plaster down to the lath and decided to cover the entire wall from the edge of the garage door to behind the kitchen cabinets with sheetrock. This will also cover the "door to nowhere" that is in the corner of the kitchen and that is walled up on the garage side. I first had to remove the two layers of sheathing boards on the outside of the house, inside the garage. Once this was done, I had to chisel out some concrete that was poured as a sort of knee wall along side the house, inside the garage. Once that was done, I was able to force the door open and unscrew the hinges. That took me most of the day by myself. The next morning I removed the door jams and trim. I bought some 2"x4"s and some nails and reframed the opening. I resheathed the opening with some 3/4" exterior plywood I had left over from the bathroom floor and I covered the sheathing with some of the 1"x12" boards that I removed from the inside of the garage to get at the door. I stapled some fiberglas insulation in-between the studs in the old door opening and also into the 24"x24" opening that we exposed. I cut some sheetrock and covered the wall from the garage door to the corner next to the kitchen counter. That done, I also decided to fix the plaster that had popped off next to the front door in the living room.

All of this took several days. I spent the rest of the vacation in a misery of spackling, sanding, priming and painting. Overall the kitchen looks totally transformed. The only big goof-ups I know about are two of the seams in the ceiling. I may be able to fix them by resanding, and spackling.

I would like to especially thank Mark and Joaquim for helping me so much. Without their help, I would not have come even close to finishing the walls and ceiling in these two weeks. Thank you both for driving all that way to come up and for working so hard.

June 14-28, 2000

My mom and dad went up for two weeks to attend a ham radio field day.  They managed to get a switched 120 Volt outlet installed in the garage. They also replaced the broken window at the top of the stairs on the second floor.

Thanks guys!

May 19-21, 2000

Another great lost weekend up in the great white north. My girlfriend and I had a lovely ride up. You would think I would know just about all of the major ways up here by heart by now. I wanted to go up through Chimney Point and cut north from there and go through Burlington. Well, I got off of the New York through way too soon and found my self eventually on route 7 heading east, so I went through Bennington and Brattleboro. From there you can pick up US 91, the major highway that runs north and south through Vermont real easy. The only problem is that by the end of the trip after I spend 3 hours on the highway I get bleary and start to fall asleep. Going through Burlington, the last part of the trip is through little towns and curvy roads. Plenty there to keep you awake, bright eyed and bushy tailed.

Early the next morning we headed out  to a fine breakfast at Martha's Diner. We went to Ray's for a few groceries and went to pick up the mail. On our way to Irasburg, we went on Old Covered Bridge Road. There is a private covered bridge along that road that allows a local farmer to get to one of his fields. Well, there must have been 15 to 20 cars parked on the road with what looked to be about 40 people milling around, taking pictures of the bridge and sight seeing. On the cars there were magnetic signs that said, "Covered Bridge Society Safari." I had never heard of this group. I will have to look them up on Internet! On our way back home with the groceries we stopped by to sight see the new Orne covered bridge in Irasburg.We stopped by my Aunt's house and everything was fine.

I found the missing chimney cap to my house. It apparently blew off early last winter and landed in my back yard. It took half of the flue tile that extended above the top of the new chimney with it as well. We went to Pick~N~Shovel to get a hose type clamp to hold the whole thing together. While we were in Newport, we stopped into the Bogner Ski Outlet (which my girlfriend loves.) We browsed in some of the antique stores along Main Street. We also visited the Woodknot Bookstore (which I especially love.) If you are ever in Newport, Vermont, make a special trip to visit them. For a small bookstore in a town that is not too large, they have a wonderful selection. Their periodical selection is particularly good and their book selection is varied enough to keep just about everyone happy. Before we went home, we stopped at Tim and Doug's the ice cream stand just outside of the hardware store.

Back home again, my girlfriend weeded the front of the house and I tried to get the ride on lawn mower started. I have never tangled with this particular beast. When I talked to my Uncle it didn't seem too complicated. I checked the gas tank. Sure there was gas in it. I went to my Uncle's and borrowed his battery charge and charged the battery. I found the mower key in the kitchen and figured out how to use the new throttle cable that works backwards from the original one. I got the damn thing started and rode it down the drive way. The only thing I noticed was it seemed a little sluggish. Once I got it on the grass, I got about a quarter of the way around the lawn and all of the sudden I had to push this ride on mower to get it to move. By the time I got one circuit done around the front lawn it ran out of gas. Sure there was gas in the tank when I checked it. About an eighth of an inch. So I hopped into the car and drove down to Orleans to the Sunoco to fill up one of my gas cans. I got back and I filled the tank and I could not get the thing restarted. I gave up only when the battery  was so drained that it no longer cranked. As I started to push the mower up the driveway, I noticed that one of the rear wheels was flat. So only then did I figure out why it was not propelling itself. Well that was only about two thirds of the day wasted without much getting done.

While I was standing there talking to my girlfriend while she was weeding, (at least she was accomplishing something!) I saw a little black bear tear across the field about 600 feet behind the house! He seemed too big to be a cub, but he seemed real young. We didn't see a Mama bear any where abouts. We only saw him once, but we know he was around all day because we could watch people stop on route 14, back up and get out and point and stare. My girlfriend was amused to see that even up in Vermont, it was still quite an occasion to see a wild bear.

I gave up on the lawn and figured I might as well get the chimney cap back on. This way I can feel like I got something done. I glued the flue tile back together and clamped it with a couple of hose clamps. I tried to straighten the cap as best I could, but it still looks like hell after being all bent up after the fall.

The next morning I built a shutter for the downstairs window. I am worried about someone kicking it in and breaking and entering. Then we planted some sunflowers and daisies around the mail box. I peeled back the plastic I spread last year in the back yard and turned the soil over with a pitchfork. I tried to get the rototiller started that I brought from home. No luck. I guess this is not my week for small internal combustion engines. We planted some corn and some potatoes. We spread some mulch from the compost pile lightly around to try to suppress weeds without smothering the seedlings. I do not expect much to come from this garden this year. They are predicting a severe drought. Nobody will be there to water it and try to keep up with the weeds.

We didn't get out of there until after 12:30. That will have to do. My parents may come up in June. I am planning on coming up for the big BANG 4th of July. Maybe the corn will be as high as an elephant's eye! Ha! I crack me up.

President's Day weekend, February 17-24, 2000

Close enough, happy second year anniversary! Hardly seems like two years, but there it is. We've got a lot done, we have even more to do. I had a terrific ride up on Thursday. The sun was bright and it was warm enough. I went up through Burlington so I could stop at the Magic Hat Brewery and make a growler run. In case you don't know what a growler is, it is a half gallon jug. The price of a refill is only about $6.00US. Damn but don't they make a mighty fine brew. If you are ever in the neighbor hood, they are just south of Burlington on route 7. If you are heading north, they are on the left. I HIGHLY recommend it. When I arrived at the farm, the driveway was plowed just fine. It only took me about an hour to shovel out the pile of snow that was in front of the garage door. The snow pile was about 10 feet wide, 3 feet high and 6 feet across. The top snow was light and fluffy, but the deeper I dug down, the denser it got. Anyway, it was worth the effort, because for the first time, I pulled the car into the garage. While I was resting between shovelfuls, listening to the sound of my own heart beating and my heavy breathing, I could hear the gobble of a turkey far off. I didn't see them but I know they are around. I hope they are getting enough to eat what with all of this snow on the ground.

Friday, I got to do a little shopping. It has been at least a year, maybe two since I have had a chance to visit Simon the Tanner in Island Pond. I used the excuse that I had left my insulated boots at home. I've been wanting to buy a set of -40°F insulated boots. They were having a sale, so I bought a pair. Now I have no excuse to ever have cold feet in Vermont again! On the way back we stopped at Willey's general store in Greensboro. You have to love any store that sells hardware, food, beer and wine, sporting goods, appliances and clothing. They really have everything. As I walked past the gun rack, I had to do a double take. They had a Savage FCM-10 Scout rifle there. I would love to have one in .308. The one they had there was in 6mm x08. Maybe next time. On the way back we stopped at the Hardwick diner in (you guessed it) Hardwick. My mother wanted to eat in a restaurant across the street. I preferred the diner. By the time we left, she had to admit that she saw more people come into the diner than had gone into the restaurant. Well that just about wasted a whole day. Almost. Once I had the boots, I didn't have any excuse not to go shovel off the roof. With about 3 to 4 foot piled up on the roof of the porch and the shed addition out back, I thought that it would be good to remove it. The weather man predicted only 4-8 inches for the next couple of days but you cant trust the weather man to be even near right. I must admit that having been born in New Jersey and having lived there all my life this was a new experience for me. I've never had to shovel snow off of the roof before. I guess that it is just one of the little joys of living in the great white north.

While my mother, sister and my two nieces went antique shopping, I took the opportunity to finish up the last of the plumbing in the bathroom. I had to fix one small little screw-up in the cold water line going to the tub. With that little job out of the way, I installed the shower head and the brass shower curtain rod. (My girlfriend wants me to point out that the fancy brass hardware cost $580US and was bought just for her.) I now call the bathroom the 'Bathmahal'. I got the toilet and the shower stuff from Antique Bath and More. I have compared endlessly and these guys have the lowest prices I have found anywhere. Their product is as good and in the case of the high toilet tank, superior to everybody else. If you are looking for antique style bathroom hardware, look them up. I also got the door rehung between the bathroom and the kitchen. When my sister got home that evening, she assembled the cabinet and bookshelf unit I purchased from IKEA for the bathroom. It fits in there nice between the sink and the door to the hall way. While I was sitting on the toilet, I was looking at the inside of the old door in the bathroom. It was spotted with these little black spots. It made the door look gray instead of white. Similar spots covered the woodwork around the door, the wainscotting in the kitchen and the kitchen cabinets. I tried to sand the spots off while I had the door off of its hinges. It didn't seem to make any difference. I was sitting there thinking, that looks like mildew. I wonder what effect a little of my grandmother's cleaning fluid would have? I mixed up a little bleach with some water and tried sponging it on. Well, will wonders never cease? A little soaking and a little scrubbing and the woodwork appeared as good as new. I did the bathroom door on both sides, the kitchen cabinets, most of the wainscotting in the kitchen and the hall between the bathroom door and the door to the basement. Everything now is sparkling and white. It is amazing what someone will do for love. Here I am on my hands and knees, scrubbing woodwork.

While I was standing around with not too much else to do, I decided to get some electric outlets in the kitchen working. I am sick and tired of having everything in the kitchen plugged into one extension cord that my father retrieved from some construction dumpster. It should also aid the work in the kitchen I have planned for later this year. I ran a #12-3 wire from the breaker panel to under the kitchen. While I was trying to buy the wire in Pick~N~Shovel the guy grilled me about why I wanted 3 wire. I guess I don't look like I know sh*t from Shineola. I plan to run 220volts to the two outlets in the backsplash behind the counter and split it into 2 120volt/20amp outlets. You know, 220/221, whatever it takes. That should be enough to run the mixers, blenders microwaves etc. I refuse to live in a house like my father's where everything in the entire house in on two circuits. I found out that the existing wiring behind the counter is ungrounded 2 wire. I will have to replace it or pull a separate ground wire if I want to put in the ground fault protection outlets like I want to. I located the wire that ran up the side of the house, inside the garage that served an outlet near the back door. I removed the ungrounded fiber jacketed wire and replaced it with a piece of grounded Nomex. I also want to replace the piece coming  up from the basement with a grounded cable. That will have to wait until I have a little more help than my mother for the pull. I wire nutted all this together and the short story is that I have 3 outlets in the kitchen that are hot. None of them are properly grounded though. I will have to remedy that situation some time in the future.  For now I have the refrigerator moved to the wall next to the back door. That means that the side that the refrigerator door opens on now faces the right way, towards the sink and the future site of the oven. I then shoved the washer and dryer stack over, closer to the bathroom door. That means that once more you can look out of the pass through window from the kitchen through the living room and out the front picture window at all that lovely snow. Beautiful.

My mother bought an antique bed. It is a pine cannon ball bed. Not real fancy, just kind of plain like. It should fit in up at this old farm house real well. These old beds are held together with bolts. The side rails are mortised and tennioned into the posts that hold the head board. There is a hole bored down the center of the long axis of the bed rail. The bolts pass through the head board, into the rail. There is a nut mortised in the rail that the bolt threads into. This bed only had two problems. One is that the bolts are missing. The other problem is that these old beds are too short for a standard full size mattress. I guess that when every man made his own furniture, you went to the local black smith and bartered with him to make you a set of bolts. What this means is that you cannot walk into the local hardware store and just buy a bolt with a standard thread and expect it to fit. In this day and age, where in the world could I find antique bed bolts? Well, I typed in "bed bolt" into my favorite search engine: www.dogpile.com and found a company on the second hit. Horton's Brasses somewhere in Connecticut. My father and our next door neighbor Doug made new bed rails out of some pine 4"x4"s. They cut tenons in the end of them and made them long enough to fit a standard full size mattress. All I had to do was drill a hole down the center of the long axis of the bed rail and somehow mortise in the nut. Well, it wasn't easy, but several hours of swearin' and cussin' later, we had the job done. Did I say we? If it wasn't for my Uncle Bill and his idea of clamping an electric drill to the top of the work bench, I'd probably still be standing there looking at it, scratching my head.

Well that about wraps it up for this trip. With the bathroom substantially complete, ON TO THE KITCHEN!

Christmas, 1999

As we slide toward the quite and dark end of the year, I reckon it is time for a little quite contemplation. At the end of a second year of ownership here are some reflections. This year was planned as and ended up as the year of the bathroom. I started with the septic work at the beginning of the year, through the nightmare of the tile floor, the electrical work, the plumbing and finished with the installation of the monitored alarm system. Over all, the main goal for this year was accomplished. I now have a working toilet, tub and sink. Most of the carpentry work has been finished in there as well. I only have some small finish painting on the outside wall of the bathroom, installing the thresholds and rehanging the door between the kitchen and the bathroom left to do. Oh, yeah, my girlfriend Laurinda wants to remind all of us about the promised attached shower head and the shower curtain. I guess I'll just have to be doubly busy next year.

Any regrets for this last year? Well, I wish I had time to hook up the Franklin stove I have hanging around in the garage. I wish I had some time to rewire some more of the house electric. At least some basement lights and the outlets on the first floor would have been nice. I don't know where I could have squeezed this into the busy schedule.

I hope next year I can get a good start on the kitchen. I hope to refinish the floor, install a new counter top, refinish the cabinets, put up some kind of new ceiling, install a new propane stove, wire up some electric outlets that work, fix up some of the exterior carpentry problems I have around the house, paint the house and come to some kind of decision about the garage. Hmmm. I only have 20 days of vacation next year. Looks like I'll be contracting some of this work out.  

As always, I would like to thank my parents for all of their help this year. I would also like to thank my Aunt Barbara and Uncle Bill. They have made it so much easier to go up there and work. They have fed me countless times. Uncle Bill seems to have just about any tool I could possible want. He doesn't mind lending them to me. This has made my work up there much more productive. They also keep me supplied with a constant stream of The Chronicle. It is the local weekly newspaper of Orleans County. I would also like to thank Eugene Webster for putting in the septic system. I would like to thank all of the employees of the local hardware store up in Newport, Pick and Shovel. You people have always been extremely courteous and helpful no mater how stupid my questions or requests were. I would like to thank my cousin John for coming up for Thanksgiving. It was sure good to see you again. Be good down there and pass me another chipmunk, will you guys? I would like to thank my girlfriend's sister's family for taking the time and coming up in September. I am sorry that Mark couldn't be there. What do you guys say about President's day weekend next year? My Aunt and her family are going up to Jay Peak this year. Anybody up for ski-wee? Or is that ski-oui?

I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to Claude LaFleur. Bob Lawson pointed out your tree stand to my Uncle and he had removed it from my property before I realized that it was yours. Claude, I don't want you to take this as any indication that I don't want you hunting on my property. You have been the only person courteous enough to ask my permission to hunt. I want you to go right ahead and rebuild that tree stand. I have some exterior plywood in my garage left over from some floor work. See me if you want some of it.

I would also like to specially thank my girlfriend Laurinda. I know that you do not have the same special love in your heart for my little farmhouse in Vermont. However, without your constant support and guidance, I would not be able to continue to accomplish these wonderful things. I love you.

I would like to wish everyone a merry Christmas, a happy Hanukkah, happy holidays and a happy and prosperous New Year!  

November 22 to November 30, 1999

I spent another glorious week up in God's own country. I drove up Tuesday night in some of the thickest fog I have ever seen. There were times when I could only see 5 to 10 feet in front of the car. I was driving about 15 to 20 miles per hour, using the white and yellow road lines to stay on the road. Since I encountered this fog mostly in Vermont it was on some of the twisty and hillyest roads I know. All of a sudden I would hit a totally clear patch and was able to go the 50 mile an hour speed limit. That would last about 300 feet or so, then wham, into another thick patch of fog. It took me 9 hours to drive up. That is only about 1 and 1/2 hour above the usual time. I swore that this was the trip I was going to meet my first Vermont moose. Luckily I didn't. Who knows? I may even have been real close to one. I wouldn't know. The visibility was so poor; the only way I'd know is if I'd have hit him!

I spent the day Wednesday grocery shopping and laying out the plumbing work in the bathroom. I was going to spend Thanksgiving at my Aunt and Uncle's house. I wanted to bring something. I picked up the makings for Caçy's cranberry sauce and my Grandmother's stuffing. I whipped up the cranberries early in the morning so they could set-up. All you need is two large cans of whole cranberry sauce, one large can of sweetened crushed pineapple and about a cup of chopped walnuts. Mix the ingredients in a bowl and chill. Viola! Then I got down to bathroom work.

I started by working on the ceiling. This way I could move the tub around and use 5 gallon pails as stepping stools. I needed to put up some self adhesive strips where the thermo-vacuum molded plastic ceiling panels joined. These ceiling panels look just like a tin ceiling. (See: Snelling's Thermo-vac.) They weigh less, cost less and are much easier to work with. I started by running the strips along the long axis of the bathroom. Each strip was about 2 feet long and about 1 inch wide. After I got all of the strips running the long way, I had to cut about 1" off of each strip that ran along the short axis of the bathroom. I measured each strip and cut it with a pair of kitchen shears. It was very fussy, time consuming work. The only real trouble spots were along the walls where the ceiling panels met the corner molding. They recommend using filler panels where a complete tile will not fit up against the wall. Now I know why. It did not come out so bad. The pattern in the plastic tile was not so high a relief, and what gaps did exist, the strips fit into. The ceiling looks so good; I may scan a picture in at a later date and post it here.

After that, I tried to run a bead of silicon caulk along the floor where the wall met the top of the baseboard molding and where the bottom of the baseboard met the floor. Yet another reason to pick 12 inch by 12 inch quarry tile. The little fussy tiles with the little black diamonds made the floor joint impossible to make neat. The fact that the floor still sags about 3/8 of an inch in the middle also does not help a bit. Still, the worst of it will be behind the tub, so maybe my girlfriend's father won't notice so much!

My grandmother's stuffing recipe calls for about 10 White Castle hamburgers, a can of chicken broth, some celery, onion and garlic, some sage and thyme. I could only get cheese burgers in the Grand Union in Newport so I had to pick the cheese off of them. Cut each hamburger into 1/16ths. Mince the celery, onion and garlic and mix into the hamburgers. Add the can of chicken broth. Add sage and thyme to taste. I put the stuffing into two aluminum baking pans and put them in the fridge to bake latter.

That afternoon I went with my Aunt and Uncle to Burlington to pick up my cousin. His plane was arriving about 17:00 or so we thought. His plane from Boston was delayed and would not arrive until 19:00 or so. Well, since we were only about 15 minutes from the only Home Depot in Vermont, we made a quick stop. (Please don't tell my friends at Pick and Shovel!) Fortunately I picked up some drain 'O' ring kits. More on that latter. When we got back to the airport, his flight was delayed again. We went up to the old flight control tower, now an observation deck. Since it was night time by now, the view was tremendous. We could see a great view almost 360° around the Champlain River valley around Burlington. They have a speaker relaying some of the control tower and plane traffic. It was neat to hear the pilot on my cousin's plane and the tower talking. If you have some time to kill in the Burlington area, stop by the airport and check it out.

When we got back from the airport, I popped the stuffing into the oven to bake for about 45min to an hour. Well sort of. I don't have any electricity turned back on in the kitchen. Even if I did, the stove that was in the house is a total wreck. (How it could be any worse than the refrigerator that we do use, is beyond me.) Anyway, I got out my old Coleman (or as the Jamaican mover's call it the "Cold mon" stove) and the camp oven for it. My mother donated it to me from the days when we used to go camping a lot. It is just a collapsible sheet metal box with a door and a thermometer. You slap it on top of the stove and regulate the temperature by the height of the flame. After playing with the flame adjustment for about a half hour, I got the thing to steady out at about 350 to 375°F. 45 minutes to an hour latter, Viola! The stuffing, she is served.

Thursday morning I went back to work. I laid out the location for the fill lines for the tub. I didn't have a 3/4 inch hole saw. So, I chiseled out the holes in the tile using a nail set to chip a nick in the tile. Then I used the largest carbide tipped ceramic drill bit I had. Then I used a cold steel chisel to widen the hole in the tile to about 3/4 inch. Then I drilled through the wooden part of the floor using a 3/8 inch drill bit. I then used a wood chisel to widen the hole in the wood. Finally I used a Surform wallboard rasp to enlarge the holes to 3/4 inch. Only took me about 1 or 2 hours longer than it should have. About that time my Aunt called up and said that Thanksgiving dinner was ready.

I grabbed my cranberry sauce and my stuffing and headed on over to her house. I also rounded up a can of those wonderful Portuguese black olives. I also had to have a jar of those dear little sweet pickles my grandmother was so fond of serving for Thanksgiving. Needless to say, my Aunt's dinner was magnificent. She bartered with a local farmer for a fresh killed turkey. The turkey departed this world about 10:00 the day before and was delivered about one hour later. Afterwards, we all retired to the family room and relaxed in front of the Franklin stove. My Uncle put Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant" on the stereo and we all listened to it. Ah, it doesn't get any better than that. Earlier that day, or maybe it was the day before, I heard Arlo on the only good radio station up there, WVPR. That is the local national public radio outlet. Arlo was telling how he had gone back to Coney Island, where he had lived as a child. As he walked by the merry-go-round, it started to run. The song it was playing was "This Land", a song written by his father. He reckoned that there would be nothing that would make his father happier than to here that song played on the merry-go-round. Ah, truly a moment.

Friday morning I jockeyed the tub into position. It was still on the furniture dolly. I eyeballed the positions for the ceramic disks that go under the feet. I glued them down to the floor with some silicon caulk. Then I tried to pipe up the drain tailpiece. While I was still down in New Jersey, I tried to buy the pipe that goes down from the tub though the floor. When my parents bought the tub, it came with the drainpipe, the overflow and the brass tee. The tailpiece was missing. I bought a 1 1/2 inch chrome plated one. It looked too big. I bought a 1 1/4 inch one and it looked too small. I guess I should have measured the damn thing when I was up there. As it turned out, the pipe and tee on the tube was in fact smaller than 1 1/2 inch and larger than 1 1/4 inch. Damn, I called it 400 miles away. Anyway, I used the 1 1/4 inch solder tailpiece extension to go from the tee down though the floor. It had a slight swell that I put inside the tee. I still needed the 'O' ring kit I picked up from Home Depot to make the thing watertight. What happened to the 1 1/2 inch tailpiece extension? It didn't go to waste. I needed it to go from the other end of the trap to the waste line going to the septic system. My Grandfather had a saying, "No amount of planning beats pure dumb luck." By carefully rocking the tub, I was able to get the dolly out from under it all by my self.

By Saturday, all I had to do was mount the faucet and pipe the fill lines from the tub. Whoever had owned the tub previously had covered the faucet and overflow holes in the tub with a triangular stainless steel plate. When we removed the plate, we saw why. The enamel had been chipped away for about one inch around the hole for the cold water faucet. When the hack plumber drilled the holes in the stainless steel plate, they don't seem to have bothered to measure the locations for the matching holes on the tub. A real bad job, even by my lax standards. I guess that at some time in the future, I will try to patch up the chipped enamel with some Bondo body filler and spray paint the repair with white enamel paint. It will be under the flange on the cold water faucet and that should look a little better than the steel plate. Anyway the tub and the faucet only cost $100 and I don't want to spend too much money. The original faucets had 1/2 inch NPT close nipples on the back to mount the faucet on the tub. Whatever nuts were on those nipples were gone by now. I gave a quick phone call to my father (the Shaolin plumber.) He suggested using some spider nuts from a 1/2 inch electrical conduit connector. They fit the large part of the tapered nipple, but they were too small to cover the hole in the tub. I was also concerned about the steel nuts, the cast iron tub and the brass nipples bi-metalicly corroding. What to do? While I was out in the garage, I was looking at the pile of broken cast iron pipe and some of the fixtures we removed from the bathroom. There on top of the pile was the old steel sink with the faucet. Right there on the old faucet were two lengths of 1/2 inch straight threaded brass pipe and two plastic basin nuts. Perfect! I sprayed a little Liquid Wrench on the nuts and pipe. I backed the plastic nuts off of the faucet and removed it from the sink. I hacksawed off the two pipes from the bottom of the faucet and filed them down a bit to remove the burrs. Wonderful. A little Teflon tape and the towel padded jaws of a pair of vice-grips later, and the faucet was mounted on the tub.

Saturday morning it was raining and I could hear rain water cascading off of the roof and splashing in the back of the house. I quick got dressed and ran outside. Sure enough, the water was coming off of the roof of the house in the back. I couldn't bear to get the ladder out and clean gutters in the rain so I waited. A little after lunch the sun came out and my nephew Christopher came over and helped me. We got the ladders out and climbed up on the roof of the first floor bedroom. Sure enough, the gutters in the back of the house were clogged with leaves and tons of roof gravel. We scooped as much out as we could with our hands. After that we ran a hose out from the basement and up to the gutters. We flushed as much of the debris out as we could. I took a quick peak in the gutters in the front of the house. Nothing. Not a leaf, only a couple of grains of roof gravel. Go figure. Anyway, thanks Chris for the help. It means more to me than you know.

I put some Teflon tape on the 5 inch nipples I had bought in New Jersey and carefully wrenched them into the fancy brass shut off valves I had ordered with the extra fancy brass plated fill lines. I shoved them through the fancy brass high escutcheons that came with the set and put the assemblies through the holes in the floors. A  couple of pipe trimmings later and I had the fill lines completed from the faucet down through the bathroom floor. Enough for one day, I went to bed!

Sometime on Sunday I tackled the last major part of the bathroom job. I finished the hot and cold water plumbing. When we roughed in the main piping, we put the cold water pipe higher than the hot water pipe. The way the tub sits in relation to the main piping it just so happens that the cold water line has to cross the hot water line. I didn't have enough 45° elbows and there was a union in the way on the 3/4 inch hot water main pipe. All of this combined to make the piping job in the basement look real bad. What to you want? I am not the Shaolin plumber after all. I am only a little flusher. While the plumbing in the basement may look like hell, at least it held water and didn't leak! I quickly gathered up my tools and ran up stairs. I grabbed the door for the bathroom (there are two, one on each end) and leaned it up against the doorframe. Hmmm. Since I added almost 2 inches of thickness to the floor, it looks like I'll have to trim a little off of the bottom of the door. Since the kitchen counter extends into the doorframe a little, that door has no choice but to open into the bathroom. I scrubbed the tub down, grabbed the soap and a towel and headed for my first bath in the new the tub. Let me tell you. I have not had a comfortable, relaxing bath like that since my grandmother sold her old house in Irvington, New Jersey. I turned up the heat, turned off the lights and lit a few candles. Absolute heaven. It was only about 10 minutes into this thoroughly relaxing experience that I remembered to worry, "What about all the weight?" The 500 pound tub, all that water and not to mention my own fat self (hey!). Not to worry. The floor didn't sag at all. It didn't creak and no tiles popped off. It was with relief that I realized that, "Hey, I'm still on the first floor! I didn't fall through to the basement!" Wonders never cease.

There was still time left Sunday evening to take a trip to Burlington to eat out. There was a little confusion about my cousin's flight back home. The original plan was to go to dinner on the way to drop him off at the airport. When he called to confirm his flight, he realized that it was not until Monday morning. We decided to go anyway. On the way there, we stopped at one of the happiest places on earth: The Magic Hat Brewery. We picked up a bunch of growlers. Growlers are 1/2 gallon jugs of beer for about $6.00. Hmmm, Number Nine. Life is too short not to drink strange brew.

When Monday morning rolled around, I had to run some errands. I needed to run down to the bank in Barton and pay my mortgage. I than had to run up to the bank in Newport to make a deposit in my checking account. After that, I went out back and pulled up poplar tree saplings out of the ground around the back of the house. These are trees that sprung up from the roots of the trees that were cut down and bulldozed when my contractor regraded around the house last year. Some of these saplings were taller than me. Some of the roots I pulled out of the ground were over 20 feet long. One root was over 2 inches in diameter. There were several root balls the size of footballs around the well head. I spent several hours doing this and by the time I was finished, I had a pile 4 feet in diameter and 2 to 3 feet high. I decided that if I just left the roots in a pile on the ground, wherever a root touched soil, I would have new poplar trees. I decide to burn the lot. While I was at it, I managed to get rid of the last of the old paneling from the bathroom. While I was watching the fire, I microwaved some left over lasagna and grabbed some Catamount Brewery beers. I enjoyed the light snow falling while I warmed myself by the fire. While I waited for the fire to burn down, I got out the battery powered drill and removed the barn door lock hasp from the outside of the garage door. Since I contracted to have a monitored alarm system installed, you can no longer enter the house through the garage. I drilled two holes through the sheet metal garage door track so I could put two Master locks through them. That should keep the amateurs out.

I also had to go pay to register my land as posted. You know, no trespassing, no hunting, no fishing, no trapping, etc. While I was talking to the town clerk, she asked me if I knew that the new covered bridge ribbon cutting ceremony was that afternoon at 1600. A couple of years ago, some local boys had burned down the old  Orne covered bridge the night before Halloween. Well, the grand opening was that evening and the governor would be there. I couldn't resist. I told my Aunt and Uncle and we all went. There were about 50 to 75 people there. School kids, town select men, a couple of near by landowners with signs saying that the ski mobile trail on their land was now closed due to Act 60. A television crew was there, as well as reporters from the local newspapers. There were cider and doughnuts, and the governor gave a little speech. I enjoyed the feeling of a sense of community there even though I am a "flatlander". A slightly negative term applied to anybody not born in Vermont.

Well that about completes the bathroom work for this year. I have some very minor trim painting left to do on the wall opposite the tub. I have to install the thresholds and rehang the door leading into the kitchen. I guess that will not get done until the next millennium though.

August 24 to September 7, 1999

Why that's almost 3 whole weeks! Where to begin? Well, I came up with my girlfriend's sister, Caçy and her family. My girlfriend's brother in-law (the carpenter) couldn't make it up, but he sent the rest of the family anyway. We had a grand ole time tearing around the northeast kingdom. We got to go over to my favorite restaurant, Hidden Country over in Lowell. I also got to take my girlfriend's nephew, Marco and his friend Martin shooting in the back yard. I'll make 2nd Amendment supporters out of 'em yet.

As far as the house goes, more bathroom work. We started by wiring up a ceiling fixture into the center of the bathroom. The existing fixture was a little off center. The original fixture also had a pull chain switch. I wanted a 3-way switch setup, one switch on each bathroom door, both of which would switch the ceiling light. Not exactly rocket science. The only problem is that we couldn't find the feed for the existing circuit in the basement. We ended up pulling up a new wire from the basement, through the sidewall of the bathroom, through the new wall switch, and up into the existing ceiling. From there, we fished a three-wire cable above the existing fiber tile ceiling to the lighting fixture. Then from the fixture, we fished the three wire over the existing ceiling, and down the other wall to the other switch. I had brought a fixture I found in Home Depot up with me. Before that could be permanently mounted, we had to put up the new ceiling. First we screwed some sheetrock over the existing ceiling. The fiber tiles were sagging and we had made some holes to pull the wiring through. The sheetrock also gave us a nice level, clean surface to glue the new ceiling to. I chose some plastic vacuum-formed panels that look like tin ceiling panels. I found these on internet at Snelling's Thermo-vac. Their office number is (318) 929-7398, fax is (318) 929-3923. Mailing address is PO Box 210, Blanchard, LA 71009. We glued the plastic ceiling tiles up and put a row of nails around the outside. The only problem is that the panels are not exactly square. There is a little gap-o-sis around the edges. They sell some self-adhesive strips that will hide the slight gaps. I guess I will have to pick some up.

Before we could proceed, we had to put a light above the bathroom medicine cabinet. My mother found the medicine cabinet in an antique store for $30. It had two coats of paint, one black and then a white coat on top of that. My father stripped the paint off and refinished the whole thing. It has a mirror on the front, and the top of the mirror is arched. The mirror is also beveled around the outside. It is truly magnificent. The whole problem was where were we going to get the electrical feed for the light fixture, and where were we going to put the switch? In our haste last year, we had already paneled the wall behind the bathroom sink. Well, we had to regress a little, and we had to remove the paneling behind the sink. This let us run the wire up from the basement, to a new switch in the wall above the sink and under the medicine cabinet and up to the light. We went out to the local electrical supply to buy a light fixture. The only one they had that would match the ceiling fixture was $112. We bought it and when we got it home, not only was it a piece of junk, it was broken. On our way back from returning it, we stopped at the Newport Liquidation Center. We found a fixture for $15 and two shades for $5 each. For a fraction of the price, I had a fixture that would work, it looks good and I guess we helped out the local economy. Everybody made out.

Once that was done, we finished the last two or three pieces of paneling. When the paneling was finished, we then spent 3 or 4 days of painting nightmare. Two primer coats and two or three finish coats. Since I thought it would be a good idea to use T-11 textured plywood, to make the upper walls look like tongue and groove paneling, the painting was a pain. The texture in the plywood was difficult to get completely covered with the paint. With a 3/4" nap roller, we eventually got it. After the paint dried, we started to mount the wainscot paneling. Another great idea on my part. (I seem to be full of them.) Funny thing is there is real pine wainscot underneath all this. It was nothing real special, just pine boards. I would have had to strip about 90 layers of paint off of them and they didn't seem to be in real great shape to anyway. So I put up some birch wainscot paneling over the T-11 plywood. The paneling I chose was not finished, so it had to be primed and painted as well. Once the entire room was paneled, we started the trim work. I chose simple 1x8s for the baseboard molding. This is what was used through out the rest of the house, this was real easy to work with and readily available at the local hardware store, Pick and Shovel. I can't sing their praises loudly enough. If a Home Depot ever opens up near there and puts them out of business, I'll cry. I had already bought the chair rail for the top of the wainscoting. It was some kind of strange almost Styrofoam like substance. It was real easy to work with, but I can already see that it is a little fragile. I dropped a screwdriver that hit the chair rail, and it left a dent. Damn, where is that bucket of spackle? We also bought the cornice molding and some 3/4" quarter round for the corners of the paneling. I got quite good at making 45° angle miter cuts, and coping them out for the inside corner miters. Once all the trim was up, we counter sunk the nails, and got out the bucket of spackle to hide a multitude of sins. Bob Villa I am not. I'll tell you something for nothing, if it wasn't for my Uncle Bill, I'd probably still be there trying to figure out the trim work. Thanks for the help Bill.

Once that was done, it was down into the basement to finish the plumbing. We had a slight misunderstanding with Eugene, my contractor. Apparently the old septic tank was left as a dry well for the gray water. We faced several problems here. We had demolished the old cast iron waste line flush with the basement wall. As luck would have it, there was a bell end of the pipe right at the wall. All we had to do was melt out the lead and pick out the oakum. A rubber bungee from Pick and Shovel and we had a 3" PVC pipe back in there. Then we had to figure out a way to tie a vent line into the new septic system and the old one at the same time. We had removed the existing cast-iron pipe up to about 9 inches from the ceiling on the first floor. My father wanted to put a T-wye in the bathroom and another pipe to go down, through another hole in the bathroom floor. Not only would it require damaging the floor I worked so hard on, it would have to be boxed in. That would complicate the carpentry work and the trim work. We settled on a 3" saddle into the 4" vent line. All this had to fit between the bathroom floor and the waste pipe, about two feet of space. If the septic tank ever backs up solid, black water will be able to flow up the vent and into the old septic system. It would be possible, but is it probable? I hope not. With that out of the way, we roughed out the toilet waste pipe and the waste pipe for the tub. My father was worried about not having enough water with only the toilet going to the septic tank. So we piped the toilet, bathroom sink and the tub into the new septic tank. That leaves the kitchen sink and the washing machine going into the old septic system. We spent a seemingly endless time measuring, cutting 4" PVC pipe, gluing and holding. We then had to figure out how to mount the traps for the tub and the bathroom sink. Since the tub is an old claw foot tube, the drainpipe goes down through the floor, there is really no way to P trap it. The sink is a pedestal sink and we had no way to get its drainpipe into the exterior wall, so we had to run a waste pipe down, through the pedestal. I will not describe the series of fittings we had to come up with to adapt the PVC S traps to the waste systems. Suffice it to say that it is not to any code. After this my father finished the fill line to the toilet. We had to get a wax ring from Pick and Shovel and then we set the toilet. We attached all of the toilet brass pipes, the fill and flush lines. We were all ready for the first flush, but we still had to finish the bathroom sink before we could turn the water back on. By this point my father was getting cranky so he took my nieces, Karen and Katie out the amusement park.

While he as out, I finished the hot and cold supply lines to the bathroom sink. Again, we couldn't get any water lines in the exterior wall of the bathroom, so I used four foot long armored speedy connections (normally used for dishwashers) to get the supply lines from the basement, up through the pedestal and to the sink faucets. I had to replace the drain and stopper mechanism in the sink. About the time I was putting the faucets back on the sink, my father returned. I got some expert advice on how to position the handles on the sink. They are quarter turn washerless faucets. It is a three-piece unit. I got the sink and the faucets from my Aunt and Uncle. The person who had originally mounted the faucets did a strange job of it and had kinked one of the flexible lines between the cold water faucet and the spout. With a little rearrangement of parts, I was able to get it all to work. I then got more expert advice on how to attach the sink to the wall. I had originally wanted to put a couple of toggle bolts with fender washers through the wall. My father said that he would use a couple of large wood screws. The only problem is that there was only two inches of room under the sink to swing the screwdriver and the screw. As luck would have it, I had gotten a give-away screwdriver at a trade show last year. It was a very stout little stubby screwdriver. With an adjustable crescent wrench on the flat part of the shaft, I was able to drive the wood screws into the wall. It only took me about one half hour for each one though. Once all the connections were tight, we turned the water on, hung the chain on the high tank, and oohed and ahhed over the first flush. We were only about 3 or 4 days late for the Newport street festival chile cookout. I wanted to have it done in time for the cookout, have the family eat a bunch of chile, and then give the toilet a good work out. Maybe next year. Later that evening my nieces, Karen and Katie came over for the treat of listening to what they called the 'Royal' flush. (With no television, you have to take your entertainment where you can get it.)

What else did we get done on the house these last few weeks? Well my Uncle had a concrete walk poured around his pool. I told him that he could dump the gravel from the excavation in my driveway. They dumped it into a pile at the end of the driveway. Since Marco and Martin didn't want to go shopping with Caçy , They were just sittin' around the house. Well, idle hands do the work of the devil. I coerced them to spread the gravel with shovels, rakes and a wheelbarrow. Much to their credit, they really pitched in and did a fantastic job. As a reward, we went out back and shot a reproduction .58 Cal. 1841 rifled musket and a reproduction .44 Cal. 3rd model dragoon revolver. Black powder is so much fun. All that smoke, dirt and grease, and the smell! Anyway, back to work. My Aunt and Uncle also volunteered to cut the grass. We had spread some seed around the house on several previous trips. The yard is really starting to shape up. It almost is beginning to look like someone lives here!

I also took two days and went up the property and removed a tree stand that someone took it upon themselves to build on my property. I first thought that it was a stand to hunt deer. However, there were no clear fields of fire, and the thing was too huge to be a hunting stand. It was two stories tall and covered an area of 3 sheets of 4'x8' plywood. By this point, I was all alone. I brought my tools and my camping gear with me and spent the night out camping. Of course it had been clear and bright for two weeks prior, so it just had to rain. It was a light drizzle though. I couldn't ask for better. I used a two-ton ratchet  hoist and a 4000-pound tow chain to pull this damn thing apart. The squatters had erected this monstrosity in the heart of a stand of young cedar trees. The Philistines. The trees were small so the were just bending, I had to pull the logs nailed to the living trees with the hoist and then climb up and use a sledge hammer to loosen the nails. Most of this thing was nailed together with spikes that were 3/8" in diameter and about 1 1/2 foot long. It only took me about 18 hours to complete the demolition myself. 

In the final analysis however, we accomplished the primary goal for this year. The flush toilet is completed. We only have some minor painting left to do in the bathroom. I need to put self-adhesive strips on the ceiling and I need to finish the tub plumbing. I still have 3 days vacation that I hope to take around Thanksgiving. That should be plenty of time!

Fourth of July week, 1999

The company I work for went berserk and gave us 5 days off around 4th of July. You better bet I went up to the house for a week. The main goal was to get the bathroom tile floor laid. I spent about 4 hours laying out the work. By the end of the first day, I had about 10 square feet of tile laid. Of course the tile I had to pick was 3" white octagons with little 1" black diamonds in the corners. Very pretty, a real bitch to lay. My father who said, "Don't put down vinyl, tile looks so much better." He picked a good trip to miss. He stayed home. By the end of the second day, I had all of the full sheets of tile laid. We spent the entire next day laying the partial sheets, and cutting and fitting the partial tiles around the walls and the plumbing rough in holes. Of course, the weather was about 90°F with a dewpoint about 70°F! Water was running off of everything down in the basement. I guess I'll have to get a dehumidifier for the summer months.

We had about a day to kill, while we waited for the mortar to cure. Not to worry, off to the back yard for a little target shooting. We hauled a .22 Cal. rimfire rifle out back and taught my nephew Christopher to shoot a little. Like a curse, the weather caught up with us after lunch and thunderstorms put an end to the shooting. We took advantage of the break to then teach Christopher how to clean the rifle he had just shot. That evening, we went to my second favorite restaurant. Ever since February, I have been craving to go there. The place is called Hidden Country, over Mount Ira from the town I live in, in Lowell. I don't really like to order prime rib when I go out. What you usually get resembles dry roast beef. The prime rib there is better then fillet mignon at other restaurants. Very lean, tender, it is just to die for. That night, from about 0330 to about 0430, there was the worst thunderstorm I ever witnessed. The lightning bolts were continuous for that hour. The bolts jumped from cloud to cloud. The eerie thing about it was there was not much thunder. The small tree that you could see from out of the picture window in the living room was bent just about horizontal to the ground with the gusts of wind. You could not see across the valley to the mountains on the other side because of the rain. A very impressive display.

The next morning, we were grouting bright and early. Because of the octagons and diamonds, the grouting was a real pain. I really have to thank my Mom for helping with the tile and the grout. I know your back wasn't right for weeks after that. Your help really meant the difference between only finishing half of the tile and completing the job in five days. Some of the other things we completed were ordered a new mattress and a bed rail. Couldn't fit the full size box spring up the living room stairs. I think we maybe able to enlarge the garage stair opening and fit it up that way. Finally got the lightning rod ball on the garage lightning rod. I also fixed the damaged ground wire with a butt splice. That finishes the lightning rod work. I also got a chimney cover on the new chimney. I still need to get some kind of cover on the old chimney. I will have to get something made up, because it is a large brick flue and is not a standard size flue tile. I put down four concrete pavers in the back yard. On top of those, I put two cinder blocks. I bought a two foot square piece of 3/4" expanded metal lath and put that on top of the concrete blocks. On top of the lath I put a 55-gal drum, with no top and no bottom. This is my new trash incinerator. With a load of paper, cardboard and wood scraps, the thing roars. A piece of galvanized screen on top keeps embers from flying away. To prevent any mishaps, I bought an Indian pump. This is a 5 gallon galvanized tank with a bronze pump. It is kind of the ultimate supper soaker, the original so to speak.

What else? Not bad for 5 days, huh? I can't wait for the days when I can spend most of my time sitting on the porch on my bent twig rocker (see President's Day weekend, 1999) drinking beer, watching the traffic go by on route 14. Maybe even doing a little fishing and hunting!

Memorial Day weekend, 1999

I get to come up for two whole days in paradise. My parents went up a week ago. My father got to stay up for the whole week. Boy, it was sure quite down here without him! Eugene, contractor extraordinare has finished the new septic tank. He installed a new leach pit, and converted the old septic tank into an auxiliary leach pit. A new 4" PVC sanitary line now runs into the basement in the left rear corner of the house. The old 4" cast iron waste line that went out the back of the house, made a right angle bend somewhere under ground, and then went to the old septic tank. Hopefully, the new drain works better. We got all of the holes located and drilled into the bathroom floor for all the new fixtures. The only thing we didn't figure out was the location of the hot and cold water fill lines for the cast iron claw foot tub. That will just have to wait until the tile floor is down, and the tub in place. The tub is wider than the door, so it will have to go in on its side. It weighs a TON and once it's in, it's in for good. We got the waste line roughed in the basement, and the kitchen sink drain connected back in temporarily. There is nothing like hot and cold running water to make a house a home. I got the seams in the cementious backer board taped up with fiberglass tape and mudded in with latex modified thinset mortar. I really have been watching too many home improvement shows. While I was siting in my Uncle's pool, relaxing on Sunday evening, what comes down the hill but a tractor with a meadow mower towed behind? It doesn't get any better then soaking in 70ºF pool water, the sun streaming down, watching someone else hay your meadow. My girlfriend Laurinda got some of the plants we hauled up there into the ground. Some rhubarb plants under the windows in front of the porch. The porch faces south, the soil is fine and sandy, they ought to love it there. We planted a Rose of Sharon, a sort of cold weather hibiscus with in sight of the kitchen window. We also had some lemon balm, lemon grass and mint plants to plant in the kitchen garden in back of the house. My Aunt donated the mint and some zebra grass as well to plant on side of the house closest to the highway. (About 100 feet away. The only way you'll see it is on your way up the driveway.) A major mile stone was reached as well. I FINALLY got the lightning rod balls (LRBs) on the main house roof. I had to throw a rock over the roof with a kite string tied around it. I used the kite string to pull a piece of parachute cord over the roof. I then used the parachute cord to pull a 120-foot climbing rope over the roof. I tied the climbing rope to a tree in the back yard. I climbed up on the front porch roof, hauled a 6-foot ladder up with me, used the 6-foot ladder to get on the main house roof, and used the climbing rope to Batman it up the steep pitch of the roof. I then shimmied out along the peak of the roof and got the three  LRBs on the rods and the weather vane on the side of the house nearest the highway. Hey, it might not seem like much, but it meant a lot to me. Now, all I have to do is haul the extension ladder back over from my Uncle's house and get the ball on the rod on the end of the garage roof. I also need to butt splice the lightning rod ground cable in back of the garage. Someone must have sliced it with a lawn mower. I hear that my Uncle drove my grandmother's old ride on mower I got my grass mowed for the first time. I guess I'll have to get someone to do it from time to time.  

Some weekend in March 1999

I had to come up for a weekend trip. I drove up Friday and arrived about 0400 on Saturday morning. I have the entire day on Saturday, then have to drive back on Sunday morning. Hardly worth the effort, just enough to tease one. My Aunt saw some trees that had been cut in the neighbor's back yard. She panicked, and called the State Police. I had to go up, see if any more trees had been cut, and tell the police. It doesn't look like any more trees have been cut. While I was morning the loss of the trees that had been already cut, I found a two story deer stand. A condo almost. I will have to spend a couple of days in August or September, pulling them down with a two ton come-along. If someone wants to hunt on my property, they will just have to use temporary tree stands that don't use nails in the trees. I tried to use an extension ladder of my Uncle's to get to the roof peak on the main part of the house. I wanted to put some lightning rod balls on the lightning rods. I couldn't believe that the ladder is about 2 feet short of the peak. Damn. I'll just have to think of something else. 

President's Day weekend, 1999

I have come up for a week. On the way up, I made the mistake of buying two Quaker rockers (really gorgeous bentwood and branches with the bark left on them,) in Basketteville. I know, a real tourist trap, but they do have some nice things. The cost of shipping the two rockers up to the house would have been $100. Their shop is about exit 4 on highway 91. My house is just a little north of exit 26. With the truck loaded for yet another workweek, I will have to drive all the way back down tomorrow to pick them up. That should only be about a three-hour round trip. Oh, well, I guess we should have planned better. However, there is nothing like sitting on these rockers after a hard day of work, on the font porch with a bottle of Magic Hat beer, watching the cars go by on route 14. Despite the loss of a day's worth of labor, I wouldn't trade the rockers for a team of laborers. In spite of the delay, I have gotten a layer of 3/4" exterior ply-wood nailed down to the bathroom floor and a layer of cementious backer board mortared down on top of that. Doesn't sound like much to show for 2 or 3 days worth of work, but there it is. I also managed to get a 12 gauge 3 wire run from the breaker panel in the basement, up along the chimney to the attic, across the attic, across the attic of the garage, through the eaves of the garage to a motion activated light. Now, the partiers with their beer cans and condoms will have a little light to work by.

I also got a PVC sump pump basin dug into the basement floor. With all of the sand up there in the soil, I figured this would be a snap. Well, about 1 1/2 feet below the basement floor, I hit a layer of fist sized stones that made digging difficult to say the least. In any case, I now have some place to drain the hot water tank, and the rest of the house plumbing. That should make winterizing the house a little easier.  

Christmas, 1998

Well, its been QUITE a busy year up here in Irasburg. Starting in February with buying this house until now, getting the  house ready for this winter has been quite a bit of hard work. I would like to personally thank my Father and my Mother for helping accomplish some of the more difficult tasks. I would like to especially thank my Father. With out his constant, "You know, you really ought to do this or that..." Without his constant help and support, we wouldn't have accomplished half of what we did. I would like to thank Larry Perry for selling me the property. I know you had a hard decision to make. I'd like to thank the real estate agent, Ed (Duffer) Parenteau for helping this city dwelling flat-lander out. I'd like to thank Bonnie over at the Community National Bank in Barton for helping me secure the mortgage. I'd like to extend a hearty thanks to Eugene Webster, my general contractor for making me feel that he cares about my house almost as much as I do. I would also like to thank Mark Collette over in Collette Plumbing and Heating for getting the furnace in and working by Thanksgiving week. It really made staying in my house for the first time MUCH more comfortable. I would like to thank my Aunt Barbara and my Uncle Bill for first suggesting this little adventure and for all of the things they have done to help me out. I would like to thank Noreen Hinton for making all those wonderful little whoopee pies. I would like to say hello to my friends at Simon the Tanner over in Island Pond and Lev and my other friends at the Common Sense Soap and Body Care down in Rutland.

I would also like to specially thank my girlfriend Laurinda. I know that you have sometime felt left out of the decisions. With out your constant support and guidance, I would not have been able to accomplish ANY of this. I love you.

I would like to wish everyone a merry Christmas, a happy Hanukkah, happy holidays and a happy and prosperous New Year!  

December 2, 1998

Well, its been quite a busy week up here in Irasburg. I don't quite know where to begin. First off, not last week, but the week before Thanksgiving, the plumber, Mark Collette got the new furnace installed. That means that we have heat in This'tle farm. My general contractor Eugene Webster has also put a new roof and gutters on the front porch. He also installed gutters on the bedroom on the first floor and on the garage. The grading work was also completed around the entire house as well to make sure that the ground sloped away from the house as much as possible. Eugene also got most of the ditch between the upper forty acres and the lower forty acres dug. This ditch is about six feet wide and at least four feet deep. With the dirt that was removed, he piled up a berm between the house and the drainage ditch. There should be no repeat of the river of snow run off approaching the house like there was last February. I spent an entire day removing the resilient floor in the bathroom. Underneath the red and white rubber tiles seems to have been masonite with a nail about every four inches. It came off in little four by four-inch chunks with a little crowbar. After eight hours on my knees, I could barely stand. The entire floor was not stable enough to lay down tile. I wanted to put down vinyl but my father persuaded me to try tile. We installed two 2"x10" floor joists. The existing joists are 6" diameter tree trunks 30" on center, mortised and tennioned into hand hewn 10"x10"s.  The floor was still flexing at a point where the existing floor had been repaired, apparently because of some wood rot. We put a lolly column underneath one 6" diameter tree trunk joist that had been notched almost in half. Great! The floor is almost rock steady. Well, except where the existing 2"x6" floorboards were cut to make the previous repair and the ends are not resting on anything. They flex like the little diving boards they are. Well at that point, we abandoned attempting to lay tile this week and started working on the plumbing instead. We got a new 52 gallon water heater, a new pressure switch, gage, pop safety and a whole lot of 3/4" and 1/2" tubing and bags of fittings. We poured a couple of concrete pads underneath the pressuretrol and the water heater. We bought a new kitchen faucet. Boy, there is nothing like hot and cold running water to liven your spirits! We got the plumbing roughed in the basement, under the bathroom. With a couple of days to go until we went home, we removed all the painted paneling from the walls in the bathroom. We were able to put up some textured T1-11 3/8" plywood, all, except for one 4'x8' sheet.

On a lessor note, we put some plastic on the windows upstairs, and on the worst of the windows downstairs. We cut some rigid pink insulation for the door in the first back bedroom upstairs and stapled some plastic over the doorframe as well. My father was happy when we got his ham radio antenna setup on the end of the garage. A ten-foot length of 1 1/4" PVC plastic pipe for a mast and some kind of inverted 'V' antenna.

Well, where do we go from here? First thing next spring after the thaw, is a new septic system. Eugene says we may want to also run a new waste pipe from the house to the tank. I would also like to get some kind of monitored security system in the house. I have spent enough money this year to really care if something happened to that  house. Boy, a coat of paint would go a long way to making the place look much more presentable. I just might throw a house warming party to celebrate the first toilet flush! I would also like to erect a barb wire fence along the back end of the property with a locked gate along route 5. And who knows? Unless we're slacking off, we might even find some time to do something with that dilapidated garage!

October 26, 1998

My parents have returned from yet another trip up to the farm. A couple of weeks ago they bought a cast iron claw foot bathtub at a yard sale for $100. It seems the previous owners had broken one of the feet off trying to get the thing out in the yard for the sale. Included with the tub was about $400 of Home Renovators’ hardware including a brass 'telephone' sprayer faucet, a brass over flow and drainpipe and a brass soap dish. They did real well for themselves. The broken foot has already been braised back together and the horrid faux finish painted on the outside of the tub is just a distant memory. God bless white Krylon. They hauled the tub up in a 14-foot rental truck with a load of my aunt and uncle's furniture. They emptied two truckloads out of the garage and hauled them to the dump. They tested the refrigerator and the freezer that I inherited with the house and they seem to work. My cousin donated an electric clothes dryer that also went up in the truck. The also put some hinges on the door that is between the first back bedroom on the second floor and the attic of the garage. They talked to the plumber and the furnace may arrive this week. Did I tell you that the water test came back? It got a perfect bill of health. No bacteria, and just a little iron and magnesium. We celebrated with a Mason jar toast with water from the well.  Well I can't wait to go up next month. Talk to you then!

September 21, 1998

My parents just got back from a flying trip up to Vermont. Seems that we promised the plumber that we would install the chimney clean-out door and provide 20 Amp 120 Volt power to a junction box above where the furnace is going to go. So that is what they went up and did, there and back again in 25 hours. Hell, I would have at least stopped by the farmers market in Newport and brought back some of Noreen Hinton's whoopee pies! 

September 14, 1998

My parents just got back from another work release week in Vermont. They found enough wooden window frames in the attic of the garage to put in the two windows in the master bedroom and the one back bedroom that didn't have a sash window. They scraped, painted, reglazed and puttied them. Windows will help once the heat is back on. The plumber mailed me a written estimate for the new furnace. With the parts, the cost added up to a little more than first guesstimated. The quote is for $4,450. I have to call him tomorrow and find out when he can be finished.

My parents went to the local airport, just up the road about 10 minutes and chartered a flight. They brought back some really cool aerial photographs of the property. I'll scan in some of the best ones and post them here tomorrow.

August 28, 1998

I just got back from another work release week on the farm. Yep, you can definitely stand up in the basement now! In some places, about 2 feet of silt was removed. In order to get the dirt out of the basement; they constructed a U shaped trough of 2x6" boards. A fourth board slid in the bottom of the U and had a foot nailed to it. They would fill the trough up with dirt and use a pick-up truck to pull the sliding board out with the dirt! Seems to have worked like a charm. The major thing we accomplished this week was we got the pump working again. We don't have the pressure tank or the pressure switch wired in yet. You turn on the breaker and the pump runs though.

Now that the basement is enclosed again, there was condensation all over everything. With so much traffic running through there lately, this has caused fungus to grow on the exposed floor joists and the underside of all of the floorboards of the floor above. We sprayed the rotting wood with bleach to kill the fungus. We wired in a 50 cfm toilet exhaust fan to move air through there. With all of the cracks and crevasses in the stone foundation, 50 cfm is not going to make much difference. We purchased a little 1500 watt space heater from the local hardware store. A little over 5000 Btu output also will make only a little difference. It was the best we could do to try and dry out the basement as much as possible.

We've come to the realization that we can not wait until next year to install heat in the farmhouse. We have to reduce the amount of condensation and moisture in the air in the house. The best way would be to warm the house up a little this winter. So, we had the plumber come over and give us an estimate for installing a new heating plant. He needs to enlarge the oil tank vent pipe. The existing vent pipe is 3/4". The fill pipe is 2". That means the new vent has to be 2" pipe as well. We need a new vent alarm and a new fuel oil filter. A new fuel line encased in a piece of PVC plastic pipe is needed. We need a new pad for the furnace, a new furnace of course and a new discharge air plenum. All new ductwork and a new flue pipe. The chimney had a wood stove hole cut into it on the first floor in the living room. The oil furnace in the basement used the same flue. Not a real good idea. That means the hole in the chimney on the first floor needs to be plugged up with masonry. Apparently the last tenants never cleaned out the chimney. My girl friend removed about 55 gallons of soot and creosote from the chimney. There is no clean-out door in the chimney, just a hole at the bottom, plugged up with a piece of cinder block. The plumber intends to install a steel clean-out door. Finally, we intend to install two thermostats, one in the basement for when I am not there, and one in the living room for when I am there. Maybe a switch for occupied/unoccupied mode would be nice as well. The Plumber's first guess estimate is about $3,500 to $4,000. I still haven't heard from him, I guess I'll have to call him back.

Once the heat is back on several things then become important. It would be nice to get wooden sash windows back on the windows upstairs. Some time in the past they were removed for fixing, painting and re-glazing. (Which of course was never done.) The other thing that would be nice is if we could get a couple of feet of fiberglass insulation in the attic. Right now there are a couple of inches of rock wool up there. That's better than nothing, but not by much. I guess that before the insulation goes in the attic, it would be nice to rewire the electricity for the second floor. But, hey, you know what the best part is? Once the heat is back on, there is no excuse not to plumb the water back in permanently. Wow, like a real flush toilet and a tub and everything! Except that I need to replace that ugly red vinyl flooring and shore up the bathroom floor before it can support the weight of a full tub. *Sigh* More and more work piles itself up every time I think about it. Oh, well. I asked for this!

Other things we accomplished this week were: We installed an 80 watt heater in the new breaker panel. We plumbed the waste pipe back in for the kitchen sink drain. We flushed some water out of the well, and dumped some of the water into the septic system. The water went somewhere, and it didn't back up at all. One of these days, we'll have to find out just where that septic tank is. We also dropped a chlorine tablet down the well and recirculated the water down the well in an attempt to sanitize the casing somewhat. We'll see how that works out when we test the water later this year. Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. I got a little over 1/2 of the land posted, "No hunting, trespassing, etc." It was the first time I walked and saw most of the property. Wow. I didn't appreciate how big 87 Acres was until I had to crawl though the woods, stapling no hunting signs on trees. Maybe I'll be able to return some time in November and finish the job if the snow is not too deep!

July 29, 1998

The new roof and gutters are on. I hear you can stand up in the basement again after the removal of about 1 1/2 feet of silt. I have seen a video tape of the bulldozer digging the culvert to redirect run-off on the property above the house. The foundation and sill work are progressing even as we speak. All and all, everything I wanted to accomplish this year has been done. So much for the easy part. Next year is going to be very busy indeed. A new heating plant, replumbing the toilet in the bathroom, maybe a new concrete septic tank and probably a new leach field, a centrally monitored security system, and last but not least, a coat of new white exterior paint. Phew, I certainly have my work cut out for me.

June 24, 1998

Well, my parents got back from Vermont OK. The electricity is on, the house didn't burn down, and I know the phone is working just fine. My father spent another day planeing doors, and now ALL the doors in the house close. My mother was so proud of how the kitchen sink cleaned up; she just had to take a picture. They cut down a tremendous amount of brush from around the back of the house. The house was also vacuumed for the first time in the Lord knows how many years. My father finished the temporary electrical installation by running a convenience outlet up to the top of the basement stairs. Even with all the work they did, I still envy them. They got to go up to Vermont, and I didn't. Lucky things!

March 23-June 2, 1998

Boy, is Vermont cool. One night we had the temperature go down to 26°F. Can you say 'hard frost' at the end of May? Well, we removed the old 100 Amp breaker panel, replaced it with a 200 Amp panel. One of the hardest tasks this week was convincing my father that what we were doing was perfectly OK and legal. Once I had done that, everything was OK. We replaced the meter socket and the service entrance head and wiring. We spent an entire day planeing doors. We got every door on the first floor except for two to close. We didn't even try any of the three doors on the second floor. We replaced a 4 foot section of gutter that had fallen off of the main roof, over the front porch. Once my father realized that most of the water in the basement was coming from the roof, we took a mad dash to the hardware store. By the time we got back to the house, it had started raining again. Well, my father insisted that we try to at least get the gutters up on the front porch even temporarily to try to divert water away from the basement. Well, I tried to tell him that it wouldn't do any good, but who can tell him anything? We mucked about out in the rain for at least an hour before he finally figured it out for himself. Not before we were both soaked though. Anyway, we got the contractor out and got an estimate from him about the heavy carpentry work this year. (Are ya sittin' down?) The estimated cost for a new roof and gutters is $4,098.00. That is if there are only two layers of shingles on the roof. If there is a third, it'll cost more. For patching up the foundation, slapping a little concrete on spots, digging out about a foot and a half of silt that has washed into the basement from the water running off the roof, for replacing about 20 feet of a 12x12 inch sill that supports the back of the house under the kitchen sink and regradeing around the house and digging a culvert further up the property to divert seasonal run-off away from the house and towards the river: a little over $15,000.00. That means that to get the house watertight before next winter it is going to cost me about $20,000.00. (It's not like I didn't know that this was coming, but.... Damn!) Since we got back, I have gotten the Phone Company to hook up my phone. I have contacted the power company to hook up the power, but with the storms and tornadoes up there, they couldn't promise me a date that they would have it done by. Oh, well, I hope that it is done for the week of June 16th. My parents are going up with a truck full of stuff with my Uncle. We'll see. 

February 13, 1998:

Me tryin' to rassle the sign outta the frozen tundra...

Hmm. Doesn't look TOO bad from up here...

Tell me again, WHY did I think this was a good idea?

Situated in the majestic Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. Take Rt.14 south from Coventry towards Irasburg. It is the 1st house on the left past Grace Brethren. 87+ Acres: 10 Acres pasture, 35 Acres meadow and 40 Acres softwoods. The house has 6 Rooms, 3 Bedrooms and 1 Bath. Full fieldstone basement. My VERY needful thing, needs a LOT of work. A new: foundation, roof, septic, furnace, plumbing, bathroom, electric, exterior paint, interior paint. The foundation and roof work, I hope, will be done this summer. If all goes well, the rest will be done by next year. Jay peak is 15 min away and Burke Mountain is 20 min away. If you are going to be in the area, email me.

Friendly faces everywhere, humble folks without temptation. Ample parking day or night. People starving almost never. So come on up to Irasburg and meet some friends of mine.