It's beginning to look a lot like . . . massive electricity bills

Christmas 2009 - One of the reasons I loved our house was that I knew it would look great at Christmas.  According to my dear wife, I have a "problem," that is, I tend to go a little nutty with Christmas decorations.  Think Clarke Griswold with OCD.  So of course, before we even bought the house I had a plan for how I wanted to do Christmas lights, both inside and out.  I even had the electricians add strategically placed outlets for Christmas lights, including one outside and one on top of the mantel.

My initial plan was to use LED bulbs to line the front roof line of the house.  After shopping for them for months online (and seeing how expensive they were), I found that Walmart carried them.  So I bought several hundred feet of lights and over a thousand plastic clips to attach them to the roof.  Due to Monica's ban on early Christmas lights, I wasn't allowed to start putting them up until the weekend after Thanksgiving.  Thankfully, my brother was staying with us that weekend, so I recruited him to help me test the new light strings and pre-mount them on the clips.  That took several hours.  

The failed LED lights

When the lights were finally tested and strung, Randal helped me put them up (in 35 degree weather), including steadying the ladder on top of the porch roof so I could reach the peak of the front gable.  That evening, when it came time for the grand illumination of the roof lights, I was sorely disappointed.  Unfortunately, you get what you pay for and it turned out that the Wally World light strings were all significantly different colors.  I immediately went back up on the roof myself in the dark and took down the offending dimmer strings.  

The next day I went to Walmart and went through over 50 boxes of LED lights, taking each over to an outlet in the corner of the decorations area to test it's color.  When I found enough that I thought I was satisfied with, I took them home and installed them that night on the roof.  This time I had Monica's begrudging help because it was windy and in the high 20's.  I then came off the roof and put up all of the incandescent lights on the porch and along the first story.  

Times Square, Pennsauken, NJ

When I stepped back to take it all in, I again was disappointed.  The allegedly "warm white" LED's were a totally different color than the incandescent strings and my OCD kicked into high gear again.  So I went back up on the roof and tore down all of the LED lights.  I decided that the mix of LEDs and incandescents would never work, so I was back at Walmart the next day, stocking up on thousands of icicle lights.  That night, with temperatures hovering around 20 with 15-10 mph winds, I installed the icicle lights.  I was thoroughly frozen, but happy with the outside.  

The living room decorations

Then I turned to the inside, putting up the tree, hand lighting the new wreath above the mantel and basically putting lights everywhere Monica would tolerate.  When I was finished (although not completely satisfied because I was not allowed to light every room in the house), my Christmas-light-o-tacular vision was pretty close to being realized.  Our house just looks naturally great at Christmas.  Then we were buried by a huge blizzard the week before Christmas, which dumped over 24 inches of snow on us.  That was a wonderful little touch by Mother Nature to make my decorations complete.  All the while I was out shoveling, Monica had old fashioned Christmas music playing through the porch speakers to give our whole neighborhood some cheer (see the video below).  

However, due to that snowfall, the very low temperatures, and even more snow and ice afterwards, I wasn't actually able to get up on the roof to remove the lights until the end of January.  We went from Christmas classic to hot-mess rednecks in a few short week.  That and we got our electric bill which went up over $200 for the time when the lights were up (I still insist the meter was read wrong).  Oh well.  At least I got to stock up on after Christmas clearance lights (several more thousand) to work up my planned Christmas 2010 spectacular!

Why Do Things Keep Breaking?!?

Thanksgiving 2009 - The week before Thanksgiving, I taught a class on the evening of the 18th. I had not been feeling well and by the end of that class, I started losing my voice. Over the course of the next week I became increasingly more hoarse until finally, on Thanksgiving morning, I woke up with absolutely no voice. I called my parents to wish them a Happy Thanksgiving, and literally had to give the phone to Taylor to interpret. I decided at that point that I would not even try to speak again until Randal, Alicia & Riley arrived as planned on Friday. I'm not sure whether Taylor saw this as an inconvenience, or the best thing that could happen to a man, but in either event I was silent for the next two days.

We kept busy on Thursday and Friday preparing for our guests. There was plenty of laundry to be done - sheets, tablecloth, etc. - and since Taylor has actually asked "Which one's the washer?" in the past, I didn't even both asking for his help. As the loads progressed, it seemed to me that things were taking longer to dry than usual. I was mildly annoyed, but figured I was just being impatient (me? never!) and kept resetting the dryer.

We had plans for the Heide crew to come to dinner on Saturday, but RA&R came over on Friday so Alicia could get up with me bright and early Saturday to begin preparing the spread. Alicia and I spent most of the day in the kitchen and when the guests began arriving, we opened a bottle of wine and enjoyed the fruits of our labor.

One of our guests, Eileen, arrived with the most amazingly thoughtful, beautiful gift. Months before, Eileen had overheard us talking about how we would love to have someone paint a picture of our house. We had gotten the idea back when we were house hunting. Well, would you believe that Eileen had proceeded to take pictures of our house (while sitting inside her daughter's car incognito and hoping no one called the cops) and her gift to us that Thanksgiving was the most beautiful painting of our little house you could possibly imagine?!? We are forever grateful for her unbridled thoughtfulness!!

We ate, enjoyed one another’s company, and breathed a sigh of relief when the dishes were done and guests had gone home. Well, all but three. RA&R decided to stay an extra night since Randal was going to the Eagles game on Sunday and figured Alicia could drop him off at the Linc on her way home.

Alicia woke up early Sunday morning to run a load of laundry so everyone would have clean clothes to wear. A few hours later, as Randal was starting to get ready for the game, Alicia went down to check on the clothes in the dryer. They were soaking wet. From what I remember, Alicia had already reset the dryer at least once and could not for the life of her figure out why the clothes seemed to be just as wet as when she put them in. I sheepishly disclosed that I thought something was wrong with the dryer, but had hoped maybe it would go away if I pretended not to notice.

At this point Randal needed to get dressed and out the door to make it in time for kickoff. Just about everything he owned was wet, so we had to assess our options. We quickly realized he would have to borrow clothes from Taylor . . . but what would fit?! We pieced together an outfit that made Randal look like a little kid dressed in grown ups clothes, and sent them on their way.

Once they were gone, Taylor and I ran out the door to Lowes to start pricing new dryers. Yet again, we seemed to be struck with unbelievably fortunate timing. We walked down the first aisle and saw a floor model Samsung dryer on sale for $350, down from the MSRP of $1,070. We immediately bought it, and it was delivered the very next day.

Attack of the Killer Oak

Summer 2009 - At the end of our driveway near the old barn stood a massive old oak tree.  The 6 story tall tree was partially on our property and partially in our neighbor's back yard.  It had actually grown completely through a 19th century wrought iron fence that now ran through the middle of the 5 foot plus diameter trunk.  When we bought the house, it was winter so there were no leaves on the tree and we thought nothing of it.  However, when spring rolled around, we noticed that most of the tree remained bare and was apparently dead.  We knew we'd have to do something about it eventually, but we had other projects in mind that were higher up on the list.



Welcome home!

 One Sunday as we were returning home from church, we turned onto our street only to be greeted by a platoon of police cars and emergency vehicles in our driveway.  All sorts of thoughts went though our heads.  We were worried that either an elderly neighbor had gotten sick or that our house had blown up or fallen down.  We quickly learned that it was a sort of combination of both. 

I almost flipped over my truck as a I pulled up to the curb and we jumped out to see a man sitting in our driveway bleeding, surrounded by emergency personnel and with our neighbors Matt and Roxy.  We also noticed a huge branch of the oak laying in the driveway strewn next to a chainsaw.  We came to find out that Matt and Roxy had a friend over to trim a branch that was overhanging their yard.  However, the friend doing the work had been perched on a ladder and wasn't tied off to anything.  As he had cut halfway through the huge dead branch, it had snapped and hurled him and his chainsaw 20 feet down onto our driveway.  Fortunately he wasn't seriously injured, but we agreed with Matt and Roxy that we'd all need to save money to take the tree down soon.



Yes it is

Given the proximity to the Delaware River, our area is prone to very strong thunderstorms in the summer (and heavy snow in the winter).  One evening a particularly strong storm rolled through and I was sitting out on the front porch enjoying the show.  Monica had come home, but left her car at the front of the driveway because she was going to go back out and meet some friends.  As she and I were talking on the porch, we heard a deafening CRACK, followed by a loud crash.  I jumped up to look around the corner back towards the tree and my worst fears were realized.  A massive branch of the old oak had snapped and landed across the hood and roof of my truck.  If Monica's car had been where she normally parks, it would have been totaled.  As I ran out the back door to move the crippled truck, I heard another huge CRACK sound as an entire tree from a neighbor's yard was struck by lightning and fell across most of our back yard.



The Killer Oak's Final Battle



When the storm subsided, we surveyed the damage.  The truck was pretty banged up and would require a couple thousand dollars in repairs.  After Matt and I saw that another branch had pierced the roof of his garage, we knew we couldn't wait any longer to have the monster oak taken out.  After getting quotes, we had a tree removal company come out the next week.  Because we had to pay for the tree removal, many of our planned projects had to take a back seat.   Again, the property decided what it wanted done on it's own schedule, not ours.  Our other neighbor (or Weird Steve as we call him) had the second tree removed from our yard. 



 It took our crew three days with a bucket truck to remove the tree.  We were left with enough firewood for 10 years and a pile of wood chips 12 feet across and over 4 feet high.  When we counted the rings in the tree stump, we found out it was over 120 years old.  Although it was a mighty foe, the great old oak ultimately succumbed to the whine of a chainsaw. Vengance is mine, albeit via my smoker BBQ and the fireplace!

Curb appeal

The Old Blah Facade

Summer 2009 - When we purchased our little old house, it didn't have a whole lot of curb appeal.  The facade was a rather drab mix of dirty ivory colored siding, dingy white trim, and old windows.  Altogether it was in relatively good shape, mostly due to the vinyl siding and the fact that the porch had recently been re-decked. We really loved the lines of the house and we knew that with a little elbow grease, we could make the old girl stand out again.

Deep Purple

Although the original antique storm door was intact, it was, for some unknown reason painted a very dark purple.  The glass in the storm door had apparently broken many years before and had been hastily replaced with plexiglass that had long since discolored and warped.  As the first project, we took down the storm door and Monica and I spent many hours stripping off layer after layer of old paint to get down to the wood.  I then replaced the glass and patched up some of the larger holes and other battle scars in the door.  Monica then painted it a bright red with black accent trim.  Monica also painted the window casings black to make our newly installed windows stand out and add some more contrast to the facade.  The old cast iron hand rails also got a fresh coat of glossy black paint.

The electricians had run speaker wire out to the front porch, so I put up a pair of speakers for outdoor music.  I installed a new antique-copper Arts and Crafts doorbell from Van Dyke's Restorers to replace the old broken button.  We replaced the old mailbox (which leaked and left us with sopping wet mail) with a craftsman style (and water proof) model to compliment the similarly styled pendant light that the electricians had installed previously.  Monica also picked up some cool mission style house numbers from Restoration Hardware. 

The facelift of the house was rounded out by a set of white porch rockers and an antique milk can, painted red to match the door, that came from a farm owned by one of my ancestors from Amish Country in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  We've been so pleased to have many neighbors and passers-by stop and comment on how they liked what we've done to the house.  Even when you're exhausted and covered in saw dust from some project, that's always a great thing to hear.

And so the trim work begins

Ghosts of the Old Baseboads

Spring 2009 - So when the electricians went through to rewire the first floor of the house, that involved removing many of the original baseboard moldings in the living room and dining room.  Well, "removing" is probably too gentle of a word.  It was more like "forceable ejection by hammer."  So that left us with old trim boards laying around and large areas of plaster missing where it had ripped off or crumbled away with the removal of the baseboards. 

Unfortunately, given that the outlets from the old electrical system were cut into the baseboards and the moldings were in rough shape, it didn't make sense for us to try to reuse them.  So we looked to find a replacement that would maintain the historic character of the house.  Fortunately, Lowes, in cooperation with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, carries a selection of historic reproduction trim pieces from a selection of famous historic homes throughout the United States.  We chose baseboard molding that was reproduced from the original trim from Belle Grove Plantation, located in the Shenandoah Valley of Virigina (GO GENERALS!).  This was not only the largest base molding in the product line, but it also matched our original stock the best. 

I had to rebuild and patch the missing areas of plaster.  Then it took John and I the course of almost an entire day to install the molding in just our living room.  Granted, we had lots of bizarre angles to match and none of the walls were square, but we got it done.  Thank goodness for painters caulk to fill in some of our joints that weren't exactly "perfect."

A little while later, Monica and I installed the base trim in the dining room.  We also decided to install a chair rail in the room, so we also chose the Belle Grove chair rail molding and installed that.  Luckily, the more trim I install, the better my joints get and the smaller our caulk patching budget gets!

As a testament to how our house projects tend to go, we still haven't finished the trim work in the living room and dining room well over a year after we started.  All that is left is to install quarter round shoe molding at the bottom of the base molding and it will be finished.  We bought all the quarter round we needed and we were all ready to prime and install it, but then 15 other projects interceded and the trim pieces are still laying in the basement.  Maybe some day I'll get to completely finish a project!

The Tale of the CO and the Windows

Spring 2009 - One of the issues that came up during the period between signing our contract and officially closing on our house was the Certificate of Occupancy (aka "CO"). John had warned us that our township was notorious for tacking on ridiculous requirements, and our house was not spared. Case in point: shortly before closing, we were notified that the township was refusing to issue a CO due to "chipping paint on the exterior of the first floor windows."

For those who may not know, a CO ensures the habitability of a structure. Things like "Does the house have windows?" would be a valid question. "Are they pretty windows?" would not. Nonetheless, we were being told that we would only be given a temporary CO until we "scraped, painted and reglazed" the exterior of all first floor windows (there are 12). Never mind that the second floor windows looked just as bad - apparently they did not care. And this temporary CO would only be good for 90 days, after which time we would literally be locked out of the house if we failed to meet the requirements of a permanent CO.




Exhibit A - The old windows



Don't get me wrong, we were in complete agreement with the township's assessment that the windows were both unattractive and inefficient. The problem, as we saw it, was that our ultimate goal of replacing every window in the house made it a complete waste of time and money to "scrape, paint and reglaze" the original windows. And unfortunately, we could not possibly afford to replace all 22 windows (the original estimate we got was $22,000 - which, by the way, we would NEVER pay) or even the 12 on the first floor, within 90 days of closing.

What we were able to do in the first 90 days was replace the 5 windows on the front of the house. We wrote to the township and basically begged them to see what great strides we were making and trust that we intended to continue replacing windows as we were able. Thankfully, it worked! We were granted a permanent CO and no longer had to worry about coming home to signs rendering our house "uninhabitable" because of our ugly windows.



The Replacements



For thos who might be interested - we ended up going with American Craftsman 8500 series windows. The largest windows in our living room and dining room are over 6 feet tall and 3 feet wide, and ran around $200 each. Tom at the Home Depot in the Market Place at Garden State Park in Cherry Hill was incredibly helpful in walking us through the installation process and to date we have installed 11 windows all by ourselves (read: free installation)!

Color Wars

April 2009 – We closed on the house on March 9, 2009, making Easter (April 12, 2009) our first holiday there. We had the bright idea that inviting the extended fam to join us for Easter dinner would motivate us to get lots of work done during that first month. Genius, really. As you've already heard, we were (barely) successful in finishing the hardwood floors and getting the electrical work done before we moved in the last weekend of March.



Monica's Rainbow

One of the first things I always do when moving into a new place is paint. It started with my first apartment sophomore year in college. My roommate and I painted our living/dining space a crazy fire-engine-esque red that was so popular the apartment complex actually asked us for the specific color (which I’ve long forgotten) so they could paint other units with it. 

When I first moved up to New Jersey, I knew I would have to paint the soaring 16 foot walls of my Victor Loft. I went with a bright Tiffany blue (again, the specific color is now forgotten) for the entire living/dining/kitchen space (minus this one pesky corner that was nearly impossible to reach and remained unpainted for a good 6 months). 



So of course, when I had the opportunity to paint a space that I actually OWN (good riddance to the days of having to paint walls back to their original (boring) color when I leave) . . . there was no stopping me!! 

Benjamin  Moore Putnam Ivory



Benjamin Moore Powel Buff

Even before we closed on the house I had paint chips hanging on the wall of our old townhouse and constantly tortured Taylor with the nuances between colors like these two.  

After much debate (this is what happens when two lawyers get married) we agreed upon the Putnam Ivory for use in the common areas of our house.

And of course I just HAD to get paint on the walls before we hosted our first Easter celebration. With all that we were trying to accomplish, it literally came down to the wire with me putting paint on the last wall of the living room about an hour before guests began arriving. Luckily we used eco-friendly Aura paint, so there was virtually no odor and dinner went off without a hitch!