Drip, Drop- Drat!

You know, I think we jinxed ourselves posting about the last two plumbing fixes- and how relatively quickly & easily they went.  Get ready for some more ugly basement photos!



I missed taking a pic of the old pipe
before Mike removed it,but you can see the wet beam!

On Sunday morning, Mike went down into the basement & found a trickle of water running across the floor. 

After a little investigating, we found a pinhole in some copper piping, that was shooting a very fine mist onto the adjacent beam and dripping to the floor.

Luckily, Mike's gotten quite good a fixing copper piping. 



The patches on the old pipe. 

He assessed the rest of the pipe, which had two sections that had been patched by the previous owner.

Figuring it was just a matter of time until there were more issues with it, he decided to replace the whole length (approx. 20 feet).

I thought all was going rather smoothly (Yup- jinxed again)

The new "T" connector all finished! 

Mike got to the "T" where it joins with the rest of the system. 

The old pipe just WOULDN'T come out. 

We had enough pipe to cut and re-do that section too, but didn't have an extra "T" connector... back to Lowe's.

Well, we're back up and running. 

I'm really hoping this is my last plumbing post for a while (knock on wood!)

PS- While all of this was going on, I did manage to take photos of the master bedroom.
I will have those posted in the next day or two!

Just a little fixing...

The surprises never end!
Here's a little round up of this month's unexpected fixes...

TWO plumbing issues

First one-

I heard a hissing coming from the pie-safe in the basement (it's basically a walk-in closet that we are currently using for paint storage.  It's not very pretty- yet- so I don't have photos!) 
I went in to see the main waterline sputtering water right where it comes into the house- not a lot of water, but not good. 
The hole was below the shut off valve (the blue handle in the photo).  So, we had to turn off the electricity to keep the pump from running while Mike fixed it. 
A day without water or electricity, but fixed without calling a plumber!

All fixed!

Second one-
When I cleaned off the porch for the winter decorations, I decided to wash the porch furniture cushions.  Sounds good, right? 
Except that one of the cushions was a little too big, and it threw off the washing machine balance during the spin cycle (Oops!). 
Which in turn, knocked a hole in the corroded nozzle that ran the cold water into the washer (Yikes!). 
Mike already had a replacement hose (Yay!)  but needed a quick trip to Lowe's to replace the blow torch that we still haven't found since we've moved... an hour later, up & running! (Whew!)

And finally the one thing that didn't give us a headache (but was too minor for it's own post!)

Three drawer handles of my son's dresser drawers were broken... it's the little top drawers, so wasn't too much of an issue... for a while they just kept popping out of their bracket, but then got lost (as things usually do in the bedroom of a six year old!) 

While I knew it was an easy fix, I just hadn't gotten around to it...

After

Before

Well, I finally fixed them!
We can now get socks out without using our fingernails to pry the drawer open!

Why didn't I do this sooner!?!



Lost & Found

One of the fun things about living in a really old house is finding out about the people who lived there before us.  One way to catch a glimpse of the house's history is through the trash they buried.

Mom & Dad gave us their metal detector to sweep the yard.  Mom had gotten it a few years ago to use in the yard of their 1860 house. 
They found cool things like a monogrammed pin. 
I'd LOVE to find something like that-  The search is on!
It's a challenge to differentiate the beeps... we're still learning!

Some finds are better than others....

So far, we have:

Pulley

-about 20 old-style nails (square heads)

-two horseshoes

-a metal pulley

-various unknown pieces

 

  

  

Here's a pretty cool door lock.  It's in very bad shape, but must have come from somewhere in the house!

Oh, and if you're wondering what they found in the very first photo of this post... it was a NEW screw from the fence Mike recently put up!  Certainly better that we found it this way, instead of one of us stepping on it... but not quite the treasure we were hoping for!

Anyways, we'll let you know if we find anything else interesting!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

I've been waiting for this since April! 

I didn't do much decorating for Christmas last year, because we were in the middle of showing our old house for potential buyers.  So, it's been two years and I'm VERY excited to re-discover all the fun decorations, & find places for everything in the new house!

This past weekend, I worked on the front porch:


I took in the wicker furniture for the winter, and brought out our sled & ice skates.

I love the little black pair that are hanging from the top of the sled.  They're the old double blade training skates, and just fit my 3 year old!  Can't wait for some ice!







I moved the wrought iron cafe set over to the one side of the porch- it just looked so empty over there!

Since we have a lot of landscaping to do, we decided to get a little live tree for the porch that we can plant somewhere in the yard after the holidays.  I wanted to do the same for the inside tree, but my 6 year old revolted against me on it- and I caved!

Good tip from Mike's mom- dig the hole for the tree now, before the ground freezes... otherwise we might have a big problem trying to get it planted in January!

I went with a simple wreath for the door, and hung a curtain with a little red trim.  Our usual crocheted curtain looked too busy with the wreath.

And check out this little guy --->

My brother's girlfriend made it for us a few years ago out of a patio paver.  Cute, right?

The inside decorating is going a bit slower.  Everything is down from the attic- but I keep moving stuff around, trying to find the perfect spot for things! 

We'll be putting up the living room tree this weekend- I can't wait!

Update:  See the inside decorations here

Barn #2

It's time for another Barn Spotlight! 

All because we started to do a little bit of work on this one:

I've been researching the history of the house, and in one of the old permit applications it lists this barn as the "Chicken House".  Hmmm... now those screened windows, low hanging light bulb & the water spigot up the second floor make some sense!

I'll share pictures of the second floor, but only if you excuse the mess!  ;o)

You can see the screened windows on the left. 
All ripped and needing to be replaced!

That pipe thing on the right of the photo is the water spigot.
There's a hole in the floor under that pile of wood...
apparently to shovel chicken poop down to the 1st floor.  (Yuk!)



Stairwell, looking down from second floor. 
There's a ladder up to the third floor "attic"

Unfortunately, this one is in much worse shape than the goat barn!

First thing we had to do was remove the tangled mess of vines that were climbing up the right side, since they were pulling the siding away from the structure! (See first photo)

Luckily the boards were still in good shape, they just needed to be rehung.

Before- from the inside

Before



After



After- from the inside

To Do List: (ugh- some big ticket items!)
-Remove vines and brush on right side of barn.
-Re-hang the barn siding.
-The roof.  Needs to be replaced BADLY!  Mike & my brother plan to tackle this in the spring.
-Do something about the ugly pull down garage door.  It's missing some panels & glass.  I'd love to put a barn-style door back on there, but for now may just fix up the existing door.
-Replace screens on second floor with windows.  We hope to re-use the windows from our enclosed back porch, which will be torn down for the kitchen extension.
-Replace first floor window on side of barn.
-Fix spots where there's rotten wood (probably due to rain coming in from that broken window)
-Replace door on side of barn, again- perhaps we'll re-use our current back door after the kitchen renovation?
-Reconnect the electric.  It was obviously running at one time, but was disconnected at some point. 
-Paint or stain- pretty obviously needs a good scraping & painting.

Once all of that is done, we'll get to figure out how we'll use the barn besides just storage (of mostly junk we're afraid to throw out because we'll likely need it as we go through the house restoration... extra wood, trim moulding, drainage rocks, etc).  Then we'll expand the to-do list!

Here's a photo of the barn from the town's files, taken in the mid-1980's: