Restoration on 7th

Springfield Home Tour starts today!

2010-05-07T08:43:00.000-04:00

If anyone is in or close to the Jacksonville area or maybe you are going to watch The Players Championship in person, I highly sugguest that you come to Springfield's Home Tour starting today and going on through Sunday. The neighborhood always showcases some of the best homes and gardens and this year they even have a free bike tour on Saturday. So if your in the neighborhood, come on out and join the fun.

Audrey's first plane trip to New York

2010-05-05T11:46:00.000-04:00

Well this past week was Audrey's 100th (Baek Il) day. In Korea, the baby's 100th day is a very special day of celebration because a long time ago if a baby made it past 100 days than their chances of survival was very good. So to celebrate Audrey's 100th day we went to visit with family in New York.

We were a little scared with how Audrey would do on the plane, but as you can see she did pretty darn well.

The trip wasn't too bad and she mainly just slept the whole way.

We arrive on Thursday night and ate with my parents, who of course were delighted to finally see their first grandchild. The celebration was going to be on Saturday, so on Friday we went to the city to walk about and 'look at stuff'... the stuff we looked at were fabric shops that my wife was dying to go see. She literally spent all day in the Fashion District looking at fabric. But of course I took some pictures while waiting.

On Saturday everyone came over and took pictures with Audrey and then we placed her in front of the rice cake (duk in Korean) and took pictures while she was still in a good mood. After that we let her sleep and we feasted on ribs and crab legs and other stuff. It was a good day and was great to have almost the whole family together. I'm just glad that everything went fairly well and that my grandma was able to see her.

Now only 265 more days until her big, big, big celebration.. 1 year.

Audrey is 3 months old now!

2010-04-23T10:43:00.001-04:00

Well I've been pretty busy since Audrey came along so I didn't have time to post this on the 19th, but Audrey is now officially 3 months old! Woohoo! She is getting bigger and bigger and now I need to do some arm curls just so I can pick her up in her carseat. She is whopping 12 lbs 13 oz now. Anyways daddy just wants to say HAPPY 3 MONTHS!! Also next week will be Audrey's 100th day, which in Korea is a very big celebration. So we will be going to New York to celebrate with the whole family. Sadily no one has yet to see her yet, but grandma and grandpa will be happy... finally.

Saving Money

2010-04-13T11:01:00.000-04:00

Well, we recently sold our beloved Mercedes Benz C230 to Carmax. It was tough, but it was part of our plan to reduce debt and save money. With the money we got back we were able to pay off our other car and use whatever was left to pay other debts we have. See since having a baby our plan is to pay off all of our debt and be debt free, so that my wife can be a stay at home mom. So that means no more Mickey D's, more eating at home, no more shopping for clothes at department stores and more shopping for clothes at discount places or thrift shops. I guess in a way it's a good thing. We end up riding our bike to work more or walking home and eating right. Of course this also means that our dogs can't have their favorite treats as much anymore either.

We figure by selling our car that it should save us about $800 a month, which of course will be offset by the daycare for our baby while my wife still works, but it is worth it for my little bugger. Ain't she cute?

Getting ready for cherry blooms

2010-04-08T14:21:00.000-04:00

Well last year at the 'Annual Flowering Tree Sale', I bought a redbud and yoshino cherry tree to plant in our front yard. Now for basics our front yard probably gets the most sun even though it is facing north. The south side of our house, which is normally the side with the most sun, is occupied by 3 large oak trees, a walnut tree, 2 palms, and a mulberry tree. So you can see that we get barely enough sun to grow weeds and such. The trees only cost $10 and they usually have a whole assortment of different trees. I made sure to grab these two as they have nice pink and white flowers and don't grow as tall. I planted the redbud in our front yard and the yoshino cherry on the city owned area between the street and sidewalk. Unfortunately for the redbud we also happened to travel to Indonesia a month or two after planting and when we came back it was dead. But the cherry tree was still going strong. Now it's been planted there for over a year and finally after the cold winter we had, it looks like it will bloom. We also replaced the redbud with a Meyer's Lemon tree and hope to harvest a bunch of lemons later on to make some lemonade and cake. Anyways here are some pictures of the buds forming and about to bloom. This should be nice. Too bad the rest of our yard looks like trash.

Another one bites the dust

2010-03-31T12:16:00.000-04:00

Well yesterday another house bit the dust in our neighborhood. This time it went up in flames and huge flames at that.

As you can see this baby was engulfed and from what I hear it went up in a matter of minutes. This hosue was a few blocks down from mine and it was on 8th street, which is a commercial area. It was in pretty bad shape, because the owner had neglected it over the years. The police say they think it was arson. Hmmm I wonder who would want to set an old dilapidated house on fire that was insured??? Answers anyone?? But anyways we loose another old beauty in Springfield and gain another empty lot that will be used as a trash dump. Sad to see but that's what seems to happen here. A moment of silence please.

Buying a Second House

2010-02-23T10:20:00.000-05:00

With the housing market crashing down and looking like it has bottomed out. Me and my wife have been thinking about maybe trying to buy a second house. No, we're not trying to bloat about it, but we came to a conclusion that we need a bigger house. Our current house is about 1600 square feet, 3 rooms and 1 bathroom. We have 6 dogs, 4 cats and a brand new baby, as you can tell it's a little cramped in here. We have been keeping an eye on the house prices here in Jacksonville and have seen some houses that are 2800 square feet selling for under $100,000.00! We bought ours for $150,000.00 darnit!! Our plan is to try to buy a bigger home and then rent out our current house until the economy gets better then sell it. I don't know how many of you out there have thought about this or have even done this, but I wanted to know what your thoughts were on this as I'm sure many people are thinking the same way, with low home prices and low interest rates.

Audrey turned One month!

2010-02-22T19:18:00.000-05:00

I wanted to try to get this online on her exact one month birthday, but was not able to because we were in Tampa for the annual Sewing Expo. My wife loves to sew for her etsy shop, so because she had to go through all that pain to give birth to my first child, I thought I'd repay her by taking her to Sewing Expo. I believe we are even now. Anyways, I made a little pin thingy out of scrap pieces of fabric from my wife's supplies and we took pictures of Audrey in our hotel room.

I have to admit she seems to know the camera quite well and takes some very good shots. Needless to say seconds after the last shots were taking to threw up all over everything she is wearing.

Why you dirty rat!

2010-01-28T01:01:00.000-05:00

Ever read about some housebloggers blogging that they find cool interesting things behind a wall they were tearing out? Like finding some old newspapers from the 20's, or maybe a letter from the original homeowners writing to their future residents, or maybe even some money! Well I was tearing out a wall for my wife's new craft room and this is what I found.

Yup that's right folks, I found a mummified rat! It was actually quite awesome to find, because it felt like little Egypt inside my house. What looks like happened was that this poor rat had made a nest inside the wall by our back chimney. Unfortunately for the rat a ton of plaster had fallen on top of him. Needless to say he didn't make it.

Baby Audrey is here!

2010-01-20T20:28:00.000-05:00

On January 19, 2010 at 11:49 pm, baby Audrey was born. She weighed in at 7 pounds 10 ounces. I swear God makes em beautiful.

Baby Bumps... oh yea and the room too

2010-01-19T08:57:00.000-05:00

Well it's been nine month now and my wife started from here

And now we are here

Still no baby, I believe we are now 8 days past due and I think this baby is waiting till it gets to 80 degrees. I swear she gets the weather channel in there. I don't know why she is so stubborn her room went from this

To this! Maybe I should have painted the room pink?

We got this vintage crib off of craigslist in Georgia, we had to drive 40 minutes into the boonies to find this place. The 2 pictures above the crib are finds from a few years ago. They are nursery rhyme prints of 'Little Miss Muffet" and "Goosey, Goosey, Gander".

We bought this shag rug from Marshall's. It actually matches the trim and ceiling color. The blue trunk and rocking horse were finds from a local antique store, Southern Crossing Antiques.

We're number 1

2009-12-22T00:34:00.003-05:00

Well not really, but my neighborhood made Southern Livings 'Best Comeback Neighborhood'. Pretty cool, huh? Hopefully this will change the minds of most Jacksonvillians. Most everyone in the burbs believes my neighborhood to be rat infest, crime ridden and basically a big homeless shelter. Now it's not perfect by no means, but we're getting there. I think this will finally shed some light on Springfield. Thanks a lot Southern Living!

Tool Deals!!!

2009-12-16T02:43:00.003-05:00

Lowes is selling an 18 volt combo kit for $39. This kit includes an orbital jigsaw, 1.2 2-speed drill/driver, multi-finish sander and pivoting-head flashlight, plus a couple bits and sandpaper. This is an awesome deal for anyone looking for a present for that diy-selfer. I believe it goes on sale in stores on the 17th, but you can order it today and pick up in stores today.

Insulation question

2009-10-04T09:43:00.003-04:00

I am redoing the walls in the downstairs room and have a question for everyone. But first here is the situation. I have torn out the plaster walls in the room and know that insulation is a good idea, but what kind of insulation should I use? Since my house is built in 1909 I'm sure the requirements for this type of house is much different than a newly built house. Should I use kraft paper face insulation, just regular unfaced insulation, should I use a vapor barrier? I have read many different ideas on what is good and bad. I know my siding lets in air for circulation and I live in Florida which is always humid, so I have read that a vapor barrier may not be good, because it could trap moisture, but would the kraft faced paper do the same? Would it be smart just to use the unfaced insulation? You'd think something like this would be straight forward, but I have been finding out with old houses, nothing is.

Painted Subfloor

2009-09-23T10:11:00.005-04:00

I've been working on the downstairs room for my wife, so that she can finally have her craft room to make all her etsy stuff. The problem I have been having is what to do with the floors. I had to rip out the original heart pine floors that were there because they were all rotten. I put a plywood subfloor on top of the original long plank subfloors, but then found out that any flooring I put on top would not match the height of the adjacent rooms floor. My only solution was that I would just have to put a threshold that would go from the higher height to the lower height of the original floors until I saw this.

These are a couple pictures from Twice Remembered and she came up with a great solution. Just paint the subfloor!! What a great idea, and why did I never think about that. So I am going to email my wife and tell her if she likes this idea. I think she won't mind as anything is better than nothing. Although I was wondering if I should caulk the seems between the boards or would they contract and expand with the weather and push any filler out?

Squirrel vs. Hawk

2009-09-14T18:54:00.003-04:00

As I was leaving the house today I got to see Round 1 of Squirrel vs. Hawk. I took these pictures and you can see the hawk sitting on the telephone wire with the squirrel pirched on top of the telephone pole. They sat like that for a few minutes then the squirrel made a break for it. Lucky for him he survived, but you never know what will happen in round 2.

33,000 Gallons!!!

2009-09-09T10:12:00.002-04:00

Recently I checked my utility bill to see how much I have to pay. Normally I don't really look at the usage, just the amount because it is usually the same amount. I was shocked when I saw my bill was near $500. When I checked the usage I saw that my utility company JEA said I had used 33,000 gallons of water! I called them up and said that it had to be a mistake because with that much water I would surely have see it somewhere. Their response was "Sir, did you have any people come over during the month that may have taken showers?" I had to laugh because first no one had ever come to my house and second why would I let anyone take 33,000 gallons worth of a shower. Anyways I told them, "No" and asked for someone to come out and check the water meter again. That day when I came home I had a note on my door saying the 'waterman' had come by and say that there was a leak at the water meter and he had fixed it. He also said that the bill would be adjusted. Whewwww, that was a relief, of course trying to get the money back from them was another story as they would not give me a credit until the second month after to make sure there were no more leaks.

Now this is a Green Home

2009-09-04T00:05:00.002-04:00

Anyone think they have a 'green' home? Read this article. 80% of the materials he uses to make these homes are salvaged from other construction or things he finds on the side of the road. Now this guy is thinking green. He also does it for a good cause, he makes them for low income families. Someone give this guy an award.

The Baby is a.....

2009-08-21T10:21:00.002-04:00

Yesterday my wife and I went to the doctors to find out if we were having a future football player or a ballerina. As I said yesterday we asked to have the final word written on a piece of paper an put into an envelope. We decided to go to PF Changs to find out. I opened the envelope and was elated to find out that our baby is a GIRL! Well I guess my hopes of a future football player is out the door, but I'm so happy to find out that We're having a girl. So now comes the part where we have to find a name. My wife has already come up with about a gazillion different ones. I guess that will have to be another post.

Is it a boy or a girl?

2009-08-20T11:21:00.002-04:00

Well today is the day (hopefully) that I find out if my baby is a boy or a girl. I'm hoping for a boy of course and my wife wants a girl. I think I have the edge because I had a weird dream that my baby was a boy, so I'm hoping I have future seeing tendencies. We wanted to make the revealing a special occasion, so my wife thought of a plan to ask the doctor not to tell us and instead to write it on a piece of paper and put it in an envelope for us. The plan is for us to go to a special place and eat dinner and open the envelope together so that it will be memorable. I thought it was a great idea, so when we go to the doctors today we are going to ask them to do this for us. Well wish us luck, well wish me luck that it's a boy!

Kicked out of your own home... Watch out for the banks

2009-08-19T15:45:00.002-04:00

Now this is something I hope never happens to me. A lady comes home to find out that her house was auctioned off by her bank to someone else. I hope this lady sues for a bunch of money. Here's the link.

My Walking Screen Door

2009-08-14T21:30:00.002-04:00

Well I came back home from work today, all elated because it was TGIF, to find that my bag of cat food was stolen. That's right CAT FOOD!!! This is the 3rd time that I have had a cat food nabbing, but that is not the whole story. I also found that my side fence door was a little open. I found that weird since I always lock the door, plus it has 2 locks on it just in case. I went to the back yard to find that my screen door decided to run away as well. I don't know what kind of people I am dealing with, but it is evidently one that is hungry for Friskies, but also needs a new screen door to look out of. Oh yea this person also decided to poke holes in my bird seed bags as well. But the jokes on you kid, I needed to fill my bird seed feeders anyway.

Yard Sale = Epic FAIL

2009-07-03T12:25:00.003-04:00

Have you ever had one of those great ideas and have it turn out to be an epic fail? Well this weekend looks to be one of those days. My wife and I decided to get rid of our storage unit to save money for our soon to be baby and to save money. So I brought most of the stuff to the house earlier this week. But with all these boxes taking up space, what do we do? YARD SALE! So we decided to have one this weekend, starting today. So from 7-12 we had our first yard sale. We took everything out and set all up, bought signs and lemonade and sweet tea. Woke up early this morning and sat outside waiting for the droves of people to come our way. One hour goes by, ok that's fine it's real early, I'm sure they will come in a little bit. Two hours, maybe I should check the signs and see if they fell down. I go and check and see they are still up. Ok, finally in the third hour someone comes by. It's a neighborhood kid and he buys a M&M mug for $.50. Woohoo!!! our first sale. Now I knew this was the start of a good day. 12:00 comes by and I check to see how much we made. $6.50.... yep that's right $6.50. The dang signs cost more than that, not too mention not one person drank lemonade or sweet tea. Of course only 3 people came by anyways. EPIC FAIL! I know it was just the first day, but I figured I would make more than $1.30 per hour. Crap I think children in sweat shops make more than that. Oh well, just wondering if anyone else has had any similar stories.

Transformers!!!!

2009-06-24T11:35:00.003-04:00

Just saw Transformers 2 at 12:01 this morning and thought it was awesome. Not much of a storyline, but action was jam packed. If you still play with your toys then go watch it.

Nail House

2009-06-18T10:57:00.003-04:00

Never heard of the term 'nail house'? Me neither until I saw this post and then I knew exactly what nail houses were. If you have watched the Disney movie Up, then you will know. But anyways this is a pretty cool article on a few nail houses and how owners are unwilling to give up their homes to developers.

The Great Sunflower Project

2009-06-07T19:48:00.004-04:00

Well this is my second year participating in the great sunflower project. This is an organization trying to revitalize the dwindling bee population. Evidently the bee population is declining and without bees or other pollinators we would see a drastic change in the food we eat in the future. So if you sign up with the Great Sunflower Project, they will send you a packet of sunflower seeds for you to plant, so that you can observe and report on the bees. I believe that for this year they are all out, but just remember their site and apply for next year. Anyways here are our plants in action.

Here they are when they first started out.

Here they are now. I probably have about 10 of them around this height, these are the tallest at about 3 feet. The others are around 1 to 2 feet.

Outside Faucet also = CRAPPY!!!

2009-06-06T15:23:00.004-04:00

Well today I went outside in the morning planning on fixing a leaky outside faucet we have had for a couple years now. So I tried to tighten the top nut, which didn't work. So I tried to screw the top screw down further, that didn't work. So now my option was to take the whole faucet off and replace it with a new one. So I made the trip to Lowes but a replacement faucet and came back home. Sounds like a simple take off and replace situation. Everything was going well I put some tape around the thread and started screwing the faucet back on. About halfway through it got real tight, just like you would expect. So I got my handy dandy wrench and started tightening it some more. I got to the point where it was getting a bit too tight, when the one sound you didn't want to hear was heard.... snap! Why did I have to try to tighten this mother any further. Now I had to go back buy a replacement adapter that I snapped and also buy the pvc glue and cleaner because now I have to do plumbing work. So I have now put the faucet back together with the brand new faucet and pipe adapter, but now I am afraid to turn it on, thinking that I will have geiser if I do. Does anyone know the appropriate wait time for the pvc glue to dry? Anyways I hope it worked. Oh yea it is also raining as you can see in the last picture.

Textured Walls = Crappy

2009-06-05T21:38:00.003-04:00

I love old house. Do you? I'm sure you do, but there is one thing I do hate about them.... previous owners. More specifically previous owners that quickly tried to redo the house in efforts of making a quick sale. And the one thing I hate that they do, is textured walls. And not only that but texturing everything in sight because they didn't have the fortitude to tape any of the trim or anything.

This is my upstairs hall, but basically every room was like this as well. I don't know what kind of great idea this was but I wish I could get a Delorean and go back in time and punch them in the face when they thought of this idea. Looks like long nights of scraping and sanding ahead for me.

I hate rain!

2009-06-05T17:58:00.002-04:00

Well it has started to rain again and looks like it will be raining til at least next Tuesday. On top of that 2 leaks started again. One by the closed off back chimney and the other from the bathroom vent about 5 feet from it. Both leaks floow the chimney and vent pipe all the way to the first flow. Luckily no drywall is on the ceilings in those rooms right now, so there is no ceiling damage but I need to remedy this situation as soon as possible. my roofs are probably about 20 years old, but I have no budget to do a reroof so I will have to call someone to come out and fix the leaks.

Free Root Beer Float at Sonics (if you live by one)

2009-06-03T08:40:00.001-04:00

I just got an email saying that there is free Root Beer Floats at all Sonics drive ins. But they only have it during 8pm to midnight tonight only. If you live by one I would say go get a free float! If you don't believe me go to Sonics and see for yourself.

Wife Heart NKOTB

2009-06-02T01:23:00.005-04:00

If you haven't heard New Kids on the Block came back. I know I know, who? But this is my wife's most favorite musical group band singers ever. When she first heard they were coming back she almost fell over in joy, so of course I had to get her some concert tickets and not just regular tickets I got her some meet-n-greet ones. These are the tickets where you get to meet the group backstage before the concert and then you get a ticket somewhere in the first 10 rows. I got her meet n greet tickets to the Atlanta and Orlando shows, plus the out of the blue Tampa show she wanted to go 3 hours before it started. Now I was never a fan of the group so I didn't know what to expect, but boy was it crazy. For a bunch of old guys they were entertaining. I think there was about 99% women all of which were in their 30's - 40's. But the show was not that bad. In Atlanta we had the best seats front row dead center, so my wife went absolutely nuts. If I hadn't gone with her I don't know what would have happened. Anyways I just wanted to catch people up with things we have done since the long time off I had. There are more stories to come. Here are some pictures.

If you want to see more you can look at you flickr page

Finally finished with before and after shots.

2009-05-31T15:09:00.004-04:00

Well it took me all day yesterday, but I finished putting on the 4th coat of poly last night in the wee mornings and when I woke up today it was all dry. I don't know how soon I can put furniture on the floors but I will wait a couple days just in case.

Before:

During:

After:

Baby Room Floor Refinishing, Priceless!

2009-05-30T15:44:00.014-04:00

9" Disposable Roller Tray: $1.98

10" Waterborne Applicator: $7.46

Clear Varathane Water Based Polyurethane: $46.26

Finishing the shellacked floor for your new baby room...... Pricel..... $59.60

For everything else there's Lowes.

Well this is still only 2 coats so far. I have about 3 more to go, but putting the poly on is not that hard at all. With the applicator it goes on real smooth and dries very quickly.

Exterior before and after

2009-05-29T20:45:00.011-04:00

I don't think I ever posted any pictures of my before and after for the exterior of the house. I actually finished this last year mostly by myself. I did need help with the very top rafter tails, but everything else I hand sanded, primed and painted.

Before: A couple months after we bought our house. It was painted half cream/pink and the other half just bare ass wood. It doesn't look too bad here, but the sides were mostly bare wood. Scraping and sanding this off took me near 2 years to complete.

During: Here is the fron mostly sanded to complete bare wood. As you can see the original color of the house was green, so we decided to keep it green, but a lighter green.

After: Here is the house tonight. I just went outside and quickly took a picture while it was getting dark. The house is back to it's green and it took me the whole summer last year to completely painting it. As I said before I did have to pay some one to go up top and paint the rafter tails. The colors I used were Benjamin Moore Saybrook Sage for the house, Antique White for the trim and Bryant Gold for the trim. It's a little hard to see the gold but it's there.

What host do you use for wordpress?

2009-05-29T09:10:00.003-04:00

I am thinking of putting my blog on wordpress with my one domain name. I was wondering since a lot of you use wordpress, what host do you use for your blog? I know there is a free wordpress, but I want to be able to configure how the site looks. So I need a good host. I have heard about bluehost and gatorhost, but I don't know anyone that uses them.

What's wrong with houseblogs?

2009-05-29T08:56:00.002-04:00

Is anyone else seeing Home Restoration's blog posts showing on the latest entries list 50 million times? I just thought that it was weird seeing that many posts for the last few days. I'm assuming there is some kind of glitch because when I view his posts they are all dated in the past. Just weird.

Sail Jacksonville!

2009-05-28T12:08:00.002-04:00

This weekend May 29-31 is Sail Jacksonville. It's an event where replica tall ships come to our riverfront in downtown. The events include tours of the ships, live entertainment, a pirate battle and of course fireworks. If you are in the Jacksonville area, I encourage you to come out this weekend to enjoy the festivities. Oh, and it is free. (except the beer)

The Government wants to paint my roof white?

2009-05-27T10:19:00.002-04:00

I just read where the government wants to paint roofs white in the US. Now I'm sure they only mean buildings with flat tarred roofs, but I couldn't stop to think what my house would look like with a white roof. Shoot I got some leaks going on, so if the government wants to paint my roof white for free then I am all for it. It was a good read and made me wonder if white roofs would make a big difference for the environment.

My pitiful office

2009-05-26T18:22:00.011-04:00

While I was painting the baby room, I started thinking of all the great times I had in there.
This was of course, the room we slept in and ate and cooked for a few years. Now everything has moved out. Now I have a master bedroom (though still cluttered). I have a family room (which also is cluttered). But at the very least this room was my office, it had my computer and other gadgets in it, plus the dogs were always there.

Now this is what has happened to my office, yes that's right. It is in the upstairs hallway, right in front of the stairs. As you can see it looks pretty neat. Haha. Anyways I am typing here thinking, damn I downgraded, but it's all for the little dude.

I just wanted to show the awesome heating system we had at the time.

Shellacking is done

2009-05-25T10:29:00.006-04:00

Well I finished shellacking the floors and they came out very nice. Even though the new wood and old wood don't match, I'm not going to cry over it. Now I have to wait to put down the poly, which I will probably do next weekend when I can get some from my local paint store.

Question: what brands of poly have people used? And how good were they?

Before:

After:

Shellacking the final upstairs bedroom

2009-05-24T01:10:00.004-04:00

Well yesterday I was removing the flooring from the downstairs room and today I am shellacking the last upstairs room. I know I know, I never finish what I start, but I'm the type of renovator that likes to do a little here and a little there. I know there are some of you like that out there, I read your blogs. Anyways I finished sanding the floors with a palm sander, vacuumed and cleaned the area as good as possible and started to put shellac on the baby room floor. Did I saw baby room.... YES! I am going to be a daddy in 7-8 months. So I need to finish this room as fast as possible. I know I haven't blogged in like ages and now all of a sudden I am a soon to be dad and blogging away. I guess that is how it works sometimes. But here are some pictures of the shellac on wood.

You can kind of see in the picture that part of the floor has a different tone. That is where the previous owners put down new pine next to the old. As you can tell they don't match up very well, but I am going to see if a few more coats of shellac might blend it in better. Then after that I will poly over it. I know most poeple don't like poly, but my wife insists that it have poly on it this time. So whatever wife says, I do. While this waits to dry I will be making more shellac.

RAM in the rain

2009-05-24T00:13:00.004-04:00

Can anyone guess what this is???

If someone said the Riverside Arts Market, then you are CORRECT!

Now what is so special about RAM?? Well it's just you same ole art and craft market, except that it is held every Saturday uner I-95. Yes I do mean the highway I-95. The space under this bridge has always been wasted space, but the city finally finshed paving and renovating the space. I always wonder what they could put in there but never imagined an art and craft market. Anyways this market has been a huge success and it only started about a month ago and it keeps getting better. Though it did rain while we were there, the bridge gives enough rain shedding to walk most of the area without getting wet. Check this out if your in Jacksonville on a Saturday morning.

Wierd find under the floors... and rot

2009-05-23T01:54:00.004-04:00

I am in the process of redoing the old downstairs room, which was originally a kitchen. To start off I had to pull up all the old original floors because they were in such bad shape (alot of rot from a former leak I presume). Anyways while I ripped up the plywood to get to the original floor, I found what looks like old linoleum and newspaper bits. It was kind of weird to see the newspaper, the linoleum had a 1950's design on it.

You can see the small newspaper piece in the second photo, there wasn't much left of it, so no telling how old it is. I assume that it was put down and then the linoleum on top. Anyways it's pretty cool to see.

The other thing I found was lots of rot. Some of the floor boards were pretty wrotten, but most was still in useable shape. I will have to put some piece of plywood in its place and then put big sheets of plywood on top.

Rain or Shine, Jacksonville Jazz Fest will go on

2009-05-23T01:31:00.003-04:00

Well it has been raining not stop for the past few days here in Jacksonville. Unfortunately the Jacksonville Jazz Festival also starts up this weekend. It is set up for the first time in downtown Jax. If you look at the picture of my logo, they were suppose to set up in the park along with the street next to it. Because of the rain they had to move all the stage indoors. I sure hope that the rest of the weekend is a bright sun shiny day or there may not be a jazz fest in downtown next year. Anyways for anyone in Jacksonville, I would encourage you to come and join the festivities.

I spoke to soon!

2008-12-22T10:56:00.003-05:00

Well a day after I bragged about my perfect weather here in Jacksonville. I awoke to a 38 degree morning! I am pleased to announce that I single handidly jinxed the city of their great weather. Good news is that Christmas looks to be back to 80. I swear this is the one bad thing about Florida, it'll go from 80 to 30 just like that.

Is it winter yet?

2008-12-22T01:17:00.003-05:00

I know I have heard about the blizzards in the northeast and how new orleans actually got some snow, but I have to wonder if winter will hit in Florida? So far this year there has probably been about 2 weeks of cold weather. Cold weather I mean where I would actually wear a pair of jeans and a jacket. Today it was 81, though it has started to get a little chilly tonight. I believe it is around the mid 50's, but I'm sure many of you would trade that temp for your first born. Anywhoo I wanted to brag to all the housebloggers that I was actually sweating today. Which isn't new in this neck of the woods. Hopefully winter will catch up to us.

Still here but not too much progress

2008-09-21T09:44:00.003-04:00

It's been almost a year since I last posted. I have been pretty busy with work and having a second job, that it's been impossible to update my blog much. I hope to start updating more and posting more pictures of the house. The one thing I can post is that I finally finished painting the outside of the house. It took awhile but it is basically done.

Damn Weather!

2007-12-11T13:22:00.000-05:00

I don't know about you guys but it is just too cold here in Jacksonville, Florida. Today it's suppose to be 76 degrees! Man that is chilly and at night it gets t 54. It's so cold here at night that my wife and I have already started using our heating blanket and 2 covers. I swear we do. In reality, I can't believe how warm it has been for winter. I think so far since October we have had about 3 actual days where the temperature didn't get to 70 degrees. I sure feel so you guys that are getting 2 feet of snow right now, but would not trade it for the world. Anyways just wanted to know where you live and what the weather was like in your old neighborhood.

Happy Thanksgiving with a little bit of shellac pictures

2007-11-22T08:44:00.000-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!! I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving and gorge yourselves with turkey and stuffing, I know I will but before we do that I have fulfilled my promise in posting some pictures of my floor. Now it only has 3 coats of shellac so far and I am going to put about 5 or 6, so it is not done yet, but you can see what it will look like.

This is during the sanding, I rented the U-sand instead of the drum sander. This made sure there were no gouge marks, but it did take a lot longer to sand. I purposely left dark areas and any character marks in the wood.

This is after a couple passes, for some reason my camera was crappy and didn't want to take any good pictures.

This is with the first coast of shellac. I initially thought I was using a 1 pound cut, but after some calculations I figured out I was using a 1/2 pound cut. No wonder it was so easy and didn't create any lap marks. Anyways again the camera didn't give me a good picture. You can see the hazy spots in the picture, I think the inside lense is dirty somehow and have no idea how to clean that. I might just get a new camera on Friday, which reminds me, if anyone needs an excel spreadsheet of all the deals on Black Friday, let me know.

And here is after the second coat, you can see it is a lot darker. My wife wants it dark, so I will have to do a few coats I'm sure. I let the dogs have a test run on it and after awhile I did see that they would start scratching it up a little, so I took out some shellac and blended it out, but because I used such a thin cut of shellac, it couldn't protect the actual wood and I saw where there was a claw mark in the wood that I couldn't take out. The scratch was gone, but the dent wasn't, So it looks like a few more thicker coats should help.

I'm a SHELLAC MANIAC!

2007-11-19T09:53:00.000-05:00

Well this past Saturday I went to Home Depot and rented the U-Sand. I decided on this instead of the drum sander, because it would be more forgiving and I wouldn't have the chance of destroying my floors. The U-Sand was pretty straight forward it had 4 orbital sanders on the bottom (which you have to replace each sandpaper with) and you just push it and pull it. It was very easy, but took a lot longer then the drum sander. I needed every bit of the 24 hours to sand my floors. Even then I didn't completely get every area, but it was better than having to use an edger as well. I made sure that I didn't sand away all the marks and dings that made my floors old. So I sanded lightly to get the old shellac off. I will have to post pictures later, but I like the look of the dark edges and the lighter areas in the middle, it kind of kept the antique-ness of the floors. After I finished that I vacuumed like a demon and made sure that there was no dust anywhere.

On Sunday I started my first coat of dark garnet shellac, if you read my previous post then you know I got my shellac from shellackshack. Making the shellac was simple. I had a glass mason jar and put 32 ounces of denatured alcohol I then put in 1/2 cup of shellac. I think this makes it a 1# cut. Either way the shellac dissolved and the jar was totally black, you couldn't see through it at all, I guess that's how I knew that the shellac was indeed dark garnet. So I made a couple batches of that and let it sit a few days (just so you are for certain that everything has dissolved). So on Sunday I tried it out, and boy was I surprised at how it looked. It made the floors glow. My wife wants it darker but I am assuming the more layers I put on the darker it will get. I decided to try a 1 # cut because I heard if you do to high a cut that brush marks would appear easily. The 1# cut worked well and I had no visible lap marks that I could see, so I might had to go up to 1.5 or a 2 # cut and see if I can get it a little darker. Overall I am pleased and hopefully the floors will hold up well. My wife has been beggin me to finish the living room by Christmas, so we could put the tree there instead of on the second floor landing. I guess her wishes have come true. Next floor to shellac will be the master bedroom. I will pot pictures later on how it turned out.

Shellac Shack

2007-11-06T10:28:00.001-05:00

I am ready to start finishing my floors in the living room, I hope that this weekend I can rent a U-Sand machine from Home Depot and start sanding the floors. I decided on the U-Sand, because I don't want to loose the character of my floor. I used a drum sander in the master bedroom last year and it basically took everything off the floor, it also created a big mess and I had wooden snot for about a week.

After I have sanded I am going to use shellac on my floors, I know that shellac is real hardy, especially with dogs, but I like the idea of being able to fix any scratches. I bought some shellac from Shellac Shack and I can't rave more about their service (and price). Malcolm will answer all of your questions and the shipping time was awesome. I ordered on Thursday and I got it on Saturday. I still haven't mixed it yet, but the color of the flakes is awesome. I got the garnet and hope that 3 or 4 coats will give me the dark color I want. I will have to upload some pics before and after I am done with it.

Damn you Clearwire!!!

2007-11-06T10:19:00.000-05:00

Well, it's been a long time since I last blogged, because my internet service provider, Clearwire, called me up and told me that they were restructuring their service, so I could choose to have this newer service which would be faster. I didn't think about asking them if it would hurt my blog or not. Of course it did. Though I still like the service, since it's a wireless service and I don't need cable or a phone line to connect, but dammit I lost my host. So I have been looking for one for awhile, but will use the blogger service to do my blogging. Oh well, sometimes you win sometimes you don't. Also the service isn't any faster than before.

Hope ya'll had a great Halloween!

Kitchen ain't complete without a vintage stove

2007-04-26T08:42:00.000-04:00

I love craigslist ! Just yesterday I saw someone had posted a link for a vintage electric stove from Westinghouse. Now I know most people like the gas type, and I can't lie, I love those as well, but since I don't have a gas line it would be a big pain to get one installed just for the stove. I had scoured eBay and other classifieds to see if anyone has a vintage stove in the neighborhood. I even would look at cities like Orlando, Tampa and even Atlanta! (Just to remind you that I live in Jacksonville and those cities are quite a distance). I never had much luck except in Atlanta, but to drive 5 hours just to get a stove wasn't ideal. I finally came to conclusion that vintage stoves were never here in Jacksonville and that the Jacksonvillians from old days just used fire and wood to cook food until the 1970's. But to my delight a post on craigslist and to put more sugar on top, it was FREE!!!!! So I borrowed a friends truck, thanks Julie Ann, and I drove to house and was delighted to see this monstrosity. It was big white and dirty and me and my petite wife had to haul it in the truck. I never thought I could strain my muscles around my butt crack, but people I tell you I still can't sit from that experience. We did eventually get it in the truck and brought it back home. As of right now it is just sitting on my front porch until I can figure out what to do with it. If you don't know my kitchen is a mess right now, gutted and beaten, plus we had to keep a dog there for 4 months til we could find an adoptive parent. But alas it's here and I hope that it will work well. My wife is a little iffy iffy about it, but I think an old house needs old appliances. Anyways here are the pictures that she had of it, I will try to post some of my own. It is a 1954 Westinghouse Custom 40 and came with the owners manual, now you don't see that often.

It's been a long time....

2007-04-18T15:08:00.000-04:00

Man, I don't even know how long it has been since I last posted something on here. I know I should do more, but there hasn't been much activity on the house lately. Right now it's still a junked up house with boxes and crap all over the place. I literally mean crap too (damn 5 dogs drive me nuts sometimes). But I have decided to do some work this weekend before my second job kicks in.

I hope that I can finally have the other 3 sides of my house primed by Sunday. I have borrowed a neighbors extension ladder and will make the 3 mile high trek up the side of my house. Now to all of you, how many have painted their house with a ladder and how many have fallen off? I ask this because I am friggin scared of heights, but I am more of a scrooge than that. So I will suck it up and do it.

Vagrants, Homeless and Bums Oh My!!!

2007-02-23T13:28:00.000-05:00

If you live in a historic neighborhood which is coming up from the dumps, then you know what I am talking about. The vagrants that walk around your neighborhood looking for something to pawn. When I saw looking for something to pawn, I mean stuff that is mine!!! If you haven't read before some trash stole my little giant type ladder from me after I had left it out one day. Now let me tell you about this. This act of craziness makes me more mad then when my ladder was stolen. Here we go:

For the past year I have gotten into the hobby of gardening. Now I'm not a good one, but I have successfully grown peppers and stuff. So I went to Wal-mart to buy some garden supplies, pots, plants and a bag of soil. Went back home and opened the bag of soil, put the soil in the pots, put the plants in the pots and added water. Voila! simple gardening. Now tell me what you think these retards stole from me.....

MY FREAKIN HALF USED BAG OF DIRT!!!

Do you believe that? I went out the next day to go to work and noticed that something was wrong. I couldn't put my finger on it and then BAMM, my dirt, my DIRT, MY DIRT! You have got to be kidding me. They left everything else there that had monetary value. I even strategically placed a printer out on my porch, knowing that if it's in the trash it won't get taken as fast, BUT if you put it on your porch, you can damn well be sure it will be gone in the next 5 minutes. They skipped that and went for the dirt. I don't know what pawn shop would buy it or what person they would try to sell it too. It's just crazy. How the hell do you even think of doing that?? Anyways I at least got my strawberries planted before they stole the dirt. Damn them.

Oh yea, does anyone know of a way to construct a gate that will open when someone steps onto my porch? I know it would have to deal with lasers and such, but I am fostering a pitbull and would like to make use of her while I have her. The joy I would have to see their crack addicted ass running down the street with a black pit chasing them. I can only dream.

Question about wood floor refinishing... Damn animals!

2007-02-22T12:37:00.000-05:00

Well I have decided that moving into the master bedroom is a must now. We have lived in the small guest bedroom ever since we moved into our house. The room is painted and livable, but the question I have is, "What should I cover my floors with?". I know a lot of people would sugguest polyurethane. And I bet that is a good solution, but listen to me first. I have 5 dogs, ranging from 3 tiny chihuahuas and 2 big black labs. They do a number to my floors everyday and with poly I am afraid that I will have to refinish every few year. I know the plus side is that it is very durable, but then the bad is that you can not fix it after it has been damaged. I have read a lot about shellac and have written a few things about it on my blog. The plus is that it is easy to spot repair and dries a lot faster, the bad is that it is easily damaged. I won't even go into the n-th number of other floor finishes either. So if you could please put your input on what I should use. I will take what you say and make my decisions.

Remember: I do have to stay in the house as the floors are being refinished. Please help. Thanks so much.

Porch ceiling is now blue

2007-01-30T22:30:00.000-05:00

Well over the weekend we decided to paint the porch ceiling. Up until Saturday it was a multicolored white, pink and ah natural. There was about 7 layers of paint on it and the previous painters surely didn't strip it all off. They actually just stripped bits and pieces of it along with the wood. But anywho we decided it was time to finally paint that sumumabitch. Lita had this great idea she got from a magazine, where someone painted their porch ceiling light blue, to go along with the color of the sky. So we thought it would look good on our ceiling as well, so off to the Home Depot we went. We "quickly" decided on a color, bought it and raced back home just drooling at our chance to paint.

But first we had to prime the damn thing, so we said what the hell it can't be that hard, right??? Were we wrong, unknown to us we didn't think that holding a paint roller off a long pole while looking straight up and dropping bits of paint in your eye would hurt so much. It took us about 2-3 hrs to prime and since it was getting cold here in Florida we called it a day. Let me tell you, I didn't know that you could hurt on some parts of your body. Even parts that weren't even directly related to painting muscles we hurting.

The next day Monday (Sunday was recovery day) we began painting. The weird thing about it was that it didn't take long at all this time. It seemed like it only took an hour to finish up the job and the after results were great. It was like we were looking into the sky, you know with like gouge marks here and there and thickly painted... paint. But we were still happy with the results, we do have some more touching up to do but that will have to wait until this cold weather dies down.

Here are some more pics:

This was the first swipe of paint, we had to see if our eyes had deceived us in Home Depot, but we were pleased.

Lita is working oh so hard to make it look good, she sure knows how to use that stick.

This is me riding the paint roller like an asian cowboy would, spanking the air behind himself. That's basically what I did all day. But the color does look good.

Damn taxes!!!

2007-01-20T18:37:00.000-05:00

I got my new notice of mortgage payment and saw that I will be paying $200 and change more than I am now starting on March 1. Dammit!!!!!!! Stupid county taxes. I need to fill out that damn homestead exemption on Monday. I wonder if I do that if it will change anything on my payments or if that only helps for next year. Anyways, guess I ain't getting that new iPod anymore. Taxes are the devil!!!!

UFO'S???

2007-01-11T12:48:00.001-05:00

Now I know this is not houseblog related, but I saw the weirdest thing last night. at about 10 PM after walking my dogs and bringing them back home, I happened to look into the sky and saw this very bright light streak across the sky. Now I know most everyone and including myself would think, "Wow looks at that comet!" But the weird thing was that this light took a turn UP into the sky. So it didn't just go across the sky it went straight then shot up into the atmosphere, but just like that the light just "turned off". Now I don't know any comets or space debris that can do this, from what I learned gravity pulls things down to earth, not away. I also noticed no sound and it was way to fast to be a plane or helicopter. I wish I could have taken a picture, but it was so fast there would be no way I could have even if I had a camera. I do live by an Airforce base so the answer could be some top secret aircraft they have, but it was just weird. Now I don't make stuff up and I have always said that I do not believe in aliens, but this totally has shook my beliefs. Whatever it was, it was weird.

Savannah

2006-12-26T20:14:00.001-05:00

Last weekend Lita and I went to Savannah for a few days. It was our first time going there and didn't know what to expect. Lita was told by a coworker that Savannah was a very nice looking city, with its old buildings and such. I didn't know what would actually be there and just figured that it would be like Jacksonville, old buildings here and there sprinkled with some new towers. Boy was I wrong!

Our hotel was about 10 minutes away on Abercorn Street and the neighborhood looked just like any suburban neighborhood did, with its strip malls here and there, Burger Kings and McDonalds on each corner, of course it was the first time I saw an actual Piggly Wiggly! After checking in we left the dogs in the room and went straight down Abercorn. At first it was the normal bungalows that I have been accustomed to here in Jax, but then out of nowhere came these rowhouses. You could tell they needed help but they were so beautiful, I thought already it was the greatest place. Little did either of us know that we had just only been through the Victorian district. This district is starting to revitalize just like Springfield is. I figured it couldn't get any better, but then the oak tree lined streets started to part and in front of us was a little pocket park with grand homes all around the park. I couldn't believe what I saw and as we kept driving the houses were just grander and grander. As you can tell, that is how it went the whole time we were there. Every turn we were just in awe of whatever was in front of us. I couldn't believe there was a city that still had most of its historic buildings intact. Jacksonville has lost a lot of it's history to the wrecking ball. A lot of the buildings being torned down to be rebuilt as parking space. Our Main St. isn't even the main street anymore. There is absolutely nothing on that street to go to, besides the new library. It is a shame to see the old pictures compared to what is there now. Anyways back to Savannah. We had a blast there and my wife is for certain that our next home will be in Savannah. I think our next trip is to Charleston, heard it was a bigger version of Savannah.

Here are some pictures of our trip:

The Return.....

2006-12-22T14:02:00.000-05:00

Well it has been quite some time since I last wrote anything, but I am finally back. Well for now at least. I guess after the debacle my FSU Seminoles have been having, I just couldn't get up to write anymore. But since the season is over (which actually ended about 4 months ago) I can go back to writing about my house.

Since I last left off there has been no real changes. I did prep the master bedroom for paint, which it hasn't been painted yet. I have also replaced the bad floor boards that I have in the living room. I thought this job would be hard, but I found out that it wasn't as bad as I thought. The worst part is finding replacement heartwood pine flooring. I'm lucky enough to have some dumbass neighbors who buy historic homes and just rip out everything inside and throw it out. As you can tell I have been dumpster diving a lot. I also found 2 old sinks from different eras. I'm not sure how old they are, but they have openings slotted with 2 faucets for hot and cold. So I can only assume they are old. Back to the flooring. Another thing that was difficult with replacing the wood flooring was cutting out the bad parts. I could have done it the easy way and just ripped out the whole floor board, but I wanted to save as much flooring I could, so that meant squaring up and cutting the floorboard while it was still on the ground. Let me tell you that was hard, I could never get a good perpendicular cut. And when I did get a good cut, using the chisel was horrendous. I found that putting a saw blade on my dremel was the best way of getting a good cut.

When I finally got everything cut to size and installed the new old floorboard, I ended up with space between the new and the old floors. The new floorboard I had was about 1/16th skinnier in width. I though it wouldn't make much of a difference, but after putting it in, you could see the spacing so well. Solution: Use a broom or brush and brush the sawdust that will no doubt be there into the crevices. I forget where I got that idea, but I think it was on someones blog. That worked like wonder. Now all I have to do it complete the other floorboards, sand the floors and then put some shellac on them. Yes folks you heard right, I am going to shellack these damn floors, but that will be another day. Until then Merry Christmas and send me some money.

Another house on fire

2006-09-05T09:58:00.000-04:00

Wow, yesterday another house caught on fire in the neighborhood. That is now 3 houses in the past couple months. I think there is an arsonist out there, because this is just too fishy. For the 1 year I have lived here, I had not seen a fire and now in the past 1-2 months, there have been 3. And all of them are homes that are being restored and currently empty. This is sad to see 3 more of these wonderful homes to go. There was a story a few years back of a woman burning houses on purpose to scare people from moving here. I wonder if this is the same situation. I can tell you that I will not be moving and I hope we get this bastard.

Oh the sweet smell of house fires in the morning.

2006-09-01T10:15:00.000-04:00

Well looks like another house has caught fire in Springfield. That's two in the past few weeks, this one a little more suspicious though. I was walking my dogs in the morning and right out my front porch I saw police cars blocking off the street next to me. I live one house down from the corner of 7th Street and Laura Street. The "blazin' house" was on Laura Street. Since it was 6 in the morning, I just thought they were doing some kind of construction on the street (8th street is being totally redone). I should have known something was up when *ding* I smelled smoke in the air. But I didn't think of it as anything. When I got to work a coworker of mine asked me if I lived close to the house on fire, I was just sitting there staring thinking to myself, "Damn am I stupid". This time the house fires were way to close to home, even though my house was still far away to not be threatened, it was just alarming to me that it could happen to anyones house. This house was just magnificent, it was a victorian style home with stained glass windows, wrap around porch, great woordwork. Now the weird thing about this fire is, that it started on the second floor of the house. "How is that weird?," you ask. Well there was no electricity in the house at the time, so the house could not have been on fire because of electrical issues. It seems either someone set it on fire or some kind of small fireball thrown from those creatures from the Lord of the Rings. Either way very suspicious. I am leaning towards the fireball.

I guess sometimes these things happen, it's heartbreaking to see, but these beauties can't last forever. I just hope that if someone did set this house on fire that they find this person soon. I hate to see them go, but I'm optimistic that the house can still be restored. I am going to drive by and see the damage. I think it is just relegated to the second floor. I always wanted that house, but I guess I am kind of lucky that I never got it.

I hate carpet

2006-08-21T11:40:00.000-04:00

I'm sure all of you agree with the title of this post. As being owners of historic homes, one of the worst things to see when you buy one of these beaut's is carpet over the original hardwood floor. I had taken out all the carpet in the house so far except the dining room. That's where the fridge and wall oven are located at this moment. Well, I decided to rip up at least part of the carpet and see what was underneath. This is what I found:

Looks like more and more of those damn laminate tiles. But the one good thing is that they come off a lot easier than the ones in the living room did. I did find out that my floors are not in the best shape ever. There is termite damage and when they put the laminate on, it seems like they had to really heat up the surface. So the woor floors look like they got burnt. I hope that, that isn't the case and it's just the adhesive they used. I can't wait to get all this carpet outta here. I HATE CARPET!!!

For Sale Buy Owner

2006-08-17T15:00:00.000-04:00

Yesterday after taking a look at the burned down house I decided to ride around the neighborhood looking for scraps of heartpine flooring or anything that some renovator was throwing out, like a vintage sink I found a few weeks back (I'll post pics of that later). As I was riding I saw a lot of houses that were for sale but ones that I never saw on the mls listing. Of course the reason why, was because they were all being sold by owner. After I rode by a few I figured I might as well take pictures of these houses and post them online. Maybe I will be fruitful in driving some interest into Springfield. I would at least be happy to see more 'normal' people, than the crazy ones. Here are some pictures:

This house needs some real TLC, but it looks like it would be a wonderful house.

Me and Lita actually looked at this house about 2 years ago. Looks nice outside, but the inside needs some serious work.

Another house that we looked at. Was in way better shape when we took a look, even though it was still in shambles. Had nice coffer ceiling and detail.

Another nice renovated home, only problem is that it is right across the street from a school.

Good looking house, I wonder how much they want?

Nice looking Spanish style home, I know Lita likes it.

This one was on the mls listing, but they wanted a lot of money for it. I bet they still do.

Another one for you DIYer's out there. This house would look great if done properly.

This one looked like it had been partially burned at one point, but it may still be salvageable. This is for you major DIYer's with big paychecks.

Another one of these victorianesque homes. I've seen the sign up for this one for a long time.

A small bungalow type home. I believe it is right across the street from the one above.

The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire

2006-08-16T22:42:00.001-04:00

Well today I worked on prepping the living room walls to be ready to paint this weekend, but after all the sanding and filling of holes I took a bike break. I decided to ride around and take a picture of the house that burned down a few days ago. I remember when Lita and I were thinking about this house. We saw the For Sale sign out front and gave the number a call. The man on the phone was asking for way too much, so we passed on it. I guess good thing we did. It was a great looking victorian house too. Now it's just the next in line to be demolished. It's a sad thing to see these 'ol beauty's go. I've already seen a few in the area that will be or have been torned down because of fires. I'm guessing it's because of faulty knob and tube wiring, or faulty crack head neighbors trying to rid of us sane humans.

Nice, huh? Did someone go get those damn marshmallows????

Paint + Rust = Crap

2006-07-29T07:49:00.000-04:00

Well yesterday I was doing some caulking of exposed nail holes on my exterior siding. After I was done I saw that the front of the house where I had previously primed(which by the way is still unpainted because we can't decide on colors) has small little dots of rust coming through the primer from the nails behind them. At first I thought it was only a couple then that became a few, to some, then it seemed like all of them. Now should I resad those areas and then caulk them and prime them with oil primer instead? I used just regular water based Zinnser Bullseye or something from the HD. If that is not a good primer, than what should I have gotten. I'm afraid that everything I have done will be for nothing. AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! (Now turning green and my clothes are ripping from my body.... it would work, but I'm asian so back to my normal self). dang

Revenge against the garbage monsters... well sort of

2006-07-26T21:55:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I was welcomed to the most beautiful sight of trash strewn across my front lawn. This is the first time it has happened to me, but I have seen it happen to others in my neighborhood. If you don't know already, I live in a area that is going through some gentrification, so we have some people that live here that are, how should I say it...... residentially challenged. They go around going through peoples trash and taking whatever they can to sell to make some drug/alcohol money. I'm sure some of you know exactly what I am talking about. Anywho, I decided to take revenge on these bastards. Now I don't mind people going through my trash to "salvage" something, but at least clean up the mess. So what I did was collect as much cat poo I could get from my 5 furry friends and I gently placed it between some goodies in the trash. I placed it outside and with a grin on my face I went back inside to sleep. Well this morning I woke up to find trash yet again piled on the lawn, but the weird thing was, the bag of cat poo I placed in the garbage was taken??? Now I don't know if I actually got the revenge I wanted, but I was both happy and grossed out. Well I just hope that whoever it was got the idea. If not I will have to keep my pitt outside and give them a bigger surprise.

Mount Dora, Florida

2006-07-24T10:59:00.000-04:00

Well this has been my first post since the last millenia, but anyways here I am. Been a bit busy the last month, hence the reason I haven't written anything, but this past weekend Lita and I went down to Mount Dora.

For about the last year or so, Lita has been bugging me to go to Mount Dora. How she even heard of this place is unknown to me, but I always blame it on my chihuahua Peanut. So it's his fault. She had been talking about this place non stop everyday it seemed, always asking me if we could go there, but I just didn't like the idea of driving 2.5 hours just to look at some antiques. From what I heard it was a big haven for antique collectors and such. So this past weekend we decided to go, it worked well with the work meeting I had in Orlando. Now hearing about Mount Dora so much, I had amental image of some kind of grand place full of anitque stores and old homes, but as we were coming closer and closer all I saw was grass and cows. It sure wasn't the grandest old town I thought. But it did have some very nice areas. The downtown area of Mount Dora was wonderful, it is set right on the edge of Lake Dora and the town is set on a hill overlooking the water. The town didn't have many old homes that I could see, they did have one that was huge, but we weren't able to get a tour of it. The shops were nice and what you would expect from an older downtown area. But the main reason we came, was the Renningers Flea and Antique Market. Now that place is what puts Mount Dora on the map. It was the largest flea market I had ever been to and had many awesome things, too bad we didn't have the money to buy much, but Lita did find a few nick nacks to buy and we had a great time talking to people and looking at stuff. We also got a few ideas from the things they did have and hope we can incoperate that into our house, whenever it is finished. I would highly recommend going to Mount Dora and having a look around the antique market and the downtown area, other than that it is really bland, but it was worth seeing the smile on Lita's face. Maybe we can go there again sometime soon and bring more money.

I am now a historic home owner!

2006-06-16T14:04:00.000-04:00

I bet your saying, "Peter, how can you say you're a historic home owner now, when we know you already bought a historic home?" Well this is how I know I am a historic home owner now. I got something stolen from my house! I've been to many neighborhood meetings and every meeting someone says that they had gotten something stolen from them at least once. I've heard stories of huge 250 lb pots to tools to anything that these SOB's can get their hands on. Well today I noticed that my ladder had been hi-jacked. And it's not just any ladder, it's one of the Little Giant type ladders. But the thing that pissed me off the most was that I was almost done priming the house. I mean dammit! They know exactly when to hit you. Now I know that I should have taken the ladder inside, but I thought no way that anyone would see the ladder from the front of the house. But to my surprise these dirt bags can smell anything remotely close to them that will fetch them a few dollars so they can get their alcohol and drugs. I am so pissed right now. I just hope that they had hell dragging the ladder with them. I hope they fell down and cut their knees while hauling this big thing with them. Those bastards!!!!!

Patching and removing wood floors

2006-05-05T21:51:00.000-04:00

Well today I decided to pull up some of my wood flooring that had been damaged by termites. I went online and read a few articles on the 'how to do's' of replacing floor boards. It seemed easy enough, drill a few holes and then use the handy circular saw to cut a few lines down the board, then you just pry up and voila - a hole in the floor! In reality, I drilled the holes, then used the circular saw only to hit the nails that were used to secure the floor boards in the first place. Then after totally screwing my circular saw, I tried to pry the board up. Too bad the board came up in only pieces and I had to scrape and dig to get every bit out. Even then I still need to use a chisel to straighten the good board with the holes I drilled in. But eventually I got a few boards up. Now onto the successful part of the day. Patching holes that termites made. WOOHOO! Well after the tremendous amount of time it took to take up one board, I started to dread thinking about pulling up all the boards that have been damaged. So I decided I would try to patch some areas that weren't that badly damaged. I took a piece of wood that I had previously pull out and I started to scrape it into the shape I needed to patch the board with. The area isn't all that big, so it was a good practice piece. It didn't take long to shave off a little at a time until I got the right size. After I was done, I just plopped the sucker into the hole and I was pretty happy with the end results. Here are some pictures of the wood pulling and patching. Enjoy!

Anyone know where I can get old flooring?

2006-05-02T13:42:00.000-04:00

Well I am almost complete in stripping the old glue off my living room floor and am getting ready to sand afterwards, but before I do that I need to get some replacement flooring for my floors. Some of the wood peices have been eaten away by those darn pesky termites. I can't wonder why God ever decided to make those things, I'm assuming it was actually Satan himself who created these buggers. He loves to enjoy watching us new old home owners rip up the carpet only to find millenia linoleum under it. Then pull that up only to find that the wood flooring under that has been ravaged by his creations. Anyways I was wondering if anyone knew of a website or some place in Florida where I could get salvaged old wood flooring. Mine are 2.5 inch old heart pine and I want to finish them with some shellac or maybe poly, depends how old I want to go. But if anyone can lead me to the right direction, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks a lot!

Riverside/Avondale Home Tour Review

2006-05-01T15:42:00.000-04:00

Well this past weekend was the Riverside/Avondale Home Tour. They had 10 buildings on the tour, but only 7 were actual homes. Also out of those 7 homes 2 were not even close to being finished, so that actually left 5 homes to be viewed, which was pretty disappointing. Not the say that the 2 houses were in bad shape, I can see the beauty in them when finished, but to have them on a home tour??? Why??? There was nothing to see. One home was actually just frames with no walls, just wires and duct work. It was just a skeleton of itself. Onwards to the other 5 homes, as you can tell I didn't take any photos, because I was overly impressed with any of the homes. All the homes had a great looking exterior, but once inside they were all pretty bland. (A note some of the backyards were wonderful though.) So I was pretty disappointed this year, but one house that was very interesting was the Mediterranean style home, with original stuccoed walls, high high coffered ceilings and dark woodwork. The house was amazing until you went into the kitchen, where it fell into a restorers nightmare. The kitchen had been overhauled and had pale woodwork, which didn't match at all to the dark woodwork throughout the house, but that house was by far the highlight of the tour. I guess I was hoping to see homes back to their original beauty, but I did realize that it is of modern times and people need to renovate their homes to match their livelyhood. All in all it was an ok home tour, they had a much better one last year. Of course they did have one house which I didn't actually lookat because they had so many stuffed animals in there. Lions, tigers and bear OH MY!!!

Woohoo a free domain

2006-04-28T14:26:00.000-04:00

Well I found a site that gives you a free domain, so now people don't have to remember hanjin1.clearwire.net. Now you can go to www.restorationon7th.co.nr , hmmmm I guess that will take a bit more to remember, but at least my web address now corresponds to my blog. If anyone wants a free domain, just click the link I have and sign up (part of the agreement is to keep a link of them on your website). Anyways this beats paying money for a domain. We'll see if anyone uses this address or not.

As for the house project, or as my wife would call it DAMMITTTT!!!! , right now we are pulling up all the old glue that held down the linoleum tiles that covered my floors. It's tedious job, but it beats hanging off my roof trying to sand the last bit of clapboard siding. I guess I will have to do that this weekend, I really need to finish that siding. Oh well, more cleaning and scraping and sanding and painting, what a week!

Messy house = Small house

2006-04-26T16:02:00.000-04:00

Well yesterday Lita and I went to our weekly animal rescue group in Springfield (SACARC) which is held at someone's house. This week we went to Anastasia's house on 9th St., first of all she had a big house (not finished yet, but whose is?). It was a really nice house and looked so open and spacious. That made me think about my house with all the boxes and crap still there (Yes we still have boxes even 1 year into moving). Anyways Lita had been saying that she wanted to rent a storage room to move everything in. Hmmm I thought "Wow maybe that would make the house look bigger!" bright idea by me of course. So it looks as if we will be renting out a room and putting our junk in there. So it is true a clean house does look bigger, who'd a thunk it?????

P.S. SACARC is trying to create a dog park in our historic area. We need 150 pledges of $25 by Thursday to get it. So far we have 85, if anyone is willing to help go to sacarc.org and click the dog park link, then download the letter of intent form and fax it to 904-241-1680. We would really appreciate any help that we can get. This is for our furry little friends, hell they need a park too!

Lita is here...

2006-04-25T15:48:00.000-04:00

Hello. This is Lita. I am blogging here for the first time and I hope my husband Peter doesn't erase this post. I have my own blog but no I am not sharing that with anyone. Sorry. It's just too personal I think. But maybe I will create another one that is more public-friendly. I mean, not that my current blog is XXX rated or anything like that, it's just that I am not comfortable other people reading it. So just read this blog. It's more fun here anyway.

The last several weeks have been really hactic for both of us. Busy volunteering here and there and other personal activites. So in short, we haven't had that much chance getting anything done in the house. I am basically not the type of person who likes to get dirty but since we own this old house, I don't have much choice.

Today, I plan to do some cleaning in the house. It is so hard to do that since 90% of the house is filled with our stuff or should I say junk? I need to sort out the stuff we don't need and donate them to Salvation Army. Then rent a storage somewhere to store our furnitures, etc. We plan to rent the storage this weekend. I hope I can finish my living room in a month. That would be fab! Then I can start doing the dining room. Master bedroom is next. Peter can work on the outside of the house while I do the inside.

I just want a nice-clean-finished-looking house.
Ours is far from all of that.
Damn.

Did I win the lottery last week?

Donations anyone???

2006-04-24T15:20:00.000-04:00

I saw this donate button on someone elses blog before and decided to put one on mine, (heck any money is good money). We all know the costs it takes to restore an old house, and I for one am finding out how much. The rule of thumb is estimate what you think it would cost and the time it would take and times it by 2 or 3 or 4 (depends on the person). Well it's not the easiest thing to do, but I love old homes, just like the rest of us and I am damn sure going to see this one come together, HELOC or no HELOC. So you can take that ELoans.com!!!!

Anyone looking for a part-time employee???

Frustrations in getting that darn HELOC FROM HELL!!!

2006-04-24T13:01:00.000-04:00

Well most of you don't know, but I have been trying hard to get a HELOC for my house. You know how the story goes, buy old house use credit cards for restoration, now can't pay for everything without eating 1 every 3 days. You know how it is. Anyways I decided to try and get a HELOC, from several lenders, but when I told them my situation (especially the part where I tore out the whole kitchen and bathroom downstairs) they said that getting one may be tough. I have only lived there for almost a year, but the mounting expenses have cut down on what I can do for the house. I'm sure not having a kitchen and bathroom downstairs will only lower the cost of my house. I wonder if there is another way to at least be able to consolidate our house debt. Damn credit cards, they are the devil!!!! Well wish me luck in finding someone that will help me out.

New Banner

2006-04-23T16:29:00.002-04:00

Since I saw a lot of people with new graphical banners, I thought I should change mine as well. So here it is, tada! Hope it is cool, tell me what you think.

Springfield Annual Home and Garden Tour!

2006-04-17T12:17:00.000-04:00

Woohoo! It's finally time for the Springfield Home and Garden Tour. I love when home tours come around, because all of the houses give me so many ideas. The good thing about this year is that the Riverside/Avondale home tour is next week! Boy so many houses in so little time. If anyone is coming through Jacksonville, FL, you need to hit up the home tours this weekend and next. It will be a blast. I will post pics of all the houses that I attend.

Exterior colors, version 2

2006-04-14T01:22:00.001-04:00

Well I tried another set of colors, this time with different shades of the green and cream color. The green turned out a lot better and I am way happier with the results, but the cream turned into more of a yellowy color. I didn't really want yellow, since there are a few houses around that are yellow. I guess I will have to make another trip to the paint store and try another cream color. You know, I thought that doing the prep work for the exterior was hard, but picking colors will kill your brain. Anyways here are some pics of the new colors:

Exterior colors.... decisions, decisions

2006-04-11T10:26:00.000-04:00

Well I started priming the front of the house a few weeks ago and have done most of it. I still have some areas that I have to smooth out, but I just don't want to deal with it yet. Lita has really wanted me to finish the front, so that at least when people walk by they won't say, "Damn, look at that crack house!" Now they will say, "Damn that's a nice looking crack house." Anyways we decided on colors for our house and have gone with a cream base with a grey green trim and accentting the windows with a dark red. So far we have this:

I think the cream is a little to brown, maybe a little lighter. What do you think?

As you can see I haven't finished stripping the beadboard ceiling. That will wait for a long time as that is the hardest area to strip. Very hard trying the use a grinder facing up. I may just end up replacing it all.

Old postcards and photos of Springfield

2006-04-10T15:43:00.001-04:00

Here are some photos and postcards I found of my neighborhood. Boy, was it beautiful then, I wish we still had the trolley going through Main St. Anyways enjoy!

Kramer's Antique Improver??

2006-04-05T14:05:00.000-04:00

Went to the antique store yesterday and saw a booth they had, advertising Kramer's Best Antique Improver. I was wondering if anyone has ever tried this stuff on their floors? I have a room that I have sanded but have not put anything on it as of yet (yes I am that lazy). I saw this stuff and read the back and saw where it says that it's good for floors as well. I've tried searching and haven't found anyone that has actually used this stuff yet. I've seen the examples they had at the booth and they look real good. The one reason why I am thinking about doing this, is because I have many animals in the house and using poly on the floors might not be a good thing, especially without anyone there to supervise. Also boarding them for a few days would cost me a bundle, so I am looking into this natural way of doing it. I have thought about shellac too, so that may be an option as well. If anyone knows anything about this please give me a feedback. Thanks a lot

Painting at a halt

2006-03-16T22:43:00.000-05:00

Well since last weekend when I first put on the primer I haven't been able to prime anything else. Of course the weather has to do something with that. Why is it that every time you plan on doing something that Mother Nature has to rear her ugly head? Oh well, I think I might have a few nice days this week, so I will let the siding dry some before I put on the primer. In the mean time I did perfect scraping out the corners and getting all the old caulk out of the siding from my second floor. It's amazing how an old house will turn your fear of heights into nothing. I risk my life on the porch roof just to scrape out some caulk. I can't wait til I have to paint up there. One dilemna I am going to face is how I am going to paint the right side of my house. I have a chain link fence that is about 3-4 feet from the house. I'm not sure if a rented scaffolding will fit inbetween that space. I hope it does, because I wouldn't want to try scraping and painting off of a ladder.

Painting has begun

2006-03-14T10:49:00.000-05:00

Well not that much painting. As I have stated in a previous post a long time ago. I had a painter come strip my house and paint it for a fee of $5,000.00. Well as all of you may know, he got paid $2,000.00 and then basically did diddly squat. He stripped some of my house but did it half-assed. Basically I ended up finding out that he was actually working on someone elses house when he was suppose to be working on mine. So long story short, if your asian and the guy that's working for you is asian. Don't fall for the "since we're both asian, I'll give you a deal" crap. I'm sure it works with other races as well. Anyways I decided to start on the stripping and painting myself, especially since the weather has been kind to me. I sanded and caulked and cleaned the front of my house (well the wall that is under the front porch at least) and put on the primer. All I can say is that it looks so good white. We were so used to the faded green brown color that was stained on the wood that the white just looked gorgeous. Another thing I found out, painting with a paint brush is brutal hell! I never thought that painting would hurt so much. Now I am dreading having to go on a ladder and scaffolding to paint. I know that spraying paint is easier, but heard that the paint doesn't hold up well. I wonder if rolling the paint on the siding is better?
Oh well, I will post pictures when I have one whole wall with trim all painted.

The war on Milk Paint

2006-02-02T18:12:00.000-05:00

Well it has been awhile since I last posted, the reason behind this is I have been at war on milk paint. Every trim in my house is painted with milk paint and 12 more coats of paint on top of that. I've had good success removing those top layers with Soygel, Peel Away, and regular methyl chloride stripper from Home Depot, but none of these have been able to scratch anything on the first coat of paint, which is milk paint. Actually until yesterday, I didn't know it was milk paint, but today I found out it was, because I was able to remove it with milk paint remover.

I ordered some of this after reading some posts from other home bloggers and hoping, just hoping that this would finally take the paint off. So I mixed the powder in some water and let it sit awhile. Then I pasted the solution on the trim and waited, actually I waited for 24 hours. Here are the results:

Milk paint before

This is milk paint remover applied onto the trim

Here is my first scrape test after 24 hours

Voila!!!! IT WORKS!!!!!!!!!!

Here is the progression from beginning to end.

The bad part about doing this, is that I found that my trim was not varnished or shellaced prior to the milk paint being painted on. So it seems that I won't have my dream of shellacing the trim. Seems to be too much trouble trying to get the paint out of the wood grain. I guess I will just paint over it or milk paint it again. Well at least I know what works against milk paint and now you do too.

Dire situation in Springfield!!!

2006-01-18T09:41:00.000-05:00

As some (hopefully all) of you know, I live in Jacksonville, Florida in an area called Springfield. Springfield is Jacksonville's oldest subdivision, right on the edges of downtown. Here we have a beautiful view of the city and only a couple minutes away from the St. John's River. Over the long history of Springfield, there have been good and bad times, but over the last few years new residents have moved in and started the revitalization process of Springfield.

In Springfield we have a Historic Jewish Center that has been abandoned for quite some time. The issue with the Springfield residents is that it is being awarded to River Regions Human Services, to be used as a facility to treat people with drug addictions, debilitating mental disorders, and those who are involved in anti-social and criminal activities. Now I'm not saying that River Regions is a bad organization, because the do a great service in helping poeple with needs. The problem I do see is that they are trying to establish this organization in a residential area that has been hard at work to revitalize and reverse the bad rep that it has aquired throughout the years. Now there has been a public outcry on this situation and it has been in the news, but it looks that the government is going to award them with the building. The only fire we have to this situation is that the Mayor and the city is backing the people of Springfield in not giving River Regions the permit it needs to do work on the building. We still have hope and wish that everyone will be able to help our sub-division in fighting this and help River Regions find a more suitable building.

Thank you for your time and help.

Gary from This Old Crack House is a Godsend!

2006-01-09T20:51:00.000-05:00

Well this is actually old news, but I had been looking a some clawfeet for my newest clawfoot tub. I got it free, but with no feet but who am I to complain. Anyways I went to the salvage yard and they had a plethora of feet to choose from, the only exception was that I had to buy a tub to get the feet. Oh well, I have 2 already I don't need 3. So I put a post on my bolg and low and behold a savior came. His name is Gary and he sent me 4 wonderful feet for my tub, I am pretty sure they will fit, but I haven't had the chance to put them on because I have loads of junk in my tub and my 4 cats love using it as their sleeping quarters. Here are the pictures of the feet (I didn't actually take these, Gary sent them to me so I could see what they look like)

Thanks a lot to Gary!!!!!!!

Oh sweet heaven, there is a salvage yard!

2005-12-15T22:45:00.000-05:00

Today I started looking online for a salvage yard in my area. I had read on other house bloggers sites that they got some goodies at their local salvage yard, but I was unaware of one in my area. I posted a message on my local historics website to see if anyone knew of a salvage in town, but no one knew of any. So I started searching and found a site for a wrecking company. On one of their pages they wrote that while wrecking homes and buildings they would come across a piece of architecture that seemed worth saving. So they put all this "junk" into a yard and let people come rummage and buy what they find. So after work Lita and I drove to the salvage yard. We were amazed at all the things we found. They had clawfoot tubs, sinks, toilets, doors, windows and even urinals, also they had this elephant too (kind of weird), but it was great like a kid in a candy store, better yet a kid at Willie Wonka's Chocolate Factory. It was great, the only downfall that they closed at 5 PM, which is about the time we got there. Good thing they were nice and let us look around for a little. But this place must be a hidden treasure that no one knows about, well know one in my historic area at least (I bet all the antique stores know about it though). Anyways the bad part is that they only open from Monday through Friday 8 - 5, which is working hours for me. So it looks like I will have to take a short day or a day off. I never understand why some business' open and close while we are at work. Just like a bank, they close at 5, right when I get off of work. When they hell do you think I can cash my check! Anyways I'm happy that I found this place and I know I will be visiting them a lot more. Looks like I can get my sinks for the bathrooms and kitchen there. Sweeeeeeeeet!

Lita's treasures

2005-12-11T09:43:00.000-05:00

Well, every now and then on a weekend, we will both go out to all the antique stores around the city to see if we can find anything useful in the house. Afew weeks ago we went into one store and Lita was enamored by this pinkish wingback chair. The owner said it was made in the 1930's or 40's, I don't remember exactly what he said, but it was sold right after she saw it.
Also yesterday we went back to the store and saw 2 more, one that had the same color but was much older and a white patterned one. Those two she bought as well, she said she wanted to put a chair in each room we have. Well at least the cats love it.

Also when we were there we bought an old round table with a leaf insert, made in the 1930's, for pretty cheap. It still needs to be refinished, but that should be nice for a dining table.

And then last but not least a console table with a tv, radio and phonograph in it. This table is pretty neat and everything works on it. The store owner said it was made in the 70's by RCA. I doubt the tv will be used much, but it looks like a great conversation piece and should fit in the dining room nicely.

These are very nice interesting things, but every antique store I go to never have the little things I'm looking for like, pocket door locks and handles, or clawfoot feet, or just glass door knobs. I'm guessing ebay will be the best way to go.

Rust stains galore!

2005-12-07T18:55:00.000-05:00

Apart from the millions of projects I have started, one that I am seriously trying to finish is the exterior of the house. The bad part is that I have rust stains from the nails in the clapboard. I'll give you the backstory of my problem. Back long ago when when this house wasn't owned by asians a man and a woman owned this house. They tried to buy, fix and sell the house quickly to make a profit. Oh what a grand plan that was, except for the fact that they wanted to fix the house the cheapest way possible. So what do they do to the exterior you ask? Well they decided to rip off the original siding and replace it with a new one. They only did part of the house, but they part they did do they nailed the boards with ungalvanized nails. Now fast forward to now and I have rust stains on my siding. Instead of taking the route of applying to my historic council and waiting and waiting to replace all the nails. I was wondering if there was something I could do, like maybe countersink the nails and apply something to the nail heads then prime over it? Is there such a product out there that can eliminate the rust stains? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Another thing the the PO did to PO me!

Another clawfoot tub

2005-12-07T10:39:00.000-05:00

Well yesterday was a great day for us, we got another clawfoot tub (well with out the claw feet, basically just the tub I guess). Anyways this is how it went: we met a neighbor that lived a few streets down from us. He was a nice guy and basically just introduced himself and wanted to take a look around. So we showed him all the work we haven't down and all the work I have tried to start. It was kind of embarrassing with all the mess everywhere, especially the one cat poop on the ground, RIGHT NEXT TO THE CAT LITTER! Anyways I told him how I needed to go to H Depot to get some wood, so he asked if it was alright to tag along and get some wood for him self as well. I had no problem with this so we went and bought it and took it to his house. Now this guy a huge house and it was actually one of the houses I saw before we bought our itty bitty house, but the problem with that house was that it was too much work for us. I'm glad that someone had the giblets to tackle this house. On to the story... after we got the wood to his house he showed us all the work he had done to it. I'll tell you, he has done a lot more than us. But after that he offered us the clawfoot tub that he had. I guess he didn't need it anymore after some hoodlums broke into his house and stole the feet. That is also a funny story, he told us that one day someone broke in and only took the feet to the tub, nothing else, just the feet. Is there some kind of premium to these feet? They must have been made of gold or something. Anyways we hauled that monster of a tub and brought it back home. Now we have 2 tubs that aren't in use and now I need to find feet for the second one. But oh well, I don't have to worry about looking for a second bathtub anymore. I was wondering how much it costs to refinish a clawfoot tub? Or if it's possible to do it oneself? Anyways I'm happy. I'm glad I have a big black dog in the house, keeps people from stealing my feet.

Hodge podge of house work

2005-12-03T01:59:00.000-05:00

Today I did some random work on the house. In my earlier posts I pulled up the living room carpet and the old linoleum underneath as well. But I was still left with the tar like substance still in the floor.

After much scraping and sweating I finally cleaned off a good 3 foot square area.

I swear I will never ever ever use linoleum in any house I ever buy again.

Another project I started was using Peel Away on my staircase. Peel Away seemed to work real well here. Of course it was only 2 layers of paint.

This was the Peel Away on my window case. The before is the white paint above and the after is the yellow paint below. For some reason every single paint stripper I have used can not penetrate through this layer of paint. I'm not sure if this is milk paint or something else, but it doesn't react to any paint stripper I know. All I know is that the only way I have gotten it off is by scraping it by hand and it just flakes off little by little. If anyone thinks they know what this is, please leave me a message. Even better, if you know how to take this off message me NOW!

Tomorrow it looks like I will be doing more of the same. I can never concentrate on doing one thing.

Oh just in case anyone is a big college football fan, this is where I am going tomorrow.
Go Noles!!!!!

Laundry updates

2005-12-02T13:20:00.000-05:00

Well this week we decided to do something about the future laundry room we don't have. After the kitchen demolition, we were left with a big empty space and a water heater on the left side of the wall just sitting there. For some reason the PO thought it would be great to put the water heater next to the cabinets in the kitchen, WRONG!!! it was in the way and a total waste of space. So after the destruction of the kitchen we needed a new home for the water heater. After much contemplating, we thought it would fit in nicely right under the stairs where the PO , with their bright thinking, had put a toilet. Since the pipes were already there we got Lee ,next door neighbor, to install the water heater. But with the space under the stairs being a relatively decent sized space, we had a great idea to put a washer and dryer hookup in there as well. The space is about 3 - 4 feet wide and maybe 6 feet deep, since the stairs are about the ceiling is angled from the floor up. So with the water heater taking up a little part of the space, we can actually stick a stackable washer and dryer in there as well, killing 2 birds with one stone. So as we speak today the hookups are in, but I still need to finish the walls since there are huge gaping holes in the walls, but other than that we can now buy a washer and dryer and not have to pay $10 every week to wash clothes. Now I just need to find a washer and dryer.

Back from the Biltmore

2005-11-27T01:15:00.000-05:00

Well we went to North Carolina this past weekend. And the 8 hour drive from Florida to North Carolina was very refreshing, especially after the hard week we had before. We went to go visit the Biltmore and get some inspiration for our house. Needless to say all it did was get me depressed. My house, nor anyones house can compare to the Biltmore. I swear, they had one room where it was about 4 times the size of our house. I couldn't believe the size and detail that this house had. Was a very good visual of what houses were like back in the 1800's. Well I wanted to take pictures of the inside, but was told that I could not do that, so we only have pictures of the outside. But I did find some on the internet, so I will post those, even though that is not what it looked like when we went. Anyways the house seemed like it had 300 rooms. They had a room for everything, sleeping, bathroom, kitchen, canned food room, bottling room, planting room... you name it they had a room for it. This is one house I will put a bid on when I see it on the Asheville listing. Anyways here are our pictures:

Mrs. Vanderbilt's Room: Yes folks that is gold on the walls.

The Chandelier: This thing is 3 stories high!

The Dining Room

Yoda 1995 - 2005

2005-11-17T11:24:00.000-05:00

Our dog Yoda died yesterday after going to the vet because of injuries. I just wanted to let everyone know and hope that everyone will pray for our dog. He was a good dog. We saved him from an animal shelter in Georgia after hearing that he was used in a puppy mill to produce puppies. The owner was caught with 50 dogs in her house, all in cages and all were used to make puppies. We were told of this and drove to Georgia to help any dog we could. When we got there, Yoda was the only one left. He was very old at about 10 years of age, but we adopted him anyway. In his 10 years at the puppy mill, he never ever saw grass and was never let out of his cage. He had many ailments, but was in decent shape. For the last 4 months we gave him the best life he could have. From playing in the parks in Springfield to taking walks down the street, he loved his last days. I know he was very thankful to us for giving him such a great life and I know that the last 4 months made up for the 10 years that he was couped up in a cage. Yoda is now in a better place and we will always miss him, but I know he is always with us.

We will always love you Yoda.

Yoda the dog

2005-11-16T15:17:00.000-05:00

If you don't know we have 5 dogs - 4 chihuahua's and 1 lab-chow mix. Their names are Peanut, Yoda, Charlie, Tinkerbell and Chewy. Well today was a sad day, when I went home to walk my dogs I saw blood all over the ground. I was panicking and walked into the room to find Yoda witha cut on his stomach and his intestines hanging out. I was in shock and called Lita. We rushed him to the vet and they took him in. Lita cried and cried, and I just couldn't believe what had happened. He was ok in the morning and I took him out with everyone else and he was fine. We paid the $400 fee for surgery and the vet said that as long as nothing internal was damaged that he would sew him up and give him antibiotics and he should be ok.....

Well 2 hours past and the vet called me saying that there was no damage internally!!!! He had closed up his wounds and was asleep. Me and Lita were so happy, now we just have to watch over him and make sure that his wounds don't get infected. What a week we were having! Yesterday the dogs got poisoned when we fed them macadamia nuts and today Yoda almost got split open like a watermelon. I just can't wait for this week to end, I don't think I can take anymore dog related problems. Thank God he has gotten through his first test.

Down comes the kitchen

2005-11-13T15:18:00.000-05:00

Yesterday we had some friends (Pete, Travis and his wife, Afrie) came over to help demolish our kitchen. This was our first time every knocking down a wall, or taking shelves out. I must say it was pretty fun! Well we didn't do too much knocking since our friends were enjoying themselves, but it was great watching the wall go down.

Here's what part of our kitchen looked like, because of FCC rules I won't show the rest.

Pic of the sink area while getting its beatdown.

This is the counter, well what's left of it. Actually it's sitting outside by the curb.

Travis ripping down a wall with his bare hands

Looky what we found behind our kitchen wall... Exterior siding. Looks like the PO didn't feel like tearing it down. That's good for us because now we can reuse the siding for some of our damaged boards outside.

Here I am acting like I'm doing work.

Here is the wall half way down

You can now see the next room from the kitchen. Joy!!!

Who ya gonna call... Linoleum Busters!

2005-11-12T02:20:00.000-05:00

Here are more pics of me and Lee busting up linoleum:

Heres Lee using his 'Proto Gun' to blast the bugger away.

Here I am, not using a proton gun. I guess I haven't earned that yet.

Here's Lee again hard at work.

Here is the aftermath, only a little in the middle to do, but basically all done.

Here is what is left on some areas. Gummy black tar like substance, I hope it sands off easy.

Tomorrow: Demolition of our kitchen! And moving a wall back so that our kitchen will be way way bigger.... MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!