It's been a long time....

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!!!

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!

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

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!!!

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???

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

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.....

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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?

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

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!!!