One year of ownership

Wow has time flown by. The 29th marks the anniversary of us closing on our home. I can hardly believe it. We've done so much, yet there is so much to do. The house looks much better than it did here, and certainly our main living areas are just the way we want them. Still, at some point we face a major renovation of the kitchen and upstairs bathroom, and the guest bedroom and den both need a makeover. Then there's the sun rooms are the 1st and 2nd floor. Yikes! Now I'm getting nervous all over again.

Halloween, last year, right after the bushes were cut down.

We love our home though. The stress of the last few years living at Helen St with the psychotic pseudo-landlord was really taking it's toll on us. I no longer worry about what obscene, rambling, nonsensical note may be taped to our door, or when the rent would be randomly raised. Now, just Cindy, Katia and Natasha wait for me. We enjoyed our new place almost immediately, greeting trick-or-treaters from our porch just days after signing. Our Christmas tree was up before we moved in. After we moved, the resolute sturdiness and overwhelming quiet of our well built home was an immediate comfort. The Christmas holidays came and went with joy and peace.

Last year's lonely Christmas tree. 

Winter and early Spring brought trials and tribulations, to be sure, but we were happy. Later in the Spring brought the illness and tragic loss of First Father In Law Geno, a staggering blow. His gentle leadership and advice have been missed. That, and joyous family events,  limited our time for renovations and repairs well into the summer. I just wish I had gotten more work done outside. I'm pleased with the porch and trim work along the south side of the house, I wish I had gotten to the north side windows, painting and repairing the trim work, and replacing the windows. Perhaps if we have one more warm spell during my days off, I can still get to that.

Bread and Cinnamon buns from 2014 

So we head into the holiday period better equipped to handle it. Cindy and I have already discussed our baking schedule and I really look forward to our first batch of Christmas bread and cinnamon buns in our new home, The Christmas music and Bloody Mary's will be flowing. With more time to think and plan, I hope to step up our game for the lights and decorating this year. I want to get my train out, and get more of the Snow Village buildings out.

Last winter was so mild, I shoveled once (barely) and never used to snow blower. Even if we have a normal winter this year, I'm sure the maintenance of our long driveway, and even long sidewalk will be interesting. If we have a snowier winter, it could easily become a real challenge. I am committed to keeping the sidewalk as clear as possible as we have several walkers around the area with the park next door, and with college and high school students in the neighborhood. Plus, with the B&B across the street, we need to make a good impression for visitors.

So what will year two bring in our new home? Other than the weather, I refuse to predict. What is certain is that there will be more good memories, more unexpected challenges, and, of course, more blogs.

Firewood and 7 years of bad luck

A full cord of wood is dumped in our yard

Last winter, which was quite mild, we really enjoyed our fireplace and ended up going through almost 2 face cords of wood. We moved in late enough last year so that were too late in the season for most wood sellers but I did find a place up off Robinson Hill Rd in Johnson City that had wood for sale, but you had to pick it up. So twice last I borrowed First Brother In Law Randy's pickup truck and loaded, then unloaded wood. This year, although I waited a bit too long again, I contacted the logger and tree remover that lives across the street from my dad and he managed to scrape together a full cord, which is about 3 times as much wood as a face cord. With what we had leftover from last year, I'm hoping it will be enough to get us through the season.

Cindy helping. Her back is still sore. SORRY HONEY!

The finished stack. Mind the glass please. 

The fire wood was dumped in the backyard and once again Cindy was a good sport and helped me move and stack the wood in the garage. I considered purchasing a steel cart to transport the wood, but in the end the distance of about 15 feet didn't make it worth loading the cart, then unloading to stack. So, Cindy and I hand carried every piece into the garage where I stacked. I first pulled last years wood out to stack the new logs on the bottom. Then, it was just a matter of staying at thejob. After about three hours we were done. I had thought that we would  have to stack some outdoors in the alleyway, but I managed to get it all in the garage, although I'm not real happy about how high it is, or that I blocked the lower part of the window. Going to have to be real careful not to knock wood into the glass.

Firewood warms you at least twice, When you burn it, of course, but also when you move it, stack it. or split it. While I wouldn't mind getting my lumberjack on and going after some of this with a wedge and maul, the logs are pretty much in perfect size to burn. We are actually looking forward to some cold and snowy days,

A large mirror after being
hit with a hammer. Several
times.

Speaking of glass, the previous owner of our home really liked mirrors. In fact, there were four large, plate glass style mirrors in the house, the biggest mounted over the fireplace. Other mirrors included one in the basement, another mounted in the bathroom, and one in the upstairs hallway. The mirror in the hallway remains there, the other three were moved to the garage where they were taking up too much room. The only way to get rid of them is to break them (Yikes!), put them in boxes, and bring them to the landfill. So, I first laid down a canvas drop cloth, then a plastic drop cloth, then the mirror, I made sure my glasses were on, put on an old pair of heavy fire gloves, and smacked the mirror with a ball peen hammer. Nothing. I hit it harder. Still nothing. I then closed my eyes tight and smacked it really hard. Smash. I was impressed how hard I had to hit it. Several more smacks and the mirror was in manageable pieces and I loaded them into a box. I did this for two more mirrors and ended up with a remarkably heavy load of broken glass, and hopefully not 21 years of bad luck. Actually, each one of them already had a small crack or break so I'm banking on that releasing me from being the original breaker, and not the bearer of the curse.

That's it for this time around. Coming up in future blogs will be additional tub leak battles, making the newly painted porch less slippery, and trying to get some new storm windows before the cold weather really hits.

Bonus Blog

There was some unfinished business in the last blog, and I've had some "feedback" about that and people are really looking for my winter forecast. Ok, well, I'll get to that in a minute. Let me bore you with some house stuff first.

A full cord now sits on my back lawn. 

We got our firewood delivery yesterday after I tracked down the number of the guy I talked to last year. I was kind of late in the season but he managed to scrape together a full cord of seasoned hardwood for me, ready to burn this year. I hope to fit much of it in the garage, with the rest along the side of the house in the alley between the pantry and the sun room. That'll be this weekend's job. Anyway, we really love our fireplace, as inefficient and old fashioned as it is. It does really seem to warm up the room when we use it, and it is nice to stand in front of to warm up. More than anything though, it's great to look at and brings warmth to the room in appearance alone. Household felines Natasha and Katia really don't seem to notice the fire, which surprises me. They seem neither attracted or afraid of it. Cindy loves the fire and, well, you know, happy wife, happy life. This alone makes the work and $200 worth it.

I'm going to grade my efforts to stop leaks in the bathroom at a C-. The most important leak has apparently stopped now, although it has stopped before and began again, so currently we do not have water leaking into the kitchen during showers. That's good. However, the hot water handle began leaking again only a couple days after repacking the fitting, so I need to pull that off and repack it again, hopefully with more success. The cold water handle is not leaking...so far.

Winter. What to expect? As usual it's a complex forecast. The three things to consider are persistence, in other words the weather we are currently having my well just continue, the state of  ENSO, commonly known as El Nino, and the NAO, the North Atlantic Oscillation. There are other considerations but these are the big three. As for persistence, we have been in a warm and dry pattern for some time now, although recently there have been, some cold outbreaks. This fits well into the ENSO, which is currently neutral, but may be heading into a La Nina pattern, the opposite of El Nino. Both persistence and the ENSO are actually poor indicators for predicting our winter, but they are the easiest to forecast. With persistence, you're just kind of hoping that the car keeps going straight, with nothing to influence our weather to change, Using it alone would give us a very dry, and relatively warm winter with few snow storms. Add a developing La Nina to the mix and you kind of re-enforce this thinking, although La Nina especially is easily overcome by other factors, especially here in the northeast U.S. The 800 pound gorilla in the room is the NAO, which is what really drives our winter, but it's really unclear what drives the NAO. The NAO is essentially the pattern of upper troughs or ridges over the northern hemisphere, particularly the North Atlantic. When the NAO is negative, we tend to get cold and snowy winters in the northeast U.S. and in Europe. The opposite is true when the NAO is positive. So what will it be? Well that is THE question. Forecasting it beyond 14 days or so is difficult. Nevertheless, I forge ahead with my forecast. I believe we will have a relative dry winter with slightly above normal temperatures, I believe there will be significant lake effect snows this year, mainly north of Syracuse, and in the Buffalo area. Here in the Binghamton area, I do believe that the NAO will go negative at times, and give us the chance for a couple big storms, mainly after January 1, but with numerous small snow events throughout the winter. At least two significant warm ups or thaws seem likely, limiting the amount of ice on ponds and rivers.

So there it is. No guarantees, no warranty. Please accept this forecast "as is". And please, hold your applause until May. June at the latest.

Painting the porch and small engine maintenance

Wild Mustang. The new paint is the lighter color. 

One of the last things to do to the porch was to paint the floor. Once again we struggled with the color and purchased three different samples before settling on our color, called Wild Mustang. Then it was a matter of scraping  and prep work. First, we had to remove all the furniture and clean the picture window and screen door. That was followed by a scrubbing of the walls and floor and complete wash down. All this left the floor of the porch quite wet and naturally it took a good day for it to dry out enough for painting. Before painting I scraped the loose paint off, mainly near the front where it got more sun and rain. As I started, the trim work was tedious and took the most time but rolling the rest of the porch was quite easy, and pleasant since you can pretty much stand there and apply the paint, rather than bending over, or stretching to reach a high point. It really looked good after one coat but decided for durability I decided to do a second. The wood was so dried out the first coat took most of a gallon, so I was off to Home Depot for a second. It was worth it and the porch looks great. I have a few other minor jobs left but the porch is finally done!

Cushion malfunction. This was AFTER I cleaned up.

After a successful and uneventful porch painting, things got a bit sillier and stupid, at least on my part. First, the cushion covers for the porch furniture needed to be washed. So, we needed to unzip the covers and remove the padding. Cindy unzipped one and found that the paper covering the interior padding had deteriorated. So, rather than making a mess in the basement, we decided to remove the cushions outdoors. That was fine, until a rogue wind gust came up and blew my little pile of papers all over the driveway, and neighbor's yard. So, I ended up bending over picking lots of little pieces of paper, all over the place.

It's mocking me. 

Next comedy session came as I decided to try and start my snowblower. I had started it once last October after bringing it over from our old house, but then it sat all winter and summer without running. I couldn't remember if I had stored it properly, which I do by mainly just adding fuel stabilizer. I think the problem began as I was concerned that it would not start and it became a self fulfilling prophesy. I got the keys, unlocked the chain, and pushed the machine to the front of the garage, and checked the fuel. I primed it, set the choke and throttle, and pulled the start cord. Nothing. Not a surprise. Pulled again. Nothing. Ok, not a big surprise, it sat there for quite some time. I went and got the cord, and plugged in the electric start and pushed the start button. It cranked and cranked. Nothing. Ok, now I'm concerned. It has always started. After several more unsuccessful attempts, I got my tools. I pulled the spark plug. It looked fine and there was fuel in the carburetor. I put it all back together, tightened everything down and tried again. Nothing. This went on for some time, with me giving the little electric motor a chance to cool off, but just cranking and cranking it, mainly because my limited knowledge of engines prohibited me from doing anything else. Well, I was making enough noise that one of my neighbors, a retired mechanic and small engine expert arrived to find out "who was cranking the hell out of some small engine". He offered to help and asked me to pull the plug then checked to see if it was getting any spark. I did and it wasn't. He said, well it could be the magneto, or as he looked at the engine, that you didn't put the key in. DOH! The solution, as he sagely nodded with a small smile, "was in your pocket the entire time". Oof. I truly am a moron. I really wonder how long I would have cranked that thing without noticing that I hadn't put in the key. Realizing he was working with a complete idiot, he gave the poor snowblower a quick inspection and offered some other tips, including some gear oil for the driveshaft. I actually knew the tires needed air but don't have a pump so he offered help with both so I pushed it three houses down to his garage and he took care of it for me. He recommended that I fix some of the surface rust inside the machine to keep the snow from sticking. He also suggested adjusting the little skid plates on the front of the cowling to protect the bottom of the machine from wear. I did both the rust and adjustment after I got it home and I should be good to go for the winter, assuming it snows.

Which brings up my last blog. I promised a winter prediction, among other things this time around. Well, this blog has gone on too long so you're going to have to wait for that, along with the fascinating story of firewood and leaky plumbing. I bet you can't wait!

Stone, plumbing, and Arizona

I had every intention to write at least one more blog in September, and thought my life was going to get more simple, but it was just the opposite. The good news is that all the things that complicated my life were good things, well, except for the plumbing.

Randy, in the alley with his pavers. Sounds like a
murder accusation from the board game Clue. 

To start off, first brother in law and #1 realtor Randy showed up with some large slate pavers and helped me make the dirt "alley" between the pantry and the sun room more useful. To explain, the back porch of the house was enclosed and a bathroom installed at some time many years in the past. This left a 4 1/2' wide dirt floored leaf collector between it and the sun room. It's covered by large overhangs from both the second floor to the north and the pantry to the south so it is bone dry and shaded such that no grass or even weeds grow. We wanted to use for storage, at least, but were still working on how we would like to cover the dirt. Then Randy stepped up to the plate with enormous slate pavers he had salvaged from an old house years ago. The stone almost fit perfectly side by side. but did not. We ended putting them sideways leaving about an 8 inch gap which I need to somehow fix. Still, the space is immediately usable allowing me to store both grills, recycling bins and garbage can. Very nice.

Ugly pale pink tub with caulk removed at seam with wall.

Plumbing continues to be an issue. For some reason, when I shower, occasionally water leaks into the kitchen below. It never happens when Cindy showers. The joke is that when I step into the tub the flooring is crying from strain of holding the extra weight, but seriously folks, take my wife, please! But really, a viable theory is that the extra weight is causing a separation in the caulking so I removed and re-caulked the tub, which didn't help. I then got a plastic, pre-caulked seal that presses into place along the seam of the tub and the showers surround. That didn't work. SO, next step will simply be to caulk everything like crazy (it worked before), and perhaps lose some weight (HA HA!).

Stuck knob removal tool. You can also see the plastic seal in
place around the tub. 

Another on going issue has been the leaky faucets. All three tub controls (hot, cold, and shower control) leaked water around the handle when turned on. I've been delaying the repair since they don't drip when off but it is a waster of water, and there's the off chance that the leaky faucet is partially responsible for the leak into the kitchen, so I forged ahead, First thing was that the knobs would not come off, I'm guessing that the faucets have not been touched since the Truman administration and despite pulling and even banging with a hammer, they didn't budge. So, off to the trusty hardware store for a specialty tool that removes stuck faucet handles, which worked perfectly. After that, the stems came out rather easily and I was back to the hardware store for advice on gaskets and repacking the seals. That seemed to work and there has not been a leak around the handles or in the kitchen since so fingers are crossed.

The only picture I took in Phoenix., captured while waiting
to enter Fort Knox aka WFO Phoenix. 

A a part of my job I am a member of the IMET program (Incident Meteorologist) and I occasionally get sent to fires, usually out west. I got the call a couple weeks ago to go to Arizona and a fire near Payson in the Tonto National Forest. The flight out was miserable despite getting an "economy plus" seat for my $1000 one way ticket. Then, at the airport in Phoenix, things got worse. It took them almost an hour to get our bags off the plane (I don't travel light, with camping equipment and enough clothes for a 2 week dispatch), followed by a 2 hour wait at the Budget rental car counter. Then, I was off to the Phoenix weather office to pick up my weather and computer equipment that I had overnight shipped. Well, due to an office move, there was confusion as to the shipping address and my equipment had not arrived.  At this point I just threw my hands in the air and headed out on the 2 hour drive to the fire.

Fire camp. Note the complete lack of smoke.

If you've ever driven out west you know how rapidly things can change. The area around Phoenix is desert with the huge Saguaro cactus. As I headed north, the cactus finally petered out and gradually various species of pine appeared. By the time I reached Payson and the area of the fire, it was heavily forested and much different from the desert further south. Unfortunately, when I reached fire camp, things were winding down, and with rain forecast for the week, they decided they wouldn't need me. So, after only a few days, I was wedged into another cattle car...err...airplane and shipped back home. Despite the short time the trip was great experience and I got to see another part of this amazing country of ours. I am very lucky to be a part of one of the premier programs in the NWS

Selfie after just a few days in
camp. You should see me
after two weeks. 

On the next blog...we've finally picked a color for the porch floor but will the weather cooperate?, chimney inspection, firewood delivery, and probably more about that damn leaky tub. Oh, and maybe a winter weather prediction. Warm? Cold? Snowy? Your guess is NOT as good as mine. ;)