Heat, Stripping Paint, and Neighbors

A warm July day.

It's been hot this summer, or at least I think so. The records at the Binghamton NWS office don't really agree with me. According to their records, June was warm, but May and July were slightly below average. August is running near average. So why do I think it has been hot? I believe it is because this is my first summer in nearly 40 years that I have not been in an air conditioned office most of the day. This not something I had considered when I dreamed of retirement. It does have us considering having whole house air conditioning installed in our home.

The beautiful wood beneath the paint.

Another part of my perception of the heat is my increased activity. Almost every day we are working on projects around the house, and that of course makes the heat more noticeable. Our current project, for example, is a hot one. Again my big mouth got me in trouble. I mentioned to Cindy that I thought the paint in the pantry could be stripped off the bead board revealing the stained wood beneath. I found a stripper that removed the paint but not the varnish and it worked perfectly. That's not to say it was easy at all. The two of us are wedged in this tiny room, the fumes are awful, and the paint tends to gum up and stick in the crevice along the bead. It is coming along nicely so we decided to strip the shelves in the back of the pantry as well. I haven't decided what to do about the floor. I might sand it, paint it, or even cover it with tile.

The night I began to call it the spooky house.

The spooky house next door continues to be a story. The owner has spent a lot of money on questionable workers to restore the place. I haven't been inside recently but if the repairs to the outside are any indication, I don't have a lot of confidence that a quality restoration is underway. The workers left a god awful mess of construction debris and general garbage which they just now cleaned up. The home has many issues, not the least of which is the yard. The house is shoe horned into a pizza slice shaped property leaving it with virtually no backyard. The driveway is accessed through city property, and cannot be built on since I have a right of way to access my second driveway. The owner does not believe my assessment of our property line, insisting that he had more land than he does despite never bothering to look it up. So I decided to pay a surveyor to properly find the pins and mark the line. I still don't think he believes where the line is so I will be installing a fence when the price of materials drops. Until then, I will be putting up a temporary plastic construction fence to keep the workers and debris out of my yard.

Yard work

Actual green grass on the side lawn. Please don't look too
closely at the "flower bed" at the back corner of the house. 

Believe it or not, I've had some compliments on our yard, specifically the grass. I started fertilizing last year, continued this year and actually have a somewhat green lawn, as opposed to half dead looking weeds. Of course, the near constant rain (and snow) over the last year or so has helped, mainly because I'm too cheap to constantly water the triple lot. Still, considering my usual abject failure with growing things. I'm quite proud of the progress I've made with the lawn.  As an aside, our Charlie Brown Christmas Tree is doing quite well this year too. I've made an effort to keep it watered and added cedar chips around the base to keep the moisture in. The little spruce seems to love them.

Photo shows an arbor terrorist with a mission
and means to complete it.

Actually our land. Potential site for shed. Driveway easement
access to Grand Blvd seen in the back. 

A familiar face in an old red pickup truck showed up at our place on a Saturday back in May, and I haven't been able to get rid of him. When First Brother-In-Law Randy is set on a task, he will see it to it's conclusion, come hell or bad weather. Randy had offered to help me clean up the back of the yard, and haul away the debris. There were old logs, leaves and just plain old garbage along the back of the property adjacent to the spooky old house. Well, like pulling a loose thread on a sweater, one yanked weed led to another, and before we knew it we had literally expanded the property. As we cleaned and raked, it became apparent that we weren't sure where the property line was. Randy, being the real estate expert that he is, did some simple research, and after some measuring, we have determined that my property is even bigger than I thought it was, and the spooky house has less than we thought. Best thing is that what I thought was the neighbors driveway, is actually partially mine, partially city owned, with the rest likely an easement. This means I have driveway access to the back of the property off Grand Boulevard, and a nice level piece of asphalt for a potential storage shed.

Re-seeded park fence line, cleared back property line, and
spooky house in the background.

We continued to work, with Randy doing the lion's share, trimming trees to let in light, pulling weeds and vines, raking leaves, and yanking out stumps with the old pickup. Then Randy brought in two truckloads of topsoil and two bags of grass seed to get some green into the newly liberated property. We also re-seeded the fence line along the park after raking and clearing that side of the yard. Throughout the project, I would get a text from Randy saying he was at the house, or I would glance at the security cameras and see him working. He really worked quite hard with zero prompting from me, and only the occasional glass of lemonade from Cindy. Randy finally loaded up his tools and headed out just yesterday. I doubt very much that he's actually done, although it looks complete to me. I think he'll be back.

The neighbor's compliments are already pouring in, including the owner of the bed and breakfast across the street, also wisely noting that Randy was doing most of the work, as at the time, I was holding a garden hose in one hand, and a Yuengling in the other. Other folks walking by with their dogs, or just out for a stroll have noticed and complimented on the progress. It is a good feeling to rescue an old home from the inside, and from the outside.