Annual battle between expectations...hope...and reality

"April is the cruelest month..." - T.S. Elliot. Truer words have never been spoken, at least in upstate New York. "May is not looking much better." - Dave Morford. Excuse me Mr. Elliot for tagging on to your famous quote but if there is a time to get away from here, this is it. Please understand, I like it here. Summer is glorious. The occasional "heat wave" broken by Canadian cold fronts bringing sunny warm days under puffy clouds and nights of "good sleeping weather". Fall is my favorite. Best holidays combined with spectacular scenery and just fantastic weather. Winter. Find yourself an open field or woodlot and hear the silence as the snow falls. Even the city's noises are muffled by thick blankets of white. But then there's Spring.

Typical "Spring" drive to work

Days shrouded in an endless cover of "battleship grey oblivion" (thanks Jim, best quote ever). There's dead grass and patches of mud. Crocuses, daffodils, and eventually tulips struggle against blasts of cold and snow. Potholes yawn in all roads delivering teeth chattering blows. Sure, you'll get teased with  a couple days of sun and warmth, but reality lurks with the next cut off low pressure system, seemingly attracted to New York. Or, it's a "backdoor" cold front sliding in from New England delivering damp and cold North Atlantic air while places as close as Philadelphia and Cleveland bask in warm air..

The poor Binghamton Mets, locked into their opening day by forces beyond their control have hideous weather for at least the first month of their season and struggle with attendance. Who wants to sit in the drizzle and fog at 40 degrees and watch baseball with a handful of other poor souls? Unfortunately, this lack of enthusiasm seems to carry over into the rest of the season making the B-Mets chronically among the poorest attended AA teams and sparking waves of rumors that they will leave town. When the weather does turn nice, numerous outdoor events pack nearly every night and certainly every weekend making them compete for fans. Other sports do well in this town. The Binghamton Senators hockey team thrives. A cold snowy night and a hockey game are a good fit. Anyway, we are definitely on the northern fringe of what could be called the climate zone for baseball.

Of course, "nice" weather is very subjective and a matter of personal opinion. Even when the weather generally turns "nice" in the middle or end of May, it's still not swimming weather. An annual right around here is the local paper posting Memorial Day pictures of little boys and girls shivering in bathing suits at the opening of pools for the season. Adults have normally learned their lesson and don't attend. Swimming season here typically extends from mid June to mid August. Memorial Day and Labor Day are pushing the season.

As far as the house is concerned, the weather definitely sets the schedule for repairs and maintenance. I've cut the grass for the first time with my little push mower and immediately decided that a riding mower is a necessity. I hope to have news on that soon. Planting grass in our bush and brush removal areas has been delayed by the weather. First, I'm looking for a good stretch of daytime highs 60 or better, and need to wait to seed the area near the house until after the walls get power washed. Any run off from the washing and trampling from the washers and ladders will definitely destroy fresh grass seedlings.

Spring fire

One advantage of a cold Spring? It's still fireplace weather. Cindy complained she was cold the other day so while she was off visiting her dad I got a nice fire going and got dinner ready. It was a date night at home with dinner, fire and movie. I guess the best way to fight bad weather is to embrace it and turn it to your advantage.

Miscellaneous...Part 2

Wall, bereft of wallpaper.:) 

Life has gotten real busy in the past few weeks and the blog has taken a back seat, as has the house projects but I still have plenty to write about, so here we go. First an update on the wallpaper in the vestibule. It's all gone! I continued to spray and scrape, and really struggled with the area above the the big closets, standing on my tippy toes (on the ladder!) and leaning forward. This did not allow me to get much muscle behind my scrapping but luckily the wallpaper hangers must have struggled too because there was definitely less glue back there. After all the scrapping was done, it was time to remove the leftover glue and small bits of paper. I first used a sponge and weakly soapy water, but that had little effect. Then I decided to go with a plastic pot scraper and Formula 409.  That really worked well and had the added benefit of pretty much removing the overpowering vinegar smell and replacing it with a light lemon scent. I've now started repairing the plaster beneath the paper, spackling holes and cracks. There is a deep crack in the corner by the doorway into the living room that will take a couple of spackle applications before it is properly filled. The wall has several deep brown stains so I will be using stain blocker, then perhaps primer before painting so I still have a long way to go, but at least the wallpaper is gone for good. Also plan to install a new light fixture and *gasp* more crown molding. I've picked a more simple style than in the living since I will be installing it myself. It should be easier (ha ha).

The least useful thing we moved.

We still haven't completely unpacked and I have spent spare time going through boxes and stowing my (our) stuff. We hadn't moved for 25 years before this and didn't completely think the move through so naturally we made mistakes. One of the bigger mistakes was packing things we no longer needed or wanted, only to move them to our new place and throwing them out there. We had spent time over the past few years trying to simplify our lives by sifting through our stuff. However, that's a difficult and somewhat depressing job. Going though boxes of old stuff in the attic reminds you of failed projects, misplaced friends, gained weight and lost youth. For a while, we made the commitment to throw away one full garbage bag of stuff a week. That lasted until we had picked the low hanging fruit and the decisions to keep or discard became difficult. When it became time to move, we didn't have the time to pick and choose so all of it came to the new house. Now, as we unpack, we are going through our life. Anybody want a massive boom box that uses like 8 "D" batteries and plays cassettes?

My 2006 Hemi Charger. Hanging  in there despite our
New York winters.

First Father-In-Law Gene painting the
living room last October.

The weather has finally broken and I have taken time off from house projects to try to get the winter grime off the cars, I am normally meticulous with the car detailing and care but with the new house and move I have just not had time. Well, I made time recently and it makes me happy to drive a much cleaner car. To me, nothing is more relaxing and gratifying than putting on a some music, icing a few beers, and detailing a car on sunny and warm spring day. It's really fun to drive a clean car too!

One final note: Cindy and I want to thank all of you for your thoughts, prayers, notes, generous gifts and offers of assistance, for Cindy's dad Gene. It's been a difficult time for us with him being so seriously ill. He continues to battle his illness and has made some slow improvement. He's not out of the woods yet but we have hope that a full recovery is in his future. Please keep him in your thoughts and give Cindy a hug if you see her.

Upcoming blogs: To ride or push, power washing, critters in the night, and that damn garage door.

31 bags of leaves...or...tasting my trees

Google image of our lot. House has the star.
You can see the tree line to the north.

One of the things that attracted us to the house that became our home was the triple lot. Our house sits on the far right or south end of the lot, with the 2 car, 2 story garage in the back. To the north, we own two more lots. On the other side of that, is a small city park. So, we have a large side yard next to a park which gives a beautiful open feel, unusual in a city that typically has about 10 - 20 feet between the homes. All this land comes at a price, and I don't mean taxes which are actually reasonable. The price is in maintenance, especially the initial work that needs to be done after years of little or none. One of the first things we did, within days of closing, was to remove the massive bushes in front of the porch and remove the vines from the house (documented here).  Other initial maintenance was started in the Fall included removing weeds and small bushes from the old flower beds next to the house. Weather, and more pressing work inside suspended the outside work until last week when Cindy and I decided to get at the outside mess again.

Cindy at work with her new rake.

31 bags of leaves

Branches at the curb.

We had just one leaf rake so after breakfast I brought Cindy to Home Depot and bought her a smaller sized metal rake. She was thrilled. Really. After a bit more shopping we headed home and began our attack on the lawn. For no other reason than it was the section that needed the most work, we went after the "North Forty" along the fence that separates us from the park. Medium to large maples, ash, and cherry trees line the fence and had been dropping leaves for years. I quickly raked the area in front of the house and along the utility strip between the sidewalk and the street. When I joined Cindy along the fence line, she had made little progress against the layers of leaves. Working together, we raked and piled leaves. I occasionally stopped to remove low hanging branches which were low enough to make me duck. When we were all done, several hours later, we had 31 large bags of leaves at the curb, along with a significant pile of branches. We were bushed (ha ha) so instead of a nice dinner on the grill we ordered pizza and crashed on the couch.

Cindy trying out her latest gift, 

The city took the leaves Monday but the branches and sticks needed to be bundled and would have to wait. So this past weekend I went after the branches and sticks. I pulled some of the larger ones for firewood and kindling but cut and bundled the rest with a hand pruning saw (I desperately need a chain saw) and dragged them to the curb. While I did this, Cindy cleaned up the rest of the old flower beds around the house and swept up the sidewalks and driveway with her new broom. The broom was her gift this week from her hopelessly romantic husband. I sure know how to treat a girl right.

We have a very interesting neighborhood filled with interesting neighbors. Once again, we attracted plenty of attention as we worked in our yard. Several of our neighbors stopped to tell us how nice the place looks, and how hard we are working. A small crowd gathered last weekend as we neared the end of our day discussing our progress and giving insight on the history of the property. One neighbor has lived across the street for over 50 years and said that the lot has always been empty, ending my speculation of a recent fire. Another neighbor remembered that the lot used to contain long, brick lined flower gardens. This explains the brick in various sections of the yard. This also brings us to tree tasting.

This same neighbor (a retired state forester) complimented my trimming work on the trees explaining how the trees healed themselves. He also pointed to the various trees saying what type they were (mostly maples) and whether they were desirable. Sugar maple = good, Norway maple  = bad. Then he got to a tree that he identified as an ash. I thought it was a cherry. This prompted him to break off a small branch and stick it in his mouth. This apparently yielded no result, so he grabbed another. And another. He then announced that he had a cold and was having trouble tasting the sap. Apparently, cherry tree sap tastes like cherries. The tree remains unidentified.

Wallpaper

This represents one afternoon's work. 

I hate wallpaper. Really hate it. Over the years, we stripped wallpaper off the ceiling and walls of four different rooms at our Helen street house. I remember vowing to never do it again. Now, at our new place, I'm at it again. We could just paint over it, as the previous owners had, but I'm kind of a perfectionist on certain things and really prefer to do things the right way, which means removing the wallpaper. I always start the same way, Brute force. I go after it with a putty knife, partially in anger, and partially because the soak and peel method makes such a mess. But after a couple hours I've blown off some steam and reality sets in. I set up my trusty water bottle and have a new go at it. The problems remains though because I have never taken off wallpaper that hasn't been painted over. So, rather than soaking into the wallpaper, the sprayed on water simply runs down the wall and soaks the paper I've taped down to protect the hardwood  After a full day of this, I headed off to Home Depot for help and advice. There HAS to be a better way.

My new scraper. Note the painted
but scored paper.

There isn't. At the Home Depot paint counter I got sympathetic looks from both the salesman and a customer that told me it took her WEEKS to strip the wallpaper off a half bath. The salesman, after suggesting I set fire to the place, did suggest I use pure vinegar in my spray bottle, and score the wallpaper to help the vinegar penetrate the paint. I found a heavy duty scraper in the tool section as well as a little device purposely designed to score the paper. I purchased the items and headed to Sharkey's to contemplate life and consider my next move.

My next move came on the very next day after encouragement from Cindy, I once again attacked the paper. I spent the next 6 hours in full attack mode scoring, spraying vinegar, and scraping like a maniac. I really think the vinegar is an evil joke played on people scraping wallpaper because the smell in that small foyer was overwhelming. Luckily I was able to open the door to the outside and shut the door to the living room to limit the smell to the rest of the house.

Making progress. Note the
wallpaper salad on the floor. 

At the end of the day (really, not that overused cliche), I had all walls scraped clean (except over the closet), and had piles of gooey vinegar smelling paper at my feet. Cindy actually told me I could clean up the next day but the thought of our house smelling like a huge salad bowl encouraged me to clean up the remnants.

Considering my experience with wallpaper over the years, I now think that wallpaper should be Federally regulated. Why not? The government has set the precedent in many other areas, protecting us from our selves, and I think wallpaper should be recognized for the hazard that it is. I'm not saying it should be illegal, just regulated. So here's my proposal: 1) All wallpaper must be registered. You're responsible for it and cannot leave it behind. 2) It is a violation of Federal Law to paint over wallpaper. Kind of like putting a silencer on a gun. People may not recognize the danger and we don't want you hiding your crime. 3) You must show valid identification upon the purchase of wallpaper. Don't worry, the feds aren't coming to confiscate your wallpaper, we just need to know where it is. (see rule #1) 4) Full disclosure on the location and amount of wallpaper in any house upon closing. Failure to do will result in a fine paid directly to the new owners.

I really hate wallpaper. Oh...and if you come and visit us, we're not making a huge salad. that's just our foyer.

Next blog: 31 bags of leaves on the curb...31 bags of leaves...

The Winter that Wasn't

Most people in upstate New York have strong opinions about winter. They either love it or hate it; there is no middle ground. For me, I do enjoy winter, especially the first half, with the holidays and newness of it. Once you get into January and February especially, it begins to drag on and becomes a bit of an endurance test, Even most winter lovers around here don't mind the first signs of Spring. To enjoy winter, you must meet it and embrace it, and find it's pleasures. For some, it's about outdoor activities: skiing, snowmobiles, and ice fishing. I enjoy the more subtle pleasures; fireplaces, warm meals, the silence and isolation of a big snowstorm.

Bonus photo of First Brother-In-Law Randy doing my work
for me. You can see the chilly crawl space under the bath. 

The Winter of 2015-2016, dominated by a powerful El Niño, was erratic and managed to leave our slice of the world nearly snowless and generally mild. There were exceptions, like the morning of February 14, where we came within 2 degrees of the all time record low here, and was probably the coldest morning I've ever experienced. Many areas were -20F or colder. Luckily, I was smart enough to see it coming and shut down the water to the half bath and sure enough the pipes froze. Since then, I've wrapped those pipes in insulation and will be looking into better insulating or possibly even heating the area under the half bath.

Our long sidewalk. 

The lack of snow has kept me from getting out my snow blower (snow thrower for some - I don't understand the changing name). I purchased it many years ago after taking over the maintenance tasks over at Helen St. The few times it has snowed, I managed with a shovel but considering the long sidewalk, I have no doubt that the snow blower will be used in future winters.

Beautiful walking weather.

The mild weather has allowed Cindy and I to get out and walk. One of the big advantages of living on Binghamton's west side is the opportunity to use your feet. Wide sidewalks line all streets in the generally flat terrain. There's plenty to look at with a wide variety of homes. Binghamton was apparently built with lax housing codes allowing apartments and two families built next to quaint cape cod's and mansions. This diversity in housing has led to a diversity in residents with college students and low income homes next to doctors, lawyers and professionals. Our block includes a large Queen Ann Bed and Breakfast, a Victorian Mansion, several two families and a small apartment building. Around the corner is a stone mansion with gold lions guarding the front steps.

Cindy and I often have a destination in mind for our walks, and that destination normally offers liquid refreshments. Pick a compass point from our front porch and you can find a friendly neighborhood pub at the turn around point of a reasonable walk. Lately we've been heading southeast a lot and stopping at Abel's Pub. The place is tiny but warm and friendly with free popcorn and cold drinks. Next door is Pizza Nia's a nice little pizza joint that sells slices for $2 and has delicious wings. They also sell spaghetti and meatballs by the bucket, reminding me of the lost and lamented Pancho's Pit.

The continued mild weather has me thinking about detailing our much neglected cars. I normally am meticulous with my car care but the move and house improvements and repairs have dominated my time. I look forward to using our broad driveway and large garage to detail our dirty vehicles getting the winter grime and the dirt and dust of our move out of them.

Helen Street...Part 2

So when I left you last in Helen Street...Part 1, Margaret's health was failing and we knew our time there was coming to an end. However, we got a reprieve when Margaret's son Scott decided to move back home with his longtime friend Mike. We had met Scott several times over the years. He was quiet and friendly and was grateful for the assistance we had given his parents over the years. He was working for a bank and was able to transfer his job from Rochester to Binghamton, solely to take care of his mother.

Christmas 2012 on Helen St

Things went well at first as Scott and Mike took over maintenance of the property and care of Margaret. Then, one Fall day Scott fell ill. It began with headaches but shortly he became weak and spent more time in the hospital. It's not my right to tell you of Scott's diagnosis, but he simply became weaker and weaker, and eventually bedridden. On one awful winter night he begged us to take care of his mother as he laying dying. A few days later he was gone.

After the funeral and burial, Scott's friend Mike stayed around for a few weeks, then he moved back to Rochester. That left us back where we were, except that we felt a commitment to care for Margaret. Frankly, Cindy did most of the work, along with friends and relatives of Margaret while I took back over maintenance of the home.

This went on for a while when suddenly, Scott's friend Mike returned. This really surprised us but Mike said he had decided to take care of Margaret and keep her in her home. This was both good and bad news. Good, in that this would buy us more time, but bad knowing that Margaret's time at home was coming to an end, one way or another. We were apprehensive that Mike would not be able to take care of her in many ways.

Removing our name from the mailbox. 

25  years in our home at an end.

Things began to go downhill pretty quickly at this point. Mike became rather possessive, demanding, and pushy. Agreements and  arrangements we had made with Margaret ended, and Mike got more angry and reclusive. I'll spare you the gruesome details but he began hoarding and despite not working, bought new cars and expensive electronics. We tried to reach out to Margaret, but she had become so dependent on Mike she just made excuses for him. Being blind, she literally couldn't see what he was doing to her house with her money.

Things went from bad to worse as he began to leave us obscene notes and spray paint messages in the garage and on the driveway. We dreaded coming home fearing what we might find. One afternoon while I was at work, he screamed at Cindy, inches from her face, such that he spit on her.  Obviously time to go.

Me and the FBAN in  Idaho. Trust me. there WERE fires.
You just can't see them in this photo. 

We had been looking at homes off and on for many years with First Sister Karen Templeman, esteemed Realtor with Realty USA, but now things got critical. In the late Summer of 2015, the western wildfire season had gone crazy with record numbers of fires. For those of you that don't know, I'm an incident meteorologist and can be dispatched out west on a moments notice. However, I had been approved for leave (vacation) and given the home situation I was not anxious to leave.But then, the situation became critical and they became desperate for help so I agreed to cancel my vacation and go, with Cindy's blessing and encouragement. Off I went to Orofino, Idaho and the Municipal Complex for two weeks. Before I went, we walked though the house on Park St and were very interested. Cindy and Karen went through the process and we bought the house while I was in Idaho.

So there you have it. A series of mostly unfortunate events led us to the home we now love, which is the happy ending for us.

Miscellaneous...Chapter 1

I first called this edition "Miscellaneous Part 1" but didn't want to repeat the theme of my Helen St post, and also because it occurs to me that there could be several subsequent editions of this theme. (By the way, Helen St. Part 2, The Final Chapter, will be out soon)

Yes, it's been cold. That's -21 on the car thermometer.

The cold weather and busy work schedule has limited the amount of work we've been able to get done at the house. The fireplace has something to do with this as well as we really love to just come home from work, have dinner and relax. Still, I've started several projects, completed a few. Unless we have a major failure somewhere in the house, no new projects will be started until we tie a few of these off.

Onward!

Kitchen TV:  As has been written before, our kitchen is rather small so space is at a premium. We do enjoy the small TV we had in Helen St, where it sat on the refrigerator. I offered to purchase a wall mount and hang the TV in the kitchen and found a quality mount in Lowes.  But, the $60 price put me off a bit, so a search on Amazon found this same mount for considerably less (about $35). An easy job, right? Heh heh. Good one Dave. It occurred to me shortly after I began, that I would be mounting the TV to an exterior wall, which in our house is solid masonry construction. Well, no big deal, you can drill in block and concrete, right? Heh heh. Actually you can, that is until you hit some kind of steel plate or reinforcement in the wall. I still don't know what I hit when drilling, but I couldn't penetrate it (had a momentary panic attack when I thought I may have hit the cast iron drain from the bathroom above, but it wasn't, I don't think). I had measured carefully and was limited in the room I had to move the mounting plate, and decided to somehow adapt the mount to fit where I had drilled. Of the two mounts, the lower hole was fine, it was the upper drill hole that hit the obstruction. In any event, the silly dry wall screws and molly plugs that came with the mount wouldn't work so I ran to my local friendly hardware store and found what's called bolt shield anchors or masonry anchors. The lower one went in fine, the the obstruction limited the top one and it went in about 75% of the way. I decided to make this a feature rather than a problem and it actually allows the TV to lean forward a bit more than it otherwise would have, making it easier to see from the sink or stove. Heh heh. It's a FEATURE dear, not sloppy mounting.

Home theater: Hard to say how much of this is completed because I'm not sure how much difficulty I'll have completing it. First a little background. Several years ago my lovely wife decided to purchase me a new sound system, and was very generous about it. The money she gave me allowed me to buy an entry level audiophile or what's called a "beer budget" system. This gets you above the mass market systems you'll find in big box retailer and gets your foot in the door of another world of quality, and, unfortunately, complexity. I settled on a Sherwood-Newcastle receiver/amplifier and psb speakers. Now, this is by no means a plug and play system, especially when you consider I had the Time Warner box, Blue Ray player, CD player, Yamaha cassette deck, turntable and VCR all routed through the receiver and then into the TV. THEN, there's a complicated method of tuning the surround sound such that it is balanced and correct for proper listening. Anyway, so far I've assembled and placed the speakers and speaker stands and routed most of the wiring. A tricky part lies ahead though. The rear speakers need to be wired to the receiver and of course you don't want then running along the floor or baseboard, so you either have to go above or below and I've chosen below. There is an old electrical box in the floor (see earlier blog) and I plan to go down into the basement through that box with my speaker wire, and back up to the entertainment center through the heating vent on the other side. I've also decided to simplify my life by hooking up only the Blue Ray player and Time Warner to the receiver. I rarely used the turntable or cassette deck, and the CD player is on it's last legs. Too bad,

Plumbing: Leaks continue to be a problem around the tub and I've been caulking like a maniac trying to keep water from dripping from the kitchen ceiling. Eventually I'll have to remove all the caulk, and start again. However I'm concerned that we have some serious structural/rot problems with the floor near the tub as it is sagging a bit near the front of the tub.

Randy does the right thing. Bonus: No plumber's crack!
He doesn't just sell houses, he fixes them. 

During the very cold night, the pipe under the half bath froze. I was smart enough to shut the water off to the bathroom before I left for work that night (I've been worried about this since we knew it had frozen before). When I went to turn it on the next day, water squirted out of the push on plumbing connections. I called a plumber, since I know far more about quantum mechanics than plumbing,  left a message, and never heard back. First Brother-in-Law Randy to the rescue! After a struggle getting the broken fittings off due to their inconvenient location, the new push on's went on easily and with no leaks!

Fireplace: Already burned through our first face cord and had to head back up to the Robinson Hill Nursery for more wood. They didn't have much left but another face cord is all I needed (I hope!) and I'm back to keeping the wife warm and happy.

Foyer/Vestibule: I have put the floor protection down and am ready to move ahead in there. I have removed the wallpaper accents and will soon remove the awful molding from the ceiling. Will not go with the complex crown molding in there, which would be too much for the small room, but instead go with a simpler and easier to install design. The ceiling needs repair, walls need patching, and then a nice paint job will be done. We also need to shop for a new light fixture.

Desk/Den: Cindy has really led the way here sorting and replacing the stuff that was quickly thrown in boxes before the move. Together we lifted the massive walnut desk we have and put  felt floor protecting cups under the feet. We need to get a mat for the chair too. I purchased new hanging files and need to file the piles of sorted mail and documents on the desk before Cindy loses her mind.

There's so much more but I think this is a record blog length for me so I'm going to stop here. Any of you that are still reading will just have to wait for Chapter 2 for more ongoing tasks.