Slave to the Pond

Celia and I did some more work on the pond today. Well, Celia mostly.

Here is a picture of her straining the muck by hand with a colander!

Working on the Pond

Our yard features a rather large koi pond, complete if waterfall.  It was one of the things that Celia fell in love with when we first saw the house. Unfortunately, it has been neglected for a number of years.  Lately we have been getting a little burnt out working on the kitchen so we decided to start working on the pond this weekend.  What a chore!  The pond has about 2 foot of standing water in it.  The water was so clogged with fallen leaves that the leaves on top never got wet.  There was literally 4 inches of rotting leaf material floating in the top of the water.   As we started dredging a rake across the bottom, there is another several inches of sediment.  Here are some pics of us working on the pond.

This is all of the leaves that were in the pond!

More Kitchen Pics

Pictures are worth a thousand words so below are some more pics of our kitchen in various stages of demolition:

Signatures of previous owners:
Greg Derry, Susie Derry, Jenny Derry, Kim Derry

Kitchen Update: The Demo Continues

Demo on the kitchen is continuing.  It is taking longer than I hoped just to get the old stuff out.  I think that means that it will be a long time before our kitchen is all done. :(

Floor:  The old 1980's ceramic tile has all been removed.  My father-in-law lent me his rotary drill with chisel attachment, which made quick work of the tile. We took one load to the dump last weekend and have the rest in a pile ready to haul away.

Walls:  The 1980's horizontal pine planks have all been removed.  Most of the kitchen is down to the studs.

Electrical:  The old ceiling lights were mounted in the faux beams, so they have now been removed.

Ceiling:  The entire lower ceiling has been removed.  It has been quite the effort to remove the faux beams, then the drywall, then the joists.  My prybar has never seen so much action!

Island:  About half of the island has been dismantled.  A couple days ago I cut the water lines and removed the dishwasher and sink.  I still have to find the correct breaker for the cooktop before I can remove the rest of the island unit.

Tonight, Celia's mom watched our kids so we could get some real work done.  Below is a video of Celia taking down the last of the ceiling joists in the original portion of the kitchen.  This women gets serious about demo!

Let there be fire!

Over the past 3 days we have been working with a great local chimney sweep to get our 4 fireplaces working (actually 3 because one has a gas insert).  Initially the job was supposed to just be a simple cleaning and inspection since the fireplaces haven't been used in 20+ years. How do I know? Well, I found newspaper from 1992 crammed up in the flues to block the drafts.  First thing he tells me when he gets out of the truck is that the chimneys are capped (sealed).  Crap. So, we work out a deal for him to uncap them and continue the inspection.  We have two brick chimneys (one in the front and one in the back).   He starts working on the back chimney, but finds that the top two courses of brick under the cap are deteriorated and unstable.  Because of this we decide to leave the cap in place.  Taking it off now would mean that I would need to get all of that repaired and it is too cold for all of that right now.

Next he moved to the front chimney.  This one was in much better condition and removing the cap went smoothly.  After a cleaning of the flue for the main foyer fireplace, we were able to light a small kindling fire!!!  We were so excited.

Finally we move upstairs to the other fireplace that shares this chimney.  He begins cleaning the flue only to be stopped cold by a blockage.  The poor guy worked for several hours trying to clear what appears to brick, dirt, and mortar dust all caked together solid about 5 feet up the flue. He could get the chimney sweep pole itself to pass the blockage, but once he attached a brush, it wouldn't budge.   Here is what the blockage looks like.  The red circle is the part that has been knocked clear.

To us, the blockage doesn't look intentional.  It seems to break apart when struck (just not very easily).  We theorize that when the upper part of the chimney was rebuilt, a few bricks fell and got lodged in the flue.  Over time, we ended up with this mess.

The chimney sweep is bound and determined to clear this blockage.  Hopefully he is successful and clears this flue so we can use the fireplace.  If so, then we are only down one fireplace which we can work on repairing it once the weather warms a bit.

Old House Society - Architectural Salvage Warehouse

This week, I had the opportunity to visit a nearby architectural salvage store.  The Old House Society based in Bloomington, IL is a group of like-minded people that work together to preserve old buildings and when needed, salvage the good bits from them.  They run the "Architectural Salvage Warehouse" which is about 16,000 sqft of old house parts that they have recovered.  I went in looking for door knobs, backplates, and hardwood floor.  I was tickled pink when I found an exact match to the door knobs/backplates in the upstairs of my house!  Their selection is great and everything is fairly organized so it was easy to see exactly what they had available.  Ken was my salesperson.  Very friendly. I was impressed that he was a volunteer that was working at the store for a couple hours before his "day job".
Celia, unfortunately was not able to visit with me, so she is really excited and cant wait for our next trip!

Contact Information:
http://www.oldhousesociety.org/

Illinois Winters

I am NOT an Illinois native.  I am originally from Texas.  For the past 6 years, I have lived here and dreaded winter snowfalls.  I never could find the extra funds to buy a snowblower so I always did a lot of shoveling.  While our other house has a fairly big driveway, it was always manageable.   With this new house, the driveway is just too big.  I have traced out the driveway(s) from this Google Maps satellite photo:

This year, I finally talked Celia into letting me buy a snowblower.  Here is my new toy!!!