The Good News Is...

I had a day off Monday, so I went to the tower house to put a heater in the basement so the pipes won't freeze this winter (I decided running the furnace there all winter is too costly).

• The good news is, I found a nifty radiator-like heater at Home Depot for $39.
• The bad news is, when I got to the Tower House I saw that the guy who has been (intermittently) cutting up my downed tree still doesn't have the driveway cleared.
• The good news is, I can drive through the front yard and around to the side of the house to park - so I did that, parked, and put in the heater.
• The bad news is, when I got back in the red truck to leave, I got it stuck in the yard. We had had a deluge of rain the last few days which turned the soil under the grass to jello.
• The good news is, I had shingles and carpet scraps to stick under the truck drive tires to gain traction.
• The bad news is, the shingles and carpet scraps didn't do a darn bit of good and encouraged me to keep trying, which dug the tires in deeper.
• The good news is, I have another truck at the Tower House - my old white truck - and some nylon rope which I could use to pull the red truck out of the mud.
• The bad news is, the ropes snapped rather than pulling the red truck free.
• The good news is, I found a couple of very stout tow straps to replace the ropes.
• The bad news is, pulling with the tow straps didn't do a darn bit of good and encouraged me to keep trying, which dug the tires of the white truck into the mud.
• The good news is...well, there isn't any good news at this point.
• The bad news is, I have two stuck trucks, I am soaking wet and splattered with mud, I have TWO STUCK TRUCKS, Lee Ann is at work, and it's getting dark.
• The good news is, I am a AAA member, and have a cell phone, so I called for road service.
• The bad news is, when the wrecker arrived, the driver took one look and said he couldn't get his truck close enough (without getting stuck himself) for his cable to reach either truck - and AAA disallowed the call since being stuck in the middle of your own yard is not a road service situation.
• The good news is, the driver called his friends, who (four of them total) got both trucks unstuck and they only wanted $20 a head for their help.

Reflections...

Here is our glamorous pier mirror, the latest in our string of recent antique purchases, hanging in the ballroom. That about does in our furniture budget for this year, and the house still looks half empty.

Beautiful Weather!

We are in the middle of Indian Summer here, and it has been wonderful. We are approaching our color peak, and are enjoying the confluence of warm, dry weather and dazzling leaves while it lasts.

New Antique

We went kind of crazy in the past week and bought some nice antique furniture for our still-half-empty house. This first piece is a jelly cupboard that we picked up at the Tri-State Antique Show in Lawrenceburg, Indiana. [The jelly cupboard is in the "keeping room" off the kitchen, which is in transition with the leather couch gone to OSU and the TV relocated to the garret.] The next is a cherry dresser from a dealer at the annual Lebanon antique show [now in the pink bedroom with the canopy bed] and the last is a mahogany table from another dealer at that same Lebanon show [placed strategically in the entry hall]. It sure looks different around here.

New Microwave

My big job this weekend was to install the above-the-range microwave. This has been pending for some time, but it forced my hand that Annie is taking our countertop microwave to college.

We had a recirculating vent hood (top picture) in place, left over from some previous kitchen incarnation and not a match for any of the current appliances. First step was to remove this, then put in a receptacle for the microwave plug. Then I had to build a little filler box for the space between the microwave and soffit, and when that was done I was able to hang the microwave itself.

I thought our old microwave was an okay size, but holy cow - compared to that the new one is the size of an aircraft hangar inside.

Pool Pics

A big project for us this summer has been getting the old Gunite pool in the backyard going. When we bought the house the pool was full of leaves and looked pretty bad. We have been busy draining and shoveling it out, then scrubbing and painting the surface, and finally calling the pool service guys to fix the pump and get things running again. Now that's all done, and I just finished my first swim. Sure, it's a little dirty (we still have to buy one of those pool vac gizmos to pick stuff off the bottom), but....it was still great. My own pool! Maybe I'll even share it with Lee Ann and Annie.

Weekend Getaway

On Saturday morning Lee Ann and I drove north to West Liberty, Ohio and visited the two house museums there called the Piatt Castles after the brothers who built them. That night we stayed at a bed & breakfast in historic Urbana. This was our kind of vacation, and we had a wonderful time despite a bit of rain.

Both of us have been busy lately with work and house projects so have not had much time for fun. We still are busy, but found time for this weekend away to celebrate our upcoming 20th anniversary (June 29). Time flies!

View of Minn/St. Paul Airport

Good gosh, observed the airborne Bengalista as he picked a couple of Canadian geese out of his teeth at Mach 3, they look just like kid's toys down there on the runway. Briefly he thought of buzzing the terminal to jolt some groggy traveler awaiting his Denver connection. Then, recalling his ill-advised close approach at St. Louis terminal a few days earlier, he instead changed course and arced up, up, up into the burning blue, higher and higher, where never lark, nor even eagle flew, a stripey orange bullet on a collision course with destiny.

Flying Tiger Spotted Over Louisville

Another day, another crazy adventure, mused the flying feline as he threaded his way at supersonic speed betwixt the skyscrapers of downtown L'ville. Somewhere far below, an insignificant speck of a sidekick talked safety in a nasal monotone to sleepy men; but up here, punching through the cumulus into brilliant sunshine, the big cat with the million-dollar smile was burning adrenaline and lighting up the sky like a supervillain's worst stripey nightmare.

Loaded For Bear

Here is Lee Ann modeling our new "Honeysuckle Popper." This is a big, heavy crowbar-like device with a hinged wooden block that acts as a fulcrum. You push the head into the soil underneath the unsuspecting honeysuckle and then lever it up out of the ground. Working for about an hour this morning, Lee Ann "popped" about a dozen good-sized bushes and any number of smaller ones.

This approach sure beats my previous method, which was to drag on the bush from all angles until I had broken enough roots to physically wrench it from the ground (at the same time wrenching my back, as it turned out). Now that we have the right tool, it's a matter of keeping at it until the invasive miseries are all gone. We have probably a thousand to go.

You Should See The Other Guy!!

This is the honeysuckle I have cut out of our back fencerow, which is mostly what I had been doing around the house for the last few weekends. The honeysuckle has taken some serious losses, but it hasn't been a one-sided affair. On Sunday, my third day of pulling up bushes by the roots and cutting them up for the pile, I overworked my back and sprained or tore a muscle back there. Score one for the honeysuckle! Since then I have been mostly chairbound, waiting for my back to feel better. Today, finally, it does. But I still am limping around with a cane, and planning a terrible fate for the surviving honeysuckle. They can run, but they can't hide. Actually, they can't run either - even better!

Kitchen Update

This isn't huge progress, but since the last picture I mounted the base and wall cabinets to the left of our stove, where the wall oven used to be. The cabinets will be painted but we are still thinking about colors. They will have new pulls, too. The next step is to put a marble top where the microwave is now so Lee Ann can roll out dough there.

Weekend in Florida

What would you do in Central Florida if you had just ONE DAY to do it in - and you didn't want to end up with a mouse ears tanline? I was stuck in Ocala over the weekend of March 19-20 in between sessions of a safety conference, so Lee Ann flew down to meet me. We picked a place called Bok Tower Gardens, near Lake Wales, as our Saturday destination. What a wonderful place - 250 landscaped acres, and in the middle is the cool tower pictured. All this was built in the 1920's by the guy who made his fortune as editor of the Ladies' Home Journal. They don't let you in the tower but it has a carillon and it's pretty fun to sit on a bench under moss-draped live oaks and just listen. We also roamed the grounds in perfect March-in-Florida weather. There is a Mediterranean-style mansion too, and we got to go through that. We even bought souvenirs at the visitor's center. It was a completely touristy day.

Big Week In A Small Room

Last weekend, after I removed the wall oven from our kitchen, we just couldn't resist tearing out its boxy support framing that had stuck into our tiny pantry. Then I left for a five day business trip. I got home expecting to pick up where I had left off.

But in the meantime Lee Ann had really gotten going. She had removed the rest of the makeshift pantry shelving, dug down to the original floorboards, pulled a million staples and nails, filled and sanded and painted the floor, and repaired the holes in the walls with new tongue and groove material. (Did I mention how much I love that girl?!)

I spent all weekend building new shelving, doing trimwork and painting. We aren't quite done but as luck would have it I am traveling again this week. By the time I get home Lee Ann should have this project knocked out.

Kitchen Project

The first big change in our new kitchen will be removing the black wall oven and almond ventless hood, leftover elements from some previous versions of the kitchen that don't match the other appliances. Once these are gone we can install the drawer base (shown sitting in front of the wall oven) and a cabinet above, and a new white combo microwave and ventless hood over the range. That will be much better use of this space.

The wall oven is recessed into the adjoining pantry and messes up the space there too, so removing it will allow us to fix two problem areas.

Since I took these photos I did get the wall oven out. It is sitting in the carriage house with a growing pile of old appliances waiting to go to the scrapyard. Maybe next week I can begin the other work. Cha-cha-changes.

Fast Forward To Now

So we closed on the house, spent an excruciating three weeks moving in the pit of winter, and now we are practically settled in.

We have been making the most of our unusually warm February weather. Today Lee Ann and I took turns hewing away at the undergrowth behind the carriage house. By evening all the stringy honeysuckle you see in the photo was gone.

Closing Is Set

Today we got word that our house purchase is ready to close, and we settled on Friday afternoon to sign the papers and collect the keys. There were a few snags and delays en route which have kept us waiting for two months, and now we are anxious to get moved in to our big pink house!

Coincidentally, I heard from the people who are buying my five acres in Georgetown (with tumbledown farmhouse) today too. They scheduled that closing for February 5. I am selling at a loss, but given the real estate market am happy to have lined up a buyer so easily. These are the farmers who own the land on two sides of my plot on Gardner Road. I am selling to them directly, without a realtor to pay, so that makes the deal a little better. And I look forward to paying down some of the new mortgage debt with the Gardner Road proceeds.

"The Gothic" - Update

That house we have been trying to buy, locally known as "The Gothic," still is eluding us. We have cleared some hurdles, though, and are getting closer.

The original catch was that the bank accepted our purchase offer before receiving title from the previous owners. We waited through the title fix, then found that the property could not convey to us without a legal description update, requiring a survey. This further delay blew our purchase contract, which expired on 12/31, along with a great Fannie Mae buyer's incentive also set to expire at the end of the year. Finally, our mortgage rate was locked only until January 4 and we feared that recently rising interest rates would leave us with a higher payment.

Update: Our contract was extended until 1/14; The seller agreed to honor the incentives past their expiration deadline; we relocked our mortgage for another 30 days at a better interest rate (4.25%) than we had before; and the survey is done and in the hands of the county, pending review.

Warren County is known to be slow in handling stuff like this, but with average luck we could close in a week.

New Year's Jigsaw Puzzle

For most of New Year's Day and a few hours into the day after, I was locked in battle with the bits and pieces of the lighthouse image you see here. This puzzle was a loan from my friend and co-worker Michele. At 500 pieces it was one of the smaller puzzles we have worked, but it proved difficult enough.

Traditionally the New Year's jigsaw puzzle is a family activity, but this year Lee Ann showed less interest and Annie none, so we may have to come up with some other fun/exasperating thing to do on New Year's Day like - I don't know - watching football.

Bringing the New Year In Wright

This is the Westcott House in Springfield, notable for having been designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Lee Ann and I enjoyed our warm and sunny New Year's Eve by touring the house and learning about its history and painstaking $5.6 million restoration.

The look and feel of this house is very different from most any house we have seen before, and we really enjoyed the chance to visit.