Hey, Emory!



Yes?

What's that you're lying on?

This? This is my favorite wrestling rug!

No, not that. That strange, shiny, floor-like material underneath the rug.





Gee, I don't know. I've never seen a 'floor' before . . .



. . . and it's not nearly as interesting as my rug.


Ah, well. Emory might not be excited, but I am! The Dread House kitchen - one of the dreadest rooms of all - has a floor, albeit a temporary one.

M is very fiscally responsible and likes to do things on a cash-only basis as much as possible, so the permanent hardwood floors (along with a new heating system that has to be put in at the same time) are still on some distant horizon. And I just couldn't take it anymore: that dark, stained concrete that mocked all attempts to clean it, that rough, snaggy surface that assaulted the eyes as much as it assaulted bare feet, and worst of all, that mysterious black stain that extended four feet across the kitchen floor. So I decided I had to do something that would make it livable for me, a very visual person, until that someday comes. The answer: those oft-decried peel and stick tiles. Yes, I've replaced the black stain on the floor with a black stain on my soul. But the kitchen, at least, is now a bright, pleasant place to be.


(Apologies if the contrast/brightness is off in the pictures. My laptop died and the desktop monitor has serious display issues.)

New Address!

Note: I've changed the URL for the blog. The new and improved address is http://thedreadhouse.blogspot.com/. Makes more sense, doesn't it? 

I hate this house. 

Well, we haven't posted in a while but not for lack of incidents. Mostly it's because my day job has taken all my time and energy so the only things going on have been the things going wrong.

We've had plumbing that wouldn't drain - even after running the auger through it, and feeding it digestive microbes for a week; the oven went into overdrive, wherein the only way to stop it on it's quest to reach the surface temperature of the sun was cutting the power at the breaker.

I'm in the process of working out what to plant this year, after last year's experiments. The ollas worked well for the small areas they covered, so I'll probably be getting many more of those as I convert the patches of grass to garden.

It's been very cold this winter, so thankfully we got the first phase of the attic insulation in before the cold arrived. We still have about two thirds of the attic to cover, but while the cotton insulation is so much easier to work with than the fiberglass, it's also more expensive, so that's going to have to be done in stages.

Here we have the original insulation, as it extends under the attic "floor" (the boards around the trapdoor), I think it is as old as the house...

... that's actually one of the deeper areas. We're supposed to have R38 in this area - I'm not sure what thin, dirty fiberglass-and-mouse-dropping, insulation counts as, but that's not it.

The insulation arrives...

... there were nine of these blocks, each containing eight pieces. The trapdoor was big enough to carry two up at a time. It took a while to get them all up into the attic. There's some irony in the recycled denim, ecofriendly insulation coming in non-recyclable plastic wraps.

Several hours of lifting later, we have a pile in the attic.



Installing the new insulation wasn't bad. Removing the dirty old stuff first was a lot less fun. Almost to the point where I was seriously considering paying someone else to do it.



Those three little strips were two hours of hot, unpleasant work, in a face mask and long sleeves to keep the fiberglass dust out. Next time I do it while it's grey and cold out - the attic gets warm even in late autumn if there's any sun.

Linen Closet Makeover

A small but satisfying project.

The linen closet, like the rest of the closets in the house, was wallpapered with an ancient used-to-be-taupe patterned paper. Why anyone would wallpaper closets is beyond me, but there they were. The bedroom closets were stripped via hours of work with spray bottles of vinegar and scrapers.

Not so the hallway closet. The thought of spending hours in a narrow 2x2 space, inhaling vinegar and spiders was too torturous. Thus, fully aware of my crime against proper home-improvement technique, I painted over the wallpaper.

Before:

After:

The color is 'May Apple', and the shelves (not present in photos) are presently being given a new coat of white.

Garden

We haven't posted much recently as we haven't been getting much done on the house. The yard is the only thing that's been making any progress. Little by little we're getting pieces of it converted into garden. This is very slow going, especially at the back, as the top couple of inches of soil is full of ... things*. Which means we can't just plow under the whole yard and start from scratch.

---

Some of the things we get from filtering the top couple of inches (through a garden sieve, by hand, this is why it's taking a while):

• Bits of plastic
• Rocks (of varying sizes)
• Pieces of fiberglass insulation
• Pieces of glass
• Nails
• Children's toys
• A bungie cord
• A patch of tarmac
• Wire
• A twelve foot long piece of two-inch pvc pipe, not connected to anything.
• bits of wood (painted)
• Japanese beetle grubs:
  

---

The "raised" vegetable bed is actually level with the original surface, but four inches above the level we excavated down to in order to clean the soil. The sides of the bed are constructed from material from the demolition.

Initial frame, with a layer of not-quite-compost from the pile (mostly half decayed leaves) to at least have some organic material in the mix.

Filled with filtered soil from the hole, using rocks we pulled out as spacers:


Putting the peas in. You can see the neck of the Olla we got from these folk - it's basically an unglazed pot that you fill with water. The water seeps out through the pot, watering the plants from underneath - which promotes better roots and avoids leaf rot from watering the plants from the top.


The peas, two weeks later:


At which point they got eaten by rabbits. So we added some, unsightly but effective, rabbit netting to foil the cute critters:



Then we dug up the next patch, didn't have time or energy to make another raised bed, so planted potatoes in the dug patch:



The peppers refused to sprout, but we had successful seedlings of cauliflower and brocolli, so those went out a couple of weeks later:


The beds by the kitchen window aren't doing so well so far. The best growing item at this point is a parsnip top we rescued from the compost pile (where it was happily growing). Here they are back in March:


And today, still droopy and brown:


Except the mint, of course, which is still trying to take over the garden:


By midsummer, we might actually have compost. The huge pile of leaves, etc. from last autumn is finally heating up (in part due to being tossed every other week - that's hard work with around 200 cubit feet of wet leaves), and cooking down into (notifcably smaller) compost:



The cherry tree behind the house bloomed spectacularly, at which point we discovered it was a grafted tree (which explains some of its mutant form), so we have a white side and a pink weeping side.


The rose bush beside the house is once more trying to eat the house:

A New Addition

An exciting new addition to the family was welcomed to The Dread House today. Our little bundle of joy was introduced to the household this evening -- red, wiggling, slimy, and ravenous.

Introducing...

Bag O' Worms!

Yes, 1000 red wigglers arrived at the house today! We assembled their home -- the appropriately titled Can O' Worms -- prepared the bedding, and freed the worms from their transport bag and box.

Placing the bedding (coconut fiber) in the bin:

Bag O' Worms!

Pile O' Worms!

Exciting worm close-up!

Our worms are currently engaged in what is known as "worm run". Meaning, of course, they're all trying to escape frantically from the bin...to what destination, we don't know. It's supposed to take about a week for them to settle in; in the meantime, it's possible we'll have a few casualties as they escape from the bin and either dry up or get eaten by the cat, whose food bowl is near the worm bin. Tragic!

As the system reaches maturity, which will take up to 12 months, we can expect our worms to increase in number until they reach 10,000-15,000. Hopefully, they'll enjoy our food scraps!

New Roof: The cause!

The female PO stated that the reason the extension went on the front of the house was they were tired of clearing out the huge pile of leaves that gathered there in the autumn. The extension was the cause of the leak (see previous entry about demolishing it).

So I was dreaming of this huge pile of leaves for the compost pile all gathering themselves without any effort.

You can imagine my disappointment when this is what we got:


Yes. That's the entire pile. Everything that gathered on the porch.

That is the reason for the entire roof replacement!

New Roof: Day 1

The crack of dawn (7:46, December 27th):



Unloading the tiles:

Getting that truck into the driveway was interesting. The driveway is one car wide all the way to the curb. The road is only just over two lanes wide. That they managed to only flatten about a square foot at the end of the driveway is quite impressive, but took a while.

Up to the roof


at which point the constant cold drizzle caused them to call off for the day as it wasn't safe for them to be on the roof and they'd be letting the rain in.