At Least We Eat Good!

tomatoes, basil & mozzarella from the Ellenville farmer's market

Goodbye Crappy Toolshed!

Now, if you were going to build a toolshed, where would you put it? Probably not in front of a window, right? Well, if you were the former owners of our Shack Sweet Shack, you apparently thought a window would be the PERFECT place for a TOOLSHED to store all the tools you DON'T HAVE because you don't do any home repairs, not even one, in 13 years... So, anyway, we (or really more accurately, Mike) ripped down the shed and let the light back in the window.

mmmmm, lead paint

I'm smiling because I was thinking "yeah, we will finish the scraping today!" WRONG.

Like Lipstick on a Pig.

Have you ever heard this expression? It's a favorite in my family, and appropriate to this situation. Anyhoo, these are the colors we will be painting the cottage--- the lightest is basically the same blue it is now, which we are actually fond of, so that will remain the main body color. The wooden sills around the window and other large trim will be the medium Whipple Blue, and small details will be the dark Van Deusen Blue. WE will eventually be adding a little more fun exterior detail stuff as well as window boxes to the cottage next year (um, eyeshadow for the pig?). A winter project will be removing and replacing all the screening on the window screens, as well as painting them the van deusen blue and replacing any rotten pieces. Right now the screens are more like a minor inconvenience for the bugs, until they find the holes.

A Dead Cat is Probably Not a Good Sign, Right?

don't worry, I didn't take a picture of the unfortunate kitty that decided to die next to our boxwood shrub... but I ask you, can it bode well for us that this is what greeted us upon our arrival this Sunday?
Chris Janks, our friend from Alfred that did our amazing kitchen is pictured here under our house looking at our hopeless pier foundation and collapsing retaining walls. Since Mike and I have very little spare time, and even less knowledge and experience with putting a new foundation on a house, we have called him in---he has a guy on his crew that does this kind of work, so since pretty much EVERYTHING ELSE we do is literally resting on the quality of this job, we have wisely chosen to contract it out. Needless to say, viewing the sorry state of this foundation caused much head shaking and even some laughing. There are no footings below the frost line- apparently the former owners thought it sufficient to place a single row of cinderblocks on a 4" cement pad placed directly on the ground. Also, they seemed to think the main beam supporting the house would be just FINE to make out of two sistered 2x6's, and not ones that ran the continuous length either--- they are sort of frankensteined together. The crookedness of the walls and windows is no longer a mystery, that's for sure. The hilarity doesn't end there, but those are the main problems we will be addressing immediately. Hopefully, fixing this won't cost us as much as the house.

the blue oasis

Here is Mike, rolling out the last of the floor paint in the bedroom. The walls are a very pale blue, and the trim is China White. We thought the original woodwork on the actual windows was in good enough shape to leave as-is. We now at least have one non-creepy room to sleep in and for any lucky guests who might want to come up for a rustic weekend of home improvement (HINT HINT). Come on, any takers? Fall projects include jacking up the cottage and putting in new cement piers and scraping/painting the exterior (don't worry, with power tools!!! We have wire cup brushes for my angle grinder and wire brushes for the drills, plus a power paint gun. We will show you how to use them if you don't know how!!!). FUN, right??? RIGHT? Anyone? *sigh* Yeah, I guess we won't see any of you up here until next summer.

our cottage is made of cardboard.

The bedroom may not be our most pressing problem, but we were only up for one day and wanted to accomplish SOMETHING. We tried to at least get the cosmetic appearance of the bedroom a little bit in shape so we have one less-squalid room to sleep in while we tear apart everything else. About what you are looking at above: those big white things are pieces of old ceiling paint that basically came off in huge sheets. We couldn't sand much, because as we found out after peeling off some of this paint, the walls are literally made of glorified cardboard--- it's this pressboard material, and the panels on the ceiling are so bowed they look as if someone has tacked old bedsheets up on the ceiling. Unfortunately, we aren't quite ready to deal with that yet, so we just slapped some new paint on it until we are ready to rip it all out, put in new sheetrock and insulate the attic crawlspace.

Adventures in Money Pit Ownership!

Well, it's ours- and as expected, it is a semi-wreck, but not as bad as it could be. The things we need to do immediately are winterize the plumbing for the cottage, paint, and have an electrician check out all the electric--- looks to be a strange mish mash of new with a fuse box (good) and old with the old fashioned screw in fuses (not so good). Plus, one of our cottage neighbors told us that lots of these cottages are really wonky electricity-wise--- as in past owners have used crazy things like unrated extension cords to rewire or add outlets and things like that. So, if we want to install electric baseboard heating (we do) we need to get it all updated and up to code.

SPEAKING of cottage neighbors, they are AWESOME. Very down to earth people, who seem to spend a lot of time improving and/or adding on to their cottages-- the extra good thing being that two of them are plumbers, one's an electrician, one's a general contractor, and one does phone systems and also has electrical knowledge so we are neck-deep in helpful neighbors that are happy to pitch in. Actually we already were told we just need to let them know when we want to do the plumbing, and they will help us do it because for them, it's a couple of hours but for us to do ourselves---fuggedaboutit! (yes, direct quote). So I guess we need to stock up on some Coors Light and snacks for them, and we will have winterized plumbing.

Rosemarie and Tony are the longest time residents of Fiume Bello (our bungalow community's name), having helped found it 32 years ago. They are the best. Apparently, this group of cottages was built in 1950, then abandoned shortly thereafter, and purchased by Tony and 11 of his friends 32 years ago. Rosemarie said when they first got their cottage, she was eating lunch in the livingroom under an umbrella until they got the new roofs put on the cottages later that year. Rosemarie's favorite way to describe something bad (a botched home repair, ugly curtains, what-have-you) is "oh my God, it's a HORROR." One of the things that Rosemarie did describe as a HORROR were the beds that came with our cottage. I found out that these 3/4 beds (that is smaller than a full, bigger than a twin) have the original mattresses from 1950 on them, laying over a weird sort of coil spring and steel band support frame. If you ever went to a summer camp or were in boyscouts/girlscouts you perhaps ran into these metal spring contraptions in the platform tents you stayed in-- you would have just laid some cardboard on top, then your bedroll. You can see the image up at the top of the post. Now, here's a fun fact to ponder as you look at that lovely mattress--- in 10 years the average mattress DOUBLES ITS WEIGHT. How is that possible you may ask yourself...well, that weight comes from dust and human skin! Yes, we threw them out immediately, which also improved the smell of the bungalow considerably.

Linoleum, my personal pet peeve

here's the dining room after we moved all the furniture to the living room, ripped up the linoleum and threw out the various awful tchotchkis. The wood floors are actually in great shape everywhere EXCEPT the bathroom and tiny entryway, where the boards are rotten. Gotta fix that before the toilet falls through the floor!