Damn You Stickley Bungalow!

What's Going on Here?

2010-01-07T12:51:00.000-05:00

So, its been over a year since I've posted and just about the same since we touched anything on the house.

Our careers and extracurricular activities have kept us pretty busy. But 2010 is here and we're newly motivated.

My grandmother always used to say "S**t or get off the pot"

And since Miles here has graciously decided to leave us a bit of toilet paper, albeit finely shredded, we're going to ....um....stay on the pot and keep blogging.

I'm looking around for a new template in order to freshen up the site an make it less clunky. As soon as I get that arranged, we'll be back on the air. Stay tuned and thanks for reading.

Let Me Tell You Why I Suck at Blogging

2008-09-10T23:09:00.002-04:00

I've clearly fallen off the blog bandwagon. Don't worry, there's lots to report. I'm just keeping busy trying to save the neighborhood.

So in honor of all of you, this photo is for me.

Ladies & Gentleman....The Doors!

2008-07-20T22:38:00.007-04:00

Okay so I know I'm really behind....we've been busy. More on that later.

I wanted to share that we found a suitable salvage door at a nearby salvage shop, White River Salvage

The door we're replacing is this monstrosity.

We wanted something that was similar to the original back door off our kitchen. Here's a photo.

Say hello Miles. Hello Miles!

And here's the one we picked out.

Very close...except without the dividers in the glass. We opted for this one because there is a three pane transom above the door and the wife couldn't handle it if the transom was three panes across and the door was two. Sheesh!

And, we're changing the door around so the door opens inward and we're adding a full-view screen/glass door for the exterior.

So Miles can look out the window.

Oh That's Sweet......A Hugger Tree

2008-06-10T23:15:00.005-04:00

Well with all the bad storms we've been getting in Indianapolis lately, we knew we'd somehow be affected.

We didn't have to worry about flooding because our house is up on a small hill. So if our house ever floods, well then there's a lot of people that are really going to be screwed.

And since we're on a hill, I have this fear that one day our house will be struck by lightning. Well, not this time.

So what does that leave? Oh yes. The wind.

Well Monday's wind apparently scared one of our maple trees so bad that the thing decided to grab on to our house to keep from blowing away.

The problem is that he stretched just a wee bit to far and broke himself. Now we've got half a tree stuck to our house and a few hundred dollars worth of damage to our new roof.

Plus, we're going to need to have call a tree guy to get in here and remove this thing.

Spectacular! Mother nature can be a real bitch sometimes.

***UPDATE***
$300 to take the branch off the roof and basically butcher what's left of the tree so the other damaged portions don't fall on it too.

Next up is the estimate for the roof damage. Hopefully it won't be too awful.

Hmmm....wondering if I can apply for a FEMA grant to help pay for the damage....

Oh Nothing Major....Just a Small Fire

2008-06-10T22:56:00.004-04:00

So the other week while the painters were priming the back of the house, they bumped the conduit that houses the (dated) electrical wires for the motion detector light.

Apparently this severed the lines and shot sparks up the side of the house which then lit the side of the house on fire.

Nothing major. Right? Hey does wood burn? Oh....oh my God! Holy Crap!

Actually it really wasn't bad. It just lit some of the paper under the shingles on fire. Luckily they were around when it happened. And it was promptly extinguished.

So this past weekend....the light you see in this photo....was permanently removed. Because hey, I'm not really into burning my house down. Not yet anyway...I'm close.

That removal process itself is worth a post of it's own as 6 foot 4 Brian had to fit his entire body into a crawl space the size of a coffee table to reach the wiring for that light.

I'm Flattered

2008-06-01T21:17:00.005-04:00

So I installed this little software thingy called Sitemeter on my page. It tracks your blog visitors so you can see how many people are reading your blog.

It also shows you the pages that referred visitors to your site. Anyway, I happened to notice that I was receiving a few visitors from a website called The Arts & Crafts Society. When I clicked on the link to investigate I found the following:

Blog of the Month

Read about the trials of restoring a Stickley bungalow at Damn You, Stickley Bungalow!. The house is spectacular.

Wow! Really? I'm honored. Thank you!

Welcome to those that have joined us from The Arts & Crafts Society. Feel free to look around and kick the tires a bit.

My home blog is your home blog.....or something like that.

Thanks for the Help.....You Jerks

2008-05-31T18:24:00.005-04:00

It's so great living in a neighborhood where everyone helps each other out with their home remodeling projects.

Just last week some friendly neighborhood folk decided that they'd like to help us paint our house.

Unfortunately, their method, while unique, would take just a wee bit longer than the old brush and roller method.

And yellow isn't really part of our paint scheme.

But thanks for the offer.

I'm On a Roll

2008-05-26T21:35:00.001-04:00

4, count them 4 blog posts today.

Actually, I guess this makes 5.

Your Firearms Are Useless Against Them!

2008-05-26T20:33:00.005-04:00

Saturday I noticed a bee had found it's way into the bathroom. At first I didn't think much of it other than OH S**T A BEE! Our windows had been open for a few days and perhaps one snuck in through a hole in a screen somewhere.

Then a few minutes later, while taking some laundry to the basement, I was greeted by another. And another...and another..... And 7 more after that.

OH F**K! THERE ARE BEES IN THE BASEMENT!!!

How the hell does that happen? Do bees even like basements?

After successfully coating my entire basement in Raid, I went upstairs to let the dogs out. And cry a little. That's when I noticed it. Just outside the back of our house was a swarm of bees buzzing around a hole in the side of the house.

Here's a photo of the hole....and yes, that's our plumbing...and no, I have no idea why it's like that.

There were easily 50 to 80 bees buzzing around the hole. I was pissed off. And a little scared. Mostly scared.

I flooded the hole with Raid (Thank goodness that stuff shoots out in a stream). After a few confusing seconds of watching their brothers and sisters die, the rest packed their little bee bags and left town.

Good thing the wife wasn't home. She would have moved out permanently.

Anyway, while thinking up a title for this post, I was reminded of the following scene from Tommy Boy regarding bees.

Enjoy!

Do You Want Some Fries With Those Shakes?

2008-05-26T20:13:00.005-04:00

They've started pulling off the cedar shake shingles on the South side of the house. The entire side will get a new set of shakes and any old shakes that aren't totally destroyed will get re-used on other parts of the house.

...in the name of preservation...and by preservation I mean cost saving.

And this is the view from the attic looking out. This was a little disturbing.

I wasn't expecting to see that much daylight.

Nor was I expecting to see the bat that wandered in through the gaps in the wall.

Time to change my pants.

Pink and Purple Houses

2008-05-26T19:40:00.006-04:00

The painting has started....well sorta. The priming has started. The painters started on the lower half of the house last week and had much of it primed by the time I came home from work.

It was weird looking. Not because our primer is purple....but because our house doesn't look like a pile of garbage anymore.

Well, okay. At least it's a purple pile of garbage. It's appealing to those that like purple garbage.

And let me just state for the record that picking out paint colors was one of the worst experiences of my life. I hope I never have to go through that again.

After 13 quarts and 5 mini samples....we finally have our colors.

For those that are interested, we chose the following: (All are Benjamin Moore)

1st Level: Bittersweet Chocolate
2nd Level: Fatigue Green
Trim: Fairview Taupe
Sash: Townsend Harbor Brown

Amazingly we're getting lots of comments from people who like the purple primer color.

That doesn't include one neighbor who remarked "That's not your actual color is it?"

No sir....that's not our actual color. By the way, I've never told you how lovely your faded pink bungalow looks. No really, I love it.

Recycling and Reinvestment

2008-05-26T18:34:00.004-04:00

Last year when we removed the aluminum siding, we decided to take it to the local scrapyard instead of just throwing it away. It was an easy decision when we found out the scrapyard was paying 36 cents a pound. Plus it made us feel good that we weren't filling the landfill with something that could be reused.

So we scraped about 4 or 5 truckloads worth and pocketed about $850.

However we weren't able to remove all of the aluminum. When we started on the exterior of the house a few weeks ago, we told our contractor to save the rest.

There was more than we expected. In all, we salvaged another 250 pounds.

Last weekend we fired up Old Smokey for the first time this year and headed off to the scrapyard.

I say "we" because the lovely wife accompanied me for the first time. She had never been to the scrapyard before. It was like a grade school field trip for her.

You can imagine our combined joy and sadness when we found out that the price of aluminum had gone up quite a bit since our last trip. They were now paying 72 cents a pound.

We pocketed a little more than $188 for this trip. Joy!

Had we waited to take all the siding until this year, we would have doubled that $850. Sadness :-(

So what did we do with the extra $188? Buy a light fixture? Put it towards paint? But some new fangled household tool?

Hell no, we spent it on booze! And lots of it.

The Near East Side Pub Crawl was that evening which conveniently allowed us to reinvest those dollars with several local bars.

Maybe it's a good thing we only got $188. That would have been one hell of a hangover.

Hey Baby, Nice Shingles!

2008-05-15T22:41:00.007-04:00

So the roof's finally done. We've gotten several complements on it. But I'm not sure how to take those.

Shingles are shingles. Sure, there are differing degrees of shingles. Different colors, sizes, etc., etc...

We agonized over our shingles. Our roof, if you haven't noticed, is very prominent on our house. Okay prominent is an understatement.

That thing is a freaking olympic ski slope.

Anyway, we knew that our choice for roofing would be a critical one since everyone is going to see it.

This was our roof before the replacement. Grey-three-tab. Basic.

It did it's job. I had no complaints. I just knew that if I ever had the option, I'd like to upgrade.

So we had the option. And we upgraded. The original roof was cedar shake. One of our contractors told us that if we wanted to do the roof in cedar shakes, we'd pay upwards of $15,000 in materials alone. So that was an easy "no". Instead we chose a triple layer asphalt shingle that would give us the appearance of real cedar shakes.

We opted for Certainteed Landmark TL (the TL is for Triple Layer). Picking the right color took FOREVER! But we think we're satisfied.

And here's a close-up shot

We also think we made the right decision because we keep getting complements on it.

Now I'm really nervous about what they'll think of our paint colors.

When it Rains it Pours.....in My Dining Room...OH S#%@!!!!

2008-05-13T21:38:00.001-04:00

As you may have noticed from my previous post, we're getting a new roof. Well, the weather hasn't exactly been real cooperative lately. We seem to have had more rain days then sunshine lately.

When you're trying to replace your roof, and it keeps raining, well that can cause a few problems.

After a short mother's day weekend with the inlaws, we returned on Sunday to find it raining, in not one, but TWO rooms of the house.

The dining room, which yes, is on the first floor, got it the worst. Water poured in through the cracks in the plaster and drained out of the box beams onto the oak hardwood floors. Both ceiling and floors are screwed.

It also rained in the top floor of our second story sunporch. We had partially finished that room with new drywall but hadn't yet painted the walls because we wanted to do the floors first. I guess, it's a good thing we waited. Because now we need to re-do the ceiling.....again.

Here's a shot of the dining room ceiling with water stains and cracked plaster:

Dining room floor aftermath...notice the warped floorboards:

Sunporch ceiling water stains on drywall:

Our contractor feels terrible. I understand. I would too. It wasn't his fault. It was the roofing contractors fault. Luckily, they've offered to pay for all the repairs. Depending on what the final cost is, they may turn it over to their insurance company.

It could have been worse. I'm over it. And that's why, boys and girls, it pays to make sure your contractor has insurance.

On a positive note, all of the plants we stored in the sunporch over the winter didn't need watering when we got back.

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Now playing: Starsailor - Good Souls

Someone's Getting a Facelift

2008-05-10T22:32:00.000-04:00

So we've finally started the exterior rehab work. Our house is a disaster right now.

After the roof is done, most of the exterior carpentry will start. We'll be replacing a lot of cedar shakes as well as patching some bad spots in the siding.

Then comes the paint. And I'm not kidding when I say that I've been to the paint store 13 times. Let's just say we're thoroughly testing our color options. Thoroughly.

Two colors down.....two to go.

The Speedheater Infrared Paint Remover....Does it Work? Part 1

2008-04-29T22:06:00.005-04:00

We got an unexpected Christmas present this year that I'm looking forward to testing out now that the weather is nice.

Okay, well I guess it wasn't completely unexpected. I put it on our wish list but I didn't actually expect to get it.

The Speedheater Infrared Paint Remover claims to remove paint safely and easily using low infrared heat.

I tested it out in the basement on a set of shelves we've been stripping for...oh like 4 years. It seemed to work but I think it takes some getting used to. It was the middle of December and I was stinking up the house so I decided I'd wait until Spring. I'm curious as to how much paint it actually takes off versus chemical strippers.

The wife and I are pretty meticulous when it comes to stripping our woodwork. Typically we use chemical stripper but that stuff isn't cheap and it isn't exactly good for anyone to touch, breathe, eat, look at, talk about....etc.

My thought is while this might not negate the need for chemical strippers, it certainly might help us minimize the use of it. So I guess I'm setting low expectations.

We've got a few things on our porch to strip over the next month or so....I think I'll give it a try.

Has anyone used it? What are your thoughts?

And yes Carmen, you may borrow it.

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Now playing: The Gutter Twins - Bete Noire

Our First Room....Our First Mistakes

2008-04-23T21:39:00.006-04:00

So if I haven't mentioned this before, this is our first house.

Em had lived in a historic house all of life before she went to college. I had lived in one in Kenton, Ohio up until age 10 when we moved to Cincinnati. From then my family lived in an apartment until I left for college in 1994.

So, I had zero preservation experience, zero home repair skills, zero pretty much everything when it came to managing a house. In fact, until we moved to this house, I had never even mowed a lawn.

Think about that. I was 27 before I mowed my first lawn. Wow...can't say I regret missing out on that joy. I hate mowing.

Anyway, so Em was the only one of us with any preservation experience. When we moved in she had just received her master's degree in historic preservation from Ball State. She had also spent much of her teenage years helping her parents restore their four square in Huntingburg, IN.

That wasn't enough to stop us from making a few mistakes in our restoration. But, I guess most people go through a trial & error phase when they do these things. You try, you fail, you adjust, and you hopefully avoid making the same mistakes twice.

One mistake I wish we hadn't make occurred during the restoration of our first room. The one we lovingly called the "Pink Room".

Pink carpet, pink wallpaper on the walls and ceiling. We even found out that the girl who used to live in that bedroom was named Rose. Rose later apologized to us and said "My parents never should have let us pick out our own wallpaper"

It was the first room we conquered and almost finished. You can see slideshow of the restoration here . In terms of decor, it's the least "arts & craftsy looking" room we have right now.

I say almost finished because we still have a stencil to paint on the wall. We found an original stencil underneath all the wallpaper. We traced it and plan to recreate the design just above the paint line near the ceiling.

So what was the mistake? Well after stripping and staining all the woodwork, we coated the woodwork with polyurethane.

What? Really? That's the mistake?

Sure, some might not consider that a mistake. However, we now we wish we had used shellac or lacquer. The latter two are favored by preservation purists.

Now that we're working on our second room, we don't plan on making the same mistake. And believe me, if that's the only mistake we ever make, I think we'll be okay.

But I seriously doubt we'd ever go back and re-strip and finish the wood in lacquer or shellac. We've got plenty of other things to keep us busy.

Like mowing the damn lawn.

**UPDATE**

I forgot that part of the original intent of this post was to share our trick for removing wallpaper. Em learned this while working on the restoration of the West Baden Hotel.

Score the wallpaper using the sharp tip on a 5-in-1 or something else with a sharp edge. We tend to score diagonally downward in one direction and then go back over the area in the opposite direction.

Then, we use a garden pesticide sprayer to spray a mixture of 409 and hot tap water on the wallpaper. You don't need a ton of 409. Maybe one cup of 409 for every 3 gallons of water. Let it sit for a few minutes and then start scraping. It's worked for us several times and it's cheap, quick and easy.

And Welcome Back .....Again

2008-04-14T21:28:00.004-04:00

So this seems to be a habit of mine. Write a post or two, take a year off and just comment on everyone else's blog.

So have we been hard at work? Sorta. Is that what's motivated me to write? No.

Our friends over at Irvington Bungalow have been relentlessly blogging away over the past few weeks and I refuse to be outblogged. So I'm putting on my game face.

So what's been happening in the Ol' Stickley Money Pit over the last few months? Big changes are just around the corner.

But first let's catch everyone up on a few things that have happened that I neglected to talk about.

And while I get my thoughts and photos together, here's a little inspiration for your viewing pleasure.

Prepare to meet your match, Irvington Bungalow

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Now playing: AC/DC - Its A Long Way To The Top (if You Want To Rock In Roll)
via FoxyTunes

Awwww Hail No!

2007-11-11T21:07:00.000-05:00

So not having posted in awhile, I realized that I've neglected to point out several important changes that have happened to the house in the last year or so.

Remember me telling you about the nasty hail storm we had back in the spring of 2006? No? Really? Well, you can read about it here.

Anyway, so we had some damage to our siding and we lost a few storm windows.

Not awful, but it certainly didn't make our house look any prettier.

When we started talking to our insurance company, we found out that they don't make our aluminum siding anymore.

Darn. Shucks. What ever will we do?

Guess that means we'll have to make other plans. Like tearing it all off for good. Oh yeah, that's right. You read that correctly. Things just got ugly. Real ugly.

The Benefits of Staying in Touch

2007-11-11T20:33:00.000-05:00

When we moved into our garage-less house back in 2003, we were told that at some point in time there indeed was a garage in the backyard but it sadly didn't survive.

Later, when a friend gave us some old photos of the house, there was one photo were were especially excited about because we could see the top portion of our original garage. (See photo below on right)

The problem was, that's all we could see of it. That helped us understand the orientation of the garage but not much else.

Then a few weeks ago, I saw one of the daughters of the previous owner at the Irvington Farmer's Market and happened to ask her if she had any old family photos with the garage in the background. A few days later, these two photos showed up on our doorstep.

Interesting eh? Too my knowledge, the garage wasn't designed by Stickley but it is a bit unique and does have some cool architectural details.

Now, somewhere down the road, we'll build a garage. Will we rebuild this one? Who knows. But at least we now have that option thanks to the generosity of the previous owners.

Indy Gets "The Business"

2007-08-07T22:58:00.000-04:00

I always tell people that the first thing we bought after we bought our house was a dog. Well, we didn't actually buy a dog. We "claimed" dog from a neighbor who wasn't taking good care of him. We named him Gus, and we kept him for a few weeks until we found a new home for him.

About 6 months later, another dog showed up unannounced. We found him a home too.

In May of this year, a third dog appeared. This time he was so cute, we nearly kept him. We refused to give him a name for fear of becoming attached to him. As you can see, he was hard to resist.

Mike, one of my Chicago fraternity buddies, just happened to be in the market for a yellow lab puppy. Needless to say, Mike got a new dog. Mike then named the dog "Indy". Before Indy left for Chicago, he got a chance to spend some quality time with our two dogs Ella and Miles.

As you can see from this video, Miles (red bassett) apparently grew a little annoyed with Ella and Indy and decided to give them each a little bit of what we like to call...."The Business"

And Welcome Back......

2007-07-18T21:53:00.000-04:00

So it's been awhile. A lot has changed. But I refuse to apologize for not posting for nearly a year. I'm not going to be THAT GUY.

Anyway, here's a little tip for you newspaper subscribers out there. Tip your carrier at Christmas...and frankly any other time of the year.

These guys get up at the crack's crack of dawn to pick up your paper, assemble it, bag it and get it to your door by 6 in the morning. It's a thankless job that doesn't pay much.

And if you don't, you'll probably go through what I went through this past winter.

This went on for months before I figured out what the problem was. I'm a cheap bastard. I tipped him $20 and the very next day, my paper ended up on my front porch. Lesson learned.

Pardon Me While I Pimp This Stickley Book

2006-11-28T10:01:00.000-05:00

For those of you who are looking for a definitive collection of Stickley homes along with an impressive catalog of all things arts and crafts, I would highly recommend this new book by Ray Stubblebine.

Finally someone has compiled all of the Stickley house designs ever published as well as a few that have never been published. The interesting thing about this book is the author has also taken the time to travel the country and photograph any known homes that were actually built from the plans. (Our house even makes an appearance in all of its mint green aluminum glory). It's a fantastic book from what I've seen so far. We received our complimentary copy in the mail last night. It tops out at an impressive 536 pages so blogs will be obsolete before I finish it. You'll just have to take me on my word that it is a great book.

In addition to Stickley's 220+ house plans and descriptions, this book also contains some of Stickley's family photos, an informative history about Gustav Stickley, as well as (my favorite part other than our house) reprints of actual arts and crafts color palettes that were offered back in the day.

Amazon has a good deal on Stickley's Craftsman Homes considering the cover price is $75. I've looked for it in stores but so far I've not seen a B&N or Borders with it in stock.

...and no, I will not receive any royalties from this post. Although I do admit that I feel a bit obligated to promote it since we received a free copy.

Also, I've finally managed to upload all of the interior photos of our house. I'll be adding links for those over the next few weeks.

Hello? Is this thing on?

2006-11-09T15:46:00.000-05:00

So I've been ignoring the blog for awhile.....I apologize.

My mother moved in with us back in August and has since not been able to financially support herself enough to move out. We're hoping something arises soon, but since then we've been unable to focus on the house. Instead I'm focusing on keeping everyone sane, including myself. We just keep telling ourselves that it is temporary.

So for those loyal 5 DYSB readers that regularly check in, I promise to have something for you soon. I've been working on getting a photo tour of the house ready for posting so you can get a better sense of what we live with on a daily basis.

I'm hoping to have some time around the holidays to catch up.

A Sure Sign of the Apocalypse

2006-09-06T23:01:00.000-04:00

On my way into work today, I saw a truck advertising this.

I love how this site says "FINALLY!". It's like this is the one invention that will save all of humanity....or end it.

I love my old logless house.

We’re Razing the Roof! Woop Woop!

2006-07-28T09:03:00.000-04:00

I don't think I've mentioned it here before, but our home and car sustained some damage in freak hail storm that occured several months back. Here's a video of the storm that was shot by someone who lives just north of downtown.

From what others have told me, what the video shows is pretty tame compared to what some other parts of the city had to endure. We happened to be out of town for the weekend visiting the inlaws.

Our insurance estimates placed the house damage at about $15K with nearly half of that going towards a roof. The rest was divided between damage to the aluminum siding on the north side of the house, 5 broken windows (luckily just the aluminum storms), 8 shredded screens, 2 chimney caps, and my crappy aluminum garden shed. Apparently damage claims across the city topped the 500 million mark.

The roofing was a blessing as we were dreading the impending expense of replacing a roof that was quickly approaching the end of its lifespan. Plus it was an ugly grey three-tab asphalt shingle roof that really didn’t add a lot of curb appeal. As a replacement we’re upgrading to the CertainTeed Landmark TL, a lifetime warranty, three-layer, dimensional shingle roof.

Apparently the three layers means triple the cost because that’s how much more these shingle cost than our paltry three tab shingles. We opted for the Landmark TL’s because we like the shake look (our house originally had a shake roof) but we’re not big fans of the fake shading that you see on some of the dimensional shingle roofs. The Owens Corning 50 year dimensional has a short and pretty tame shade but others we looked at including Elk shingles just go way overboard. The triple layer adds much more true dimension than a single layer. We figure that with a roof as prominent as ours, we can’t afford to skimp on aesthetics.

The roofing job will start in early September. We’ve opted for a brown toned color for our shingles (the shake look photo above is our actual shingles) as that should complement the dark brown and mossy green colors that we’ll eventually paint our house. Here’s our inspiration:

Of course, Painting our house will necessitate we take off the aluminum siding first.

When will that happen? Stay tuned...

One Thing Leads to Another....and Another....Part 3: Brian vs. the Installer

2006-07-28T08:58:00.000-04:00

For those of you just joining us, you may want to read part one of this series here and part two here.

Our kitchen floor, frankly, is a pain in the ass. We have about 7 layers of flooring on top of the original sub-floor. At some point in the history of our house, more than one owner decided that it was much easier to keep shaving inches off 6 kitchen doors than tear up the old floor before they put down the next layer. So what we’re now left to manage is a kitchen floor that is 1.25 inches above the level of the rest of the house.

Those of you who have replaced or installed a dishwasher before, know that size ...or rather, height…matters.

Luckily, the previous owners didn’t bother pulling up cabinets when applying the new floor (not surprising). They instead just laid the floor flush with the front of the cabinets. Thankfully, this left us with some additional room to work with if we could just wedge the dishwasher in past the high front edge.

Well Mr. Sears Dishwasher Installer felt otherwise. On his first trip out, he claimed his trusty measuring tape told him it was impossible. His "brilliant" solution was to cut out two feet worth of the excess floor in front of the dishwasher so he would have enough room. Okay I know our floor is ugly, but that would be crossing the line.

I wasn’t convinced. After he left, I unpacked the dishwasher and gave it the old college try. After lifting the sink with one hand and rolling the dishwasher with another, I was able to fit about 98% of it under the sink. The 2% I left exposed was to ensure that I could get the dishwasher back out in order to make the connections. But I was certain it would fit...barely.

At this point I could have, and should have installed it myself. However, I had already paid for installation and wasn’t about to let this guy off that easy. I called him back, convinced him that is was doable and waited patiently for 2 weeks before he made his second attempt.

In the mean time, I went about addressing one of his other concerns….the water and electrical connections under the sink. Apparently I had paid for the “replacement installation” and not the “new installation” which was about $100 dollars more. We did have a previous dishwasher so I really had no reason to believe that my job would be considered a “new install”. Wrong! Apparently our half-assed plumbing and electrical work under the sink would require some additional work.

Now I pride myself on being handy around the house, but plumbing is not one of my strong points. I’m not scared of it. I’ve just never really done much plumbing in my life. I lived in rental properties for 17 years before I bought this house, so it hasn’t been until recently that I’ve learned a lot of “do-it-yourself” skills. To be honest, I didn’t mow my first lawn until I was 27.

Anyway, while working on the plumbing I managed to jar some rusty corroded pipes in the basement which led to a sizeable leak….on a Sunday. I called a repairman who then charged me $150 to fix the problem (bad, but could have been worse for coming out on a Sunday). After three trips to the hardware store and several dollars in parts, I had managed to get the right plumbing connections installed. And did I forget to mention that we also thought it would be a good time to replace the faucet?

We bought a new faucet with a sprayer. The only problem was that the extra hole in the sink wasn’t large enough for the sprayer. That required a second trip to the hardware store for a drill bit that could cut through stainless steel.

We also bought a new garbage disposal since the one we had was old, loud, and not very effective. The problem was that the one we bought worked via a switch unlike our existing one which turned on by turning the sink stopper. This dilemma required us to get an electrical estimate. But of course, we could just get an estimate on the switch. We aslo had the electrician estimate the cost of installing several switches, outlets, can lights and moving some light fixtures in preparation for new kitchen lighting. The estimate came in at just under $1000.

Whoa…..hold on. Lets re-cap.

A leaky dishwasher has so far led to:

$3000 for a new refrigerator, stove, dishwasher and disposal
$1110 in new warranty parts for the faulty new appliances
$40 in plumbing supplies
$150 for a Sunday plumbing emergency
$79 for a new faucet
$15 for a stainless steel drill bit to install the new faucet
$10 in damaged non-stainless steel drill bits that sadly were defeated by our sink
$1000 estimate for electrical work
Not to mention countless man hours, time off of work, gas for redundant trips to the hardware store, mental sanity and poisoning the purity of my dogs by sharing a few choice words that I won’t repeat here.

We set some priorities. Install the faucet, sprayer and the dishwasher. Then we’ll be back to normal everyday operating procedures. The disposal and the lighting are going to have to wait.

That was over a month ago. We’re fine now. Really. Although, we’ve recently noticed that the dishwasher door doesn’t latch correctly….good grief.

Making up for lost time...

2006-07-27T01:29:00.000-04:00

Apparently I'm on a roll today as I've done 3 posts (4 if you count this one) in the last couple of hours. Enjoy!

The Goodyear Blimp Vists DYSB

2006-07-27T01:26:00.000-04:00

Not sure why I found this interesting enough to post, but this made a pass near our house a few weeks ago.

Contest: Name that Spider

2006-07-27T01:10:00.000-04:00

The lovely wife happened upon this fearsome 8-legged creature in our backyard the other day. He's hanging out on the inside wall of a cinder block.

The first person to identify it along with providing photographic proof of your claim will win an actual brick from our house.

Just think, you'll be the proud owner of a Stickley brick. Okay, so Stickley didn't actually make the brick but its a brick from a Stickley house. What a coversation piece! What a fantastic paperweight!

Your brick will arrive with a certificate of authenticity which pretty much equates to a photo of me in my crawl space hand selecting your brick.

Good luck and play fair. Post your answers to the comments section with a link to a photo of your guess.

UPDATE: Here's an enhanced photo that shows his markings in a little more detail.

One Thing Leads to Another....and Another.... Part Deux

2006-07-27T00:57:00.000-04:00

Okay, so should I even bother apologizing for not including a new post in over a month? I’ve seen enough house blogs to know that it is not uncommon for us historic homeowners to get so caught up in actually fixing our home that we don’t have enough time or energy to let others know what’s new.

So, I’m happy to say that I’ve actually found some time. Sadly, its on a plan from Harrisburg, PA to Chicago so I’ve got about 1:38 to write…..lets get right into it.

Here’s part two of some excitement that happened to us a couple of months ago. You can read part one here.

So we’ve got 3 new appliances and we’re $3000 more dollars in the hole. Somehow, we’re still happy about that. I’d love to say that all of our appliances work beautifully and that so far, we’ve had no problems with them. I’d love to say that, but I won’t. Or rather, I can’t. Instead I’ll say that they each have something in common with the plane I’m on. They arrived with their fair share of “baggage”.

The refrigerator so far has been the least problematic of the three. The only problem that we noted is that one of the door shelves on the freezer refused to snap into place because of a slight manufacturing flaw on the door itself. The drawers attach by latching on to these little plastic nubs that are a part if the inside plastic liner of the door. The drawer would somewhat stay in place, but it really wasn’t secure enough to hold anything. We called Sears to ask for a repair and they sent someone out to look at it. Diagnosis: Replace the door. The whole door. Luckily, it was under warranty so we didn’t have to pay the $1100 it cost for a new door. Why a freezer door on a $1300 refrigerator costs $1100, I’ll never know, nor will I care. That is, unless something else goes wrong after the warranty expires. I did feel a bit guilty that it had to come to that but, hey, at least the shelf fits. Now, if I just had some money left to buy food.

Three out of four burners worked on the stove. We bought a gas stove with some special burners on it called “power burners” and “simmer burners”. We should have asked for one with “functional burners” because the “simmer burner” refused to light 9 out of 10 times. The culprit? A little plate that sits on top of the burner and distributes the gas outward towards the ignitor. This problem only cost about $10 to fix. So at this point, I’m averaging about $555 in repairs per appliance. All under warranty of course.

The dishwasher was a fiasco. So much so that I think it deserves its own post. And this one’s getting too long anyway…..

Graveling Won't Get You Anywhere

2006-05-23T12:03:00.000-04:00

Everyone has their own preferred method of relieving stress after a long hard day of work. Some people go for a jog while others pop open a beer.

Me? ....I like to rake the driveway.

I know, I know, that doesn't sound remotely interesting to anyone. It doesn't even seem interesting to me when I talk about it. You see, we were blessed with one of the World's Longest Driveways. The first 100 feet or so are asphalt (hate it) and shared with the vacant house next door. The last 100 feet are gravel (hate that too). The gravel wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't so damn large, sharp, and nearly white (like that albino guy in The Da Vinci Code).

One day after a 14 hours of staring at a computer screen full of numbers (a typical day on the job), I decided that it was time to get rid of the gravel....the hard way. I raked the driveway for about 45 minutes and managed to clear about 3 wheelbarrows full of gravel. Strangely enough, it was relaxing to me. I felt a great sense of accomplishment.

Sadly, it rained pretty hard that night, which exposed even more gravel buried beneath the section that I had just raked.

Now I rake about once every other day. You know, I'm not exactly sure what I plan to do once I finish. I'd think about that, but it would probably stress me out too much.

Then I'd have to come up with something else to relieve that stress...like tearing off aluminum siding.

One Thing Leads to Another....and Another....and Oh Dear God, Please Make it Stop!

2006-05-22T21:55:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, Emily was down in the basement doing laundry when she noticed a random wet spot in the middle of the floor. When she looked up, she saw water dripping from the ceiling. After a little investigating, we realized that the dishwasher had been slowly leaking and seeping through the kitchen floor. I'm not sure how long the leak had been there, but it was safe to say that it had been that way for more than a few days...maybe a few years.

Well now we had a dilemma. Fix or replace? All of the appliances in the kitchen came with the house when we bought it. As close as I could tell, the appliances were all from the Reagan-era...the first term. Our dishwasher had already failed us once, and rarely produced what I would call "clean" dishes.

The leak seemed to be coming from somewhere near the motor, so my vote was to replace. Emily agreed. Of course this discussion then led to..."Well what if we just bought all new appliances?" (I admit, I was the one who uttered those famous words.)

It made sense. These days, some of the package deals that you get on appliances make it very tempting to buy everything at once. We searched several stores but eventually found what we wanted at Sears. Although it wasn't until my second trip to Sears that I finally was convinced to buy from them. On my first trip, the appliance salesman chose to spend more time helping a guy pick out the right vacuum cleaner bags than answer my questions about the $1200 fridge I was looking at. Don't they work on commission? That must be one heck of a commission on an $8 bag of vacuum cleaner bags.

Anyway, on our second trip, the salesperson actually recommended that we come back at the end of the month when they had a bigger sale. Buy 3 appliances over $399 and get 20% off all three. That was enough incentive for me. We picked out 3 while we were there and then went home to wait patiently. On the way, we stopped to stock up on paper plates and plastic cups.

Two weeks later, on the last day of the sale, we forked out the money and bought the appliances. A $100 dishwasher repair had just turned into $3000 worth of new Kenmore stainless steel appliances.

Touché Stickley Bungalow. Touché indeed.

To be continued....

Bonus...Here's a photo of Old Smokey just before he made his first 2006 trip to the landfill. Note the dishwasher.

What are the odds....

2006-05-15T13:46:00.000-04:00

If you've had a chance to check out the latest edition of American Bungalow, you'll notice that there is an article about a Gustav Stickley designed Craftsman House located in a little historic neighborhood called "Irvington". Sound familiar?

No, strangely enough, it's not our house. It's the Lewis T. Gilliland House.

Given that they have only identified less than 100 true Stickley Craftsman homes that exist in the country, I find it very strange that there are two located in neighborhoods called Irvington. The Gilliland is located in the Historic Irvington neighborhood of Portland, Oregon and ours in the Historic Irvington neighborhood of Indianapolis.

That, my friends, is a creepy coincidence.

If you happen to live in the Portland, OR area, be sure to check out Irvington's home tour this weekend as I'm sure the newly restored Gilliland house will be a sight to see.

Needless to say, I'm jealous that ours still has a long way to go.

Winning the War on Boredom.

2006-05-15T12:56:00.000-04:00

Okay, so we've been out of the loop for awhile but in our defense, we've had a flurry of recent activity that has kept us from having much time to do anything. Here's a preview of what's been keeping us busy lately and what you can expect in future posts:

1. Photos. I'm scanning in photos of the house from when we bought it so you can see how little we've actually done in 3 years. Fantastic!

2. Hail damage. Because of some recent hail damage, the roof and the aluminum siding will need to be replaced. We hate them both so we couldn't be happier. We're taking the siding off for good and then replacing the roof. Oh good God that is going to be a big job......Buckle up.

3. Kitchen repair. Our kitchen, by far, the ugliest room in the house, is getting a makeover. The new appliances have arrived and we're working on getting the electrical work estimates. I'm not looking forward to pulling up 7 layers of flooring.

And the house next to us is vacant again so if anyone wants to be our neighbors, just let me know. This house has been foreclosed on twice in three years. I don't know if its cursed or if its just the neighbors....Oh wait, that's us.

Speaking of neighbors, our new neighbors to the south just painted their house. Oddly, they chose the same green color as our siding. It's a definite improvement over what was there before, but now it makes me feel like I live in the burbs where the houses are all the same color.

So in addition to the work on the house, which takes up about 10% of my time, the other 90% has been spent on making neighborhood improvements, trying to move my mother to Indianapolis, help my brother find a job, spring lawn maintenance, and of course, my day job.

Buying an old house? You'll want a crappy truck.

2006-04-12T22:38:00.000-04:00

It’s no secret for those of you that have bought a house in various stages of disrepair that nothing comes in handier than a good old worn out pick-up truck.

Meet Old Smoky, our prized 1973 Ford Ranger. Old Smoky got his name, well because when you start him up, big plumes of smoke shoot out from his tailpipe. I have an uncle that used to have the same problem.

Unfortunately Old Smokey didn't come with the two fine looking ladies shown above. Instead he came equipped with a faux wood sided camper top, “questionable” brakes, no heat, an AM radio, several spots of rust, 140,000 original miles, and a tweed seat cover that smelled like an old boat.

We were gifted Old Smoky by the parents of my sister-in-law's then boyfriend Cory. We were so grateful that we agreed to give-up our first born in exchange for the free truck. Sadly, our first born Ella wasn't really a fair trade so they sent her back and told us to keep the truck.

Some of the first work we did on our house was actually on the yard. Our front and backyard were engulfed in Irvington’s worst nightmare, Purple Wintercreeper Euonymus . You can see it in the front yard and along the backside of the house in my previous post. The photo above shows some of our efforts in the back corner of the yard.

Anyway, as you can see above, Old Smoky came in handy as we started to rip this stuff out. It seriously takes a flamethrower to kill this stuff. If you don’t have a flamethrower, you can either resort to some pretty harsh chemicals or, just rip it out with your bare hands. Stupidly, we chose the latter. After several months and about a dozen truckloads to Greencycle we finally had a clean slate for a backyard. So naturally, we then moved on to something totally different.

When we finally do the front yard, I’m going to opt for the flamethrower.

Now with Minty Fresh Aluminum!

2006-03-26T22:45:00.000-05:00

And here is the house in the condition that we found it. See those people in the photo? They're looking for the Stickley House. They heard that there was one in the neighborhood somewhere but when they went to look for it, all they found was this giant green monstrosity.

Actually, I shouldn't complain, its not that bad. And it did come with some industrial strength clotheslines. Some people have pools and patios. We have clotheslines. And there's an industrial strength swing set in the back yard too. What a steal! I hope I'm up to date on my tetanus shots.

Does anyone have a time machine?

2006-03-26T00:12:00.000-05:00

This is what our house looked like back in the 1940's. For those of you that are familiar with any of Stickley's house designs, ours is house #8 from the 1905 series. I've included the photo from the original Craftsman magazine design plans.

Sadly, the house has taken on a few unsightly changes since then. And by unsightly I mean ugly. And by changes, I mean green aluminum siding.

However, I am happy to report that there haven't been any structural alterations. There are no crazy additions, no massive floorplan redesigns, and no waterslide from the attic down into the basement. I'm actually pretty broken up about the latter.

Luckily, all of the original wood siding is still intact beneath. The first level of the house is sided with a rough cut spruce siding that is about 6 inches wide and about an inch thick. This was then stained a deep brown. The second level was sided in cedar shakes and was stained a mossy green. The windows are painted white in this photo, although we don't think that was the original color. We have an older B&W photo of the back of the house that seems to show the windows as a dark color rather than white. We haven't investigated further, but I'm sure we will find out eventually.

Who is this guy? And what's with the goofy bow tie?

2006-03-25T22:04:00.000-05:00

Have you ever heard of Gustav Stickley? I hadn't. At least not up until 2003.

As I was searching through www.fctucker.com for houses, I found one for sale in Irvington that mentioned him as the designer. Most new houses today don't provide you with the name of the architect in the listing. Mainly because most new houses today are probably designed by guys named Steve or Bob and look like this stunning architectural marvel: The Oak. I'm guessing that more time is spent trying to come up cheesy names for the design rather than the actual design plans themselves. Oops....I'm on my soap box. Moving on......

Emily was finishing her master's in Historic Preservation and Restoration Architecture at Ball State University (MSHP Program). I called her on her cell and asked if she had ever heard of Stickley. She had. And when I explained to her why I was asking, it all went down hill from there. For those of you that haven't heard of him, here's a brief bio of Gus, courtesy of Encyclopedia Britannica:

Gustav Stickley
born March 9, 1858, Osceola, Wis., U.S.
died April 21, 1942, Syracuse, N.Y.

U.S. furniture designer and maker who largely created what came to be known as the Mission style.

Stickley learned basic furniture-making skills in a Pennsylvania chair factory owned by an uncle. After a time he took over the factory and in 1884 moved it to Binghamton, N.Y. He experimented briefly with designs in the fashionable Art Nouveau mode before introducing, about 1900, a new line of sturdy oak furniture whose virtues of simplicity, functionality, and soundness of construction were for Stickley an expression of democratic values. He established the Craftsman Workshops in Syracuse in 1901 and began publishing the monthly magazine The Craftsman to carry his ideas and designs to a wider audience. Although he owed something to the British Arts and Crafts movement, Stickley was a highly original designer who applied his ideas not only to furniture but to decorative accessories of all kinds. One of the most popular features of The Craftsman was a series of house designs intended to suit modest incomes.

The popularity of Craftsman furniture waned after a decade and a half, and in 1916 Stickley ceased publishing his magazine and gave up his bankrupt workshops to two younger brothers, who continued for a time to produce furniture from his designs. Two other brothers had for some time produced similar furniture under the name L. and J.G. Stickley, and numerous other imitators had capitalized on his work as well.
"Stickley, Gustav." Encyclopedia Britannica. 2006.
Encyclopedia Britannica Premium Service. 25 Mar. 2006
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9069687.

I have to admit, there was nothing about the online photos that made me even want to see the place in person. It looked like the kind of place that parents told their children to pass over on Halloween. But that didn't stop us. We set out on a "drive by" in the hopes that whatever we found would make us happy we still lived in an apartment.

Our first house.....what the hell were we thinking?

2006-03-23T17:04:00.000-05:00

Usually when a newly married couple ventures out to buy their first home, they choose something small, manageable, and in relatively good shape.

Not us. Not that we're very proud of that. At least not any more.

I shouldn't even have been looking for a house. We had just re-signed our lease at our apartment complex in Fishers. (Yeah, I know. Hey at least it wasn't Carmel). Emily, my wife, was finishing her masters degree at Ball State. The plan was to wait until she finished school, then spend the next year looking for the perfect house. Something that was just the right size, in good shape, and, at the request (ultimatum) of Emily, built before 1920.

Instead, I, moron that I am, decided to browse some realtor websites just so see what was "out there".

And so begins our story......