Casa Decrepit
Chipping and Shredding
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- Published on Saturday, 02 February 2013
Authors: ayse
Time for the mostly annual chipper/shredder rental this weekend. Many years ago I actually bought a very disappointing chipper/shredder for relatively cheap from Harbor Freight, and it just wasn't able to do much of anything. Most of that was that it was electric, the other part was its totally inferior construction. It's easier and...
Garden Report: January 28
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- Published on Tuesday, 29 January 2013
Authors: ayse
I know, I know, two garden reports and in the middle of winter, too. I spent the last week at my company's headquarters in Boston, and I got to enjoy a bitingly cold -8F windchill (an episode in which Ayse foolishly takes a walk to get out of the office for a bit). So grant me a brief indulgence on the garden thing.
Before I left I...
Garden Report: January 23
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- Published on Wednesday, 23 January 2013
Authors: ayse
Have I told you all how much I love our new gardeners? They are exactly what I envisioned when I went looking for gardeners a year ago, only better. More on that in a second.
I've been concerned about the garden for the last several weeks. It's been cold, very cold. So cold that both our bee hives froze to death, which is depressing. I...
Truckloads
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- Published on Monday, 21 January 2013
Authors: ayse
We've spent the last four weekends working with our friend on clearing out his house and, this last weekend, yard.
A couple weeks ago we piled up some bags of trash and recycling in the truck:
That was kind of a quickie load. Luckily the dump will take not just garbage but recycling, so it's one stop.
Then this week we got a group of...
2012 in Review: The Big Bathroom Project
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- Published on Sunday, 06 January 2013
Authors: ayse
We both got sick this week, which has been lots of fun. A nice way to round out what has not been our greatest Christmas season ever.
This year we got about halfway through the Big Bathroom Project. That's not totally unexpected: we both have full-time jobs and I'm a perfectionist who cannot do things the fast and easy way. But we did...
Ten Year Plan: Year Nine
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- Published on Friday, 04 January 2013
Authors: ayse
Time for the annual review of the Ten Year Plan. For those of you new to the concept, this is just a plan for what we can get done without triggering all kinds of project dependencies. We're on year nine, and honestly, we are going to probably get past year fourteen on this puppy. Great Recession and all that.
Anyway, this is what we...
New Year, New Thing
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- Published on Wednesday, 02 January 2013
Authors: ayse
Hey, yes, I know we haven't posted much lately, and that is because we haven't been working on the house. Not on our house, at least. For the last week we've been helping a friend of ours clean up his house after the death of his long-term partner who was an artist with a bit of hoarding tendency. The big truck has come in very handy,...
The Two Parlours
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- Published on Sunday, 16 December 2012
Authors: ayse
So, a little more work on straightening out the parlours today. Mostly this was clearing out that largish pile of boxes in the middle of the front parlour, but there was also some moving around of stuff, such as the smaller beige chairs from the back room to the front.
We took a break midday and went to see a movie for the first time...
Pas de Deux
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- Published on Saturday, 15 December 2012
Authors: ayse
We have a particular reason to not be getting anything done on the bathrooms this weekend, so we decided to take on a project that has been nagging at both of us for a while: making the front parlour into a usable room again.
Noel had been repairing a piano action in there, we had a coat rack holding all the coats that will end up in...
Ceci N'est Pas Une Pipe
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- Published on Saturday, 01 December 2012
Authors: ayse
Today Noel removed some of the old infrastructure, to get it out of the way for the new plumbing and electrical service.
There were these old pipes from around the sink, installed like a monkey did the work.
And of course, the ancient, leaky lead drain pipe from the former upstairs toilet.
The extra class with that lead pipe is the patch...
