Down She Goes

June 27, 2008 - Alright, let's get right down to business. Here's what our house looked like when we arrived this morning - sort of a half house.

Joe says, "I'm sick of working on that roof. We're taking the whole house down today." Right. Okay, let's do it. Joe attaches this rope thing to the house, to the tree, and to his car.

After a few mighty attempts by Joe, and a little cheering on my part, a few things fell down, but the house was still holding on.

Joe made some adjustments, then took a few more tries. Finally, with our neighbors (who have been waiting 20 years for this moment) watching, the house came down.

Hmm, now there's a big mess to clean up. And with all the fun stuff over, it's just a bunch of dirty work now. But we got a bit of it done last night and we'll be heading back over there in the morning to keep going.

In other news, the rooster and one of his girlfriends have a new home. After a whole lot of turmoil about what to do (including a brief but serious conversation about bringing the poor rooster's life to an end), we decided to bring them over to the new property, set up a modest home for him, and see if he makes it on his own. Well, with one lady to take care of him of course.

Here's what Joe set up for them.

Recognize anything? It's the old skybox! We believe in recycling. He brought them over in it and actually hoisted it up there while they were in it so that they would establish it as their 'safe place.' After he opened it up they stayed up there for a while. Then the rooster clumsily fell down to the ground and the hen flew gracefully down. Didn't have my camera that day, which was too bad. So since we can't really be there first then in the morning and last thing at night every day, we're just leaving the box open. Here it is Saturday and they're still alive, so either there's not much scary stuff in those woods or else the chickens are pretty tough. They may not even be staying in the skybox at night, but it's there just in case.

When we go over there, we don't usually see them right away. After a while they come creeping up on us and eat some food that we brought with us. Then they wander off again. It always makes us happy to see them. We really love our chickens and we're glad we didn't have to knock off our rooster. :)

And now for some food news. I harvested some beets the other day! It was one of the more satisfying moments of gardening, because they truly are a surprise. I mean, you can sort of see the beet root coming out of the ground, but it's so cool to pull them out and see what's been growing underground all this time. Plus they are delicious. I also cooked the beet greens with onions and portabello mushrooms, which we ate in tortillas.

And then here is a dinner I made with some more of our collard greens. I cooked them with onions and white beens and then served them with pan-fried polenta over blue cheese sauce. Yummm.

Best thing about working hard is that you get to eat lots of calories. :)

Downsizing

June 22, 2008 - Woke up this morning with the expectation that it was going to rain for most of the day, so we got up, picked up some coffee and bagels, and went straight to the house to try to get in a few hours of work before the storm. Upon arrival, Joe decided that a piece of the house had to go. So here's the pictoral demonstration of what happened. The boys should like this.

Here's Joe after he has peeled off the roof, cut the walls from top plate to sill, and severed the ridge beam, so that the left most 6 feet of the house are just hanging there, ready to go.

Crouch down, and kick...

Kick harder....

KABOOM! Cool.

Here's how it looked from the inside -

Right after this was done it started to drizzle, so we went to work getting all the big pieces of drywall and insulation that came down into the dumpster, cuz that stuff is no fun when it's soaking wet. Then it started to pour. We couldn't leave yet because we had a fire going that wouldn't quit, so when the storm was directly overhead we ran to the truck and hung out there for the worst of it. Then we figured, since we can't leave, we might as well be working, so we got to work dismantling the piece we knocked down. I impressed Joe with my sledgehammer skills, knocking apart the lumber as he stacked it up out of the way.

By lunch time, here's what it looked like -

This afternoon was spent taking care of miscellaneous things, including talking to Kelly for a good long while about the plans. I just cannot stress enough how much work this part of it takes. There's just so much to think about and work out and for someone who's never even built a house, planning one is kind of tricky. But we discussed some modifications to the floor design, the roof trusses, as well as a complete cross section of the house with all the dimensions needed.

And now for some garden pics, finally -

The romaine lettuce probably makes me the most proud. I just think it looks so healthy and beautiful. We actually cut a small head for lunch today and it's soooo good.

Here's one of our first zucchini!

And the tomato garden which is growing more and more every day.

Here is the broccoli, cabbage, collard greens, celery, and celeriac. There's also a small row of basil in there, and once we eat all the collard greens, I'll fill it in with some more basil plants that I still have in cell packs.

The winter squash is getting real big -

And I think the corn is on track. I think they say, 'knee high by the fourth of July?' So we'll see.

And then a pepper plant. They're definitely the slowest to grow, I think because they like super hot weather. But they seem relatively happy.

And that's it for now. Night!

Tearing Down the Roof

June 21, 2008 - Let's see, where to start. It's been a busy two days. Yesterday we got an early start on the demolition project. Joe spent most of his time on the roof -

but don't worry, I took a turn too cuz I'm tough like that -

Honestly, I don't quite have the balance Joe does and so I'm not all too comfortable up there. So I mostly spent my time cleaning up around Joe - getting shingles into the dumpster after he shoved them to the ground, moving more insulation and drywall, and managing the fire which we had burning the whole time we were there -

We incurred our first injury yesterday too. Okay, not so much 'we' as 'me.' It was very stupid and I'm ashamed of myself, but somebody had to get hurt at least once so if this takes care of it then I'm cool with that. Basically, I had just headed down to the lower side of the house to pick up shingles and after my very first handful I stood up and bonked my head HARD on this pretty pipe that's behind our house. Been there since we bought the house. Knew it was there. Hit my head anyway. Joe heard the ping from the roof and came running to my rescue. No blood, just a big old bump and some soreness, and I got back to work pretty quickly. But Joe, being the king of safety, tied this orange tape around it to try to keep me from repeating my stupidity.

Once we got tired we quit the hard labor for the day and went over to Williams Lumber to see my brother Bill and get some info...on lumber. We're going to use engineered lumber for the floor, so we needed to ask him about what we can get so we can add the proper dimensions to the plans. As you can see, he was happy to serve us. :)

As it was my first day of super hard work, I passed out that night around... 8 pm. Hopefully my body is going to get used to this energy level and I won't be so exhausted EVERY day.

This morning we woke to our maturing rooster crowing his heart out. He's definitely getting to be a problem. Every time I hear him I cringe, not because the noise bothers me but because I can only imagine what the neighbors are thinking. So we decided to try something new tonight - a dark box maybe? We'll see. But the sooner we move him to the new property the better.

We had to do some shopping this morning to buy some tarps, rope, and a screened tent, which we then took over to the property. We have less than a week before we need to move out of mom's house so we decided to start working on our camp site today. We raked a big clearing for everything and found the ground is actually pretty soft and squishy. We went ahead and put up the screen tent so that while we're working we have a place to go chill out in the shade and away from the bugs. It's amazing to sit in it and look up at the trees and the sun peaking through. We love our property. And it looks pretty from down by the road too -

We stopped for a pizza break, besides the local deli it's pretty much the only food nearby, and then did some more on the house. Here's where we were at when we left tonight -

In two days we'll have had the dumpster for a week, which is when I thought we'd be done with taking down the whole house. Obviously an unrealistic goal. But we do think it's coming along pretty well and we are actually enjyoing the hard work as well as the time alone together, working toward our goals.

I still owe you a garden update, which I do not have time for tonight. But for just a taste - here's a broccoli head starting- shouldn't be long before we can start eating it. :)

Dumpster Delivery

June 19, 2008 - Tuesday morning Joe and I rolled out of bed around 6:30, I to get ready for my morning with Natalie, and Joe to get ready to meet the dumpster delivery guy. They said they would be dropping it off sometime in the morning and that they would call first. They open at 8 am, so I figured that would be the earliest they would call. I was sitting at the tables in my pjs drinking tea when they called - not at 8 am, but at 6:50 am - to say they were on their way. Just to keep us on our toes I guess. Needless to say it was a bit of a mad dash to get Joe out the door and I was a bit frantic that he would be late and they would turn around and leave us dumpsterless. But everything worked out fine and the truck even made it up our slightly difficult driveway with no problems. So now we have a dumpster. A beautiful sight, isn't it?Joe got straight to work - we have afterall been waiting for this moment for months. First order of business was to turn that window the dumpster is in front of into a door to make for easy tossing. Next he went to town tearing out drywall and insulation, dodging mouse poop at every turn. Seriously. I have never seen so much mouse poop. What it must have been like to live in this house and listen to the mice living in the walls - glad I never had to experience that.

After working for a couple of hours he came home for a lunch break. When I was finished watching Natalie, the two of us headed back to the house for round 2. Here's me kicking butt, if you can see me under there -

And Joe -

We worked inside for a while getting as much insulation and drywall out as we could, but between the mouse poop and the fiberglass floating around, the air quality in that house is basically dreadful. We wore goggles and air masks but we still decided after a while that we needed to get out of that house. So we worked on the outside. Only the one exterior wall has siding on it that we're getting rid of. The other three sides are wood siding and we're keeping all the wood. We're going to use what's good on small projects and we'll burn what's not good since it's silly to pay to have that stuff taken away. But here's what we did to the one side.

After a few more hours, I was itching all over and my eyes and throat hurt (I'm very delicate and sensitive) so we called it a day. Wednesday I was working, but Joe was back at it on his own and decided to start tackling the roof. Basically, as much light, air, and water we can get on the inside of that house, the less toxic it will be for us to clean it out. So here's what he accomplished -

And that's where we're at with the house so far. In other news, we've decided to call a couple foundation contractors this week to talk about our options. Might be easier and faster to have somebody else bust out a foundation so we can get to the framing soon. Or we'll just get some info which will help us make some decisions. But we've decided to abandon our goal of having the plans done by Tuesday, since we really need to think some more about certain things before we move forward. Slow and steady, right?

And now we head into another weekend, task list in hand. No matter what you do, the weeks just keep on flying by. They say time flies when you're having fun. Time flies. Period. Fun or no fun, it flies.

A Good Day

June 14, 2008 - Today was a good day. Now, I know that from reading our happy blog, many of you think that all our days are good days. Not the case. But today was definitely a good day. As part of our attempt to establish some sort of specialization in the many tasks involved in building a house, Joe and I decided that I would be dealing with the building inspector. I am certainly the organized planner on our two-man team, and I also happen to believe that I think like an inspector - not just a building inspector, but any inspector for that matter - because I have that neurotic obsessive compulsive thing going for me. In a good way.

So anyway, after a few phone conversations with the guy, this morning I drove myself, along with our mounds of paperwork, over to the town hall. What I returned with was this -

Victory! I would never have expected something as simple as a demolition permit to make me so happy, but we feel like we can finally get STARTED. When I got home, Joe and I were so excited, we actually did our victory dance in front of other people. Now I had already known that this was going to be the outcome of the meeting so in the past few days lined up the actual inspection as well as the dumpster delivery - er 'container' delivery. See, I'm learning. So on Monday the inspector will come take some measurements of the existing house just to make sure we're building in the same spot and not any closer to the property lines, and on Tuesday the 'container' will be delivered and we will start tearing the house down. Totally psyched.

In the meantime, Joe has done a bunch of tree work over at the property. He took me over last night to see it and it is really starting to look great. Here's one of the clearings he made -

And then this is an area he cleared for our tent site, which is beautiful -

My meeting with the inspector also gave me a chance to show him our plans so far and find out what kind of detail he would be looking for. We really just have a few more things to figure out - the roof trusses, the basement design, and some floor framing. We're hoping to have the drawings finished by the 23rd, which is when we should be done with the demolition, which means we'll need to get our building permit before we take any more steps.

We've also started gathering things for our camping adventure. I did some shopping today with the help of my sister and my mother (the camping expert), and came home with a tent, two 4-foot tables, and two plastic tubs for keeping our clothes in. Oh and 12 rolls of paper towels. You can never have too many paper towels. Really need to figure out where to store this stuff as we accumulate, since it is currently stored under my mother's dining room table... there is just no limit to that woman's generosity.

And for some gardening news, we started harvesting the collard greens today! They've been pretty big for a while now, but I just hadn't gotten around to cooking them, so today was the day. It happened to be raining when I needed to go cut the greens, so here's me getting ready to go out in my raincoat and galoshes-

And me back inside with my loot -

And then the finished product - I cooked the greens in sesame oil with ginger and garlic, and fried some tempeh in sesame oil and soy sauce. Totally 'winged' it tonight, and it turned out fantastic.

Oh, and the other night I cooked the turnips we picked up at the market - I just mashed the turnips with some potatoes and added some goat cheese to it, cooked some onions for a good 15 minutes, and cooked the radish greens separately in a little oil. Layered it all on top of one another and voila!

I have also now harvested the rest of our radishes and we really need to start eating more lettuces - it's amazing how big the romaine has gotten in the past week or so. But tomorrow is a gardening day, so more on that tomorrow evening. Night!

Hot Summer Night

June 8, 2008 - Holy cow, it's HOT. It is way too early for it to be this hot. But I have to say, as disgusting as it has been outside for the past two days, there's something really satisfying about being outside working in it - getting filthy and sweaty and having to just be okay with it, drinking water like it's your job, and then at the end of the day drinking a cold beer, taking a cold shower, and sitting down in front of a fan. You may not understand this. Just one of the bizarre things that I discovered I can take pleasure in. Anyway. Onward.

Yesterday a good friend of Joe's came to help him do some work over at the house, so I kind of had the day to myself. Can't really recall what I did, although I know that I was busy and that the heat caused me to take not one, but two short cat naps over the course of the day. I did, however, get to go strawberry picking! There's something about strawberry season that just screams "summer is here!!" It was the first day of pick your own at Mead Orchards and I was there about five minutes before they opened. It was great. Five minutes into picking, the sky opened up and it POURED. I got into my car just in time and here's what I came home with

I also got to talk to Kelly about the plans for a while today. She found the New York State Building Code online, so I have to find some time to devote to reading that. She has now given us our floor framing requirements and determined that our concrete floor can be held up by wood. We are currently discussing grading and framing, the electrical plan, and plumbing. If only I could keep up on my reading about these things so that I would know what the heck I was doing...

I did manage to do some reading about compost, which by the way, is just such a cool thing. I mean, why doesn't everyone compost? Anyway, I first learned the wonders of compost when I was a little girl and my dad would take us out in the winter and have us stick our hand deep into the compost pile to feel the heat. Amazing stuff. So here's the system we have at our house. The pile on the left is full of dirt, slightly decomposed kitchen scraps, leaves, etc. I started my morning today by completing that pile and topping it with leaves so that it will now sit and do it's thing. On the right is where we put our fresh kitchen waste in order to keep it closed up from animals and whatnot. We'll toss in some dirt and leaves every now and again, and eventually it will go into another big bin.

At 10 am sharp, Joe and I were on the road to the farmers market. We picked up some turnips, spinach (I'm sooo enjoying spinach season - it makes the best salads), cilantro, basil, and as a splurge, some gazpacho. Do you think Joe's getting tired of me taking his picture all the time?

After stopping at a few yardsales and stopping home for lunch, we had to run several errands, including a stop at Home Depot for more electrical supplies. There were more storms in the afternoon, but we headed over to the house anyway to try to finish up a project. The mosquitos were TERRIBLE. I ended up waiting in the truck while Joe worked, but I kept a close eye on him, as we were both concerned that a band of mosquitos were going to carry him away. Needless to say, conditions were such that it was a less than productive day at the house, and we consoled ourselves with milkshakes. Miscellaneous chores back at mom's led us to the end of our day. We sat outside and ate cheeses, salami, crackers, olives, and apples, and drank delicious cold beer. A perfect hot summer night.We took the usual tour of the gardens, which shows several vegetables flowering -

Zucchini -

Tomatoes -

Peas -

And we watched our chickens for a while. Our rooster is starting to get fresh with the ladies. In just a few months he's going to start fertilizing eggs, but he's already a big flirt. As evening set in it was very cute to watch the chickens wait to be let back into their bed. Joe had built a new box for them and was hoping they'd learn to go into it, so he locked them out of their current home. But here's them, just waiting patiently for Dad to come put them to bed where they belong. They're really so adorable.

And now another weekend gone. Three weeks til we have to be out of mom's house, and about four weeks before we are hoping to have our house torn down and the hole for our new house dug up. Should be a busy few weeks, eh?

Night!