The Adventures of Restoman

So far my injuries from chasing Lily are healing well. The scabs are gone, the stitches have been pulled and I am no longer wearing the brace on my left hand. However I still have some pain in my wrist and need to have it x-rayed again in a week. I will have a permanent scar on my forehead, ...Like my face really needs more character!

We have been spending much of the past few weeks working on a 2-family Italianate Style house on the next block over, but also have been doing outdoor yard work on all the properties.
A few days ago Mark sliced his finger open while trying to put up some stockade fence for me. I had to take him to the hospital to get 6 stitches. He was back to work after one day of down-time.

I hired Trayne again to cut down 2 more huge weed-trees. These 2 were Ailanthus trees that were growing behind the brick store building. Trayne hired a large dumpster to haul away all the limbs and trunks this time because Ailanthus isn't even any good as firewood. It took him most of last Sunday to cut down both of the huge trees. Both trees turned out to have rot in the trunks. One of the trees was hollow and filled with several feet of bat guano inside. Trayne did not realize how much he was risking his life by working high up in a tree with a severely weakened trunk.

The weather has been beautiful for most of this week with temperatures in the 60s and 70s. I decided that I needed to get out of Syracuse today and went driving around in the countryside. As an excuse, I went looking for, and photographed, as many 19th century storefronts as I could. I need to research what storefronts looked like in the 1850s, so that I can design a new one for the brick store. I found a number of storefronts from the 1860s to 1890s, but very few storefronts from the 19th century have survived in this area. Maybe I can find some photos online.

Here are some photos from the past week:

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Trayne, high up in one of the Ailanthus trees.

( 9 more photos )

This weekend I spent some time with an LJ friend. stormdog is planning on moving to Syracuse this summer to go to Grad school at Syracuse University. After attending an orientation at the school on Friday, he drove to my house, a little over a mile away, and we went out for dinner at a Thai restaurant on Erie Boulevard. Afterward we drove around the university area and then came back to my house where we talked and looked at some of his photos online.

Chris got along really well with Lily and spent quite a while playing with her and showing me some techniques for training her and getting her better socialized so that she will be a better pet. He was remarkably patient with her, and she loved having someone who would get down on the floor and wrestle around with her.


Chris playing with Lily on the living room floor.

Chris stayed in my newly set-up guest room. That room had been my bedroom for the past 2 years, but over the winter my crew and I finally finished off the master bedroom and I was able to move back into it a few days ago, leaving that bedroom to serve as a guest room. I will post pictures of my new bedroom soon.

On Saturday we went to breakfast at Brugger's Bagels, and then we drove around the Westcott neighborhood and my own neighborhood so that Chris could get a better feel for areas where he may get an apartment this summer. We drove through downtown Syracuse and looked at the architecture. Both of us like Art Deco architecture, and Syracuse has some wonderful examples. We wandered through a large antiques shop on the north side and then had lunch at Heid's, in Liverpool, an Art Deco hot dog stand that is a local landmark. Chris left after lunch to drive to his girlfriend's parents' house in Canada and then on back to Wisconsin.

I had a great time getting to know Chris. We have a lot of common interests and similar temperaments. I look forward to having him live here.

My house, earlier this evening.

Yeah, I know that Christmas is still a month away, but if Mother Nature is going to make it look like Christmas, I might as well join in.

I will spend this evening making pumpkin pies and stuffing. Tomorrow morning I will stuff the turkey and put it in the oven, then bring it over to George's house for a Thanksgiving dinner, mid-afternoon.

I would like to wish all of my LJ friends a Very Happy Thanksgiving!!!

*Hugs*

This was all that was left of my hammock after Lily was done playing with it!

ARGHHH!!!!!!!! :-(

I decided that I wanted to build a distinctive porch in a mid-19th century style on the back of the house. The earliest part of the house was built around 1850, and at that time, Gothic Revival was one of the most popular styles for houses in this area. It also happens to be my favorite style. I knew of a handsome Greek Revival house, built around 1850, outside of Oneida, NY with an attractive Gothic Revival style porch. I went there and took lots of photos and studied the details of how it was built. Then we started making up parts in the shop: octagonal columns, lattice-work that fit together with rabbeted joints and quatrefoils (made using bandsaw, jig saw, hole saw and router). We built the framing and cornice, then put on a roof, and finally added all the decorative woodwork. I am very pleased with the results!

The Gothic porch in Oneida:
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( Building the new porch: 14 photos )

Once again, I am exhausted tonight. No new pictures to post, but I will leave you with some wisdom that I snagged off Facebook a few months ago.

Here are some photos of Victorian color schemes from my drive yesterday:

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( Nine more photos )

Sorry that I haven't posted in such a long time. Life has been very busy. But, I do enjoy LJ, and value my friends here, so I am going to attempt to post more regularly, and will try to post every day, with photos, for the next week.

For a couple of years I have been saying that I need a new pickup truck. The issue came to a head 2 weeks ago when my Mercury Mariner started acting funny. I took it to the mechanic, who said that it needs major transmission work. This meant the car would be out of commission for at least a week, probably longer, so I decided to shop around for a truck.

I really needed a truck anyway. For years I have been coming back from the lumber yard with boards stacked on the dashboard, running through the car and out the back window, the only way to get long lumber in the car. The men at the lumber yard would laugh at me as I pulled out with 16' boards balanced in the back window of the Mariner. There was absolutely NO WAY to put full 4' x 8' sheets of plywood or drywall in the car, which meant that I had to rely on Dave whenever I needed plywood or drywall. That worked OK, more or less, But Dave's old Ford pickup was being held together with duct tape, chain and rope. His tailgate actually fell off on the highway a week ago, and the work that his exhaust system needs will cost more than the truck is worth.

I took Mark with me and we stopped at a small used-car lot which had a half-dozen newer model pick-ups on display. The one that most suited my needs was a 2005 Dodge Ram. I test drove it, liked the way it handled and its powerful engine and bought it after doing my best to bargain down the price. It is 3 years older than the Mariner, with 20,000 more miles on it, but it suits my needs far better than the Mariner.


My new wheels: club cab (4 door), 4 wheel drive, powerful "hemi" engine, vinyl bed liner etc. A macho truck, if ever there was one!

I still have the Mariner which has been sitting forlornly in my driveway, waiting for transmission work. Once I have the work done, I will sell it. It was a good vehicle to have for the 11 trips I made back and forth to Virginia a few years ago, but it was what my father bought for his own needs, and was never really suited to mine.

After spending the winter being cooped up inside I was eager to get out of the city and explore the countryside. Last weekend and 2 weekends ago I spent some time wandering through the Finger Lakes area. I had seen on the local news that there was a large fire in the little town of Ovid, between Seneca and Cayuga Lakes. Ovid is a pleasant and picturesque 19th century town that I have always liked. The fire wiped out most of a block of 19th century commercial buildings in Ovid's center, so I headed toward Ovid to see the damage.

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The fire gutted an Italian restaurant, a Chinese restaurant, a thrift shop and a couple of other small businesses and offices, plus the apartments that were over them. It was started by an 11 year old boy playing with a cigarette lighter near empty cardboard boxes behind the stores. Fortunately no one was injured.
( Eight more photos, including Puppy Porn! )

We are still working on that 2-family house that I bought last year, but getting down to the finishing touches. The floors in the back apartment are all done. We installed oak flooring in the living room, dining room and eating-area of the kitchen. In the working area of the kitchen we installed large rectangular tiles that look like slate. We have started building the oak cabinets in the kitchen as well.

This morning, Mark started working early, and I got to the house around 10 AM. Just as I got there, Mark showed me the bottom panel of the sink-base cabinet that he had just cut. As he finished screwing the first screw into the panel, he turned toward me and said: "What is that sound?" Then a sinking feeling came over me as I realized that he had put that screw right into a main copper supply pipe. As he backed the screw out, water was already starting to run across the new kitchen floor. The water quickly started spreading onto the new oak flooring in the kitchen eating-area and the dining room. We quickly got John, Dave and Tony to help pick up power tools, paint cans and lumber off all 3 floors while I ran to the basement to shut off the water. The old valves that shut off the water supply individually to each apartment just spun in my hands, accomplishing nothing. I tried shutting off the even-older main valve that controls all the water in the house, but it wouldn't shut off tightly. Water was still leaking out of the damaged pipe in the kitchen as my crew frantically worked with brooms and mops to keep the flooding contained. I decided that I had to cut the main copper pipe in the basement so that the water would leak out there instead of across the kitchen floor. It worked! ...and I only got a little soaked in the process! I placed a large bucket under the cut pipe in the basement and headed off to Home Depot. I bought copper pipe, fittings and new shut-off valves. With Tony as my helper, I spent the rest of the day replacing the damaged section of pipe in the kitchen, and then replaced both of the non-working shut-off valves in the basement.

Fortunately, the water didn't sit on the new oak floors long enough to cause damage, and the tile floor was unharmed. A few of the hand tools got wet, but none of the power tools. I hate doing plumbing, but cutting and soldering copper pipes is more enjoyable than working with waste pipes or installing fixtures. I think that the biggest casualty of the day was the damage done to Mark's pride. He will have a hard time living down the day he put a screw into the water pipe!