Back to Brimfield

We were on vacation last week. We decided that it would be cool to visit Maine and on the way back, go back to Brimfield. Maine was beautiful. I have never been to Maine before. We went to Belfast and spent a day in Acadia National Park looking for starfish and sea urchins with Elizabeth. Since we are home educators, much of this trip will get logged in as science. On Wednesday we drove to Brimfield, Mass.
If you have never been to Brimfield, it is an experience. This year marked the 50th anniversary. It all began in 1959 when an auctioneer opened his property up to 67 dealers to sell their stuff for a few days. Now it has grown to 21 different fields along a one mile stretch of road with some 5000 dealers. If you go to the link above you will see an aerial photograph that will give you an idea of how big this show is.
This year I had the privilege of running into someone that I used to work with in my Pittsburgh days some 15 years ago. Jack Dill is an auctioneer that I worked with for about a year and a half. He now has his own business. He bought an old Victorian house back in 1994 and proceeded to renovate it. He has been selling at Brimfield for 25 years. It is because of him that I knew about this place. Here he is in action!



Elizabeth was in her element. She collects Wade figurines and had discovered an entire box full of the things when I took this photo


We also discovered a great craft item for kids when we went to one local restaurant. They are called wikkistix. These wax covered pieces of string can be used like pipe cleaners to make things. Here is a photo of my figure (on the right, in a pike man's pose) and Elizabeth's figure which is about to stick a pie in my face!



But alas, vacation is over. Today I cut the grass, weed whacked the back yard and made a dash to Home Depot to get the wood paneling to fix my termite infested kitchen wall. Tomorrow the craziness associated with running for mayor begins. Only six weeks to election day and then I get my life back!

It's Been Awhile .....

Sorry for the delay in posting. You would think I was running for mayor or something ....

What has August brought us. Let's see. Lots of rain has caused much havoc and our bathroom ceiling finally produced a black hole where there once were mushrooms growing out of the wall and ceiling. I have made several trips to the roof with tar and flashing in hand to reduce the effect of the rain. At one point during a severe storm, I emptied three five gallon buckets of water in 7 minutes.

I have been chopping wood. The back yard jungle has been cleared to some extent and needs much more work. There is so much wood debris. We need one of those chiminea things so we can just burn most of it. I'm tempted to take one of our wood stoves outside. In the meantime we have lots of termites back there. As long as they stay away from my kitchen I don't care. What we really need is an anteater for a day or two. A couple of goats would be good too. I wouldn't have to cut the grass.

Now let's talk about the raccoon that has been frequenting our attic. Several nights in a row we have been awakened around 4 AM by something going "BUMP" in the night. On the third floor no less. After investigating the first time we heard it, I found a raccoon climbing up one of the structural joists. After a few prods with a long stick the thing wouldn't budge so I told it to leave quietly and went back to bed! Two more nights it returned and it sounded like the thing was having a relay race around the central chimney up there. So a couple more trips to the roof to plug a few holes and we are back to sleeping like babes except that the dumpsters at the Dollar Tree store are emptied at around 4:30 AM every other morning which is a violation of the noise ordinance I believe. The driver of that truck bangs those things so loud that the whole house shakes. Maybe they need a raccoon to keep them company.

TERMITES!

Bastards!




Super Bastards. They ate the pink styrene!



Oh well, we needed an excuse to re-paint the outside of the kitchen.

Laundry Room Blues

In 2006 the laundry room looked like this.



You can read about the progress back then if you search the archived posts from around July 2006.

This morning the room looked like this.



I spent a couple of days putting the tile down and getting the room painted. We decided to use up some old paint that we had left over rather than buy a new color. So we ended up using three colors since we didn't have enough of any single color to do the entire room. Two walls are the same green color that we used in our bedroom. One wall is dark brown and one wall and the ceiling is a pale yellow color. Not bad considering that I started on Friday and today is Tuesday. It's not like I'm running for Mayor or anything important like that ....

Last night when I was painting, Elizabeth wanted to help me with a paint brush but the only brushwork was cutting in the edges which requires a steady hand. So I promised her she could come out with me today and help me paint out some graffiti on this old building. All in a days work!

The Chronicles of Narnia.

Like we need more furniture! We went to another auction at our favorite auction house and bought a wardrobe because Deborah has way too many clothes! The three closets don't cut it. Of course, in the 1840s when the house was built, people only had three sets of clothes and a drawer full of collars and cuffs. So in those days the three closets were adequate and probably quite bare.
The wardrobe is a Gothic style knockdown wardrobe from the 1840s. We know this because it has those pre 1846 flat tipped screws holding the hardware together. It is in excellent condition and we got it for $350. You can't get a new one at IKEA for that price!
Here is the money shot;




Elizabeth thinks it will take her to Narnia. I hope she isn't too disappointed.

While we were there we bought another mirror. We have so many. This one was a deal at $55.

It is leaning against the wall in the hall until I find time and a location to hang it ..... I am hoping no white rabbits will emerge from it.

We are STILL living out of many boxes.

More Evil Roots

I am so far behind with blog updates. That is what happens when life catches up with you!

Anyway, would you believe that one week after snaking out the drain, it blocked up again? This time I did what any sane, intelligent person would do. I asked the wife to call Roto Rooter and schedule for them to come out and clean the thing!

The poor man was here for at least two hours. He got about 2X more roots out of the main sewer drain than I did one week earlier and called for a supervisor to stop out with the "camera." A few days after my drain was professionally cleaned we got it "scoped" to see if we were facing any major problems.

The drain passed with flying colors! In fact, considering the fact that it has been there for at least 113 years it was in remarkably good shape. Three tiles exhibited slight separation. One may be off by one inch due to settling. It had a root protruding through it into the drain. Looks like we dodged the bull(et) dozer this time around. Think of all the money we saved!

The Root of All Evil

Wouldn't you know it. Three weeks after we move in the sewer backs up. This is a common story. Fortunately it wasn't so bad. Of course it would happen the week that I was out of town. I don't know if I ever mentioned it before but when we bought this place, upon closing we discovered that the sewer had backed up and my very first job was wading through two inches of water and sewage in the basement in order to clean the place up.
Anyway, I rented a large drain snake on Tuesday and proceeded to snake the drain. At about the 50 feet mark the snake was kinked and I could not get it to go down the drain. It kept winding the coil in the rotating cage such that it would not pull out in order to be fed down the drain. This was frustrating because I had a luncheon speech and a neighborhood tour to do this same day, so I must have changed my clothes five times between various events. Eventually I gave up and went to bed late. On Wednesday morning I returned the equipment and got another to replace it. I rushed home and got the job done before 11:00 AM so that Elizabeth could go to her playgroup by 11:30! Good job I'm not afraid of dirty work.

Here were the results;

A pile of roots bigger than my hand



and the tell tale signs that the drain had been snaked!