I spent today taking moldings off of doors and taking up the final pieces of subflooring. This section of the room was all built in bead board cabinets that I don't think I'll use again. It makes a good TV corner. I will probably put a door underneath the stairs though...that is assuming that nothing else in the room is rotted. Notice that the stairs are being held up by two chunks of wood at the lower left. The beam coming down isn't actually supporting anything right now and you can see that the lower portion of said beam was already replaced once. I removed the stair landing yesterday and the underside had super moist white mold growing inches thick on it. I tried an environmentally friendly way to kill the mold and then went straight to bleach when my method didn't work!
I had a drainage guy come over today an inquired of him what it would cost for him to build a French drain around the house...I told him that I planned to do it, but wanted to know if it was worth it for me if he did it instead. He told me that I should excavate all around the stone walls on the exterior down to the base (6 feet instead of 3) and then put a series of drains around it.
and it all sounded very expensive. When I said I couldn't afford that, he told me what I could do on my own to ensure that I wouldn't have water problems for years to come.....jackhammer out the floor and dig down about a foot and put in a dry well with three quarter stone and with a drain at the low spot, draining away from the house.
My contractor friend with whom I had dinner tonight said I should probably listen to the guy as it really would take care of my water problems. He offered to jack hammer out a section to see what we found...we could go either way after that.
Tomorrow is cement wall day though. I am digging out the loose cement and then adding a concrete bonder called waterblock around areas that appear to still be wet. There is an area of old pipe thats been covered up but seems to be the root of all problems.
We'll see.
Wish me luck
Kudos to the California Supreme Court for bringing the decision that gay marriages should be allowed under the law because gays cannot be denied the fundamental right to form a family. It is a HUGE step for gay rights in this country, though it is still under threat of a Constitutional amdendment banning gay marriage. If it sticks, I think we will see a tide of states allowing gay marriage in the future...after all, it really ISN'T destroying the moral fabric of our society.
Why don't these wing nuts who want to ban gay marriage go after child pornographers instead?...now there is an issue the IS destroying the moral fabric of our society.
As California goes, so goes the Nation!
Woo hooo
Nothing in the house to eat for dinner, so I drove to the store at 7:30pm to find something to eat. I also had to shop for the potluck Italian night at
L'il Kim's tomorrow night. I am making pesto and roasted eggplant lasagna rolls. I was at the self check out with my 25 things in the cart, including red wine and I flagged down the poor young gay boy overseeing the self check out line. "could you card me, please?" I said. " Oh sure, you don't need to show me your license" quipped the boy in skinny jeans and acne...Shoot, I thought, I am probably his mother's age...yikes!
I used my debt card and asked for $40.00 back...which I left in the machine. I got in my car and was passing the Duncan Donuts when I remembered that I'd left my $$ in the machine. I was thinking about having a drink down at the Three Tides and then realized that I didn't remember putting the cash in my wallet.
Upon reentering the store, I inquired of Mr. Swish as to whether someone had turned in my $40.00...nope he said. I told him it was my fault and "oh well". Right outside the door stood a young woman who asked me whether I was looking for $40.00..she had taken it and was waiting around to return it to me...I love Maine, people are so honest.
found the source of the dampness in the basement room of the cottage. There is a small river that runs right under the subflooring, pretty much diagonally across the room....I've got only a few days to fix it before I have to cover the walls up again and get the rest of the place in shape for renters.
A River Runs Through it!
Pretty windy on the water today...seas were 2-4 feet and the swells were wild....but, thats right, summer has officially started and Pilgrim is in the water and moored in the cove!
You shoulda seen the two morons trying to get off the boat in their new inflatable dingy....I think we were the dingy ones! The thing said it was suitable for two people, but it really only held one of us. I made greg tie every piece of line we had on the boat and pay it out while I rowed to shore. I made it almost the whole way, but had to jump out when the water was to my knee caps...it was cooooollllllddddd, about 46 degrees. Greg pulled the boat back in and rowed himself ashore.
40 MPH winds here at JFK have closed two runways and delayed my flight to Maine. Sigh...this is not a good week for me. I have had my second client in as many weeks tell me that they are focusing elsewhere for a bit and would I mind if they slowed down (read: put off) purchasing artwork for a while....one has to pay for landscaping and the other is getting married. She assures me that when she and her husband buy a house that they will want to begin collecting in ernest, which I totally believe, but shit, I just sunk all of my money into a vacation home for my friends to use! Yikes!!!
Anyone want to buy a
pump organ ...cheap?
I have to wonder about people in security lines at the airport. How long has this been going on? Since 2001? There are voice recordings about what to remove and what has to go in a bin and whaat cannot be allowed through the security checkpoint. So why do people continue to complain that they "just bought this water!" or "do I have to put my cellphone away?" Come on folks. You are waiting in line for the security checkpoint and you wait until the minute before you are going through the scanner yourself to check your pockets? Or the best is "My boarding pass is in my bag and its just gone through." Well, honey, you should be made to go to the back of the line so that you'll REMEMBER to empty your pockets and keep your boarding pass the next time you are on line in front of me!! And folks? When you are having your boarding pass and driver's license checked....take them out of the folder and out of your wallet first...I mean come on...a bit of common sense would do us all a world of good.
I have a confession to make: I'm a
Brothers and Sisters junkie. I am often away or in the car or on a plane on Sunday nights, so I watch the show on Monday mornings before I start my day. Today was no different. I guess this was the season finale..a gay wedding, a one time brother and sister who, through DNA testing, find that they are not related, begin a romance, and a family business is merged with a business started by the father's mistress and she becomes CEO...what could be better than that? Oh and
Sally Field is the mother of the show...so cool..she is a great actress in this show.
The show last night was amazing.. the wedding was great, but I loved the
the banter between Scottie and Kevin beforehand. The show portrays gay couples as they should be portrayed, in the same light as straight couples. We have a lot of the same problems, issues, connections and loving times as anyone else. If conservatives would take time out to sit and watch a show like this and think about it, they might realize that gay relationships are not so different from straight relationships. There is WAY more to gay relationships than sex and the sooner people realized that the better off all of us would be!
Country Road, take me home...its so friggin' humid here, remembrances of Chicago in August when it was so humid, it felt like walking around in someone's mouth. I don't understand Florida in the summertime! I took the dog out for a walk at 6:30 this morning and I came back soaked in perspiration. I don't want to seem like an ungrateful son, but Happy Mother's Day, mom! I hope you are having fun in NY with your daughters and the grandkids while I suffer down here in the heat!
Dad and I did go out to see Ironman last night, which was a bit hokey. I loved the house in Malibu though. It was wierd going to a mall though...I haven't stepped foot in a mall in about a decade or more, so when we arrived at 4pm for the movie, the place was mobbed...lots of kids on cell phones, the food court was jammed, and it was all rather unpleasant. All that noise and all those colors and all that....well, that! A nice slice of American life that I am luckily missing living in the rural outpost of Northpoke Maine. Sure, we have malls, but they are quiet, 50s indoor shopping centers. I still don't partake of them since I have no need for cork wedgies or tube tops.
Sigh...
Some hot shots of the cottage with its rotted walls removed. Here is the original foundation of the place. Some of the boulders are bigger than I am. I have already ripped out the remaining green homosote walls that you see here and will clean up the place early next week before beginning my own big dig...that is, digging the French drain underneath the house that will hopefully send water pouring into my neighbor's back yard...what the hell, they are from Southern California and will probably never visit...or at least come and be suprised at the natural pond that has formed behind their plastic palace!
You can see where I am almost down to the subflooring in the basement room. The pipes you see below will be moved so the damn windows will open all the way now...all I can say is how mornonic was it to put pipes in the way of windows so that they impede said windows from opening???
One good thing out of all this is that I am feeling really butch!
Dad and I are going out to see Iron Man this afternoon and then going to a steak house for dinner...when the mom's away, the boys will go play...still feeling the whole butch thing, even down in Florida!
