clean slate (and bricks,and leaves, and . . .)

In a token acknowledgement of the ritual of spring cleaning we've done a bit of purging this weekend, as well as some move pile A to pile B style "cleaning." I'm forever grateful to the scrappers who showed up 30 minutes after responding to my ad for scrap on craigslist to haul away some pretty worthless trash we dug out of the backyard, and to the Veterans of America (pickupplease.org) who will come by with a box truck to pick up donations, saving me a trip to Salvation Army. The scrappers turned out to be contractors who do demos, and with 5 old homes pending, they'll give me a call later this spring to see if I can use anything from the houses they're bringing down. They also threw out a number for bringing my piles of bricks and slate to the back of the house (left over from the first two rounds of massive construction). While the number was reasonable, it was motivation enough to put on work gloves and move the first of the piles today (400 bricks). We have about 1000 more bricks to go, as well as two huge pallets of broken slates.

5 bags and three trashcans full and waiting
for trash day, 2 piles of bricks left to move

the last two pallets of broken slates

Why did we keep broken slates you ask? We honestly didn't have a good reason at the time, they were just so pretty . . . Our slates are Buckingham slates, grey with quartz so they sparkle. It turns out that they're among the best slates in the world, and will be forever out of our budget to replace, so paying to throw away our broken ones seemed foolish. As an experiment, last fall we cleared a wild corner of our front yard, surrounded it with old foundation stone, and after putting down landscape fabric, filled it with broken slate (a mix of our buckingham and some old barn slates). It makes a surprisingly nice patio (although NOT barefoot friendly), was nearly free, and the pieces shouldn't migrate like pea gravel does. We're waiting to see how it ages, and may use the rest to make some paths through the garden (which doesn't actually exist yet, but anyway . . .).

in progress . . .

this looked better last fall with the rest of our
furniture and plants, but you get the idea . . .

stuff in dirt . . .

Today was the first day we've had a chance to work outside in the sun, and may be the precursor to abandoning interior work for a while. We had some small unblogworthy projects to do (garden fencing to try and protect our mini-orchard from our crazed-red-fence-eating-monster, and pre-painting some new fascia boards). Now I know I've claimed that despite our blog name, there's been no buried treasure here, and that's a bit misleading. On the contrary, for every pound of buried trash we pull out;

broken toilets and sinks
galore and chunks of concrete
and ruined buckets

the innards of a waterbed
performing "erosion control"

countless rusty cans . . .

a bathroom's worth of baby
blue tile

what we thought was a big hill: just trash . . .

we find one shard of buried treasure . . .

original green Cambridge fireplace tile (we're
missing two original fireplaces)

original subway tiles (there's none left in the house)
and oddly, a pool chemical testing kit (there are no pools in the area)

solid aluminum mold, possibly of Taft or Cleveland
if anyone has an idea of what this is I'd be forever in your debt

Of course what we consider treasure may be a little atypical, and I've learned that if I gleefully call someone and brag, they may not exactly "get it." It does mean that every plant we put in the ground turns into a carefully organized archaeological dig, and renting a metal detector is certainly in the future (it was my iou birthday present to the trained monkey this year).

All this to say, I'm sure with the mention of buried treasure my little house blog will continue to climb the rankings and infuriate those searching for the actual Queen Anne's Revenge. I'm sure all you bloggers that post about "stripping" will understand. In the meantime, enjoy the blue skies . . .

DON'T PANIC (in large, friendly letters)

Well, the Borough office must not have received any hate mail after my last post, or they wouldn't have told me that erecting our little school house doesn't require a building permit. Now I know that means I could tear it down and rebuild it hillbilly style, but I just don't have it in me, which is too bad because it's looking like that may be the only way we can get it done. The numbers that have been thrown around have been insane, even with us doing the finish work. Just the current cost of concrete is $150 a yard (we'd need 37 for just the foundation wall). To be honest, we had figured we could conjure up 10k to get this done (savings, tax returns and eating ramen noodles till winter) - this would have to cover the foundation, and labor to move and frame/roof the school house. Instead, rough guesstimate numbers have been between 15-20k. Ouch . . . The kicker is that, foundation aside, this isn't an overly difficult project, just one that requires lots of muscle and manpower.

This is made all the more sad because seeing the building on Saturday cemented our love for it. Even the current owners are wonderful, and had hoped to be able to use the building - however it's condition is such that it has to be torn down before it can get rebuilt (it leans, sags and probably sways in the breeze). That said, there's very little rot, and it still has an intact interior, which we weren't expecting, and the floor and ceiling joists are huge hand hewn timbers. The floor is nice pine that matches what's in our house, and the shutters and windows are beautiful, and mostly intact.

We have a neighbor who owns as excellent excavation and foundation company coming by this evening to talk things over with us. But if the news continues to be bad I doubt I'll post any further updates, it just hurts too badly to think of it getting used for firewood (yup, the other person interested in it). So maybe it is the time to panic after all . . .

we regret to inform you

In an effort to bring the Borough of Edgewood into the 21st century, this blog was put together as a novel way of gauging the community's  interest in, and desire to support the restoration of the J.G. Kelly house.  However, due to low community involvement as gauged by our social media intern using available blog statistics, the decision has been made to pull the plug so to speak, and proceed with the demolition of this nuisance structure.  We have no doubt that the surrounding neighborhood will applaud this decision, and it will unequivocally fix the ongoing problems the Borough has had with the couple squatting in the building under the pretense of "restoring" it.  Discussion of how to apply the funds that had been allocated to the initial stabilization of the building will be addressed at the next counsel meeting, as will the proposal for the construction of 20 ultra-modern condos on the soon to be vacant lot.

pardon the dust . . .

Since I proved to myself that I would indeed be posting regularly, the trained monkey and I made the pretty new header you see the other night, as well as cleaned up some formatting and such. That led to the purchase of a domain (only two dollars with a coupon code, who knew?). What we didn't anticipate was all the problems we'd have linking the domain (www.sparrowhaunt.com) to blogger. All this to say, it seems I've disappeared from some of the lists of people that were following me. Pretty pretty please add me back?