I nailed it!

My foot that it…but I am getting ahead of myself.  You may recall that I have been putting insulation in my crawlspace and my attic. I finished that and have moved on to the next project.  Since none of our house is insulated, I decided to just pick a room to gut, insulate and remodel.  We have a goofy little craft room off of the family room and it seemed like a good place to hone my skills.  It is fairly small and seemed like an easy room to start.  So we hauled several hundered books out of the room and cleared the floor.

My therapist has suggested I use imagery and meditation to ease my woes and destress.  Smashing the plaster celing out with a hammer seemed much more my style though.  So I committed to destroying this room.  Who says men can’t commit?


I smashed every bit of plaster out of the ceilings.  I started pulling the wanes coating off the walls and that’s when things got interesting.  The room is 2/3 under ground and water has, apparently, been seeping into that room since it was constructed in 1939.  There was 2 inches of cement (I guess) over the cement block walls (and under the wanes coating) that crumbled from the water.  Actually, the half of the cement that was wet crumbled…the remainder that was dry is as solid as a rock.  Of course, I will need to chisel the remaining cement off of the walls to make it smooth enough to insulate and re-cover.  Besides having to remove the cement, I also need to fix the seepage so we will have to dig around the back corner of the house to install French drains.  It seems like this was supposed to be a simple room on which to start…hmmmm.

We looked at the windows and found that there are no lintels either so I’ll need to jack the floor above and install new lintels in the lower windows to prevent sagging.  Since the two windows in that room are lintel-less, I am sure that the door and 3 windows in the family room suffer the same problem.  That room is next.  Anyhow, it seems like this was supposed to be a simple room on which to start…hmmmm.

I finally stopped crying and decided to start cleaning up the mess I made in the demolition.  You may remember, though, that I seem to have an issue with my feet which proved true again.  I stepped on a nail in the process.  My tetanus is up to date from when I got a rusty nail in my head when Abigail was born (unrelated).  Anyhow, the problem this time is that the nail not only entered my foot, but also broke off.  It seems like this was supposed to be a simple room on which to start…ARGGGGHHHH!.

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warren, March 3rd 2009 | Posted in House

We licked the bell!


The Bridge Road Shops, a local group of businesses that have banded together in the neighborhood, have just installed a monument which includes a Liberty Bell-like bell.  I chatted with an owner of one of the shops and she mentioned that the monument stands on the grounds of the old Fernbank school.  I understand that the bell in the monument once hung in the school though I could not verify that.  Regardless, it’s an awesome looking bell and is an interesting addition to the neighborhood.

Anyhow, we used to watch a tv show called How I Met Your Mother.  In one of the episodes, Barney, the wild single guy takes his pal Ted to Philadelphia to lick the Liberty Bell…just to break the monotony.

Winter time gets pretty monotonous around here so I decided we needed to “lick the bell”.

Emily and Isaac were too embarrassed to partake on Saturday, but Abigail and I had no qualms, even as traffic passed by us.  Sure enough…we licked the bell and we hereby claim the honor as the first family to lick the Bridge Road Bell!  Licking the bell did interrupt the normal.  We broke the monotony of a winter day at least, if not the entire winter.  Spring feels not so far off now.

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warren, March 2nd 2009 | Tags: ,
Posted in Fun, WV
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