walking in Mike’s woods

walking in Mike’s woods, Laika in the big meadow

Our next-door neighbor Mike owns almost 40 acres of land out behind our house, and he’s always encouraged us to go out and explore his land. There’s a dirt road leading out behind his house, and a network of paths all through the woods, and a huge meadow that he’s been working hard all summer to keep mown and cleared. I can’t believe it took us until mid-summer to finally get out into the woods behind our house and start exploring, and I’m so glad we finally did. I’ve been taking the puppy out for walks most days, it’s easy to pass a whole hour or two wandering and looping around all the paths and splashing in the stream and exploring the woods.
In other news, I got a “polaroid” type app for my iPhone so that’s why all my iphone snapshots are now fake-polaroided. Its kinda silly but… since my iPhone photos always come out smudgy and cruddy-looking anyway, it’s funner if they at least look old and cute…

mudroom floor

new subfloor in mudroom/entryway

We’re putting in a new subfloor in the little mudroom off the kitchen. This had once been an entrance from the porch into the kitchen, later it was closed up and boarded over and turned into a pantry or something. We want it to be our new main entrance. Judy and Richard found this amazing Victorian door in our attic and lovingly restored and repainted it, it’s all finished now and just waiting to be installed.

Beautiful new door!

First though, we’ll need to fix up this mudroom floor, before we can put in the threshold and straighten out the doorframe to hang the door. We’ve already gutted the walls down to the studs an ripped up some weird crooked flooring, and then put down a layer of metal screening across the entire room, between the beat-up old subfloor and the new subfloor, to keep all the squirrels and critters out. We are planning to eventually tile the floor with the Argentine encaustic tiles that we brought from Buenos Aires!

rough mockup of what the argentine encaustic floor tiles will look like….

homemade bathroom faucet!

before and after

Richard made us this beautiful new copper faucet!!!!! for the upstairs bathroom sink. We call it the steampunk faucet. I wish we could make the handles and everything match it…

IT FLUSHES!

toilet: before and after

Exciting bathroom progress: I finally got this stinking toilet clean! It took me a few months of hard labor and experimenting with different cleaning products. I started by putting on rubber gloves and throwing away the ghastly toilet seat, then over the course of a few months I tried scrubbing it with toilet bowl cleaner, soaking it in bleach, dumping in vinegar, and scrubbing it with more cleaners (sequentially, not all at once). Each effort produced slight improvements but the real winning trick was to wait until it was disconnected (and therefore empty), then scrub the living hell out of it with a pumice stone and liberal doses of Ajax. Why did I waste so much time on this thing, instead of throwing it away and replacing it as any normal person would’ve done? I guess I hate to waste something that could be saved. I’m on a tight budget. And once I’d wasted a few afternoons scrubbing it I just refused to accept defeat and had to keep scrubbing until I conquered it. Today I declare victory!
But the best part is: it is now reconnected and it works!! The most satisfying thing about this whole weekend was completing the plumbing updates so that we once again have indoor plumbing. Just as we were re-installing the toilet, I discovered a pair of childrens’ scissors lodged in the drainpipe! Glad I caught that. Explains why it wasn’t working so well.

baby’s first plumbing project! it took me a ridiculous amount of time and thought and trial-and-error and labeling and marking and color-coding (and infinite amounts of help from my dad) to figure out how to run the pipes and fit all the pieces together. But it was worth it because it WORKS.

I also improved the bathroom by ripping out all the flooring. It’s a shame because it was sort of new and relatively decent (compared to the rest of the house, that is) but it had such an unholy stink. You don’t even want to think about it. Now the flooring is all out and the smell is basically gone. The subfloor seems to be in decent condition, not too stinky, though I’m treating it with a hydrogen peroxide-baking-soda odor removal treatment just to be thorough.

refinishing the front door

Judy sanding down the front door

Judy’s been working away at the front door! Every day she takes it off the hinges and lays it out to work… first she stripped off most of the lead paint using a soy based stripper (supposedly less toxic ) and then she started sanding away the remaining bits, stopping to vacuum up the lead dust every few minutes. The wood underneath is so beautiful! We think we’ll keep the grain exposed on the inside of the door, and paint the outside of the door Portsmouth Spice (a dusty pumpkiny kind of color) to match the beautiful side door (which she also refinished over the winter!) Every day at the end of work, we have to re-hang the front door on its hinges, it looks nicer already!

door before … door in progress

the new puppy

what a photogenic little peanut

Here’s Laika! she’s so cute!!! We couldn’t survive for long without a dog. I didn’t want to rush to replace our lost pups too quickly, but we realized that summer is really the best time to start out with a new dog, and we just fell madly in love with Laika’s cute face on petfinder. Right now we are just fostering Laika, we haven’t formally adopted her yet. She has a really tenacious urinary tract infection that hopefully will be all cured after a few more weeks of antibiotics, and then if all goes well, we will finalize the adoption. She seems just as healthy and happy as any puppy, she’s been a crazy little monster all morning and now she is napping sweetly at my feet. Laika is around six months old, she’s a rescue puppy and she was brought up to Maine from a high-kill shelter in Arkansas. Nobody knows what she is, she was billed as husky and german shepherd but we’re thinking she could also have some australian shepherd, maybe even a little bit of beagle? for sure she is 100% puppy. She’s only been with us for a day and a half, but so far I can tell that she is CRAZY about food, any and all of it, she is smart as a whip and busy busy busy all the time. She seemed to fall in love with us just as quickly as we fell for her! She’s an expert counter browser, she knows her name and usually comes when you call, she’s very very curious, she likes chasing butterflies and chickens and trying to climb into the dishwasher, she doesn’t know how to fetch yet but I’m trying to teach her.

bedroom

looking pretty good, right?

Although we’re supposed to be focusing our efforts on the kitchen and the downstairs, we’re hoping to start living (or at least camping out!) in our house sometime this summer. So I’ve spent a little time tidying up our future bedroom, hoping to get a bed in there sometime soon. We tore out the carpeting and particle board and there’s a beautiful wood floor underneath! Cleaned and reassembled the baseboard heater, it’s still ugly but it looks a lot better now. Overall the room is starting to look really beautiful! I’m excited about sleeping in here!

pulling up particle-board, discovering a mysterious hole underneath.

My mom had torn up the carpeting before we even got home from South America! Then I ripped up the particle-board floor underneath (with some help from both Vickie and Mike), and while we were prying it up, we discovered underneath… whoa! There’s a giant, perfectly circular hole in the middle of the wood floor! Why? It goes down about 8 inches but doesn’t go through the ceiling of the livingroom below, the lath and plaster below is at least 100 years old, so it’s not like it was used for a stovepipe or something. Was it perhaps a circular heating register? We can’t figure out a good explanation. Mysterious!

We’re hoping to enjoy some summer nights up here, but it’s not well insulated and we don’t want to deal with heating the drafty second floor during the cold months, so when the winter comes we’ll have to move our bedroom downstairs, probably we’ll be camping out in the livingroom or dining room for the first winter. Hopefully we’ll get the second floor winterized within a year or two? Meanwhile, we have a lovely summer bedroom.

before: realtor’s photo of the upstairs bedroom before the house was sold.

modest progress on many fronts

The past month has been super duper crazy and busy. We spent a lot of time getting ready for the Renegade Craft Fair in Brooklyn, and a lot more time working away at various bits of this big house project.

We had our well water tested and found that it has elevated levels of lead, and coliform bacteria. We’ll need to replace some plumbing to take care of the lead problem, and we will do that eventually, but a temporary solution is to just run the water for a few minutes before drinking. To deal with the coliform, we had to dump about 4 gallons of bleach into our well. String together enough hoses to stretch out into the well, and turn them on full blast – so basically we’re pumping water up out of the well, running it through the pump and piping, through the hoses, and right back into the well again. Just to get that chlorine really spread around. And then the water suddenly turned black! I guess since the well had been unused for a while, there was all kinds of pond scum growing in there and the chlorine broke it up and it came gushing out. So, for the next two weeks our tap water came out black and green and chunky and smelling like chlorine. Yuck! And then finally one day it came out crystal clear and beautiful. We’re still not drinking it, until we get it re-tested and make sure the problem is really gone, but it looks a lot better now!

We’ve also spent a lot of time mowing. We’ve got two acres of grass and fields, the front lawn looks OK but the back forty has become an impassable, un-mowable no-mans-land. We tried mowing it a few times with my parents’ huge heavy-duty mower but I think it’s too far gone, we’re going to need to rent a tractor or something to tackle it.

And of course… I stepped on a rusty nail! I had to go get a tetanus shot. That’s what you get for walking around in crocs. There’s a great health center nearby in Porter and I’m happy I got to meet them.

Richard finally called up the Limington building inspector to have him approve our projects. He was an amiable older fellow, a pretty funny guy, and he mentioned that he’d also considered buying our house about twenty-five years ago, when he first moved to Limington! He loved the place but even then it was in pretty rough condition and he decided it was a bigger project than he wanted to take on. But he seemed happy to find somebody ambitious and foolish enough to take on the challenge. The most interesting tidbit he mentioned is that back when he looked at the property, our front left room was working as a beauty parlor! We had no idea! It did look like it had once housed some kind of business (it has a separate entry, and a recessed, spotlit display area set into one wall) but we never would’ve guessed it was a hair salon. I love how these bits of history unfold here.

richard and eliza, talkin’ bout exposed beams in the kitchen.

Meanwhile… as we’ve been working on the kitchen, we’ve noticed some pretty dramatic angles and sagging in the kitchen floor. So we decided this is the best time to try and even it out a bit. We brought in some extra columns and set them up down in the basement below the kitchen, and each one sits atop a 20-ton hydraulic jack. Each week we raise them up another 1/4 inch, hoping to straighten out some of the sag from that floor.

jacks in the basement. trying to straighten out the kitchen a bit!

Which is a great idea, but it caused some repercussions up in the kitchen: a noticeable sag in the beam over the doorway that leads to the dining room. At some point in the past, that doorway was widened, and the big support beam above it was damaged but no additional support was added to redistribute the weight. It was probably saggy to begin with, and our jacking seemed to cause more sagging, as the two beams on either side push up into the floor above, and nothing pushes in the center. We like the wide doorway (and even widened it some more!) but didn’t like the sagging beam overhead so we’ve sistered it with some other beams and placed temporary columns across the open doorway to even out the pressure of the jacking. We salvaged some big old heavy beams (maybe 10″ by 10″?) that came from my parents’ 1700′s farmhouse and had been sitting unused in the basement since their most recent renovation.

jacking the kitchen doorway

We fitted one directly underneath the compromised beam, horizontally above the doorway, and then fitted two others vertically on either end to hold it up. Sort of a Stonehenge type arrangement. If this doesn’t hold then we might need to switch to a steel support beam, but these big old wood beams are much prettier so I hope it’ll work.

At the same time, we’ve been doing some work in the bathrooms… In the downstairs bathroom, Paz helped us smash out this wall! which used to separate the laundry room from a closet, now the spaces will be combined into one big bathroom.

bathroom wall destruction, and plumbing.

And we’ve been on a plumbing adventure which began with relocating the waste pipe (coming down from the upstairs toilet) and involved temporarily uprooting our only functioning toilet, plus lots of in-depth plumbing lessons from Richard! I think we’re learning a lot. And although we are unfortunately spending a few weeks without indoor plumbing, the end result should be a properly vented and thus better-functioning toilet, a WORKING SHOWER, and more convenient placement of the pipes, plus a hook-in spot where we will attach the vent line for the downstairs bathroom appliances, in due time. While we have the toilet pulled out, I’m taking the opportunity to remove all the vile, stinky, filth-sodden flooring that surrounded it. Hooray and good riddance!

Back in the kitchen: we’ve finished gutting everything and we’re slowly, slowly starting the rebuilding! Mike and Richard have been doing electrical wiring lessons and we’ve planned out where all outlets and appliances will be located, and installed all of the outlet boxes!

outlet boxes are all installed!

Also in the kitchen, we noticed during the destruction that a lot of rodents have made their homes in our ceiling and walls over the years. We would like to prevent this in the future, so we need to seal up EVERY opening in the kitchen walls. I’ve been cutting heavy-duty hardware cloth screening to fit over every opening and stapling it firmly in place. Then we will attempt to fill the holes with spray foam insulation. Might even cram a bit of steel wool into the bigger holes for good measure.

rodent-proofing the kitchen

And… then there’s the never-ending chore of packing up wooden lath to use for kindling.

a giant pile of lath

Every wall in our house is made of plaster over wooden lath; most of them need to be torn down to put in insulation and modern electrical wiring, etc. Since we’ll be heating primarily with the wood stove, we save the old wood lath to chop up and use as kindling in the woodstove. Great stuff for starting fires but it’s a huge job to cut it all down and pack it up in boxes for the winter. It took me basically two whole weeks to chop it all up and pack it away. And then, of course, as soon as we need to smash out another wall, there will be more lath to chop up and pack away. But I think we’ll be grateful for it when the cold winter comes!

finally! a table and chairs

We got a great new kitchen table & chairs for $15, at a yard sale down the street. We can’t put them in the kitchen yet because we don’t really have a kitchen at the moment, but they fit nicely here in the livingroom and make the place feel a lot more cozy and civilized. (In the same morning of yard-saling we also found an extra wooden chair, an old rocking chair for the porch, a small fifties-looking wooden cabinet, a hand-truck for carrying heavy stuff, a stack of old country LP’s, and a cute summery blouse with stripes and puffy sleeves! What a good morning. )

studio

I have been working like mad on the new house! So much to do, and the summer is flying by already…

studio room: before

We picked a big room upstairs from the kitchen to be my studio. It’s got six beautiful windows and lots of open space. On the negative side, the floor is in bad shape, it’s got damaged old wood planks with a few big gaps where you can see through to the kitchen below, all covered over by vinyl flooring which is peeling and curling and torn away in a few spots, then covered in some places with a second layer of peeling and curling vinyl, it’s hideous. And the walls are covered with seventies-style fake wood paneling which someone partially painted forest green and then gave up and just punched a few holes through the wall instead of finishing the paint job. They even painted over a few random sections of the cruddy brown trim with what looks like black nail polish.

ugh.

I don’t need my studio to be very fancy at all, it’s just a place for making messes anyway, and we’re supposed to be focusing our renovation efforts on the kitchen and bathroom downstairs, so the studio is like the last priority for real renovations. But the ugly splotches of green paint were going to drive me crazy, so I decided to do a quick and dirty paint job just to give the place a little bit fresher look.

first order of business: cover up those crazy patches of green paint. I can’t possibly concentrate on work if I have to look at that crazy paint job all day.

I even primed everything and then painted it all some historic shade of greenish-blue. (I will admit that I have a strong urge to paint EVERYTHING in the whole house greenish-blue or bluish-green or robins-egg blue or dusty aqua or anything along those lines. I am going to have to use a lot of self control to avoid making the whole house look like a swimming pool.) Anyway, I haven’t totally finished painting but it’s looking a lot better already. I was in a rush to get working so I could print up a bunch of t-shirts and new cards for the Renegade Craft Fair, so I had to start filling up the studio and working in it even before the painting was done. I swear I am going to finish the paint job soon!

it’s not all painted yet, but at least one entire wall is done…

silkscreen printing table

silkscreen set up! My first screen made using my new light table!

I found some small shelves for free on craigslist, and got some more cheap sturdy shelves at a big box store (ugh). Shelving is the one thing I can never find used at the salvation army or on craigslist. My parents gave me a beautiful, incredibly heavy, big long work table (I think maybe an old army mess table?) which they’d in their basement for eons. The table-top is too rough to print on directly, so I made a portable printing station with a smooth, flat slab of wood and silkscreening hinges. I covered the wood with a layer of clear acetate so it’ll be easier to keep the surface clean. For drawing at my worktable, I found a super comfy giant office chair by the side of the road in Limington. For drying printed t-shirts, I strung a clothesline across the back of the studio and tied little loops for hanging clothes hangers at regular intervals. For drying printed cards, I found a beautiful folding drying rack by the side of the street in White Rock, what luck! (I have a sharp eye for free stuff, right?) The biggest studio project was the light box which I need for exposing photo-sensitive emulsion to create my silkscreen stencils. It’s just two long fluorescent shop-light fixtures inside of a big box, on legs, with a thick sturdy glass tabletop. I built one a few years ago when I was setting up my first studio in New York, and it took me a few days in the workshop with my dad’s help. But this time I whipped it up in just one day, in my dad’s workshop, with just a little help from Mike to screw in the light fixtures that evening. And it works!

building my new light table (in Richard’s workshop) … and the finished product!

At the moment I’m using the icky, windowless downstairs bathroom as my darkroom though I would like to eventually build a little darkroom in the closet attached to my studio, I just need to do some major clean-up in there, and hang a door. And I’m using the garden hose for all my washing-up needs, but one day soon we will get running water and plumbing in the studio! I found a utility sink in the back yard at limington (perfect!), and my parents have been trying to get us to take this old claw-foot tub that’s been sitting in their back yard in Gorham for thirty or forty years at least. I think the tub and sink will go side-by-side on the back wall of the studio, by the chimney. I can use the sink for cleaning up small stuff like paintbrushes, and the tub will be excellent for washing out big screens. And gorgeous too. I am going to have such a great wash-up station! The studio’s definitely not finished but it is really exciting to have ONE room in the house that is actually functional. I spent a lot of hours in there during the past few weeks, working late into the night. It’s a great space already.

more flowers

blue bellflower, and aquilegia

poppy seed pods

rosa acicularis? and tiny raspberries

wow! I love poppies! what a treat to find them blooming in our yard in limington.

rosebud with ant

clover, buttercups