Christmas Spectacular 2015

This year we are hosting what I am lovingly referring to as our Christmas Spectacular Full Construction Immersion Experience.  Christopher and I will be sleeping on an air mattress in the unfinished 2nd floor. It will be very rustic. 

I will be cooking for 8 in our high tech multi cooker. There will be soup. Lots of soup. Also, eating out. Thank heavens we live in NY where eating out on the holidays is pretty typical and we have a large selection of places in our neighborhood at which to eat one hot meal a day.

It kills me to say this, but the pies and cookies have been ordered. Sigh. Next year I'll bake up a storm, but for now, I'll take a stroll to our local bakery each morning to pick up fresh tasty treats. The biggest perk of this set up is that variety will be far greater than anything I would have whipped up. And I guess there is a teeny, itsy-bitsy, tiny, weeny, party of me that is looking forward to spending most of Christmas week with my family instead of wondering if the pie crust will turn out alright. 

In terms of pre-Christmas construction, we are pushing to get the HVAC installed and the 2nd floor bathroom near complete so that we can have at least one bathroom where tape doesn't do double time as tile. We've been incredibly lucky this winter so far as temperatures have been mild and I even had a 60 degree day to finish sanding one of our entry doors. 

That project will come later, right now I'd like to bask in the holiday decor I was bequeathed by my folks. With one garland, a bolt cutter (best tool ever), a few extension cords, two strands of lights, one  spool of ribbon and some floral wire, Christmas officially visited our row home renovation.

 

All lit up with man and dog:



Gratuitous bow shot:



I'll have you know, I trained for several years under the stiff arm of Bonita Quenzer Real Estate Mogul tying bows and hanging greens all over the neighborhoods of Pueblo, CO each winter. Glad to see the muscle memory kicked right back in. I can still hear the coyotes crying in the pre-dawn hours on the frozen tundra, as I raced from mail box to mail box with crystallized tears glistening on my cheeks. Seriously, it was fun. Wish I could do it every weekend. (I love you Grandma).

Roofing and Rear Facade

Today is my first real day off in over a month. The contractors are hard at work though as it is the first day of work on our house! I am overly excited about the prospect of a new roof. I knew we had a problem when during the last rain, pieces of the ceiling fell into the stairwell. After climbing onto the roof with the contractor, it was even more apparent, it all had to go. They're going to strip it down, remove all the old roofing, replace the hatch, skylight in the hall, put mushroom vents in the light well which is currently being utilized as a vent and plumbing run from the previous renovations done on the house. It's time to button up all the hatches and make this baby weather tight. Hopefully our new roof will be in place by middle of the week.

New windows are the next big to-do on the house but those will take a while to get ordered and installed as we are waiting for approval from the National Historic Tax Credit department. We live on a block designated a National Historic District which means that due to several other factors (personal income, neighborhood average income) we qualify for a tax credit on all approved work on the full building and on our individual owner occupied unit. This goes a long way in helping us pay for the basics that this Ol' Girl needs to get back into working order. 

I'll get more into specifics on windows once we get the go ahead. The amount of information out there on windows is both daunting and frustratingly sparse - depending on manufacturer. 

But back to work soon to be completed. The cornice on the front will be scraped down and get a new coat of paint in the next few days. I've got three green contenders. I did some historical research into the style of the building and I decided on dark green, which coincidentally seemed to be a very popular color around here. The gentlemen at the paint store are pretty familiar with all the "old" colors have serviced a great number of historically designated properties.  

I was able to paint up some sizable drywall squares (thanks to the random sheets of the stuff lying around the basement).

Unfortunately, I don't have that luxury to help me pick the color for the rear of the building. You see, the rear of our house is also brick, which I love, however some numb-nut decided that it was a good idea to paint the brick. This lead to another paint job that was done on only the bottom of the building, which is pealing horribly. Why they'd paint the brick in the first place is beyond me, why they'd go and paint it a second time but only the lower half, is an even bigger puzzle. That being said, we are now getting the rear washed clean of loose paint and coated with a breathable thorolastic finish meant for brick.









This product which great in application leaves something to be desired in the color selection process. There is a nice brochure of colors to choose from but the damned color samples are smaller than my thumb. I picked Tudor Beige and am hoping for the best!  The taupe color to the left is the color our windows will most likely be (again, pending approval) the color to the right was the color I had picked out for the trim around the windows, I may need to revisit that decision. For now, I'll content myself with watching them climb around on ladders as they prepare the building for it's new dress of color.