Love/Hate Relationships Updated!

Update:  Last night, I was noodling about with some possible solutions to the new bedroom situation that didn't entail a) kludges, b) lots of destruction and rebuilding. The thought occurred: "Skin the existing wall with drywall!" I figured that was a good compromise to  my problem and met my requirements.

Today, I was overjoyed to discover that there is such a thing as 1/4" thick drywall! Several of the reviewers at Home Depot said it was an excellent way to cover old walls.

So, I am now the proud owner of three 4' X 8' X .025" sheets of drywall, plus accoutrements. And if I have to do this again, I'm paying someone to pick up and deliver the stuff!
 </update>

The Flight Attendant Girl Friend introduced me to working on old houses when she bought her house back when we were dating in the last century:

(Courtesy Google Street View.)

 It was built, as near as we could tell, in the late 1910s or early 1920s.  Working on it proved the rule that, when estimating the time required for a project you should give it your best estimate, double that, and then bump it to the next higher unit of measure.  So, for example, a three day job takes one month. ( 2X3 days = (about) 1 week, next unit of measurement is a month, ergo, 1 month.)

When I worked on my own (newer) places, the law pretty much still held, but those places had far fewer surprises.  No interesting dry rot in the bathroom that was (supposed to be) the three day job. No electrical that followed the evolution from Edison to modern code compliance. Needless to say, I learned lots.

Flash forward to today. I have decided to move my bedroom from the back room of the third floor to the front room of the second. This reduces the possibility of damage from a leaky roof (it's getting fixed next week!), and more importantly, puts me in a room that has heat from the boiler/radiator system, rather than relying on the (very, very) expensive wall heater.

So, I decided that I wanted to spruce the place up a bit by painting it. Relatively easy and cheap. Wash the walls, floor and ceiling, pull out all of the old, useless hardware, patch some spots on the wall, and paint. The goal was to have the ceiling, walls and trim done by Wednesday (tomorrow).

There has been, in the words of every airline everywhere, a delay.  Observe:

This...

...turned into this...

...resulting from this...

...and this!

Scraping one little bit started to pull up goodly sized strips of painted-over wallpaper. I admit, there was something satisfying about  the way all that effing wallpaper came off so easily. (I really, really hate wallpaper.)

And, as I had expected, we're dealing with lath and plaster:

You can see to bits of lath poking out above.

And there is a bit of a gap between the wall and ceiling:

Given the gaps at the ceiling, and at the wall,

...I'm starting to toy with the idea of pulling out that the lath & plaster, and replacing it with drywall.

What could possibly go wrong??

A Saturday Friday Garden

So, I went to the local hardware store, to get staples for my compressor-driven staple gun, and a quart of paint for my moving downstairs project.

And then, I saw that they had raised bed frames and peppers for sale. Gardening sounded way more fun than painting, so, meet the new bed:

Left-to-right, 'found' tomato, muskmelon, Serrano pepper (new), Thai Hot (transplanted).

 The 'found' tomato was found (duh) sprouting in the compost heap. I had tossed out some tomato, and voila! Since it wanted to sprout for me, I thought the least I could do was get started and plant it.

The other found tomato iat the top right, and muy mas Serranos.

In other news, when I got back from the hardware store, I saw that some of the pototoes were blooming! Who knew?

Potato flower

Next, a couple of views of progress:

 

Finally, in other news, the Sunflowers have a predator, as seen here:

Said predator being...

...Griffin.

I suspect he has a bit of a tummy ache, and the Sunflower leaves are his remedy of choice.  He sniffs just about everything f=green, including the lettuce and the tomatoes, but Sunflower is always the winner.

Finally, a rodent monorail (taken from inside the kitchen):

More, later!

Animal Husbandry Question du Jour...

Is it wrong that I want to get screaming goats & fainting goats?

— Pope Sparkles (F) (@beautiflywings) June 4, 2015

Mid-Week Friday Garden

Well, it's been just over two weeks since we've looked at the garden.  The rains over the last week or so have had quite the positive effect!  So, in a more-or-less clockwise pass:

The kitchen bed is overwhelmed by lettuce!

Reverse angle on kitchen bed to show the basil and rosemary (found that at Wall-Mart).

Sunflowers and honeydews.

Red onions, garlic and yellow onion. I added a few Poblano peppers from my sprouts.

Tomatoes, Thai Hots, and some more Poblanos. Also, some random tomatoes in the sprouting trays (center).

Potatoes in the background, the two Anaheim peppers and one Thai Hot. And one of the Early Girl tomatoes.

The Royal Candles are beginning to bloom.

Roses.

Another view of the Potato Forest!

Both of the Early Girls are living up to their names!

Finally, the wild strawberry is settling in around the edges of the garden. I think it makes a nice ground cover, so I'm letting it encroach pretty much where it will.

Harrisburg, Pa

I'm doing my Sunday reading, and found this on Shorpy:

(Click for full size!)

Monday's Friday Garden

So, three weeks since my last garden post.  Things have changed:

Potatoes are running rampant the foreground (six of eight have sprouted). Early Girl and two Anaheim peppers in the background.

The rose stick is filling out, and has several new shoots coming up from the bottom.

Royal Candle (not "King's Candle") is filing out.

Onions and garlic (and weeds).

Reverse view on the peppers and potatoes. One of the new Thai Hots is in the front left corner.

Tomatoes and peppers. Three more Thai Hots, and a row of sprouting Poblano Serrano next to the seed starters.

Benny is guarding the lettuce and oregano.

The basil sprout.

Both of the tomato pods have taken off after the rain over the weekend.

Oregano, random onion, tomato, and lettuce.

The blackberry.

 I'm told that the blackberry needs pruning if I want it to be a bush rather than a vine.  I have no clue how to prune it, so a trip to the interweb seems in order.

The mystery melons.

The Mystery Melons are beginning to look suspiciously like sunflowers. Which is OK, but I really wanted melons.  I planted honeydew seeds in front of the sunflowers, and will be looking for cantaloupe the next time I'm at the garden store.

I finished running a new water line to the spigot on the patio, and purchased a new garden hose. (The old one was more leak than hose, and way too long to manage.) Now I can water without having to make trips to the kitchen to fill the watering can. Which also makes filling it when I feed the plants much easier, too!

Time Bomb...

...of a (Now) Minor Sort.

Last last month, I got an email from my cousin, John, asking for my physical mail address.  He said that his brother Robert had found something he thought I'd be interested in.  I replied, and a week ago, I received a warm letter from Robert, along with an interesting enclosure.

The enclosure in his letter is the bottom dog tag.  I've had the other two, since Martha had saved them.

Here is the letter:

The sentence that got partially cut says "tale of the tag".

I can only think of two "easy" explanations. First is, the house belonged to a friend or friends of Dad's, and he gave it to them, or somehow lost it while visiting.  Second, Martha visited after the funeral/accident, and gave or lost it.  I'm guessing that finding out who owned the place after WWII until the end of 1950 might shed a bit of light on the puzzle.

About the title of this post. After Mom passed away, I spend a month of weekends going thru her stuff, sorting what I wanted to keep and what not to keep.  I found a boatload of Dad's things, which just nailed me to the floor.  And the name was given.About ten years later, my cousin sent me an envelope she found addressed to me that was in her mom's (my aunt's) desk.  It was her written recollection of what happened to Gladys, Lane and me after the two of us were born. As I recall, that pretty much cost me my weekend.  I learned to hate time bombs.

But this one not so much.  As I told Robert, I've had 35 years to process all of this since Martha passed on.  That was the start of my mourning not only her, but Gladys and Dad as well, something I had never truly done until then.