Something different

It is 87 degrees inside our house as I write this. This is the main floor -- the cooler floor. I am afraid to go upstairs. I won't say that it is too warm, but my brains do feel as though they are thrice cooked... 90 degrees by 10:30 a.m.  A neighbor said it got up to 94... As I was ripping out boards and beams in a cooler dark basement and then hauling ALL OF THAT GARBAGE out to the searing sunny, sunny, hot, hot garage.... I leave you with photos to recap just what exactly has gone on "down cellar" (as Mainer Lakey would say). Well, just the hallway today. Main basement room tomorrow. Keep cool.

Before....

   

During.....

      

After....

 

(Mostly).

Well, demo that is.

Jeez, did I do all that?!

Bad dogs, sore bones, new hard-drive

Well howdy. Back in the saddle again, after being bucked off by a bad hard-drive. All is recovered... over $400 later, sigh.

We actually took yesterday OFF. Much fun was had, and many beers...

Lakey has left me again. My dogs responded to their neglect by reviving their interest in a groundhog hole. These adorable fuzzballs live pretty much under the garage. My BAD dogs had been forbidden from even LOOKING at that corner of the yard, but alas they regressed. The former entry way to the groundhogs' living room is now an outdoor great room. (Nebbie and Rumpus said, "Freya made us do it!" I'm not buying it...) The rubble is supposed to keep BAD DOGS from continuing to dig, whilst allowing adorable groundhogs to come and go. We'll see how that goes.

More interestingly, much tiring progress was made in the final demolition of the basement hall/stairway. (p.s. you can click on photos to make them bigger). The stairs and supporting structure are completely gone. The final bit of plaster has been removed from the stone wall, and tomorrow I will finish pulling up the last of the floorboards in the hall. Weee! 

                       

Where once there were stairs!

 

Too tired for more. Tomorrow: floorboards and brick/mortar repair!

Bad Lakey, no Rice Krispy Treat

All there is left of the abyss is the abyss. The final layer of flooring was painstakingly removed, board by board, to expose the underlying beams. How interesting to note that one's house (Jodi and Alicia's, that is) has been held up by three or four slabs of rock and a couple of shims. Rusted shims. Beams were removed, scraped, vacuumed, bleached and stacked ever-so-neatly in the garage.

Meanwhile, in Funtown D-O-G, groundhogs were in grave peril and mulberries were in season. Which is to say that certain canines of the Welsh Cardigan Corgi breed are sure to have intestinal issues, no doubt during their trip back to Maine. And certain other WCCs might have big lumps on their little blue heads from falling ten feet or so in pursuit of one of the many relatives of Lional, the dead cat. Said blue merle corgi proceeded to cost her guardian well over two hundred dollars in emergency vet fees because of a great big lump on her little blue spotted head. We will never know exactly what happened. At least Lakey got a really cool x-ray out of it

Lakey spazzed out and collapsed all of Saturday while Jodi ripped out, single handedly, the staircase from the main floor to the basement. Jodi is amazing. She is a super hero.

Lakey Here

Ah, what a week it has been. Sorry to be cliche, but sometimes pictures are all it takes.

This is Jodi's Blog

Hi. This is Lakey. I am writing this entry so that when Jodi logs on, with her newly geek-squaded computer, her entry will show up first.

Lakey Sez ...

Another fine day in the city of Poughkeepsie, formerly known as "Uppuqui-ip-ising" by the Wappinger native Americans. We stupid white people somehow managed to warp that into its current permutation. Emphasis on the mutation.

Most of my day (Jodi will write later) was spent, yes, in the abyss. Quite literally IN the abyss, making friends with the dirt and assorted debris that the first builders tossed in there. We found a lot of vertebrae and a few ribs that no doubt belonged to the Dead Cat. (I feel as though we should name it, for some reason.) We also found a toothbrush, which was pretty creepy.
At any rate, we poked all around in the dirt with crowbars, because Jodi said she wanted to know what she was walking on. (I think this has a lot to do with the dream she had about falling into a sinkhole without her cell phone.) Mostly we raked through the rubble and pulled out rotted wood. We also freed the beams that formerly supported all of those layers of flooring, and tomorrow will haul the suckers up to the garage. We've made a very neat lumber pile in there, thank you very much.

It was a beautiful day.
Lakey

Jodi say, "hey."

Lakey was too kind to not mention my girly screams that I burst forth with on oh so many occasions today. Have you ever REALLY experienced completely virgin, uncompressed earth? I.e. have you ever had to walk upon it? Now, I don't mean a dirt pile. I'm talking about light soil that has existed in some encapsulated nether-world whilst wood bits and assorted refuse have decomposed, ceasing to exist and leaving a their stead air pockets, mini-sinkholes that hold grave peril to those brave explorers from the modern above-world whose aggressively defensive crow bar points and tentative toes inch forward in the cobwebby hell that is the abyss floor above the REAL abyss floor. THAT is what I am talking about. Perhaps my paranoia did stem from that dream, some weeks past, BUT THERE WERE REALLY SINKHOLES down there! And the LIVE all black spider that I almost grabbed with my (gloved) hand was really, really BIG and scary. There. Girl screams justified.

Nor did Lakey mention the various (hopefully not life-threatening) strains of molds that we unearthed upon bricks and beams in that oh-so-damp basement floor. Of the two major strains, one is pure white and very slimy, yet fluffy --the other bright yellow and much more delicate and deadly smelling. It burned my nostrils even through a full-face respirator. Yikes. I succeeded in removing all of the apparent offending wood and bricks, hoping for a less stinky day tomorrow.

I apologize for the lack of photos. We accumulated quite a collection of artifacts today, but are making you wait until tomorrow to see them.

Comments needed

Please - we need your comments. Without them we feel stranded and hopeless. Anyone can post; no google account needed. Thank you.

Jodi's Bad Day

Alas, the day was so lousy for Jodi that Lakey is in charge of the blog tonight. Jodi is having the dreaded Technical Difficulties with her computer. As I write, it is in the we-hope-capable hands of the local Geek Squad, who seem to think it might be something as horrible as a hard drive failure. Probably unearthing the spirit of that dead cat didn't do any good. This neighborhood is rife with stray cats, who seem to be surrounding the house and staring alot.

Anyway, while Jodi moved and opened every box in her storage unit (Guardian, Suite # 201) in search of the emergency Windows XP boot disks, which she did not find, I, Lakey, spent the day "down cellar" as they say in Maine, taking a wire brush and Shop Vac to lots of board feet of Southern Yellow Pine. Luckily I didn't find any more dead things. I did, however, fall into the Greater Abyss via a rotted beam that broke under my apparently formidible weight.

After I emerged into daylight, blinking and coughing, I played Sisyphus and began rearranging stacks of ripped up flooring (nails intact) in the garage, in hopes of making room for the ripped-up flooring that I'd just brushed and vacuumed.

Jodi came back from the storage unit empty handed but for the stack of 1-2-3 books from Homo Depot. No disks. I decided to knock off work and accompany her to Best Buy, where she dropped off her laptop with such a forelorn look that I had to give her a hug. The boy behind the counter, in his nice white shirt, said "Don't cry." And alas, right beside Best Buy was an Old Navy store, where Lakey bought a new wardrobe complete with mobster shoes (off-white slip-on sneakers. Picture later.) After that we came home to feed the dogs and walked over to Noah's Ark and had TWO pints of beer and played three games of pool.

And now we are home, there is a cooling breeze, the dogs are happy and Jodi is cooking something fabulous while waiting for her therapist to call.



Oh - and by the way - one shot of espresso in a chai tea is referred to as a "red eye chai," and two shots a "black-eye chai."

"He smokes like a fish"

A delightful Poughkeepsie saying (evidently) that we were almost uncontrollably amused by today. I am quoting a neighbor that we just met today from down the street. She is wonderful, and invited me to sing Catholic songs (they pass out sheets with the words) in someone's basement. I told her I was an atheist. She said we can still come...

Oh! Lakey is back and hopefully, I didn't work her too hard. Today was a little Steven Kingish. Amongst the artifacts from the day, please note cat skull. Said skull was found resting beneath the floorboards in the dirt of the greater abyss. It appeared to Lakey that someone had hastily wrapped their dead cat in a sweatshirt and shoved it under the floor "before their kid came home". Creepy. This is a perfectly good cat skull (from the near the Catskills, ha, ha). Does anyone want it? Lakey bravely took care of it. Thank-you very much.

In other news, the pile of lumber in the garage has forced Jodi's Jeep to sleep on the street. (Lakey doesn't want another $50 parking ticket... not that she's paid it or anything...). 

Oh - the mosquitoes have hatched! Lakey instructed Jodi to go out and come back with 100% DEET, which is perfectly SAFE, but no ... we have BABY DEET. 7%. Not 70%, seven percent. That's just going to piss them off. Yikes. (But "it says it gives you up to two hours of protection," she said. "We're not going to be out there for more than two hours.") Speaking of insects - if anyone can identify the gigantic albino spider pictured here ...

We'll leave you with assorted artifact photos, 

as we are stuffed ... Lakey ate TWO (2) porkchops (disgusting!) and Jodi ate an entire plate of food: chicken piccata (3 fillets), mashed potatoes and half a head of broccoli. Yes, these girls worked up an appetite -- even in 90 degree weather with high humidity.

A bad day for Ivy

Change of plans... did not work myself to death. Instead, I killed killed KILLED poison ivy and all other viney things in my way to killing the ivy.

I've had a rash since a few days after I got here. It's definitely the ivy.

It is everywhere: on either side of the yard in massive jungly overgrowth waiting to make its move,

around the borders of the yard in planting beds, around the yard and IN the yard (yes, in the grass, even).

I HATE poison ivy. We go way back... BAAAAD memories.

Our green (i.e. earth-friendly) on-its-way-to-being-organic yard is full of poison, by my own hand.

I am ashamed and triumphant. Poor, poor wilted ivy. 

Now you can walk next to the house!  

(Formerly a jungle).

I am hesitant to say it, lest I am not out of the woods, as they say... I think I fought it back without it biting me. I will know for sure by tomorrow morning. I am hoping that coveralls, mask and two pairs of gloves were an adequate barrier. I followed the outing with an alcohol rub-down (ow! sting-y), soap pre-wash, double wash with poison ivy soap, then full body spritz with Super Ivy Dry. I am crossing my fingers.

A quick outing to the DMV... I have New York license plates!!

The rest of the day was spent on-line and on the phone: research and calls for estimates. That actually felt shockingly productive. Who knew? Guess I had a desk job today versus the usual manual labor.

Lakey is driving toward Poughkeepsie at this very moment. Her dream has come true: I saved the last of the basement floors (#6) for her to help with tomorrow. Do I know how to spoil a friend, or what?

Ain't no way I'm workin' tommorow!

Lies, all lies. There certainly were NOT 1,000 screws. There 413, and yes, I actually counted them after the fact. BUT before you judge my lameness for counting them, please know that it took me four minutes to do so. Not so terrible a waste of life...

I also counted how many floors I will have removed from this one basement room by the time I'm done: 1) the raised plywood floor 2) the tile beneath that 3) the slate tiles 4) the Wonderboard 5) the tongue and groove wood floor and Monday 6) the wood subfloor. Geez, no wonder this takes so long.

Today, I began the removal of the final floor (#6) -- once all of the screws were removed and the last of the other wood floor. It makes for a scary (and dangerous) entry into the basement.

 Watch your step!         

It's been a looooooong week. I'm taking tomorrow off. Gotta break out the electric lawn mower again and do some yard work. 

All I want to do now is play my guitar...

Land of a thousand screws

Still feeling yesterday a bit (buns of steel, baby)... So I actually took it a little easy. Had hoped to get a lot more done today, but I had an estimator come in the middle of the day. That through me off.

Anyhoo, today's task was that pesky Wonderboard floor that was laid under the slate tiles. 

Sometimes it was easy... 

But in other areas, it was very crumbly or stuck down...

But it was always very heavy... 10 (ten) garbage bags later....

I was then left with The Land of a Thousand Screws. The installer liked screws very much. They wanted to use as many screws as possibly. So they did. Imagine screws every 4 to 8 inches on an entire floor. Yes, it is so. I wanted to have all of the screw removed today, so that I could give you their astonishing numbers, but alas, my task was left incomplete. I get to rise early tomorrow (Saturday!) and unscrew screws (crouching, squatting or bending over mind you...good for the booty). Jealous? (Of the task, silly, not the booty).

What am I looking at??!

It's dryfloor!

My favorite part I actually found yesterday tucked away in a corner. Now, have you ever contemplated why they call it drywall?? Well, perhaps these handy people thought of it as dryboard.  If it's board, you can use it anywhere, right?? For instance, on a FLOOR. Oops, better make it double thickness for STRENGTH. Oi. I laughed my ass off yesterday when I found it, today I dug it out. It is just too absurd. It is like using toilet paper as INSULATION! Ha, ha, ha, ha. Oh, wait, they did that, too.

Ooh! Finally found some artifacts. It's been many dry days, yielding nothing but coins

(unremarkable ones). Today's tidbits:

 

I leave you with one more image: 

The Bruise    (can't you see it?!)

Anyone can comment now

Hello from Lakey in Maine, soon to return to PKNY. Just wanted to let everyone know that we finally figured out how to change the settings so that anyone without a google account can post comments, too. Although comments can be anonymous, please don't torture us.

A hard day in the palace....

Today was a sad/happy day for me. I want so badly to be in Seattle right now for Hilly's graduation. It is a hard thing to miss. Conversely, I am ecstatic for HER.... It's a truly big day.

Work was, I suppose, cathartic, as it was physically exhausting, tedious, and required much patience and attention. What was this fascinating task, you ask? Removing tongue and groove wood flooring and then (the bulk of the day) removing  slate tiles:

one..................................

at.....................................                                    

a......................................                         

time.

Phew. I kept telling myself it was worth it...for reuse/resale? Was I successfully removing at least HALF?! (Yes). Best find an architectural salvage around here soon.... Things are piling up fast. Only one smash to the hand betwixt rubber mallet and tool. Wail. That was cathartic, too (twistedly). It's the kneeling/bending over thing....yow, me back is achin'! 'Twas a pain in the patootey (check THAT spell checker!), but over now. Just wonder board (Dur-rock) to remove, and then the rest of the tongue and groove wood flooring and then the sub-floor and THEN: the entire floor will become the abyss! But THAT'S for tomorrow. It's freaky therapy, man.

My Seattle ties pulled tight, I now sip a Washington state wine (excellent!) and listen to Sleater-Kinny.

I give you progress in baby steps....

      All that tile....

So, I can barely walk, my hands and forearms are screamin'..... the pasta water is heating, the pine nuts are toasting, the Red Diamond Washington Shiraz (2002) is really delicious (thank-you Michelle and Marlene) Hmmm.... puttanesca or arugula pesto?? I do NOT believe in suffering. Life is GOOD.

Congratulations, Hilary!

Our Hilary graduated from Nova High School today! I am so very proud of her hard work and wish desperately that I could be there in person on this momentous day!

Ready to take on the world....

Facing one's fears...

I don't know why I fear "the abyss." It shouldn't be scary to have dirt under one's wood floor in a basement, and yet, I am scared. This has been exacerbated by a dream I had last week: I was standing on the dirt floor, when suddenly it caved in completely, leaving me twenty feet down in a cavernous hole. I didn't have my cell phone. My dogs were outside and didn't have access to me. I wondered how would I be rescued?! No one could hear me. I would starve. My dogs would starve...

Well, it's time to open up the depths of that abyss. I tore the first layer of floor off today. Tomorrow will be the real day of reckoning: the original (subfloor). Then, nothing between and the dirt. I peaked under the hall floor boards. That is less scary, but harder to navigate. The base is rubble there, i.e. sharp stones and bricks. Fun, fun, fun!

Oh, forgot to post this delightful photo of our new outdoor bathroom...

Uh, oh. It's startin' to look a little trashy around here!

A delicious side note: Lots of great beers to try out here. I've been sampling summer brews. I recommend Brooklyn Summer Ale, Magic Hat Fat Angel (YUM), Shipyard Summer Ale, Anderson Valley Brewing Company's Summer Solstice Cerveza Crema, and Spanish Peaks Summer White. There's nothing quite like an ice cold beer at the end of a really, really hard work day.

I'd also like to tip you off to Newman's Hermits. An incredibly scrumptious spice cookie (like grammaw woulda made. I've liked every flavor I've tried. Oh, hell, while I'm thinking about food: Odwalla's Chocolate Protein drink and Wallaby's organic yogurt (maple is tops).

My pizza is done and so am I. Cheers!

The last of last week

Friday was clean-up day: Hand picking pieces of plaster one by one so as not to pick up rat turds with them.  (A long story -- having to do with plaster disposal). One last run to the dump before La Bomba disappears back Maineward.

That George is a sweetheart. Just look at that smile. And yes, that's me writing check after check after check to the City of Poughkeepsie.

Work day ended before two-o'clock. Weee! Off to Davies Hardware store in Poughkeepsie (angels singing). It is a temple to all great hardware stores. Lakey is in heaven, dizzy with delight, yet requires no dragging to exit said store after a good browsey hour or so (?). Next stop: Adam's Fairacre Farms grocery store. Another Poughkeepsie original: so quirky, so East Coast, so wonderful! More oohs and aahs from Lakey.... More sight-seeing for the rest of the day. (I'm sparing you).

Lakey rode off into the sun Saturday. I got the lawn cut with THE MOST FANTASTIC LAWNMOWER IN THE WORLD: the Neuton battery powered electric from Vermont. Bliss. One of the best things I've EVER purchased. Pass the word... it ROCKS. So quiet, start with a squeeze of the handle.... Aah. (Ooh, they could be another sponsor!)

Future postings will be more entertaining, I promise. Just felt the frustration and pressure of technical difficulties -- both with our internet connection and my inability to log in to the blog. (stupid Internet Explorer).

So, thank-you so much for your patience and your interest. Pass the address to people who you know that I know. This will be the easiest way for me to keep in touch. I love your comments, so join Google and post 'em!

Love to everyone.

Jodi

I leave you with indications of progress: The basement looks very different, I just wish that it smelled different.

 

More catching up from last week

Slave driver Jodi "let" Lakey in late...

then served her a fine breakfast of 2 slices of bacon, 2 eggs over-easy,  a slice of warmed buttered brown bread and coffee...IN BED. Poor Lakey... (Spoiled Lakey even took a photo of her favorite salad that I'd made for her one night. Where's that photo?)

Thursday I don't remember, except for rat nests, mouse nests and a short work day. Oh, yeah, I realized I had forgotten a section of wall... We finished around two-o'clock and headed out for some sight-seeing.  Delicious tacos in New Paltz, browsing a delightful art supply store and a great health food store ala a tiny Whole Foods. The checker was pissy with Lakey. Grrr.... Out for pizza and pool near Vassar. Much fun and yummy pizza... Oh! and the gay bar! (In Poughkeepsie??!)

Finally! Something new to read!!!

I  just want to say "Yay", and thanks to new Safari for Windows, which is not making this blog possible and BUG FREE. Yippee!!

Don't know where to pick up from...

I wanted to dedicate last Wednesday's workday to my brother Jeff, who would be amazed and -- maybe even a little impressed with what his little sister can do! Hell, I dedicate my whole work week last week to Jeff. Lakey and I ripped through that bathroom and the main room, too. 

Many, many trips to the dump to see my pal George at the Big House.

The blog became an excellent distraction to pedestrian work tasks like dump runs. A road construction site is suddenly a photo op!!

   Silly girls.

Lakey and I had many blog-inspired ideas: sponsors (Vitamin Water, Devil Dogs, Icy-Hot, beer companies... Yeah, they'd love us. I've got a skimpy swimsuit bottom and tank undershirt on and Lakey sports boxers and a white tee.... under our coveralls). Then there's the Wish List: First on mine is bionic gloves that clamp down on tools for me, thus saving my prematurely arthritic hands.... We'll add the Wish List later.

Monday, June 11 2007

Photo is of Tuesday's artifacts

From Lakey:

I am back in Maine, having left Jodi to deal with the rest of the abyss. There is some technical malfunction that we are experiencing that is making it impossible for Jodi to post. Some weird google thing.

We made progress. I was going to write "good progress," but thought that sounded redundant. Can you make bad progress? Anyway - Jodi has a lot to tell and I won't spoil it for her.

The room we were working on is gutted. The rats' nest that fell on me was only the beginning. Some photos, and hopefully we can figure this technical junk out.

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Notes from Lakey
Jodi is a freakin slave driver. My goal for the day was to violate as many OSHA regulations as possible, and I think I succeeded. The pit over which I teetered, on the top step (the "This is not a Step," step) of a wee ladder, I have come to call The Abyss. Tools fall into the Abyss, never to be seen again.
I got most of the wall removed and have started on the little stage that held the throne. The wood over the Abyss is rotted, thus quite soft, and I managed to fall halfway in. This gives me first place in the injury-of-the-day competition. Well, I don't think Jodi's actually playing, so its my own little inner competition.
Toward the end of the day, in the debris pile beneath the once-throne, I found a child's sock. Scary. No child, thank heavens, but I found two beaten up pots, a plastic bowl, a toilet brush and some old newspapers. Jodi found a penny from 1901.
Now we are going to go have some dinner.

Back from dinner, Jodi is too tired to post. It was her turn to be smothered in rats nest. Sometimes pictures are all you need:

Monday, June 4, 2007

I love my full-face respirator!!!!

Today was a two-beer day. Two dump runs. The Poughkeepsie dump has one (1) scale, which means: you pull up, wait for the unintelligible prompt to pull forward, then the next unintelligible prompt to "C'mon up," from George. (See belt buckle.) Then you back up to the dumpster, empty the load, and .... drive right back to the above mentioned scale. Repeat unintelligble prompts. Pull up to the big house and meet George in the flesh. He calls me kid, which I love. Kid Jodi. Kid. Kid pays George (well, the city of Poughkeepsie) and she and the truck leave.

(It bears mentioning here that said TRUCK belongs to M. Lake. Name of said truck is La Bomba. La Bomba has, courtesy of M. Lake's BOYFRIEND, an air horn that plays ... well, "La Bamba.")

After the dump, we broke out the reciprocating saws (a.k.a. saws-alls) and proceeded to rip through studs, nails, rotting pipes and not-so-rotting pipes to release the tub (bathtub, that is) from its rotting stage. Now, mind you - we're just two girls. It was a big heavy tub, probably from the 1920s.

We are so damned smart. Really. If it had been guys doing the job, they'd still be down there, standing around discussing it (at least five guys) and be trying to put the door back on its hinges. However, because we are girls, and smarter, it took us maybe half an hour. That's right. Not half the day, half an hour. Whee! It was an amazing performance of ingenuity, brilliance and a wee bit o' brawn.

Next - the toilet, enough said.

Then the floor, and shit howdy we ripped that sucker out in about five minutes. Back slapping, high fives ... oh SHIT - the ceiling! On what does one stand, exactly, to tear out the ceiling when the floor has ceased to exist. The subfloor is rotted, and there is a three (note from Mary - I think it's more like six) foot drop to rubbish and ultimately, dirt? We hope? Okay, so the ceiling. Oh the ceiling. Balancing on hastily arranged loose two-by-sixes, Mary started poking holes with a badass crowbar (favorite new tool for demo), and the ceiling came down quite easily. So did the rats' nest. All over Mary.

(Note from Jodi: Please remember Rat Room, Seattle. Ugh. Now Mary feels my pain, a little.)

Did you know that rats have an appetite for exhaust fan ductwork? Jodi shut off the power to the basement, and we started ripping wires out. When ready to snip the wires to the overhead light and fan, Jodi panicked and shut off power to the entire house (along with the cold water, but that's another story). Wires were safely clipped and the wild guess of what wire went where in the junction box was successful. Phew. Nothing exploded, flooded or caught fire - good day!

Then Mary - hereafter to be referred to as Lakey - went upstairs to take a shower. Remember the cold water thing? Ow! Meanwhile, Jodi was heaving hundreds of pounds of debris into the bed of La Bomba. Rose, the darling eighty year old neighbor from across the street, appeared in her bare feet, asking urgently, "Does the white one come back? It went that way - will it come back?" The White One, also known as Little Fucker, also known as Rumpus was nowhere to be seen. Uh oh. The damned dog came running -- upon the fourth or fifth "RUMPUS!!!" -- covered in green and yellow stains.... Hopefully none of which are poison ivy, which grows rampantly everywhere here, including Jodi and Alicia's yard, porch, etc. FYI: Jodi is shockingly, dreadfully ALLERGIC to poison ivy. (But I'm just SURE the rash I have currently is NOT poison ivy....) So, anyway, Rumpus is back and in trouble.

Beans, franks, brown bread for supper. Life is good.