1923 Mills Avenue

New (not really) Website.

2010-05-17T16:07:00.003-04:00

Hi I updated my other website a good long time ago but never linked to it here. I thought I should do that:

Drew Allan Design

A few updates.

2010-05-17T11:40:00.008-04:00

Here are a few things that have been done around the house in the past year or so but that haven't as yet made their way onto the blog.

Baseboard and trim around all the doors and windows. Finally!

This makes everything feel much tidier and complete. We used 3/4" poplar which feels substantial even with the small trim that we wanted. I like that the base and the trim are the same dimension. It feels to me like a cake decorator came over with a big pastry bag and iced their way along the floor and around the doors. Except in a nice clean machined sort of way. This doesn't really make any sense but that's how it feels to me.

Here is the trim around the widows in our bedroom. The windows are deep set in the stone wall.

After two prior attempts (grey, bright bright green) we found a color that we like for the spiral stairs. Forestwood! Thanks Sherwin Williams.

Also a large and lovely Evan Hecox screen print up there on the outside of the office wall. Thanks Sarah and Sarah's parents and Country Club Gallery!

The breakfast nook region is installed and painted and Junia, Momom and Popop eat their morning meals over here. Banana mush, Kashi CRUNCH and black coffee respectively. The table and chairs came with the kitchen cabinets and we re-covered the chairs with happy oil cloth left over from our happy wedding.

And this is the shower in the master bathroom. Pretty orange glass mosaic tile that Sarah tracked down with a really heavy frameless glass door. It feels funny to take a shower in something so cubic, it feels vaguely roman or like a very fancy and private YMCA. Hard to explain but it's a good feeling.

This is where we keep our shampoo and ivory and bodywash.

Nursery!? Whoa.

2009-02-26T12:41:00.005-05:00

Here are some pictures of the (almost) finished nursery.

Outside that window is the balcony which is lovely. That will get it's own unveiling once it gets pretty outside.

On your way down the stairs.

This is the backside of the wallpaper wall for those of you who remember.

These windows open to the main body of the house.

Just like all the baby books recommend: "place the crib near a potentially perilous drop". I guess I need to put a lock on here.

Ooh..and here is the occupant - Junia Thompson Allan - born February 13th, 2009.

I assume she'll grow into that crib.

Welcome little one.

and naturally Butters likes it too.

and if you don't know, now you know.

2008-10-10T00:52:00.003-04:00

Sarah and I are reproducing.

That's right..

... and oh boy is she cute.

I love her.

Just a refresher.

2008-08-25T22:47:00.003-04:00

Hi. I just noticed that it's been a long time since I showed you the front of the house. So in case you've forgotten here it is.

We planted double knockout roses on the left side, a peony on the right and a weeping cherry in the middle. Those pretty yellow things were there already.

That is all. Thanks.

Yup.

2008-06-03T01:23:00.012-04:00

Look at these pictures and be happy.

Living room!

Living room by night.

Dining room.

Kitchen region.

Small bathroom by the front stairs.

The bedroom.

Master bathroom.

This is the view looking up from the bathtub.

You might want to see what we started with again at this point.

Say hooray. Say it now.

Goodnight.

2008-02-27T07:36:00.001-05:00

Ready for Drywall:

After Drywall:

If you need me I'll be in Vietnam.

The Heat is On.

2007-12-18T21:46:00.000-05:00

The heat is actually finally on. The floor is warm and Butters is a happy kitty. It was a pretty dang complicated assembly process involving some 150 copper solders (no leaks), 75 threaded black pipe connections for gas (many of them manually threaded with my tired arms), many feet of wire and some fancy wiring, 2 thermostats (and 2 more to come), PVC pipes through the roof for the exhaust and a whole lot of figuring.

Here are some of the technical details which you may or may not find interesting. It's a really elegant system. The building is divided into 4 zones each with it's own thermostat, zone valve and series of tubes. If a particular thermostat calls for heat the zone valve controller opens up the valve for that zone which allows water to run through the appropriate tubes, it switches on the secondary pump and tells the boiler to turn on (if it's not already on heating another zone). The boiler has a bunch of sensors and is a pretty sophisticated little unit. So the boiler is now burning gas and heating water in a hurry which is flowing through the floor tubes in the appropriate zone. The water starts out hot and returns cooler having given off some of it's heat to the floor. As the difference between what's coming back and going out gets closer to a programmed differential the boiler modulates it's heating so that it only heats as much as is required to maintain the right temperatures. Then eventually the thermostat says whoa! and the whole system just mellows out for a while, a long while. It can take like 3 hours for the air to drop just 1 degree once the concrete slab is heated up. There's also an outdoor sensor so that the system can predict rising/falling temperatures and disengage/engage early if needed so there's no lag.

Pictures with labels:

The important thing to know is that it keeps my toes warm and it makes butters curl up like a happy cinnamon bun.

Oh boy. Here we go.

2007-10-25T23:52:00.000-04:00

Well it's clearly been far too long and there's a lot to get to because I haven't just been sitting on my hands. I've been using them to build things. However, first things first, please say hello to our new friend.

His name is Butters and obviously he's really cute.

He's the friendliest kitty I've ever known.

Sarah is actually really allergic to cats but how can you resist this? You cant. You simply can't.

Okay, back to building stuff. When last we spoke we had just poured the concrete floor. It was nice but it was pretty cold looking so I added some stain to the sealer to warm it up a bit.

It's hard to see it in pictures but I really like it.

It turned out sort of clay colored and nicely varied. I was scared about that one but I got lucky.

We also built a special wall upstairs. We had to build it as part of the balcony project (which we'll get to later). This is the back of it, no drywall on this side yet.

But just look at this side! Pretty huh? I told you it was special.

This is what you see when you look up at the loft from below. The windows aren't installed yet, just leaning there for effect. They're going to swing out though and trust me, they'll be charming.

We found this really pretty wallpaper in the first book we looked at. It's what grandma would want.

Speaking of walls, this is the dining room all framed out (filled with Sarah's stuff moved here from Philly). There are lots of rooms framed out but we'll get to those in detail some other time.

Here's another view.

Okay one final project to look at right now. Do you remember that way back when we decided to build a balcony and I said that Jonathan was a genius for figuring it out? Well I take it back. It was genius in a way and I'm going to be glad it's there but what a pain in the whole body it's been. Here you see the underside. Brand new joists, sistered 2x10's for strength and a bonus 2x6 for added stiffness since we're going to be putting tile up top. Everything is held together with bolts and glue. Okay, not such an exciting picture.

Topside now. 3/4 plywood with two custom built trenches to handle the rain (only one visible). The whole thing slopes toward the trenches and there are drains on each end which run down and out into a storm drain.

Obviously plywood is whatever the opposite of waterproof is so we need a little something more. This is PVC membrane with a whole complex set of folds to handle the drain. It took me quite a few paper models to figure that one out.

Oh, just for the sake of context, this is the balcony looking out from inside. Obviously the tarp and those old looking boards are just temporary.

Here Butters helps unroll more membrane.

When it was all glued and seemed and sealed (which took forever) we filled it with water for 36 hours to test it. It doesn't look like it here but it's about 6 inches deep at the drains.

Concrete goes down on top of the membrane. Because we're pouring such a thin slab we had to add these magical looking fibers to strengthen it.

Here's my friend and helper Dave mixing the concrete. Dave mixed concrete all day long which is really hard work when it involves carrying 80 pound bags of concrete up the stairs. We mixed and used thirty 80 pound bags which is to say 2400 pounds of concrete before even adding water.

Here's my friend and neighbor and generally very helpful guy Chris with what looks like a pile of pooblets but which is actually properly mixed concrete.

Dave created a special dryish mix so that it wouldn't shrink and crack and weaken. It was stiff enough that Butters could walk on it but if we tried to it would have gotten stuck in the treads of out shoes and ruined our nicely formed trench. It was necessary but it made it hard to work with because it didn't flow at all and it all had to be placed rather carefully. We put metal mesh in too which complicated things still further. Concrete mix aside though, the real point here is that Butters is cute.

Many many hours later Chris smoothes out the final spot with a magnesium float. We were all sore and tired and long since ready to be finished. I ended up with this intense chafing at my knee and ankle from rubbing against wet concrete and sand for so many hours and I figure the Dave and Chris were just as beat down (just as beat up? your choice). Anyway, thanks guys for a little bit of above and beyond.

Ta-da! Okay it doesn't maybe look that exciting but trust me, it is. In seven days we can start tiling. Hooray. Hooray.

Floored again.

2007-07-20T16:53:00.000-04:00

So here it is, our brand new floor!

It's hard in the pictures to see how smooth and finished feeling it is but trust me it's smooth and finished feeling.

It makes me very happy that we're at this stage. It means that the drain lines are finished, the bulk of the plumbing is finished, the bulk of the heating system is finished, the wall locations are all set, the posts are positioned and above all it feels clean clean clean!

It's just regular concrete but it has lots of color variation. I like that.

This is the texture. It's really smooth.

Sarah and I are going to celebrate by taking a few days off at the farm. Yay.

Floored

2007-07-19T21:31:00.000-04:00

Okay so let's recap. We'd just filled the trenches and found ourselves roughly back to square one.

Square one was nice as things had gotten pretty messy in here for a while. Living in the building felt far away and making things clean again was a big help.

There was a lot more work to do though before we could start building walls. In fact the past two weeks have been the busiest two weeks of the whole project so far.

We successfully made a floor

Like the roof, the floor required a layer caking of materials.

Layer one: Vapor Barrier.

Layer two: Insulation. This had to be carefully screwed down to provide a stable substrate for the forthcoming concrete. Dozens of 5/32" concrete drill bits and over four hundred concrete screws were used. A lot of work but worth it because it allowed us to do this:

Yes those are radiant heating tubes, yes our floor will be warm in the winter, yes you should be jealous. It was a lot of figuring but the actual laying of the pipes was easier than I was expecting. It still took two people three days to lay the over 1600 feet of pipe. It sits on 6"x6" welded wire remesh to reinforce the forthcoming concrete and to give us something to ziptie the tubes to.

The tubes all come together temporarily at this here manifold. Chris had lots of plumbing parts in his basement and he helped me figure out how to pressurize the pipes.

We pumped in 80 psi of air and this handy gauge would tell us if it lost pressure, which would mean that there was a leak somewhere. We left the system inflated throughout the forthcoming concrete pour to let us know if something went horribly wrong. The tubes are pretty tough but there would also be a lot of people walking around on them and some pretty heavy stuff being dragged across them. Scary.

Let's analyze the making of a heated concrete floor for a sec.

As you can see there's a lot to figure out. My brain was tired from thinking, my eyes were tired from google/book research and my body was tired from working long days to get us ready for the forthcoming concrete.

This is the concrete pouring process:

The cute children (Elijah, Reuben and Kalilah) watch the cement truck (from Anchor Concrete) as it dumps the concrete into the..

.. concrete pump (Bob's Concrete Pumping) which forces it into the..

..hoses which were very heavy and required two people to move (sometimes I was one of the people (Thanks Karen for letting me use your green authentic British wellies)).

The concrete was moved around and brought up to the approximate level by us (Drew, Chris and Jonathan).

And then these guys took over. Sam (big guy in front) has a Harley and likes to talk about it. He's very nice. He leveled the edges. Mike (behind with the ever present cigarette) is a quiet genius who can make concrete do whatever he wants it to. He did everything else.

The three full trucks of concrete (27 cubic yards, 49.6 metric tons) was all laid in four hours and Mike spent the next six hours troweling, waiting, troweling, waiting, etc. until he turned the oatmeal like mess into a hard and lovely smooth finish. The process still seems like magic to me and I'm very glad Mike was there to make it happen. I'll post the finished results tomorrow.

Stay tuned.

No more trenches dirty looks.

2007-07-03T00:35:00.000-04:00

Okay everybody come on back with me to the trenches.

After we put those drain pipes in we covered them up with dirt and put our potable water pipes down. They are made out of PEX (cross-linked-polyethylene) AKA "poor man's copper" (which also happens to be better than copper in almost every way). Blue is for cold and red is for hot.

Water to the bathroom.

Then those pipes got covered with gravel.

Then we cut some footers for the loft and for the forthcoming decorative i-beam.

Here's a nice summary picture of the PEX, some gravel and some footers.

We filled it all with concrete which brings us back to...

... SQAUARE ONE!!! *

* with drains, plumbing and footers

Remember the Trenches.

2007-06-18T20:46:00.000-04:00

'Membo those trenches we cut in the concrete?

Well this is what we put in them:

This is the floor drain in the laundry room.

A miscellaneous junction.

This is the guest bathroom.

These new pipes exit the building thisaway...

... and connect to those old clay pipes we know so well.

Down and out

2007-06-13T22:26:00.000-04:00

Our pipes have been around since 1934 and are made of clay. Before we start flushing "stuff" down there we thought it might be a good idea to see that everything looks like it should.

We hired a guy with a fancy camera on a long tube to take a look. This is what he saw. The video's admittedly a bit boring so I added music.

Lots is happening.

2007-05-21T21:36:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the weeks between posts. Oddly enough it's not for a lack of things getting done. I'm going to post the most recent developments over the next few days so get ready for some feverish updates.

Here's the first one:

We've been painting!

3/4 of a mile of trying to maintain a perfectly straight edge whilst 11 feet in the air atop a rolling scaffold. A challenge? Yes but Drew and Drew were ready to meet that challange. (Just to clarify: Drew is me and Drew is a friend of mine who shares my name and has been working with me)

Here are the results:

If you think back to the roof construction you'll remember that we insulated on the outside of the original structure which means that we can leave these lovely beams exposed.

This will be what we'll look at as we lie down on our green 9 foot long couch. (Couch post to follow at a later date)

The criss cross support member things look like fancy stitches to me. I like fancy stitches.

The original roof underside was built from reused wood in 1934. It's covered with color and history which I wanted to highlight. I polyurethaned it to bring out the details. The beams were then each carefully hand painted off white to reflect the light back down to where we can use it.

It all makes me very happy!

What do you do in your living room?

2007-04-09T20:56:00.000-04:00

Here's what we do...

..roadwork.

With big scary saws no less. We're cutting the slab so we can run drains to the kitchen and bathrooms.

But don't worry, our living room is a place for fun and games too.

Yeah!

The last one crushed a coke can.

Before:

After:

Tee hee, that's just good old fashioned kid-fun buxcept with massive concrete blocks.

Big Old News

2007-03-13T00:15:00.000-04:00

This happened a little while ago but I forgot to tell people. Sorry.

The fancy new home-welded front windows are in.

As you can see, they open up in a charming manner.

It's a bit hard to appreciate their charm though as the inside of the building appears to be a dark hole. Therefore I'm including this artist's rendering of our finished home...

... complete with Bambi and Thumper in every room.

They're cute.

Unroll the bluprints.

2007-02-25T01:06:00.000-05:00

Things have been cold and icy here of late so I've been working on the computer putting together permit applications. Here are some pretty pictures to look at.

All elevations.

All elevations with invisible outside walls.

Detailed floorplan not including lofts.

All comments welcome. Thank you.

Remember this?

2007-01-18T11:48:00.000-05:00

We just got this beautiful record of the events that transpired on September 3rd, 2006 AKA Marriage Day!

Bruce James is to thank for both the filming and the music. It's all perfect!

Great Scott!!

2007-01-04T23:10:00.000-05:00

I took my sandblasted frames...

...over the bridge to Old Kentuck...

...where this man, Leonard, covered them with charged paint powder and baked them...

...I brought them back over to the Buckeye State...

...laid them on the floor to examine them all...

...picked up the glass...

...(note: We decided to go with single panes rather than insulated units. Our efficiency will come from high quality interior storm windows)...

...knocked out the old rusty, broken, 1934 frames...

...and put it all together with help from Chris.

High fives please.

Bosnia in the corner.

2006-12-20T22:24:00.000-05:00

THE BATHROOM HAS BEEN DEMOLISHED! GRRRR. I'M A DEMOLISHER!!! GRRRR. AND SO IS MY FRIEND JEFF!!! GRRRR FOR HIM TOO. GRRRRS ALL AROUND FROM THE DEMOLISHERS!!!

RUBBLE!!!

Look! Look!

2006-12-14T09:05:00.000-05:00

All of these windows have been welded.

All of these windows have been sandblasted.

All of these windows have just been dropped off to be powder coated.

All of the glass for these windows has been ordered.

There's a surprisingly good french café here. I'm going to eat a croissant now.

Mmmm.

The Nordic Welder...

2006-11-22T22:40:00.000-05:00

... would like to wish you all a happy (American) thanksgiving.

A heated building sadly remains something of a fever dream but I know how to stay toasty: a funny woolen tête cozy.

Cool it down.

2006-11-16T22:04:00.000-05:00

The window making is moving along nicely but doesn't provide a whole lot of fodder for blog updates so instead why don't you say hello to Miss Linda Lee.

She's got the power to break into the building and make me rescue her from the rafters twice in one day.

Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Meow. Help.

She looks angry but she's not angry she just doesn't like the flash. Also, she's really cute.

Now go fight with the rest of the alley kittens. No food here little missy.
I love her.

Happy birthday to me!

2006-11-03T18:51:00.000-05:00

It's my birthday tomorrow and look what I gave myself:

One roof all shingled right up to the ridge.

"Thanks Drew!"

"Your welcome. It wasn't easy considering all the rain we got this month but I'm glad I got it done before the big day. I also got you this...

...one window that opens and closes just like a real window, and there are several more just like it."

"Wow, thanks Drew. How does it work?"

"Well you see it's hinged like this:"

"I see. I like it, it's nicely primitive."

"Yeah, it's both chunky and beefy which are qualities I look for in a hinge."

"Me too. How did you know?"

"Just a lucky guess. Happy Birthday Drew!"

"Thanks Drew."

It's like an umbrella for the house except made out of rigid polyiso insulation, plywood, 2x4's, tar paper and shingles.

2006-10-10T19:47:00.001-04:00

It's been a long time since I've updated this, but then it's taken a long time to do the roof.

This is the process:

First comes the vapor barrier to keep the inside humidity from condensing inside the roof.

Then come the insulation panels...

...carefully arranged in two layers with the seams staggered.

This is the "strapping". 2x4's screwed right through all of the insulation to the original rafters below. We used 10 inch screws to get through it all.

This is what a 10 inch screw looks like (next to my shoe for some sort of reference point).

This is what a 10 inch screw looks like as it's being driven into the joists. Often we would miss the joist and it would be hard afterwards to figure out which of the screws had missed so we had to have somebody down below watching. The watcher would yell up if it was good or bad. We did this 500 times over about 5 days.

Then comes the new plywood sheathing. The space between the insulation and the plywood is for ventilation. That way if any moisture gets in to the roof the air and sun should dry it out before any mold develops.

Chris unrolls the tarpaper and Jonathan nails it in. Then I follow and nail a bunch more.

This is what it looks like when the whole thing is done.

All that's left to do is to put on the shingles.

So there you have it, that's how you put a brand new insulated roof on top of an old uninsulated roof. We did it that way so that we can keep the original rafters exposed inside. Terrific!!

Roof repair gone overboard.

2006-09-24T01:10:00.000-04:00

Well the plan was to build up the roof to allow for insulation. That meant removing some of the shingles and replacing some of the rotten wood underneath and then affixing the insulation pannels and re-shingling. Simple enough. But as we got started and as we removed the shingles and wood we ended up with a big hole in the roof.

Conveniently that day I happened to be working with my friend Jonathan who, as I discovered, is a genius.

The big hole inspired the genius Jonathan to formulate a genius plan. This is how the hole appeared to him:

TA DA!!! A BALCONY!!!!!! A balcony will be created 192 square feet large while sacrificing none of the usable interior space (it all would have been storage). Brilliant indeed.

There's just one problem, the ceiling is too low to get onto the balcony without hitting your head. A simple plan was devised. RAISE THE ROOF!

We altered the angle of the roof on the balcony side to allow for a comfortable access.

It used to follow the angle of the truss but we raised it about 18 inches.

This is how we supported it on the right side.

All in all I think this is pretty darn exciting. Yay!!

I also want to thank my friend and neighbor Chris Reiff who climbed right up on the roof with us to help out.

Chris is also something of a genius. He designs toys and runs a website that pieces together Start Wars parts from all of the odd detritus that happened to be lying around Lukasfilm in the 70's.

Thanks Chris and Jonathan!

Holy Matrimony!

2006-09-14T23:12:00.000-04:00

I'm sorry I haven't been posting for the past couple of weeks.

Here's where I've been:

That's right I'm now a husband and Sarah is now an Allan!

And...let's dance.

Next week I'm putting a new roof on the "homestead". That should be some excitement for the all you This Old House types. Incidentally, last minute wedding preparations included running electricity to the barn. I didn't have time to write my own vows because I was busy running conduit.

FW: This is so cute!! :)

2006-08-26T11:27:00.000-04:00

I just noticed that my little truck is never cuter than when it's loaded all up with stuff.

It's basically the truck equivalent of the classic "Baby in a too big baseball cap":

So be sure to e-mail that truck photo to all of your colleagues with an appropriate subject line about cuteness.

The Industrial Revolution Hits 1923 Mills

2006-08-19T14:57:00.000-04:00

Yup, still makin' windows.

We'd like to make an announcement.

2006-08-07T20:07:00.000-04:00

Here's what happened:

We got ourselves the right equipment.

Then we got some materials.

Then we practiced a lot...

...because practice makes half-decent.

And now Sarah and I couldn't be more excited to announce the arrival of our first window!

Welcome to the world little window

1923 Mills Avenue: A History

2006-08-02T13:28:00.000-04:00

As you can see 1923 Mills Avenue was built for Art Blum in 1934 but what did Art Blum do? What was the original purpose of this building?

One nicely romantic rumor told to me by some Norwood locals is that it had originally been a candy factory. A candy factory! How charming is that? Charming indeed but not the least bit true.

Somehow I found this envelope amid the rubble. Two truckloads of old paper, almost all of it mouse eaten and flooded but somehow this envelope survived. As you can see, 1923 Mills Avenue was a garage from the beginning and Art Blum presumably a mechanic.

Let's take a look at what the 1934 model year looked like:

Pretty damn classy.

I like to think of men pulling their Packards and Deusenbergs in and Mr. Blum welcoming them and opening up the hoods to take a look, gloves hanging out the back pocket of his coveralls. The coal furnace kept things comfortable in the winter but in the summer months the men and their cars would have to stick around for a while because you just can't hurry in that kind of heat. They'd appreciate the effort though and would stop by the next day with a pie or a batch of cookies from the wife.

"Thanks Art."

Contact customer service for a stock list.

2006-07-28T00:57:00.000-04:00

First we tried an abandoned garage then it was a demolition site but in our continuing search for a successful business model we have evolved once again.

Welcome to our warehouse!

Insulation, lumber, shingles, gutters, steel and powertools. We have the best deals in town.

Window Shopping

2006-07-26T01:09:00.000-04:00

I just ordered the steel bars that will be welded together to become the new windows. The current thinking is that they'll look like this:

The rightmost parts of each section (with the half-dividers) are hinged to open in. I like the half-dividers I think they're a nice reference to the original factory stylings without being too reverential. That said I've gone though several window designs already so we'll see what we wind up with.

Rafters After

2006-07-26T00:54:00.000-04:00

Please enjoy with me the newly discovered "After Rafter". As you can see the "Before Rafter" is covered in nasty powdery paint surely as bad for the lungs and brain as it is for the soul. But after much sore-armed-wet-work with a pressure washer the beautiful old-school heart pine rafters are revealed. Enjoy them now though because soon they will once again be covered with white latex history hider. I know it's tragic but it needs to be done.

Before

After

This is the pattern that was created on the floor as the water droplets fell from the rafters onto the stripped paint particles. I think it's pretty.

A new aesthetic.

2006-07-15T21:59:00.000-04:00

I'm sorry I've been so slow to update. Dumpster day was incredible. 12 generous souls loaded up a 30 yard dumpster before lunchtime. 2 more generous souls barbecued up a feast for the hungry dumpster savages and a genuinely good time was had by all. Just so you know 30 cubic yards is an absolutely obscene amount of dirty mess. Thank you participants and long distance well-wishers alike.

Before and after pictures will show up soon.

This week I've been stripping paint from the rafters with a pressure washer and a tall ladder. I come home every night exhausted, soaking wet and covered in paint flecks. It's disgusting but it led me to discover my new aesthetic: driving my pickup truck shirtless but wearing a seatbelt. It's redneck and sensible. The new Drew is both redneck and sensible.

DUMPSTER DAY!

2006-07-05T11:18:00.000-04:00

Let's take a look upstairs.

2006-07-04T18:10:00.000-04:00

Well I just got back from a short Philly visit and I realized that it hasn't been very long since I lived a whole different life up there. I've been so focused on what's going on down here in Cincinnati that it felt far away but after 3 days with Sarah it was like I never left. I came back here and it was all Talking Heads:

"This is not my beautiful house. This is not by beautiful truck."

Very strange but also fun and exciting all over again.

Okay, let's see, where were we? Ah yes, I'd been working upstairs and I was going to show y'all the results. Let's take a look.

This is what it looked like when we started:

Half way through things weren't looking too good:

But look at it now!

Oh man would you just take a look at that potential all exposed and ready for what's next! Hooray. That's what happens when you shovel out all the dead raccoons.

Just for fun why don't you take a gander at the view from there. That's looking down on the living area below.

The building and I are one.

2006-06-24T11:08:00.000-04:00

Come on inside, let me show you around.

2006-06-20T19:43:00.000-04:00

This is what Sarah and I saw after we signed the agreement of sale and were given keys. Welcome Home!

Oh yeah, and 3 feet of water in the cellar.

Hmmm, looks like a lot of work, I think I'd better get me a truck.

Done!

This is it.

2006-06-17T18:20:00.000-04:00

1923 Mills Avenue, Norwood, Ohio.

Pretty right? Yeah, until you see the inside.