Feeling New at 52

Happy Birthday Peter! Today’s my birthday, I’m 52 and for reasons that I think I know, I feel good.
I am feeling a real peacefulness now and it’s because I’m doing what I want to be doing and I am right where I want to be. I am feeling content and thankful for my situation.
Some of my family is doing well and some are struggling. I hope those who are struggling are able to find a way that makes it better.
There’s a special feeling that I get each time we accomplish something here in Maine. Early last week we had our first good rain because prior to that it had been snow. Well that rain pointed us to a leak we had in the roof and that leak happened to be directly above our heads in our bedroom. It was a bit depressing to be honest because we thought the bedroom and my office were the two rooms in the house that were “good enough” to move into without much work (except major cleaning) so when this leak started it was a bummer. It wasn’t a major leak but not certainly one you could sleep through unless you like Chinese water torture. It had only managed to drip on one pillow by the time we noticed it. Fortunately the next day was sunny so I went to Western Maine Supply (my life-line) and purchased a gallon of roof patch tar. I climbed up on the roof, straddled the ridge, made it to the front chimney which is where the leak appeared to be coming from and noticed plenty of gaps for water between the chimney, flashing, and roof shingles. So for the next hour or so I used the whole gallon around the two chimneys we have. Today it was raining all day and I’m happy to announce No Leaks! That’s the special feeling I’m talking about.
Last Thursday Amber, Tommie and Maya came for a two night visit. They were our very first sleep over guests but the catch was they had to bring their own beds. It worked out well except I think it took Tommie some getting used to the lack of a bathroom door on the first floor and the lack of a complete floor on the second floor bathroom. At the moment if you’re sitting on the toilet you can look to your left under the tub and see down to the first floor which of course means if you’re on the first floor you can look up to the toilet. So yes, total bathroom privacy is still an issue here but we’ll fix that.
Amber and Tommie helped Lauren paint the kitchen while they were here and though it’s not quite done it is looking really good. Thanks for your help.
While they were painting I went out to the yard and started cutting down a few trees with my new Husqvarna Chain Saw that I bought at Lowell’s Saw Shop in Bethel. I don’t have many trees on the property but we wanted to clear out around the edge of the lot where the stone wall runs so we could get some more sunlight and have the stone wall stand out better. It felt good to cut down the trees and gather up the brush. I love trees but we happen to be surrounded by them. Last night Lauren and I went to Sud’s Pub and had a Baked Haddock dinner for our birthdays and then Lisa the bartender brought us out a nice piece of chocolate cake with a candle on it. 52 is good.

The First Meal

Today is our official 1 month celebration of living in this house and we have lots that we’ve accomplished. One big accomplishment was having our first dinner guests for a sit down meal. My sister Anna, Doug, and their daughters Helen and Ella came for a visit last Saturday and were our very first dinner guests. This is yet another example of how Desire Moves because Lauren had a strong vision of having family over for some homemade beef stew served in blue bowls and on red plates around a big table in the dining room here in Maine and… it happened! Lauren bought the bowls and plates at Crate and Barrel in California with a gift certificate that some of her friends had given her from work as a going away gift. Doug helped me bring in the dining room table from the barn to set it up and minutes later we were having our first meal. The beef stew was delicious as Lauren had the beef slow cooking in a Crock Pot from the night before and pre-roasted the vegetables before adding them in near the time of eating for a great texture and taste. Served with hot bread, butter and beer it was Delishio! Nice job Lauren.

We have been doing so many little projects that I’m starting to lose track of what was done. We’ve cut doors to make them fit better, primed and painted the kitchen ceiling, painted the bathroom floor, installed two new sets of accent lighting in the kitchen which required installing junction boxes and we put in a new countertop in one section of the kitchen to make it clean and workable. For the counter we used ¼ inch birch plywood and then put three coats of Good Stuff on it which makes it a food safe surface. Good Stuff is more like a paste then a poly-urethane so you apply it with a rag versus a brush. To be honest, I don’t know how this can be food safe because you need to have ventilation when you apply it, you’re supposed to avoid eye and skin contact and it ate through the fingertips of the latex glove I had on. The pictures above show how the kitchen looked when we bought the place and then how it looks now. We’re calling this temporary because we have plans (in our mind) to really re-do it nicely when we have the money (in our pocket).

I also started to cut some of the limbs on the pine trees in our yard which I’ll be cutting down to allow for more sunlight and it will also make the yard look bigger and our stone wall will be more noticeable. There’s also a fair amount of bamboo I have to get rid of. It’s not the nice tall bamboo that Panda Bears eat. It’s about 4 to 5 feet high and from everything we can tell and from everyone we’ve talked to this could be a real challenge.

Finally I need to talk about “noises in the night.” When we moved into the place we replaced and installed a bunch of new smoke alarms. To be exact five new smoke alarms and one carbon-monoxide alarm and they are all battery operated. About a week ago at 3:05 AM one of them went off. It only beeped once but it was loud and one beep was all I needed to bolt out of bed to see if the place is on fire. I couldn’t smell smoke or see flames upstairs so I ran down stairs and checked out all the rooms and the basement. Nothing, no smoke, no flames, just one loud beep. I chalked it up to weird smoke alarm behavior and eventually went back to sleep.

Three nights ago at 5:15 AM Lauren and I both woke up to this sort of high pitched squeaking sound. I jumped out of bed to try to figure it out. What was it and where is it coming from? At first it sounded to me like a bird had somehow gotten into the house and was now flying around frantically trying to get out. But as I searched around the sound had stopped and I was stumped. So I went to the bathroom, because I usually do that anyway once a night and heard the noise nearby again. With my flashlight in hand I aimed it at the noise just in time to see the tail end of a mouse scuttle under some boards in the floor. I told Lauren what our noise was and she laughed saying something like “Oh brother…. a raccoon, mud, and now a mouse. So first thing in the morning I went to Western Maine Supply and came back with eight mouse traps. I smeared peanut butter on all of them and set three in the basement, three near the area where I saw the mouse and two in the ell to the barn. I felt confident I would have one by the next morning but when I woke and checked all the traps, nothing. Mmmm?

Oh well… we went to Portland today and had lunch with Amber and Tommie and to give Amber “The Pickle” which is the green van we have borrowed from Lauren’s parents for the last two months to take back to Gloucester. Of course it was nice to see them…because it always is. We ate at Gilbert’s Chowder House having some seafood and chowder. Speaking only for myself I’ll give it 3.5 out of 5 Lobster Claws…Sorry Gilbert….the chowder was too cool to begin with and the clam cakes were…eh…okay but not great. Your waitress was very nice though.
We made it back home about 5:30 tonight and lo and behold… I got one. Sorry Mr. Mouse but the trap I had set pretty close to where I saw him was too much temptation. It must have snapped perfectly and then it fell eight feet down hitting the bathroom floor landing just one foot away from the toilet. Can you imagine….? Oh well, never mind. Here’s to one month of living in Bethel and more adventures! Thanks for checking in.

I’m not sure Where to Begin?

I’m pretty sure this is what Lauren and I say on a daily basis since we’ve moved into our home. So allow me to randomly blab on my blog. Today we bought a 2002 Ford Explorer from Bob Everett at Bethel Auto Sales which was an enjoyable experience. I even enjoyed registering the car. Why? Because it was so easy. We went to the Town Hall, walked up to the counter, gave the woman our paperwork and a check for $157.98 and walked out seven minutes later with our registration and two license plates to put on the car. No line of people, no “take a number” machine, no wait. That is the way life should be…and is.
So we’re coming up on our full third week of living here and Lauren says that she has two nemesis; MUD and a certain raccoon. Lauren has been mopping and cleaning up layers of dirt, mud and whoseknowswhat from the floors and walls of the house. What makes it more challenging is that Mud-Season has officially begun and anyone who steps from our muddy driveway into the house has the ability to ruin all of Lauren’s hard labor. If we could Lauren would pave the driveway tomorrow with asphalt. This is coming from a girl who would always give her dad a hard time anytime he seriously considered paving his gravel driveway in Massachusetts. During Mud Season heavy trucks weighing over 26,000 pounds (I think) cannot drive over certain secondary road which is what the orange sign in the picture represents. That sign was posted on March 4th and stays in effect until May 15th so that basically means we have up to 2 and 1/2 months of mud season. I built a little pre-step from the driveway to our porch that hopefully will help, then we have two mats to wipe your feet before you even enter the door, then we have a 4 foot by 6 foot mega-mat just inside the door where everyone WILL take off their shoes and walk around the house in socks until the mud is gone or we get the driveway paved.
Now the Raccoon is the critter that has been crawling all over our stuff in the barn because it is not secure from the outside. It would take me a couple of days to secure the barn because there are so many open access points but we have other things in the house that need more attention. We didn’t have any food in the boxes in the barn but the raccoon thought that Teabags, Metamucil and Hungarian Paprika might make a meal so it ripped into those boxes and now has no problems with constipation.
Let me end by saying that we have couches in the living room, a working TV with about 20 stations, heat and hot water, beer in the “Frigidaire” and unity in the community. Thanks for checking in.

I SPENT THE DAY ON THE ISLAND

The nice thing about owning a home that has soooo many projects to work on is that when I wake up in the morning I’m not exactly 100% sure of which one I will tackle and what I will accomplish. Well today I spent most of the day on the island. In our kitchen we “had” an island that was, shall we say “custom-built” and which was a little oversized given the space of the kitchen. Lauren said it was like having a Mini-Cooper parked in your kitchen and I have to agree with her. So with hammer and reciprocating saw in hand and safety goggles for my eyes I began to demolish the sucker. It was satisfying de-construction and I’ll reuse the butcher block top for a future work bench and some of the plywood to patch up part of the barn. The rest of it made it to the transfer station before it closed today but not before I had a tasty pork burrito at Hot Taco topped with a little Hula Girl Chipotle Habanero Sauce…mmmm...baby!

It Feels like Home

We did it! We moved into our house a week ago today and have had seven days of house projects and seven nights of warm comfortable sleep. Our biggest surprise and delight is just how warm this house is. We never turn the thermostats higher than 68 degrees and it always seems to be warm. In fact I think I probably made a $5,000 mistake by putting baseboard heat on the second floor because it has never come on until we finally forced it to come on last night for the first time. We’ll set the thermostat to 62 degrees at night on the first floor and the second floor seems to stay at 67 degrees with the rise of the heat. Oh well another lesson learned.
It was a busy week and although I can’t show you anything as impressive as a new heating system we did accomplish a lot of little things and that is what we “need” to do because this house has a thousand little things that need to be done. First we got our new FRIGIDAIRE Refrigerator delivered to the house. It has an EnergyStar approval and averages only $41 an year in cost, yay…go green! Because we bought it at Agren Appliance in South Paris, Maine we got a free DVD player and they’re taking care of the $100 rebate we receive. I have to side step here for one moment to acknowledge my memory of Annie Van Ness, Lauren’s Grandmother who always called any refrigerator, no matter what make, “the Frigidaire.”
Another important item we had installed was the Cable Internet and TV Service from Time Warner Cable because….well like everyone else in the US that’s the only choice we had. Oh yeah, I could get Satellite or I could string together some coffee cans and stick an aluminum pie plate on my roof. Whatever happened to free TV? Yes we have “choice”; Pay or… stay in the Dark Ages. I apologize, I digressed.
Let’s see, we got our bedroom set up and we have my office space functional. We found the curtains we were looking for so now we have curtains in the bedroom instead of a bedspread hanging over them. I replaced some old broken floor boards in the first floor bathroom and enclosed one of the two doors in it so we had sensible place to put “The Frigidaire” (yes, we put it on the other side of the bathroom). I replaced some of the old smoke alarms with new ones and installed an extra one. I insulated many of the gaps and cracks in the basement foundation with fiberglass insulation and GREAT STUFF Expanding Foam Insulation. When you can see daylight between some of the granite rocks you know you need to fill it. I removed the old stovetop and oven and will haul that to the dump later today.
Lauren is a cleaning and painting machine. There are multiple layers of dirt, grease, crud, and grime on every surface area in the house and armed with TSP and DAWN Liquid Detergent she is cleaning, scrubbing, re-cleaning and then painting. Until we can get to the point where we can actually remodel the kitchen and bath we’re just trying to get it to “clean and bearable”. She’s doing a great job. Lauren also seems to like going to the hardware store as much as I do. That’s a picture of her in front of Western Maine Supply taken yesterday just as the snow started to come in. I think she likes some of the recognition she gets from the guys coming into the store. Hey, if it puts a smile on her face…it’s okay.
It wasn’t all work and no play last week. Lauren had three of her longtime friends, Mary, Mona, and Cindy come up for a visit from Gloucester on Tuesday. I got to hang out with them that night where we had a nice supper and then went to Sud’s Pub for a drink and where Scott the bartender commented on my “Harem”. After that it was over to the Funky Red Barn where we played a game of pool and there were only two other guys there but Mary knew them because they were from Gloucester too. It’s a small world.
On Friday we went out to dinner with Susie and Gary who we had rented an apartment from in their house for the month we were here while waiting for our heat to be installed. We stayed a little more than a month so instead of charging us they said “take us out for dinner and we’ll call it even”. So we went to the Jolly Drayman at the Briar Lea Inn which is an English style Pub and had a wonderful dinner and wonderful time. Gary actually bought the Briar Lea years ago when it was just an old farmhouse and turned it into an Inn by installing ten bathrooms and a ton of other work so we now know a lot about the history and evolution of the place.
Well it’s Sunday and I’ve got work to do. I have to go to the dump for starters. The other picture above is the scene from our bedroom window this morning. Thanks for checking in and hope you are all well! Peter

You Can’t Beat the Heat

Today was a momentous occasion. It is the day we finally got heat and running water in our house. Check out the photo of our new heating system. It’s a tank less NTI gas burner heat and hot water system that is barely bigger than a bread box. Had I not seen one live and in action I would not believe something this small could provide all our heat for 2 floors AND our basement AND all our hot water needs AND another zone all ready for when we expand to make more living space in the back of the house. I want to thank Roger and the crew at Community Energy who did the work; John, Gary, Dennis, Mike and Keith and any others who I missed. This system had the house temperature from below freezing to 65 degrees within a couple of hours. Lauren got right to work with the hot water mopping up the layers of dirt, dust, and grime that had managed to accumulate over the past year or so while I started to tighten up the place with more insulation in needed spots and trimming doors so they could actually close. Our plan is to clean up and prepare a little more tomorrow and then move in lock, stock, and barrel on Sunday. Don’t look for our house in Better Homes and Gardens yet. We’ll be living with broken plaster and half built walls for awhile taking on as many projects as we can at a time. But that’s okay because this is what we chose to do and I’m loving every time I swing the hammer.

Progress Report from Bethel

It’s been three weeks since we rolled in to Bethel and things are progressing fairly well. Community Energy was working every day last week on installing our new propane gas furnace and hot water system. It’s a big job because they’re removing the defunct oil burner and tank from the wet and damp basement and installing a new gas burner on the first floor. Also they’re installing new baseboard radiator on the second floor where the only heat previous to this was an 8” x 10” hole cut in the floor to the let the heat rise from the first floor. We’re not going to tough it out like all the families who lived there before us did, after 200 years we’re modernizing it. I figured the two most important things are to be warm and dry. I’m hoping by the end of next week the system will be ready to fire up.
Last week we took advantage of one of the biggest perks around here which is a free day of skiing at Sunday River. The deal is if you are a resident of the area you can get a free lift ticket, free ski rentals and a free lesson so Lauren and I headed up the mountain and Don (also known as the preacher) gave us some lessons. After a couple of hours he cut us loose and I wiped out twice on my own. That’s one way of learning. Later that afternoon we went down to the Matterhorn Restaurant and had pizza and beer. I had anchovy pizza which I love but can’t order too often if you’re sharing one. Thankfully these were personal size pizzas.
Amber, Tommie, and Maya came up this weekend to see the house for the first time. I know they think we’re a bit crazy and seeing the challenge ahead of us will help sustain that thought. We took them around town and stopped at the “Transfer Station” to dispose of some construction material and trash. Nothing but the best for my kids. Then we took the Mountain Explorer up to Sunday River to show them the ski resort and had a late lunch at the Phoenix House and Well Restaurant http://www.phoenixhouseandwell.com/ which overlooks the mountain. Today we took a ride up to Screw Auger Falls in Grafton Notch State Park. Needless to say the Falls were frozen over but there were a few open holes here and there where you could see the water flowing through (See the picture above) http://www.maine.gov/doc/nrimc/mgs/explore/surficial/sites/grafton.htm . On the way back we stopped and had some BBQ smoked Pulled Pork and Beef Brisket from BBQ Bob’s “Real Pit” BBQ http://www.therealbbqbob.com/ which was wicked good. He smokes the meat over low heat for up to 16 hours. Signing off from Bethel in the words of good old Walter Cronkite “And that’s the way it is.”