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Repointing The Brick

July 9, 2008

This is a project that finally feels really accomplishing. Not that we technically lifted much of a finger to do it. But it’s definitely a bigger house improvement project – getting the foundation’s brick repointed!

Two houses over from us a house had sat empty ever since we bought our house. It was a cute enough bungalow…granite foundation, several built-ins (kitchen, dining room, and living room), a number of fire places, and even some original light fixtures! Though Patrick and I have been able to see past the neglect we realized it was still a house in need of some TLC. Especially the granite foundation was looking a bit sad where blocks looked very loose. Finally after all this time of sitting there a “For Sale” sign appeared. It sat on the market for months, and just before we went out of town someone bought it. When we returned from vacation we were thrilled to see they had worked on the granite mortar – and it looked great! The workers also continued with the brick foundation on the back of the house, so one day I decided to walk over there and inquire who had done it. We have long realized that our brick foundation was in need of some new mortar as well, so we went ahead and got a quote.

We had previously researched about repointing bricks. Unfortunately the results weren’t so fun. Basically from what I’ve read it comes down to this: These older houses were built with a softer mortar. Shortly after the bungalow timeframe harder mortar mixes were introduced. All this eventually means that using the harder mortar can damage the old bricks. So what does this mean? “We need to get our mortar analyzed for some $500?! And that doesn’t even include the labor or figuring out how to get the materials for the analyzed results?!” I’m all for trying to do things the right way and respecting historic aspects, but we had to draw the line somewhere. Some of the bricks already had new mortar slapped on, so was this such a bad decision anyway? I’m trying to make myself feel better here – I hope the old-brick-and-mortar gods forgive me one day.

So over the last few days we’ve had Victor and his crew work on repointing our bricks. Since the old crumbling mortar (can you even consider it crumbling anymore when it’s really just turned into sand?) was a reddish color we opted to die our mortar with the “Terra Cotta” liquid cement color. On most of the house they simply scraped out the loose mortar and replaced it with the new one. However in two locations the condition was so bad (they were able to pick out the bricks by hand!!!) that they rebuilt the entire section. We think they did a great job and are so excited how much better our foundation looks!! (Now we just need to get rid of that god-awful pink color!)

Re-pointing brick before

Before

Re-pointing brick after

After

Re-pointing brick before

Before

Re-pointing brick after

After

Re-pointing brick before

Before

Re-pointing brick after

After

This was one of the walls they entirely rebuilt. Imagine how scared we were when they just picked out bricks near the supporting corner by hand!

Re-pointing brick before

Before

Re-pointing brick

Patrick going “”Can you believe that”?!”

Re-pointing brick

In the process

Re-pointing brick after

After

Yay for another completed project! :)

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What Slackers

July 2, 2008

Wow, what slackers. I know we said that in the last post, but I think we can say it again. Last time my parents had been in town so we didn’t get too much accomplished. This time we were on vacation, followed by being so busy with work that we found ourselves slaving away until 11pm every night to catch up, followed by Patrick coming down with an unpleasant fever. Now we finally feel like we’re starting to catch up with life…work is getting back to normal, Patrick is feeling fine, and we’re starting to get our yard under control again (you know how those weeds grow when you’re gone for a little while!).

So even though we’ve been doing a little house work here and a little yard work there I’ll post about that later. In the meanwhile I’ll share some more non-house related things, like happenings in the neighborhood.

As spring/summer was coming, the trees were filling in with leaves, and the birds were busy making nests. While checking the mail one morning I was upset to see one bird’s hard work hadn’t paid off. The nest had fallen on our path and the blue eggs were lying smashed next to it. :(

Bird nest

Bird nest

In the meanwhile at a neighborhood association meeting someone asked “What’s going on with all the dead chickens in the road?” – Patrick and I, like much of the remainder of the room, burst out in a puzzled laughter. What on earth were they talking about?? Someone else chimed in and said they’d seen them at various intersections as well.

A couple of days later we drove down one of the nearby streets and saw something laying in the middle of the road. What do you know, it was a dead chicken!! Of course there has been much speculation as to the reasoning of this, the main one being that it’s some sort of voodoo related thing. I believe someone mentioned that it may be a type of initiation ceremony, or someone doing a protective “spell” on the neighborhood or something. If anyone knows about these types of things, please let us know what else it may mean!

Voodoo Chicken

Voodoo Chicken

Otherwise we’ve been very busy with neighborhood related work. One of the recent projects was a neighborhood BBQ…an “excuse” for neighbors to come out, meet new neighbors, chat with acquainted neighbors, and an opportunity to get to know their local police officers and firefighters. The firefighters brought out the truck for kids to play with, the police brought out barricades to block off the street, and generous neighbors donated food, money, and time to make the BBQ happen.

2008 Ontario Park BBQ

Patrick and neighbor Leslie enjoying some food in the shade during the Ontario Park BBQ.

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We’ve been busy, busy, busy!

May 11, 2008

We have really been slacking on the blog lately, but Steffi’s parents were in town visiting so we have a good excuse! Of course we did continue working on the house (and the neighborhood) while they were here. We have made some great progress in the garden. We enlarged our vegetable garden, came up with a garden plan, laid out a path, created some new flower beds, weeded the old flower beds, and started a compost pile.

Westview bungalow garden plan

Garden Plan

It took us a while to come up with the plan, but it really helps to have a clear vision of the garden.

We also finally put up the Westview street toppers yesterday. We have been working on these since October (Steffi was the lead on the project), so it was very rewarding to finally see it all coming together. We had a small unveiling ceremony at Ontario Park, and then neighbors drove around with ladders installing them. The street toppers are very important for Westview since people often think we are part of West End.

Westview street topper

Westview street toppers

Months of hard work finally paid off!

Lastly, a couple weeks ago (when Steffi’s parents were visiting) we went to the Inman Park tour of homes. Inman Park is a beautiful old neighborhood on the east side of town, and it holds a lot of historical significance to Atlanta. Their tour of homes is always one of our favorites.

As we walked up to house number six on the tour Steffi’s dad headed inside while we remained outside reading about the house in the handout they provide you. Her dad promptly returned with a huge grin and informed Steffi’s mother she was in for a big surprise! As it turned out Steffi’s younger sister had gone to school with the homeowner’s son. Surprise, surprise! They had recently built a traditional Austrian Weinkeller (wine cellar) in the basement using old bricks, so the conversation turned to where they acquired the bricks.

I’ll pause the story here to explain why old bricks are significant. We have been looking for old weathered bricks since we bought the house. We want to tear up the front walkway, which is currently broken concrete, and replace it with brick. We specifically wanted old bricks to match the old house. New bricks just don’t have the same character. Unfortunately we haven’t had much luck. It seems that when a building is torn down these days a lot of the time the bricks are sold, recaptured, and then re-sold. Additionally, we don’t have many connections to the demolition industry in Atlanta, so we had no clue how to go about trying to ask for bricks that are headed landfill. This has been a very frustrating situation for us.

Okay, so back to the story… Sandi told us she would have to check with her husband, but they had a pile of old bricks left over in the backyard from the construction of the wine cellar. Could it be true?! Had we finally found the elusive bricks we were looking for? We got her email and phone number and left with our fingers crossed.

We waited for the weekend to be over since we knew they would be occupied with hundreds of people touring their home! Steffi sent a couple emails back and forth with Sandi, and finally the email we had been waiting for came through. She told us to come and get them!!!

This morning our neighbor Carl from West End rang our doorbell bright and early (10:30am) and offered to help us with his truck. We made a trip over there and filled up the truck and the trunk of our car. Then we headed back to the house to drop them off. We probably were able to move at 1/3 of the bricks on this first trip. (THANKS FOR THE HELP CARL!) Steffi and I then returned four more times by ourselves and were able to move the remaining bricks in our car. In the end when we stacked them up they look like a palette of bricks. Lucky for us it seems as if it is going to be exactly the number of bricks we need for the front path. Hooray!

So we have to say a MASSIVE THANK YOU TO SANDI AND KEVIN for giving us the bricks!! It means more to us than we can really express in words. They also put a lot of hard work into removing the mortar from the bricks, and we know that is no easy task. THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU SO MUCH!

We had a lowrider with all those bricks in the trunk.

Trunk full of bricks

Trunk full of bricks

Pile of bricks

A big old “Pile-o-Bricks”

Steffi with bricks

A girl and her bricks have never been so happy!

Old Bricks

Check out the beautiful old bricks!

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Working in the Garden

April 15, 2008

We started working in the garden again! Our wonderful neighbor Christy told us about a place in Loganville where you can get plants for cheap. We all made a trip up there and came back with some great stuff for the yard. Steffi and I have also finally come up with a half decent plan for the backyard, so we are slowly working on making it happen. We also dug up a ton of concrete!

Check out the hostas from last year. They came back STRONG!

Hostas

We dug up a lot of concrete – now we just need to figure out how to get rid of it.

Pile of concrete

We started by making some small flowerbeds along where the path will go.

Flower bed

Here’s another one of the flowerbeds. They will eventually all become one big flowerbed!

Flower bed

We planted some Jasmine by the shed. We aren’t sure what the colorful plants are in the front – they had no labels!

Flower bed

This is the start of our “woodland garden” behind the shed. Nothing but hostas and ferns! It should grow in nicely.

Woodland garden

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Mouse in the House

April 9, 2008

Here’s a story I forgot to post about back in January when it happened…

It was right after New Years. Patrick walked in the kitchen and yelled that a mouse was on our kitchen counter! The next few minutes must have looked rather funny from the outside – us running around like idiots with a box, trying to catch the mouse. It ended up somewhere in the laundry room and we knew we wouldn’t be able to find it amongst our storage mess.

Since we had gone on a mini vacation after Christmas we just left a few of our Christmas presents under the tree. One of them being a food basket with maple syrup, pancake mix, a pound cake, etc. As we were taking out the items to put in the pantry we noticed someone had gotten to the pound cake before us! Part of the plastic wrapping was missing…instead there was a chunk gone from the cake. The little bastard!

Another night we were sitting on the couch watching TV. And who do you think comes running across the floor, right in front of our faces?! None other than “mouse in the house”! The nerve! And again we had a funny episode of a mouse chase. “Quick, get a box!”…”Pick up the chair!!”…”Where did it go??”…”Is it hanging on to the bottom of the chair??”…”No!”. The mouse had gotten away again.

That night we heard it running around the house as we were falling asleep. That’s it; we had to get a mouse trap. Since it wasn’t going to contribute in rent or pick up some groceries we had to give it the boot. So the next day we went to the big box store to find a mouse trap. We looked horrified at all the “Will Kill!” boxes. We didn’t want to kill the poor little mouse; we just wanted it out of our house! So we found a cheap seesaw mechanism that would entice the mouse to walk in towards the food, then snap the door shut when its weight would shift. A “No Kill” trap. So we went home, put some peanut butter on the trap’s end, placed it along a wall and went to bed hoping we would catch a mouse. Sure enough, we woke up in the morning and had a little friend in our trap. AHA! Take that you little mouse, you! We got out a box and let is slide out of the trap. Our plan was to release it in a park later on. In the meanwhile we put some peanut butter in with it. Just look at our cute, adorable little evil-doer…

Mouse in the house

Well, we didn’t quite get that far as releasing it in the park. Next thing we knew another mouse was running across the floor in front of us. Had our little mouse escaped the box? We checked…it was still there. Our next fear was – if this is mouse number two, how many other mice could there be?! Two mice can easily turn into a million! Mouse #1 would have to make do in the box for another night. The trap was set again. Excitedly we checked the box the next morning. Negative. No mouse was in it – bummer. Mouse #1 would have to wait yet another night. And the next morning – success! We caught mouse #2!

Mouse in the house

So we drove to release the mice. We turned over the box and mouse #2 (slightly larger than mouse #1) bolted out of the box, never to be seen again. Mouse #1 however wasn’t coming out. We turned the box entirely upside down…it wouldn’t come out. It was clinging onto the box with dear live. We started shaking the box until it finally fell out. It was just sitting there, shivering amidst the leaves and pine straw, not moving.

Mouse in the house

This is where we started getting a little “emotional”. How could we leave this poor little shivering mouse in the cold?? It could die out here! We’d been so busy trying to get the mouse out of our house and now we were pacing back and forth discussing taking it back to the house! So we determined we had to take the mouse back to the house and feed it back to health. Obviously leaving it in the box all those days with relatively little food (just the bit of peanut butter we had put in there) must have weakened it. After working so hard not to kill it we couldn’t very well leave it there to die. So we took it back, gave it some more pound cake (hey, it had already had some, we may as well give it the rest, right?), and hoped it would regain energy. The next day we drove it back to the park and turned over the box. Poof, it was gone. It had no trouble running this time.

Relieved that this episode was over we went back to the house. And that’s the story of our mouse in the house…

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