Some Hillbilly's a'livin' in my DOGHOUSE!

Moved in the week of Thanksgiving!

There was a couple thousand dollars left over from Mammie's affairs, and my brothers and I divvied it up. With my share, I got a furnace from a place in Okoboji at a hell of a discount because some other body put a ding in the side, but since it has a new warranty and that it was a no-brainer. It is 95%, and all! Also, I got a new water heater, and replumbed all of the Natural gas lines inside. I had a tankless that I wanted to use, but it didn't have the special vent hardware with it and for what it cost to dink with I just call to the hardware store and he brought one down to me.

The night we did the hot water and plumbing I did the two-step Maytag bath in the clawfooted tubbie. Know what that is? You draw a nice hot bath, scrub and lay there till the water ain't warm, then you drain the tub and draw another hot one just to sit and stew in! Since I am a bachelor, I can do that. So I do.

There isn't any galvanized plumbing left in the place, and all the cast iron sewer stack is replaced with PVC because it was rotten. We rammed a rubber boot in the cast iron pipe going out, and put the PVC in that, and added a clean out while we were at it. Now if the line stops up we don't have to pull the terlet off to do something about it. Speaking of things terlet I got to get a new one, we broke the bowl. The hardware store has a "pot-in-a-box" kit pretty reasonable, that may be what I get.

I rewired a light from my great-grandmother's house, and hung it in the back bedroom. It's a brass pan light, hangs on two chains and has two sockets. The wiring was truly scary. It was all half-assed, so it got redone. The shades are frosted, and have lilacs painted on them. One has a corner that was broke, dinged up, and glued back together, but it doesn't show so much, and even if it did what the hell, my great-grandmother won't ever buy any more lights. Besides, it ain't the Gotrocks' mansion, and in the end the only one that has to be happy about it is the one I look at in the mirror.

I also put a nice Porcelier fixture in the bathroom. I got it from Shirley Pico in Emmetsburg, when she had the antique store. She was a good friend of my Grandma's, and she made me a real deal on it, because she knew I liked them. It is supposed to be a ceiling fixture, but it looks all right on the wall. It's real art-deco-looking, and has matching colours to the rest of the room. The wiring was pretty nice yet. Those bulbs looked like hell, but they've been in the old light for who knows hows how long.


The porch of doom is no more-it started making ominous noises, so an executive decision to perform the removal. Saving all the wood I could, it took an hour to pull it off. I burnt the rotten wood up in the dark of the night, and stacked what was worth bothering with. Mammie's front storm door and the one from Teri's house are up and working.

A whale of a storm is commencing, and pictures are to follow.

Merry Christmas!

My Christmas present to myself.

I know, I know...I'm greedy, I want it all! I want heat. Inside. Inside the house, no less! Turns out the electric furnace I got from my dad fires up and heats, so it's the logical option, now that the propane company hasn't gotten around to putting in a bottle. I was over there today, and got some pop from the fridge so it wouldn't freeze, and did notice that the house was keeping the heat coming in from the south windows. Speaking of my dad, here he is! He came across a pretty nice Ward's snowblower, and let us take it. This when he could've sold in a second anywhere in town. How's that for nice?

The stove fires up and holds temperature, so I need to pick up a few small cylinders for it, and a new regulator. It's sort of neat to think that the stove has been there since 1934 (there's a receipt in the kitchen drawer for it) and still looks good and works, but then Miss Andrea was immaculate in her housekeeping, so it stands to reason.


My New Year Resolution is to be in there to live by the end of January. Wish me luck...

The ice man cometh

With no real end to the nasty cold expected anytime soon, and the propane barrel in limbo somewhere, I have done more work on furnishings.


My dad found an old oval frame, and it had potential. With some new glass and oil, looks like a million.


Also a neat old tray that I've hauled around for the last few years is finally going to have a home.

More as I can write it.

Fare-thee-well to warmth.

Well, what little summer we ever had here was nice, I guess, but now we had our month of warm weather and it's time for winter again! It's too damn cold to do anything in here without the furnace hooked up, so that's next on the agenda. Here is the roof done on the south side, before the vargeboard got replaced. That porch is going the way of the Studebaker next summer, because the basement stairs are in there and the whole thing was a temporary measure ninety years ago. It's truly had the pickle.

Here is a set of plates that my eldest brother scavenged from some building in Iowa City where renovations were taking place. He used to go to school at University of Iowa, and worked there for a while, so he scavenged some goods from time to time. I think I have six, which will replace all of the plates on the outside doors. At one time I had a knob or two, but they were pretty scabby, and all of the knobs in the house are china, so they'll probably get black knobs this time around.

Also, I have a pair of these old baby gates. I saw some eyelets screwed into one of the door jambs, and sort of guessed there was a gate there, but then one turned up in the attic, and I found an identical one at a local shop for next to nothing. What on Earth does a bachelor want with baby gates? Because they also keep long-snouted hounds in and out of certain parts of the house. Long-snouted blue hounds. Like this one. It's not his fault that his nose is bigger than his brain! He is pretty well trained to respect a baby gate because we had them around when he was a puppy. I do confess that when it's cold and the furnace isn't putting forth, he is a boon to have laying on the bed. He is an eighty pound furnace.

Fashionable freezing? Bah!

There is a furnace down there, but it is shot. It was probably decent at one time, but not running for eighteen years has done it in. Fortunately, I have a secret weapon, in the form of my dad, who has the knack of coming across the very thing I need, just when I need it. There'll soon be a furnace, of some sort. He found an electric one, which may just be put in for the winter and replaced next year.






The old damper flapper turned up in the kitchen porch, and it's too much fun not to put to use. It was on the hallway door trim, and I'll probably mount it back there. It would really be something to take and rig up a thermostat to it, so I can turn it and control heat with the thing.