Greetings from my bedroom
We have lived in the Big White Money Pit for a year and a month now, and it's starting to feel like we really do live here as opposed to merely residing in a never ending project. This was made even more so by the addition of carpeting in the bedrooms. (a project made possible by the generosity of parents who understand what it's like to be raising kids and trying to fix up a house and not being made of money) One may not think that flooring can make such a dramatic difference. One would be wrong.
Mr. Unreserved and I have decided that we're living in the bedroom now. Get your minds out of the gutter, we're married people. Married people don't do that. Just ask a married man. We can annex the living room, or perhaps rent it out to victims of housing collapse. There are too many things yet to do in the living room, whereas the bedroom has been converted into a cozy den by the addition of ~300 sq ft of beige olefin. Even the pets have been hanging out here.
There are three things left to do in the bedroom in the near future. Doors, ceiling fan, and fireplace. Yes, fireplace. The last owners "discovered" a previously covered fireplace and ripped the plaster away with reckless abandon. Woo! Bricks! Dirt! A big hole in the wall! Then they quit.
So we did what anyone would do when moving into a bedroom with a gaping hole in the wall. We put furniture in front of it and pretended it wasn't there. The chimney itself, lacking both a cap and a damper, had been stuffed plastic wrapped insulation.
Note the past tense in that last bit.
I noticed a month or two ago that a family of birds had made their home in the chimney. (I assumed swifts; between them and the wrens in the garage I'm starting to feel like a benevolent naturalist) They were awfully noisy, especially at 5:30 a.m.
Sunday evening we removed the furniture, and found out why the swifts were so noisy. The insulation had fallen. The floor of the fireplace had become their bathroom.
They weren't too happy about our intrusion. They registered their disproval by attempting to poop on us.
This interested Oliver greatly.
The swifts are still up there, but there's a new pile of insulation between us and them. Fixing up the "fireplace" wall has been moved up on my priority list. And come fall, we should probably add "capping the chimney." Or we should get a cat that can climb masonary.
Mr. Unreserved and I have decided that we're living in the bedroom now. Get your minds out of the gutter, we're married people. Married people don't do that. Just ask a married man. We can annex the living room, or perhaps rent it out to victims of housing collapse. There are too many things yet to do in the living room, whereas the bedroom has been converted into a cozy den by the addition of ~300 sq ft of beige olefin. Even the pets have been hanging out here.
There are three things left to do in the bedroom in the near future. Doors, ceiling fan, and fireplace. Yes, fireplace. The last owners "discovered" a previously covered fireplace and ripped the plaster away with reckless abandon. Woo! Bricks! Dirt! A big hole in the wall! Then they quit.
So we did what anyone would do when moving into a bedroom with a gaping hole in the wall. We put furniture in front of it and pretended it wasn't there. The chimney itself, lacking both a cap and a damper, had been stuffed plastic wrapped insulation.
Note the past tense in that last bit.
I noticed a month or two ago that a family of birds had made their home in the chimney. (I assumed swifts; between them and the wrens in the garage I'm starting to feel like a benevolent naturalist) They were awfully noisy, especially at 5:30 a.m.
Sunday evening we removed the furniture, and found out why the swifts were so noisy. The insulation had fallen. The floor of the fireplace had become their bathroom.
They weren't too happy about our intrusion. They registered their disproval by attempting to poop on us.
This interested Oliver greatly.
The swifts are still up there, but there's a new pile of insulation between us and them. Fixing up the "fireplace" wall has been moved up on my priority list. And come fall, we should probably add "capping the chimney." Or we should get a cat that can climb masonary.
