House progress -- photos and notes

Warning: this post probably won't be very interesting to folks who don't know me and/or are not even remotely interested in following progress on my house. However, if you are interested, this post is just for you!  Yes, you!  That makes you a very special person indeed.

First, a few shots of one of the two third-floor bedrooms, AKA Wayne's Room, AKA the Pisces Room.  These photos were taken at the beginning of July and lovingly illustrate not only the criminally nasty green color of the room but also the scope of the necessary plaster repair work which took us more than a week to complete and was extremely messy during the sanding process (but turned out not to be nearly as torturous as one might think, especially after having had a fair amount of practice on a previous room).  Back in the day, when young Wayne Brown occupied the room, he was obviously offered a pretty generous helping of creative freedom and ran with it.  Zodiac Pisces was painted on the ceiling in purple splendor, visible in the photo showing my friend Dan working.  The walls were also pockmarked with approximately four million pushpin holes.  Thankfully, both third-floor bedrooms are now complete with fresh white walls and ceilings, newly painted window sills, and clean hardwood floors that don't even really need to be refinished.  (When I first bought the house, those hardwood floors were hiding beneath mid-century linoleum sheet flooring and quasi-zebra print carpeting that would blow your mind.)  All I need to do now is update the electrical outlets on the third floor, mostly so that window air conditioners can be safely installed (thereby rendering sweltering barely-inhabitable-in-the-summertime rooms comfortable for tenants!).

 

Next, the glorious back yard, also taken at the beginning of July.  Throughout much of June, and much to my embarrassment, a large portion of the back yard was a bombastic fast-expanding tangle of chest-high weeds--in other words, an honest-to-God Pennsylvania jungle.  Many hours of sweaty labor later (not to mention an extremely unpleasant case of poison oak that left pus-oozing sores all over my forearms and itchy rashes everywhere else, including above one eye and all over my male parts), the yard was tamed.  Since these photos were taken, the patch of grass in the middle of the yard has been trimmed; a compost bin has been purchased and placed in the back corner of the yard; several new plants have been added to the collection, including Northern sea oats (a type of tall decorative grass), chives, and a tiny little gingko sappling; and the rusty green steel pipe in the middle of the brick pathway has been removed and given to my neighbor to sell for scrap.  Next Monday, a gentleman from the Nine Mile Run Watershed Association will install a large rain barrel at the corner of the house, meaning that the innanely-installed PVC pipe running across the patio (and causing all kinds of erosion damage every time it rains hard) will be gone!

Finally, some recent photos of the front yard, a true obsession of mine in the landscaping project department and a seemingly never-ending work in progress.  (Wait, isn't that the whole house?!)  Little by little I've been acquiring large rocks and extremely heavy chunks of slag metal (mostly from a debris pile in Duquesne, PA, on a riverfront wasteland property once occupied by the Duquesne Works steel mill) to use both as retaining wall along the sidewalk and as decoration throughout the yard.  These unique objects, which look almost like rocks except for their oxidized surfaces and graphite-gray metallic textures, have turned out to be the ideal landscape feature for my yard--heavy enough to create a durable, permanent barrier and a fitting found-art tribute to Pittsburgh's legacy.  The red-brown pine bark mulch that I chose is also a perfect fit for the house, although as long as the retaining wall remains unfinished, and until I can reroute the downspout rainwater through underground pipes and out to the sidewalk, the mulch and much of the bare soil is at risk of washing into the sidewalk every time we experience a heavy downpour.  (This has happened twice now.  The first time it happened I spent almost half an hour shoveling mud out of the sidewalk and back onto my hill.  That kind of made me want to scream and break things.  Instead I got dressed and went to work and was bitter all day.)  Next spring or summer, provided that I have some money saved up, I plan to rebuild the entire front porch deck.  I'll feel a lot better about the house in general once that project's done!