Halloween Statistics

The early returns are in and all the numbers indicate that it was another big year of Trick or Treating around the park. The only way I can keep track is by how much candy we start with and how much is left at the end of the night. I ended up with none. The first kids started showing up just after 5:00 and we were turning people away by 7:45 P.M. That means we had gone through over 700 pieces of candy in less than three hours. It seems hard to believe but the traffic was pretty thick all night long.

Officially Historic

I thought it was time that I got an official picture posted of our Official Historic Marker which officially proclaims to the world (or at least the people walking by) that this house is on the Official Register of Historic Places. You know, I think that George Washington once slept here. I can tell you for sure and quite officially that I have slept here.

All of the houses around the park are on the Register and most of the houses have this same plaque posted somewhere near the front door. We haven't had one and just recently purchased it as a Wedding Anniversary present to ourselves.

Stairway Update

Let's talk about what little work IS occurring here at the Ranch. We have been working on the stairway. We are kind of stuck on exactly how to proceed. At some point in the past, the bannister was changed to raise the handrail. In doing so, we have two different spindle designs holding up the bannister railing. I would like this to be uniform but we have had very little luck finding spindles that match the ones we have and like. That leads us to the possibility of having them made. I will not go into all the details, but I think we have found a guy with a Duplicating Lathe that will manufacture the 30 to 40 spindles we need. What we don't know yet is the price and that will be the deciding factor in whether we preceed that way.

Here are a couple of pictures to see our progress. On the left is the stairway that we started with. On the right, is the stairway as it is today. You will notice that we have removed all the wallpapering on the wall. That's where we have been skim coating and all that remains now is a little touch up of a couple of areas that insist on cracking and then some more primer.










The most dramatic feature is the wanescoating going up the stairway. We are going to cap it with railing and then stain it the dark walnut color.

You can also see that we have been trying to sand the steps and remove the stain. The problem is that the stain doesn't want to be sanded. We've got it a little on the sides but it's holding strong in the middle of the steps. I can't wait to see it when we're done...if we ever get there.

Research Project Results

I pretty much struck out yesterday with my research project. I went through all of the Sunday Spokeman-Review's for 1909. They were in the habit in those days of printing pictures of newly completed houses. It was amazing to see huge three story houses built for $5,000.

Anyway, I was not able to find any pictures of our house. Then I went to the Museum to look through the collection of historic photos they have. Supposedly, they have the complete archives from Libby Photographers, THE major photographer from the early years in Spokane. Well, I found the collection to be pretty sparse. It was much better organized than I had been led to believe, but again, no picture of OUR HOUSE. I'm sorry to be selfish here but that's what I'm looking for.

The Heart of the Problem

We've had a bit of a setback in working on the house in the form of health issues. My health issues. I woke up Saturday morning with a familiar discomfort in my chest. I woke up Susan and told her it was time to visit the Emergency Room. This feeling has been building for a while and I had an appointment to see my Cardiologist on Monday for a Stress Test, but my body couldn't wait.

I had an Angioplasty procedure on Sunday and they placed a stent in one of my arteries. Now I'm as good as your average 80 year old and I have a week off from work.

This is not my first brush with heart problems. I think it's boring to talk about so I'll just say I had a mild heart attack about 12 years ago, followed by a double by-pass about eight years ago.

So now I feel fine (except that I wear out easily) and I have a week off. I have done a few little projects around the house but nothing that requires a lot of exertion. Today, I'm going to the museum and the library to do some research on the house.

My main goal is to find a picture of the house around the time that it was built. The museum has a large haystack of photographs from the that time. The trick will be in finding this needle.

Busy Social Season

It's tough when you have a lot of remodeling to do yet you have a rigorous social schedule to juggle as well. That's where we are right now.

Halloween is a big Holiday for Susan and I so it's a good thing we moved to a place like Corbin Park. Halloween is a big deal here. It's not that a bunch of the houses get all decked out. A few do and we are one of them. However, the park has somehow developed a reputation as a good place to Trick or Treat. I think parents have developed that rep because it's easy for them to drop their kids off on one end of the park and then they go around the park and the parents are done for the night.

We had over 600 kids last year. We know that because our next door neighbors kept track. I know that because, at one point, all I did was stand at the door and pass out candy to the continous line of monsters, fairys, pirates and ghouls streaming up and down our porch.

We also have planned a Halloween dinner with a group of our neighbors for the night before Halloween. This will be a party for the adults. It will be a progressive dinner at three different houses. Susan and I have offered up ours as the Dinner House. Before us is the Appetizer House and after us is the Dessert House. We put invitations out to every house on the park. I haven't heard yet how many people have responded but I expect that it will be the same small group of partiers that attend all these types of functions.

We were busy last weekend with a trip to Canada for our Anniversary. We drank a lot of wine and spent a lot of Canucks, the offical legal tender of Canada. Their prices up there are much higher than in the states. Gas costs almost four canucks a gallon but they sell it by the Celsius so it is hard to convert. Their wine costs lots of canucks so to soften the blow, we drank about a kilometer of wine.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is that we haven't done a lot of work on the house lately.

What's Under the Stairs

I spend a lot of my remodeling time looking at the way things are in this house and asking, "Why is this set up the way it is?" Then I start to tear into it and I discover why it is the way it is.

Just such an episode arose tonight while working on the stairs. I have known for sometime that the bannister on the stairs is not the way it was originally built. I think it had to be raised to a certain level to meet code when this house was converted into a group home. They did what they could to make the change, make it look okay and do it for as little money as possible.

The details of what has been done to the stairs are way too complex for me to describe here so I will go with pictures.

On the left is the staircase as it was when we moved in. On the right, is the staircase after tonights endeavors.

You can see that the wonderful woodwork and trim was covered by a sheet of wood paneling that was then wallpapered.

Return of the Blogger

I haven't written anything on the house in over a week because we haven't done any work on the house in over a week so there was nothing to report on the house for over a week so consequently, I haven't written anything on the house in over a week.

That all changed today when we commenced to painting. To be more specific, we commenced to priming. We have to get everything primed before we can start our next step, floor sanding. That will create a tremendous amount of messy dustiness and we want the walls sealed before the messy dustiness gets everywhere, including our nooks and our crannys.

Here I am in the stairway after finishing todays priming. We ran out of our 5 gallon bucket of primer before we could finish the whole landing. I got the whole ceiling done and most of the walls. I have to finish the walls in the stairway. I was able to do that little bit of wall above me with the last of the primer. I'll be getting another 5 gallon bucket tomorrow. The bare drywall really sucks up the primer. I still have to get primer on that back hallway on the right and the wall out of the picture on the left. That wall is a bitch because it is soooooooo tall...over 16 feet. That's where my special $400.00 ladder starts to pay for itself.