The best Christmas present

For a while, I have been coveting telephone tables.

About a year ago, my mom and I were talking about telephone tables (she'd read the blog and knew I really really really wanted one, but a genuine antique). She has one in her house in Ohio that I like a lot; it's the perfect foyer piece, great as a conversation-starter. I believe that one is my grandmother's.

It turns out, she had another one in the basement that she'd planned on restoring someday and displaying in the house somewhere; it wasn't in the best shape, she said, but it was her grandmother's -- my great-grandmother's. She passed away about 10 years ago and left my mom a telephone table that my mom loved as a child. I, of course, was all giddy, thinking I'd get to inherit the piece someday.

I got home the other day to find a ginormous box outside the house. What the ...

Knowing it was my Christmas present but a) too curious to wait and b) figuring such a large box couldn't just sit in the house anywhere, I opened it.

I opened it to find a newly restored antique telephone table, from my mom.

After about half an hour of carefully cutting away the bubble wrap and shipping "stuff," I sat in the middle of my kitchen floor with tears in my eyes, looking at the most gorgeous piece of furniture I'd ever seen.

Rich whistled. "Damn, she did good," he said.

Maybe it's not beautiful to everyone, but my mom knew that Rich likes dark wood, so she had it restored in a dark stain. To match the house, she had it reupholstered in a neutral color that picks up the yellow of the walls. And it's a genuine antique, a family heirloom.

Until I finish the basement and can move the litter boxes out of the upstairs alcove and down two flights, the table is on the porch, where it really does belong but I don't want to put it there until we finish the porch and replace the windows. It'll be the welcoming centerpiece of our home someday, hopefully soon.

Thanks, Mom.

Tiny updates

So it's been a while.

Bich has reasons, though not any worse/better/busier than anyone else's. Sometimes life just gets in the way. Or Penn State football gets in the way, or scandals, or whatever. Let's not talk about that.

Very minor updates, though, before Brooke restarts the basement project. (Last week, the Irene cleanup was completed, and repainting of the once-repainted section can commence this evening, or whenever.)

-- This morning, we had our 41-year-old boiler maintenanced. Yep, we're hangin' on to that puppy for as long as we can.

-- Our lawn has come in quite nicely -- nicely enough, in fact, that Brooke went apoplectic when she discovered that a very unneighborly pet owner let their obviously large dog defecate on the new sidewalk. Four signs were then added to our stretch of grass, with the following messages: "Your dog did his duty. Now do yours: Pick up after your dog"; "Please leave your address so I can let my dog dump on your lawn next"; "Be a good neighbor -- pick up after your pooch"; and another in that line of thinking.

-- We need a new camera. For some reason, the one we have stopped working, which meant no new pictures, which meant no blogging. Guess I'm back in the market for one.

Pickup, 41 Claire

Since we moved into the House of Bich at the end of July 2010, we have gotten rid of an extraordinary amount of stuff with the help of:

-- Two free township bulk pickups (one in May, one in October)
-- One appointment for a township pickup, $30
-- Two appointments with 1-800-GOT JUNK?, somewhere in the neighborhood of $700 total (this included the removal of an old refrigerator and a "work bench")
-- Rich and Leeza's trip to the township dump

Those include nearly 80 years of accumulated crap in the basement, the carpet we ripped out before we had the wood floors restored, everything we took out of one of the crawl spaces, stuff from the shed, detritus from the walk-in closet upstairs, crap we've accumulated over the years, boxes from stuff we've ("we"=Brooke) bought ...

It's been a lot.

This morning, the township picked up the old sink we destroyed with a sledgehammer, a table from my parents' old kitchen that was nearly 20 years old and had, unfortunately, come down with a case of post-Irene mold, and a lot of shrubbery that we'd cut down before we redid the lawn.

Everything. They took everything.

I love Woodbridge.

Basement, continued

(Sorry the video is sideways.)

Today, Rich and I got to work on undoing Irene's work in the basement.

While we were at it, I figured I'd go buy a sledgehammer and get rid of the utility sink; the township's second bulk pickup of the year is coming up, so I figured $27 for a sledgehammer was better than the $300 1-800-GOT JUNK estimated. (They did tell me to just get a sledgehammer and a couple of friends, and that it just wasn't worth it for me to pay them to take out the sink.)

Rich: I don't know what's different about a sledgehammer from a hammer, but that sledge tore through the sink in five minutes.

(To me, that can be answered by sheer physics, but it was pretty impressive. And fun.)

After the sledgehammering:

After we took out all the concrete and rotted wood:

The bare-looking spots in the white paint are where I peeled off the Drylok that was pushed up by the water.

And before I forget, this is how it looked after the 1-800-GOT JUNK guys came back in August:

(I really can't recommend all of their guys enough.

And they were cheerfully game for a photo when I told them I blog about the house.)

Green, green grass of home

We have grass.

Just six days after we planted seed, we have little shoots popping up all over our lawn.

I keep telling myself that I need to calm down, we still have to stay vigilant, we have to watch it carefully ...

But grass! I'm so excited.

I'm probably the only person in New York (judging from my office*) who can't wait for more rain. The more moist our grass stays on a consistent basis, the better off we'll be.

I didn't get a chance to take more pictures after we seeded, put down Seed Aide and hay, and got to watering last weekend, but this weekend -- if it's not raining, but it's supposed to rain all weekend, yaaaaay! -- I'll try to get some pictures up.

One thing I've noticed is that the Seed Aide and hay really do work to keep the soil in place. In the little that it's rained in the past week, the soil at the corner of our new sidewalk did not shift (as it did in other places in the neighborhood where the soil hasn't been reseeded since the township's repaving project).

Also, it's fun to watch the neon-teal Seed Aide stuff grow like sea monkeys when you water it.

I'm a child that way.

As much as I want to do it now, mulching will wait until the spring so I'm not trampling over the new lawn too much. And I plan on putting down decorative gravel and stone in the backyard as well, and planting two new trees in the front.

The cost rundown
15.5 cubic yards of soil: $480
Tiller rental: $70 for first 24 hours
150 pounds of Seed Aide: $68.85
Three bales of hay (only used one, though): $44.85
Grass seed, sun/shade stress mix, 15 pounds: $25.95
Water roller rental: $20ish (Rich may have to correct me on that)

Estimate from landscaper to redo same area of lawn: $3,500-$6,000

DIYers do it right. (Well, if they do it right.)

*Once again, it's been a busy year -- most of you already know, but I started a new job about two months ago in Manhattan. I'm copyediting for a trade publication that follows the metal markets in North America; while that might sound boring, it's not. I learn so many new things on a daily basis, I can barely keep up. It's pretty damn cool, considering the three years of Woman's World we all endured. (I'm well aware I drove everyone nuts, but come on -- I have great stories to tell at cocktail parties!)

Blood, sweat, tears, dirt

Bich is tired.

Bich is so, so tired.

After two days, 15 yards of dirt (according to Amanda, that's 30,000 pounds), two wheelbarrows, multiple garden tools, one tiller, and endless amounts of "oh, shit, we will never get this done/yes, we will, we have to or we'll be those neighbors with dirt for a lawn and we already have drug dealers down the street," we managed to rip up a lawn and lay down an entirely new level of soil that is ready to be seeded.

Truly fantastic moment: As we're cleaning up, the older couple across the street -- he's usually seen outside with his banned cigar and a Mason jar full of bourbon, while his wife is cooking inside; they're pretty cool and full of great stories, and they watch the neighborhood like hawks -- pulls up on their way out of the neighborhood, and she says, "My husband hasn't stopped talking about all the work you've been doing for two days!"

He: "You've restored my faith in American women!"

She: "Everyone expects the man to do all this work, and you've been out here doing all this work, too!"

Rich, walking up: "What about me?!"

She: "Oh, yeah, you, too, but she's the wife! I should be cooking you two dinner! We've never seen anyone work so hard on their lawn in this neighborhood in all our years here and I've been here since 1942!"

He: "You've restored my faith in American women! Seriously! You're a lucky man!"

It's good to know the neighbors know Rich is fulfilling his manly duty, and I'm apparently doing womanhood proud.

Tired.

Afterward, we walked down the street to celebrate the end of our dirt-moving with a Blue Moon at Rug's and Riffy's, the local dive. I was especially dirty, having wrangled with the garden hose, a little water and the soil (we need a new hose now).

We walked in, sat down ... and I was promptly denied for not having my ID with me.

Sure, I suppose I should be happy, but let's be honest -- I don't look that young. Can't be mad at her; she's just doing her job.

But I really, really wanted that beer.

Anyway, so many neighbors stopped by or yelled over to say hi, tell a little joke about us digging through all that dirt, tell us to be patient ... I found it all very satisfying, despite the exhaustion. I almost forgot about the cold I've been fighting all week; maybe the dirt really does do a body good.

Rich took a little video:

Soil, grass and blisters

House of Bich is getting down and dirty this weekend.

By "down," I mean "Brooke and Rich can barely stand up, and even the tips of Brooke's fingers hurt typing this." And dirty ...

This is the second part of the delivery.

This is the third part of the delivery.

Fifteen and a half yards of dirt. 

Three bales of hay, 15 pounds of seed, three bags of Seed Aide await.

Tilled.

After receiving one estimate for upward of $6,000 to have the front and sides of the lawn torn up, replanted, mulched, etc., we decided to do it ourselves. I ordered 15 yards of soil from The Yard in Scotch Plains, and Rich and I set aside one full weekend -- this one -- to get to it.

Rich went to Home Depot this morning and rented a tiller, while I grabbed the chainsaw (yes, we own one) and took down a few small trees and bushes. And then we got to work.

Tilling.

Raking.

Shoveling.

Wheelbarrow-ing.

Dumping.

Leveling (sort of).

This is where you keep telling yourself that it'll look great in the spring, that doing it yourself will make you proud of your work, blah blah blah.

Yeah, probably. But I'm still hurting.

Tomorrow, we'll rake up the other half of the yard and put down the rest of the soil. The goal: to seed and put down the hay by sunset.

I hurt more already.