Tax Free Weekend, etc.

Most years, Massachusetts has a sales tax free weekend. It's most years because, although the date is set, it doesn't happen unless the state legislature approves it (and they don't always). They did approve it this year and this was the weekend. We had some larger purchases that we hadn't gotten around to yet so it came in very handy.

One draw back, of course, is that the stores tend to be jammed. What we didn't realize, and what most people don't realize, is that the stores are more than happy to take the orders in advance and then process them on the weekend.

Last Tuesday, we had an appointment with a lady at Lowes to pick out window treatments and get a quote. She told us about this whole thing about doing it early (of course, since a contract was involved we did have to come in on Saturday morning).

While Kristen was dealing with window treatments, I wandered across to the appliance department and picked out a washer and dryer (the ones in the house are incredibly noisy) and a chest freezer (for the basement). Once Kristen had a chance to approve, we got those ordered. Once we'll got home, we realized that the dryer wouldn't fit through the laundry room door so I headed back to Lowes with a tape measure and changed our pre-order.

We had been shopping for a pellet stove insert and had made our selection but not ordered. We stopped by the pellet stove store to see if we could pre-order and, of course, we could. We hadn't realized it until then but Tax free weekend excludes car purchases and has a cap of $2500 per invoice. The pellet stove place did some artful repricing of the components so that we had 2 invoices under the limit.

I mentioned earlier that we had to return to Lowes yesterday morning to sigh the contract for the window treatments. We had realized that we also needed a new gas grill so we picked out a nice Weber while we were there.

I'd say that we took pretty good advantage of Tax Free Weekend.

Moving on, I'm not sure if I mentioned it before but, the one piece of furniture that we moved East that wouldn't fit into our house was our L-shaped sectional sofa (queen bed on one side and recliner on the other end). We put it on Craig's List this weekend and, after many responses, sold it to someone who drove up from Connecticut.

Kristen would be unhappy if I didn't mention her new berry garden. She already had one raspberry plant that the farmer gave her when we went raspberry picking. She had received a gift certificate to a local nursery for Mother's Day and spent it (and then some) on another raspberry, a blackberry and 3 different types of blueberry (they say that you need 3 types to cross-pollinate and do well - I could understand 2, but 3?).

This morning, we got out early to create our berry garden. The prior owner had a junk pile off the end of the garage that we insisted be removed. That being the site of the new garden, we got in there and removed the weeds (and junk remnants) and filled the soil. The soil here is amazing. It was wet all the way down and I was able to easily turn it with a pitchfork. I used a pitchfork because of the rocks. There are rock walls everywhere you go around here (including all around our property). Back in the farming days, those rocks had to go someplace. It would be a bit grand to say that our berry garden has a rock wall but it certainly has a rock border.

We still need to stretch some wires across over the raspberries and blackberries. The farmer told us how to train them so that they won't become a thicket and so that we'll actually be able to get to the berries.

While I'm on a roll, I'll mention a couple of other accomplishments that we had this week. We now have Massachusetts drivers licenses, we are now registered to vote in Massachusetts and we now have Oakham library cards.

Also, we had some pretty incredible thunder storms this past week and even spent some time in the basement during a tornedo warning.

-JC-

Concert at Oakham Town Square

I've mentioned before that we're just down the street from Oakham Town Center and that there are 3 houses between us and the Town Square. There's a bandstand/gazebo in the Square and they host a number of concerts there over the summer months. We didn't attend any while we were waiting to move in. There was one a couple of weeks ago that got postponed because of rain. It was then cancelled when the makeup date was also a rain out.

Last night was the last scheduled concert of the season. The Otters are Grateful Dead wannabes that we have seen at a couple of events on our visits back here. They only performed a couple of Dead songs but their covers of other songs we kind of Grateful Dead-esque. The founding members are from Oakham and they have been doing Town Square concerts since 1969.

The Otters play Oakham Town Square

-JC-

Our Old House

I've mentioned previously that the prior owner did her own version of "This Old House" on this 1850's (or is it 1830's?) house back in 2005-2006. She was kind enough to provide us with copies of the pictures that she took while the renovation was in progress.

Her pictures weren't digital so I've scanned what she gave us and separated the pictures that were usually 2, 3 or 4 to a page.

Obviously, a before picture. I'm amazed that the trees were right up to the house, Now, there's a wide expanse of lawn between the house and the trees. The prior owner told us that a squatter was living in the house when she bought it and warned us that we might get some of his mail from time to time. 

That lower structure at the rear was completely demolished and rebuilt during the renovation.

View from the rear. Three chimneys. Only one now.

That entire righthand wing was replaced.

This is our mystery room. The attic in the front part of the house is largely unchanged - wide rough chestnut floorboards and stairs and hand hewn chestnut rafters. The oddity is that one end of he attic is finished in lathe and plaster and has a doorway. Except for the mess, it still looks exactly like this.

This is what the rest of the attic still looks like (except that it's clean. Well,OK, part of the forced air system is up here and some ducting is on the floor.

This must be the old kitchen in that demolished part of the building.

I have no idea of what this room might be.

Again, no idea

The spacing doesn't look right for this to be the living room. Maybe the old kitchen?

No idea.

The front stairs have been beautifully refinished.

That's the master bedroom beyond the stairs. There are walls now.

Looking at the upstairs landing from the turn in the stairs.

The front door.

The back wing demolished, the basement has been dug and the footing for the walls poured. The entrance to the part of the basement that is under the front part of the house is just barely visible here (under the tarp). It was also redone with new concrete walls an floor, It has a 4 foot ceiling so we think of it as a stoop space rather than a crawlspace.

Tarp covering the hole after the demolition of the back wing.

Basement walls have been poured.

Tyvek n the front part of the house. No walls in the back yet.

The far hole is where the fireplace is. The nearer hole is where he basement stairs go down and then turn to the right. The back stairs to the 2nd floor start at the lower right and stay directly above the basement stairs.

A different view of the new basement.

Not sure what this is but my guess would be looking up the hole where the back stairs will be. Stairs will turn and go up to the left. Chimney should be where that black hole is but maybe it hadn't been built yet.

Kitchen floor?

Upper landing for the front stairs. The steps in the foreground lead to the attic.

?????

Looking down the front stairs from the 2nd floor landing.

Starting the fireplace. Kitchen is in the background.

Kitchen downstairs. The room upstairs was enclosed but left unfinished. We'll be finishing it in soon.

The new wing is complete. Still no garage or farmers porch.

Lots of gravel near where the farmers porch will be. I suspect that it had something to do with the septic system.

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Bathtub in the Jack and Jill bath between the 2 upstairs bedrooms.

Making progress on the fireplace (fireplace on the right, firewood storage on the left).

Getting started on the garage. Who knew that a deep hole would be involved?

More fireplace.

Making progress on the garage.

Obviously out of sequence, the footings for the garage walls.

I'm amazed at how much concrete is underneath the entrances to the garage.

In the basement, the boiler, hot water tank and heater. Stairs are on the right. You can see back into the stoop space which is the size of the entire front of the house..

Tyvek on the garage and kitchen wings.

Approaching completion on the siding.

Not quite as far along on the siding. Who's been driving on my lawn?

The cherry cabinets are in and the silestone counters are on.

Another angle on the kitcen.

And another.

The final result - Winter (I've no idea why the coloring is so odd - theactual color of the vinyl siding is a pale olive with tan trim)

The final result - summer

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-JC-