A bunch of exterior work is being done on my home right now.

• Chimney caps, tuck-pointing and new flashing;
• Rotten siding replacement;
• Glass block windows added to the basement;
• Gutter repair; and
• Some patches to the foundation.

Our regular guy doesn’t do exterior work, so I had to track someone else down. Since you can find anything on Craigslist, I put up an ad. I got a bunch of responses, with the usual range of grammatical errors and professionalism. I responded to a few of the likeliest and only heard back from one.

The guy came out to take a look at things, with two of his buddies. They were all wearing ragged and torn clothes, and one of the guys was more interested in eating as many peaches as he could from my tree. Main dude said he’d get back to me with an estimate within three days. He kept trying to get me to tell him how much I’d be willing to pay, which is a huge red flag. Ten days later, after one unannounced return trip and further phone calls where he kept trying to find out how much I wanted to spend and kept trying to give me prices piece-meal, he finally emailed me his estimate. This estimate only covered the cost of materials for one of the items on the above list. Needless to say he didn’t get the job.

Meanwhile, I received a response from a gal around my age who just moved from Portland, OR. She came out, took a look at things, some measurements and photos, and got me an estimate within a couple of days. She’s done historical restoration work and has the necessary tools to get the job done. My chimneys are repaired and the foundation patched, the glass block has been ordered and from what I’ve seen so far, she works both efficiently and effectively.

Inside I’ve been painting the new doors we got a couple of months ago and touching-up various Bram-smears.

My tenant upstairs is moving out this month. This means I’ll be out the supplementary $450/month that was quite a help. Thankfully Debbie’s now a full-time teacher, so her additional income will help offset that. Her brother might move in upstairs and just pay for utilities, and I plan on working with him to tear off the wallpaper and do a little bit more renovation up there as well. Once it is painted, the electrical is upgraded and there’s new carpet, I’ll probably be able to get at least another $50/month on the rental price. It’s a 2 bedroom, so $500 is a pretty good price, I think. I could probably do better than that if the bathroom wasn’t the size of a mouse turd.

Speaking of which, I’ve killed 4 in the last 24 hours.

These last two were both “abandoned” houses with squatters in them. Rumor has it that the bank who owned the house behind me (which was slated for demolition) had the house set aflame so they could recoup as much from the property as possible. Rumor also holds that some kids set the fire, or, less likely, someone set fire to keep warm.

The house had been abandoned since I moved into the neighborhood and over the course of two years it was peeled like an onion and pitted like an avocado. By the time whomever set fire to the place set fire to the place, all that was left inside the structure was some crazy-looking linoleum.

Now, there are quite a few serious problems that are touched on directly or tangentially in this post:

• Habitual Arson
• Foreclosed Homes
• Squatters
• Folks stealing siding, wiring and anything of value from abandoned properties
• Crazy Linoleum

and one very good thing. Thank you Cleveland Fire Department, you guys are great.

While the arsons are troubling, there is much that is great on my street and in my neighborhood. I have new neighbors who are renovating the home next door to me, and the children who appear to own the house catercorner from me on Holmden Avenue are fixing the place up quite nicely.

The new Buhrer Elementary school one block away is nearing completion, and I just found out, will be remaining a Dual Language School. Now if only Debbie could get a job as an art teacher there, all would be set. However, finding an open position in the CMSD isn’t the easiest.

The shoot went well and I ended up having to bust ass back to work in order to give a presentation to a bunch of folks about using our Content Management System. Slept with the heat off and the window open for the first time in seven months.

This morning Abraham woke us up at 6:30 and after he’d had a bit to drink we watched the sunrise and learned about outside. He loves touching trees and looking at how huge they are. He doesn’t like grass; it is too prickly.

I spent most of the day shirtless in the backyard. I tore up a couple of peach trees using my bare hands:

I also cleaned out the shed, turned the soil over my tiny garden, and got everything planted. The all-tomatoes-all-the-time patch last summer has been reduced to two plants. The rest of the space is occupied by a bell pepper, basil, chives, oregano and cilantro.

I had beans & rice for dinner on the porch, and after the little guy goes down for the night, I’m going to eat some chocolate-peanut-butter ice cream on the porch.

My porch still needs a rail-mounted beer-bottle opener. Speaking of that, here’s a list of other things that I need to do around the house (in no particular order):

• Remodel Kitchen
• Till & resow backyard
• Dig up one more peach tree and replace it with something that will provide shade
• Replace rotten siding
• New gutters
• Paint the exterior of the house
• Finish bathroom
• Get covers on roof & chimney & get the flashing checked out.
• Fix basement plumbing
• Get a cover for the AC & get it hooked back up to the furnace.
• Get new screen doors
• Refinish front door
• Bring wiring up to code
• New windows
• Doors rehung

I ended up scheduling an appointment with a fellow downtown and met with him the other day to finally talk about refinancing. Turns out it is a $350 application fee crap shoot. With the way housing prices have tumbled in Cleveland, it could cost me several thousand dollars, up front, to refinance. My house could be worth 20% less than what I paid for it. Zillow estimates that my house is worth $7k less than what I paid for it, which would mean I would need to pay 5 or 6 grand to refinance to a lower rate.

The upside to this is that it will take me a bit to save up that kind of cash, and in that time, rates might fall even further. The new mortgage will likely have mortgage insurance though, so figuring out how much money I’m really going to save in the long run is going to be quite complicated.

I’ve gone to see The Dark Knight, which was the first time since Abraham graced us with his presence that Debbie and I managed to get out alone. I went to the zoo, where the boy and I became an exhibit to all of the women around when Debbie went to the restroom. I went to Whiskey Island on Friday afternoon for a picnic, took a walk by myself to get some alone time with nature, watched swallow bug-catching, a swallow-heckling oriole, and played with a groundhog for a little while.

Last Monday my office was one of the three County offices raided by the FBI and IRS-CID as a part of their investigation into corruption by County officials. Apparently they came over the intercom and told folks to go to the canteen [which is what everywhere else is called a lunch room]. The design room keeps the overhead speaker turned off because we’d rather not listen to the best in soft rock from the 80s, 90s and now, so I didn’t hear the announcement. I happened to be both on my computer and on the phone, both no-nos, when the FBI knocked on the door. I’d already managed to tell Debbie everything she needed to know to get the scanner at home working though, so it was no big deal.

I went to the canteen, where everyone else was, and filled out a sheet that asked for basic information and job duties, and then got to take the rest of the day off.

When my mom rolled up here for the 4th of July, we planted a tree for Abraham. I had a tree planted for me when I was born as well. I even wrote about it for Young Authors, so you can read that here. Although that picture is from a month ago, Abraham is already much bigger, I’d say near 12 pounds. He’s started smiling and chuckling a little, and I can actually sort of play with him now. The only rough part is that when I’m at work he’s in his best mood, so when I come home I get to interact with him for the part of the day when he’s at his worst. It gets frustrating at times.

I got season tickets to the Notre Dame football games this year, blessed be my monogram. I don’t know that I’ll be able to get to more than one of them, however.

The weather has been wonderful, and today looks as if it will continue that pattern. Dinner is a daily choice between eating on the porch or watching some old school Muppet Show episodes. I recently discovered that I can get Mr. Wizard on DVD as well. Abraham’s going to talk to folks at school about these crazy shows that aren’t on TV anymore and no-one is going to know what he’s talking about except his teachers.

I haven’t been to a rock and roll show in forever. It hurts.

I painted, put down quarter-round, replaced a pane in the doors to the bedroom, and painted those too. The plaster needed some serious patching but that was done awhile ago. I’m having quite a bit of contracted work done on the bathroom and getting a closet expanded. One of the small rooms is disappearing to make this happen, but it is certainly worth it. During this process we’ve found some painted-over hand-made fixture gems. Here are some hinges:
Stripped of their paint [and original black enamel, unfortunately]:

And restored [thanks to Rustoleum]:

The window sashes have similar paint-encrusted metalwork, and I’m still working on restoring the original doorbell [you can see the paint-encrusted version and the empty spot in the photos above]. The door itself is probably going to take a week or two of work itself. I’m not looking forward on the constant removing and rehanging of it.

There will be pictures of the bathroom and closet when they are finished.

We’re pretty stressed and cramped, living in two rooms with the floors covered in crap from the other rooms, and the kitchen. We’ll have to go upstairs for most of the bathroom needs. Plus, an imminent eminent like a thief in the night baby on the way. Compared to the hectacular hecticness of our current lives, being settled in with a finished house and a finished baby seems positively cromulent.

Before the housing disasterbacle here in Cleveland, affordability based upon the NYT calculator would have been giving me returns on home-ownership after 3 years. Who knows how that’s changed. The Housing and Transportation visual for Cleveland basically fit what I expected. The poorer areas with lower property taxes fit the criteria for affordability, while the nicer areas [outer rings, non-Cleveland-incorporated] are over the suggested benchmark. Of course, the map just provides basic data, there isn’t much interpretation going on in terms of statistical comparisons of other data associated with our area. The advanced menu is a bit more informative.

Life at home this week has been a flurry of task-dragon slaying. Every Thursday I clean a bit of the shed out back, piling up towers of junk on the curb for scrappers and the fantastic Cleveland Waste Management fellows to take care of. I’ve been cleaning and preparing the upstairs unit for a tenant, which results in multiple bike trips to Home Depot each night. I’ve been tagging some of my personal junk for a yard sale I’m going to have On May 24th. I had an idea to make it a Punk Rock Flea Market in honor of Punk Rock Softball, which I’m going to have to miss this weekend. It’d be sweet to have a bunch of Cleveland rockers show up and browse each other’s indie crap they don’t want anymore. Grills and beers and informality.

Sorting through all of the stuff upstairs has been an adventure, and it will be nice when the second half of the downstairs is complete, so that Debbie and I can arrange our stuff in some semblance of finality. It’d be nice to have space for the kid when he shows up too. There’s a ton of work that needs to happen there in preparation as well. I’m waiting until after the baby shower to ramp that up.

There’s so much going on, and I feel pulled in so many directions, that I’m almost shackled by indecision. Back to work.

We were at the hospital for 6 hours, so I didn’t get to accomplish all the things I wanted in the morning, including having my friend Chris come and install a faucet, Punk Rock Softball, and hanging out with Rafeeq. Instead, it was time to clean and organize. I was emotionally and physically exhausted so I crashed at 9:30 and didn’t wake up until 8:15.

Today I just went ahead and installed the faucet myself. It took a couple of hours, but I did it well, and now the upstairs is ready for renters.