And so it starts......


I spent the afternoon taking down homosote walls and finding that there was shag carpeting behind each board of homosote going up the stairs....can you say "dusty?" Yuck! And such an early, lovely pastel pink color...I guess that was to make the interior of the cottage "cheery." Well, in the 21st century, the color just makes me want to go hit my head repeatedly against the nearest wall.
Before I knew it, I had taken down the bulkhead for the stairway so that I could get a bit more headroom. From the looks of it, there was at least one other stair in this house before the current incarnation. I have not problem with taking these stairs out now.


I have a full load to take to the dump in the new man-truck tomorrow and then we are on the road until next Tuesday. Enjoy the weekend and remember to VOTE NO ON 1 if you are a Maine resident.

Am done for the day. Decided to take out more of the living room wall. I got a nice pouring of mouse nest on my head!! There was quite a colony of nests up behind the board of the wall, so much so that the shadow of their trails through the maze of sawdust is imprinted on one of the beams..ewwww! In the photo below, you can see our black tape outline of where the downstairs bathroom will go. That's right, the leaded glass door will be changed out for a window. The new addition also has a front door, so we will use that instead. I already sold the leaded glass door at our estate sale, so we might as well take the whole thing out! The downstairs bathroom is big enough for a shower stall as well as a sink and toilet. We like this idea rather than the one we had to put a tiny bath under the stairs.

You can see the mouse trails on the beam in the picture below.

I got a bit tired of the kitchen floor, So...........I just went ahead and ripped it up...surprise! another floor underneath!!

Took me about a hour of ripping and crawling around, but I got the flooring up and found the very nice hard Southern Pine floors below. They were originally gray and then painted brown then they had two layers of flooring over more roofing felt! The underside of the lino was covered in mold spots. Ewwwwww.

Got to knock off for the night and get to Goodwill with the last load of stuff from the cottage, then home to make apple crisp for a dinner party we are attending tonight.

Til tomorrow!

A bit of Before and After. Ok, It's not the same as what Architectural Digest does, but it's a start!! Though you cannot see it, the view through the glass sliding doors is really magnificent.

Before:



AFTER!!!!!!!


I just couldn't stand it this morning while packing up the house, so I took the middle part of the wall out. The whole wall will come down soon. A bathroom will be on the right, and the kitchen on the left and so this view will be what you get while standing outside the front of the house on the porch. I will probably have renters come in the double doors so that this is the first thing they see:

Estate sale Final total: $1975.00
I forgot what it's like to have a thousand dollars in cash in my pocket!

I've had enough of strange people for the day. Ended up selling the prison made furniture for $825, a bit less than 1/2 of what they were new. A woman found my ad on Craigslist and emailed me this morning. She wanted me to pull the set of cabinets because she wanted to buy them. I was down to $75.00 a cabinet on the tag, but she was willing to pay the full $650.00 for five cabinets. The hutch was a harder sell, but I threw in 40 pieces of English ironstone into the deal and sold the thing for $175.00. Saved me having to wrap up the china for Goodwill! Still have the dining room suite of furniture which I loaded up on Craig's list for $350.00. It still boggles my mind what people will buy. Take a look at this photo carefully:


almost everything in this photo sold...really look...now you can see...people will buy anything, including a resin sparkly dolphin for $1.00 I sold the microwave oven for a $1.00 to a friend who wanted to use it for drying FEMO clay. Sold a bunch of lamps to a woman who wouldn't shut up the whole time she was there...finally she let on that she had just come from church and that she hoped her god blessed me. I made her pay full price.

It was such a nice day that I pulled a rocker out to the porch and made myself a vodka and cranberry and read for the downtime. Of course once I did that, hundreds of people showed up. Then Greg and Pegi arrived for the space planning meeting

Pegi is a genius and has figured out the space and made a plan we are all happy to consider. It involves closing up one of the doors to the house so that we can fit in a bathroom, but I think that is fine. When we get some good readable plans, I will scan and post.

We are going to take down the chimney wall tomorrow to make one big room downstairs. I might get motivated and pull up the lino in the kitchen too. I do think I need to make a pie tomorrow, so I'd have to knock off early.

Off to bed for a bit o' quiet time, its 7:30

Just as we were about to pack it in last night, my sister took a digger of a fall off the front stairs of the cottage and landed on her back with a stair tread to the spine. I have never seen someone in so much pain and my vain attempt to find a doc or a nurse friend in the hood was all I could think to do. We did crack a bottle of rum over there so that she might numb the pain and then Greg showed up with a Xanex and all was right with the world. She couldn't drive home, but the pain subsided for her a bit. The bruise on her back is quite large, I hope that we stemmed it a bit with an ice pack.

* My sister went to the doctor and they found nothing wrong. The bruise I talked about above never materialized, so we are thankful for that. She did get an X-ray, but she feels that it is just a very bad bruise. We'll check in on her Thursday when we go down to Portland.

Pegi Miller from Himes Miller Design in Los Angeles arrived today to lead in the space planning for the interior of the cottage. We had a chance to talk and both of us are on the same page about the cottage. She is good about reuse, and is telling me that if we don't sell the f**king prison cabinets, we should figure out a way to reuse them for the kitchen. I have an idea to cut the feet off and make them cabinet height and then add a piece of granite or something to the top and Voila! We are talking about how to recycle the walls we'll be taking down upstairs.
By the way, she makes a mean meatloaf!

It poured rain today and I was embarrassed that I got my sister to come up with a load of crap...I mean....antiques to sell at the estate sale and we had no one come in for the first hour or so. It was a pretty slow day, but Ann made a strong $30.00 and I cleared over $300.00. Sold the dingy, the table saw, a vintage tin wiper blade sign with thermometer, and some small stuff. I had one woman come in, ask me how much a pair of ladies boots were and when I told her $5.00, she said that if they fit she would take them and if not, she would tell me what they were worth. They happened to be a pair of Ferragamo boots that my mom bought in Italy with me in 1985...she wore them twice and decided they wouldn't fit. My sister kept them all this time. Apparently, they are $250.00 boots..though a quick check on Ebay tells me that no one is buying them right now! The nice lady got them for $5.00.

Lots of neighbors came by today to tell me they were excited by the prospect of having the house done up. It made me feel good.

Live blogging from the Estate Sale!

Phew! We had a bang up morning, selling most of the contents from the house. I think we've almost cleared $900 for the day. The big ticket stuff like the dining room table chairs and hutch and the prison furniture hasn't sold yet. Some woman commented that it was hard to ask for a better deal when she felt she was getting a good buy already.

Customers with trucks just pulled up......

OK, they just wanted to look at the table saw we are selling. A couple are back to pick up all the stuff they bought! I am grateful for the business and it's nice to be putting money in the bank before we start ripping into the account and start spending it!

Just sold a desk I bought last year at a garage sale for a 50% mark-up...not too shabby considering that I replaced it with that cool arts and crafts library table that came with Sunnyside.

Closed up shop around 4:30. My sister is coming with more stuff tonight and I will probably grab some stuff from here to sell. I am tired of little windsor chairs and crappy 19th century porcelains.

More tomorrow

Lots of activity today. I met with the power company and they essentially told me that it would be a HUGE deal to move the power lines underground. I would have to get approval from about 15 houses and then get them all to help pay for it, or pay for it myself for about $30,000. I figured it would be a lot, but not that much. Because they would have to move 3 poles, I would have to get everyone in the neighborhood's approval since they all come off those pole. Ugghhh

The other problem I pointed out to the field operator is the access point for the electricity to connect to the house. I can actually reach out and touch the line if I wanted, and that is a problem. The CMP operator was flabbergasted that the line was attached to the house like that.....will have to get it moved.


I think we are ready for the tag sale:


Velvet seascape anyone?


Can you tell I want to sell the dining room table and chairs? I blocked off the rest of the house with furniture that I hope will sell, though I would keep the pine hutch if I had to, paint it green, and put it somewhere around the kitchen.



Arranged today to go get an oak beam. Its a 24 foot 8" square beam that is coming out of a building in Rockland and which will run underneath the second floor floor joists. Hopefully between that and reinforcing the manufactured beam that is already in place (but not secured properly) we will quell the wobbliness of the second floor.

Oh, and I also made a very nice sale today in my real business. Its a deal that I have been working on for several weeks and it finally came to pass. That should carry us for a couple of months.

Greg came home yesterday with Betty the man-truck. He finally sold his Wrangler with the lift kit and bought a 2005 Dodge Ram 1500 pick-up. Big boy truck--YEAH!

Estate Sale!
Contents of Bayside Cottage, Sunnyside.
Friday, October 23-Sunday October 25th
9 to whenever

9 Clinton Street, Northport, ME

Sale to include:
Mahogany Eastlake Settee with original crushed red velvet upholstery, Early armchair with matching footrest, fireplace equipment, Cottage dressers, Thomasville Contemporary Dining suite in blonde oak. Includes Dining table with two leaves, six chairs, and a lighted hutch with glass doors. Great shape. All wool scatter rugs and room sized rugs, Seven golden pine freestanding cabinets made originally sold in the Maine State Correctional Facility showroom in Thomaston, ME. paneled doors on raised feet. 8 foot dyer dinghy, lamps, lamps, and more lamps! schoolhouse cookie jar, old cookbooks from 1920-50s, paintings, prints, and wonderful frames, landscape on velvet, lots of glass and china, pots and pans.

Everything must go!!

Got it into my craw while driving over the last two days that I needed to get the rug and the roofing felt off of the living room floor and see in what shape the pine floor survived the previous owners. To my surprise, they are not so bad, and ripping up the nasty, mildewed, old carpeting and the felt underneath was cathartic and made the room seem that much bigger and brighter. a bit of sanding, some insulation, and some walls and this room is pretty much ready to go.

Spent the day setting up for the tag sale. I just made a big "ESTATE SALE" sign for the front of the house. We are going to try and get rid of everything in three days next weekend.

Spent the last two days familiarizing myself with what is in the cottage in prep for the estate sale next weekend. We are keeping all the good material to disperse around our houses and all the cottage-style stuff to make this place look passable.First, there is the Arts and Crafts library table that I love.
It will go to Little Bohemia to rub elbows with other furniture of its own style.

There is some great wicker, represented here by an armchair that matches the headboard in one of the bedrooms of Little Bohemia. I'll probably keep this and the other wicker at Sunnyside, because after the renovations, this place is gonna needs some cute-ing up.


There isn't a lot though, its all pretty depressing, especially going through the tired 30 year old sheets in the bedrooms. I pretty much threw all that stuff out.

I did find a cool 1930s watercolor from Rockport, ME though the artist is not listed anywhere.

I might have it reframed for our house cause the scene is very nice.

It was pretty clear that the house was rifled through after our offer to purchase the house and contents was accepted. While I've been going through the drawers, I have noted that somethings I spied while we were looking at the house are now gone.

I found that one of the most valuable things left in the house may just be the ugly dining table and chairs which are pretty good quality oak by Thomasville.

I don't know why people insist on having matching furniture suites in their dining rooms, but that just may be me. Nothing we own matches.
I just listed the table and chairs and the cabinets from the Maine State Correctional Facilities Workrooms on Craigslist. Hopefully I can sell these things and the crappy rugs before next weekend!

Oh, I took a pretty nice photo of the view from the second floor bedroom:

WE CLOSED!!!

and


I GOT RID OF THE UGLY COUCH AND CHAIR IN 20 MINUTES WITH A FREE SIGN!

to the woman from the bank who turned me down for a loan
(she was looking for something cheap for the bank break room)

ain't life grand???

T minus 11 hours until closing! My day starts with getting a big ass cashier's check from the bank, signing papers until my hand is numb, and then it's me and the new cottage, and a date with a box full of contractor bags! Who knows what we will find there! I can begin posting to the site in earnest!

OK, so I talked to the owner of the shed, who happens to be my barber. Saw him today at the Vet and he said he would consider selling the shed to me (He is just moving into his new house because the one where the shed is burned down in April. ) He told me the sills and the floor are rotted out. I am thinking that if the price is good and I can get a deal on moving it, then it would be worth moving it and at least re-using the roof, which, as you can see in this detail, is constructed identically, to the Little Bohemia.



But, I can't think about that right now...closing on Sunnyside on Wednesday morning at 9:30am. Then starts the big clean for a week or so, and listings on Craig's list for some of the items.like this gorgeous couch and matching chair set

Here is an example of how nuts I am:
Greg and I were walking the dogs today and though I have walked past this building dozens of times, I have never even noticed it. It is a shed that sits in the back of a neighbor's yard, totally innocuous. Today, I saw it and Eureka! I found what I think might be the old shed from the back of Little Bohemia, our first Bayside cottage.

The construction is identical

So are the rooflines.

I want it back!

I found this image in the New York Times Home and Garden section this morning and love it. I would totally love to put in a Dutch Bed nook in one of the bedrooms. I told Greg that I really liked the idea of having built in bunk beds in one of the bedrooms, along with a Queen sized bed, but this is so much better! It would double as a cozy couch in the room and also build in storage. totally cool.

Since the closing was pushed back two weeks, my panic attacks about this place have subsided....until tonight that is. For some reason I was wide awake at 3am thinking about all that this place needs and whether we have enough money to do it. Since I have failed to qualify for a loan or even for a Home Equity Line of Credit, everything we do to this place comes out of the stored away cash under the mattress account. Tossing and turning from 3-4 am while thinking about heat and windows and insulation is not good for the old back, so here I am, blogging about it at 4:45am in hopes that my panic attack will subside.

It didn't help that I showed the house to a woodworker friend this past weekend who advocated reducing the size of the addition by lopping off about 1/6th of it in favor of a larger porch on which to sit a look at the water! I am trying to economize here, not spend all my extra cash making sure that some renter has a sun deck on the first floor!

I recently came up with the idea though to have an outside set of spiral stairs leading to the second floor sun deck off the master bedroom. I went on Craig's list and found a listing for "old cast iron spiral stairs...$1000 in Brunswick" I emailed and asked for a picture and this is what I got back via email. It's a riser from the staircase that this guy has:

The staircase is apparently 9' tall, probably without a railing and in need of serious sandblasting!

The real estate market is starting to stabilize here in Maine, so that is one good thing in our favor. A number of places are selling again in Bayside, but for values far below the peak when a house with 14' of waterfront sold for a lot of money. After that, scores of houses went on the market at inflated prices and burst the bubble pretty fast.

Ok, back to sleep now...I hope.

Oh god, here are the photos of the inside of the cottage...don't laugh so loud that I can hear you, ok??? These are just of the first floor. As you can see, the previous owners took some walls out in places and removed the chimney from the dividing wall between old living room in the front of the house and the back part of the house with the kitchen and porch "rooms." We used to say in my family "it has possibilities" when we looked at houses like these. Can you see the possibilities? Wanna tour?
Ok
The first photo shows the new "addition" off the first floor. It was never finished, but will make a very cute sunny room when we finish it. The wall of doors opens onto a very narrow walkway and the ocean view. Think of a beadboard ceiling, nice slate floor tiles and a fireplace where that hutch is. You can click on the photo to see it in detail.


The second photo shows the dining area, or "where the new kitchen might be"



This photo shows most of the interior of the house. I am standing in front of the wall of sliding glass doors looking back into the house. Behind Greg and Bill, there is the chimney wall, you cannot see it, but there hole where the fireplace used to be is behind the cabinets next to the stove. This whole wall will come out (it is not a supporting wall) after we get some support beams in the place. You can see where the stairs are on the other side of the wall over the fridge? We want to create a wrap around stair core that will provide support while also providing space for a small downstairs bath. It will be like a boat head in that the whole thing will double as a shower stall.


and here we have the living room and the stairs. The couch to the left sit directly in front of the original double doors of the house and the stairs straight ahead are the ones you see in the previous picture. See how the interior walls were removed and framing put up for new walls? We like that!



Think we are nuts? So do I!

Another period photo of Sunnyside that we found. This house must have originally had an incredible view of the water from two sides. It still does now, but there appears to be nothing around it in this pic. I have some interior shots that I took yesterday and I will try to get them up later this afternoon. I have to run errands right now. They are pretty scary pics too!