Scrapbook
Week 6 - November 7th - 13th, 2006
This week I spent very little time over at the house. Other obligations...however Andreas went one evening to do a bit of demo on the upstairs kitchen (yes, still), and other miscellaneous handy-man things. I don't really know what they are, but I like to refer to them as 'fartin around'. :)
He did however, spy some larger sheets of newspaper, flat (or mostly flat) in the south wall - at the very corner of the door frame and actually out into the upstairs hall. He left them for me so I was excited to hear about this!
However, even on Saturday this week I had to work at my day job so once again Andreas wad over there fartin' around. He cleaned the eavestroughs and then we met later for a friend's party.
We are starting to feel like we are getting nothing done, and should spend more time at the crack house. To that end, we decide to put in a couple of hours on week nights when we can.
Monday November 13th
Off we go to put out the garbage. We stay until 9:30pm but what a discovery day this was!
Andreas is a work horse - pulling off lath and being bathed in century old insulation laced with squirrel pee for his trouble.
He points out to me where he saw the larger pieces of newspaper, and it was all over. I instantly become historical CSI and get little to no actual work done! I did yank off the baseboard in the hall - not even worth saving - it was serveral rows of separate wood, stacked up to LOOK tall! I also smashed a lot of plaster and discovered that there is paper practically lining the entire wall behind the lath. Unfortunately, when you pull lath, the plaster between the pieces falls backward into the wall, thereby crumbling the newspapers. This is nearly impossible to avoid. However, it looks like this whole section is part of the Sports, Advertisements, Classifieds and news of The Evening Telegraph dated 1914. There goes my theory on 1920! I was so excited to see all this paper - the camera only got in one or two shots because the batteries ran out, so I ended up leaving it in the walls until I can photograph it all. The papers have headlines like "Flashes from the Front" and a listing of "Some of our Boys Over There" complete with headshots!There was also a plate under the eaves, just parked there like someone had just had a snack and left it. I also found a 1927 nickel! I was way excited and Andreas was getting really sick of hearing "oh my gad, take a look at this, hun!"
Here a a couple of shots:
The story of how we bought the crack house
Common references in my scrapbook:
Andreas: god love him for putting up with me and my big ideas
Me: the other half of the loony toones who decided to buy the house.
dodgy: means sketchy, bad, worse, 'imagine that' and 'can you believe it?'
ch: crackhouse
front room: main floor a.k.a living room
middle room: main floor a.k.a dining room and Command Central
stolen goods room: this is at the front of the house in the basement - the police told us that is where the previous tenants stored their stuff