"So...if we come out to visit, is there anywhere near your house where we can grab a bite to eat?"
Prior to visiting, we've had several friends and family members ask this very very question when attempting to plan their trip. To us, our seemingly endless restaurant options within a short walk of our home are almost a given, but to people who live in areas similar to where we grew up in Ohio, the option to head out for a nice dinner at a restaurant often leaves you looking at only a few viable dining options.
Eamonn's with PX upstairs
As we head into Old Town Alexandria's official Restaurant Week, the event running from August 23rd - September 1st meant to encourage people to try out new dining options through the allure of a bargain meal, we have to laugh at our response when we were first asked the question that opened this post...
"Um, yeah...there are about 100 different places we can walk to."
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Thursday, August 22, 2013
When Wendy and I take walks around Old Town, we typically don't take a specific route, and we often don't know exactly where we plan on walking when we leave the house. There are so many lovely streets, so many beautiful homes, so many things to see. We're 13 years into living in Alexandria, more than 10 living in Old Town, and we still love finding new things as we walks the streets of our town.
There are few things I enjoy more on a walk than discovering a home that's undergoing some sort of restoration project. When this occurs, we make a point to pass by these places often, watching the progress, marveling at the speed that's possible when a giant team of specialists is working on the job, and quietly judging based on our preferred aesthetics (hey, I'm being honest). We're house nerds and Old Town geeks, (and Wendy's even a licensed real estate agent now) so it's what we like to do.
A little while ago we passed by a house on Wolfe Street that really caught our eye. It wasn't because of a major project completed but rather one that had reached its first phase, and it made us do a double take.
The owners of the house were having the exterior clapboards stripped in preparation for new paint. The thick faded matte yellow coats of paint that had accumulated over the 180 years since the house had been built (circa 1834) were no more. In the place of the modest and somewhat nondescript home now sat what resembled a haunted mansion that would look more appropriate atop a hill while being struck by lightening.
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Wednesday, August 21, 2013
The siding project involved a great deal of research, a fair number of purchases, a tremendous number of steps, and the assistance of a good number of friends and family along the way. The overall project was easily the most collaborative project we've undertaken during our entire period of home DIY, which is a bit odd given the accepted practice of asking friends to help out when moving into a fixer upper.
We were never ones to throw a house warming paint and pizza party where we plied friends with slices whilst thrusting rollers in their hands. Something about that tradition doesn't sit right with us, and the typical end result we see in homes of people that have done this, well, you shouldn't expect stellar quality from often non handy "workers" paid by the hour in pizza. (Or perhaps you should think twice about serving beer with that promised pizza.)
However, facing a hard deadline on the siding project, we felt compelled to enlist the help of others who had been offering to assist as they learned of our siding project and goals.
As I mentioned in our last post on the siding, Wendy's brother had come into town to assist in pre-priming all of the siding lengths in a neighbor's yard. This had worked out perfectly and (in spite of a minor morning shower the day after the paint) the work slated for the Friday of our planned long weekend of effort had been knocked out.
Feeling rather good about our progress, we woke up bright and early on Saturday morning, ready to take on the day, and we began preparing for next round of cavalry's arrival.
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Boy, did we have a weekend! This past weekend was full of highs and lows. We kicked it off by meeting up with the family of blogger/Instagram friends who were in Old Town, which was a whole lot of fun and just reinforces why blogging and interacting with total strangers can be such a great thing. Then, just a little while later, we had a clumsy cat accident.
Yes, poor guy was so stressed there was drool hanging out of his mouth.
Our little old man, Mel, decided to jump onto the arm of our family room chair. Somehow, the spry little fellow lost his grip and ended up falling backwards onto the hardwood floor. I heard the thud and then the little guy started hissing at anything and everything around him. To make a long story short, after vet visits and analysis our Scottish Fold has what appears to be a strained Achilles or partial tear of the feline equivalent of an ACL...on both knees.
The good news is that he's gained one pound since earlier this year, so our efforts to fatten the skinny old man up have been working out. After some pain meds he's doing much better now, but we need to keep him from jumping and climbing stairs for a few weeks...yes...a cat...that we need to keep from jumping...good luck, eh!
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Thursday, August 15, 2013
After having satisfied all prerequisite items on our all too critical list of siding unknowns, as well as beginning our project by removing all old siding elements and the various underlayments we discovered along the way, we felt pretty great about the project and where it was headed...
Well, actually, I wouldn't say "we felt great," go ahead and scratch that. I'm not going to sit here and spin blog tales of the "you can do it" sunshine and DIY rainbows that somehow magically appeared amidst our siding undertaking. That's right, full honesty here, we actually didn't feel "pretty great" at all, in reality we felt...hmm, how should I put this...completely overwhelmed by what seemed as if it could turn out to be a foolish undertaking that would result in our possible need to admit defeat and call in a pro to finish what we couldn't handle. To say I was concerned this might be the route we were on, well, lets just say that I'm simply not good at "admitting defeat," and just the fact I was entertaining these basic thoughts was more or less soul crushing and a testament to my level of concern.
Just to remind you, this whole project took place in 2005 (so we're doing more of a retrospective recap here). We had never done anything this large, had never worked on scaffolding, had not anticipated the level of "decroded piece of crap" our house's deterioration had achieved, and we had very little clue about what we might find lurking around every little buh infested and rotten corner. We were learning as we went along and we hoped beyond all hope that we were not making any enormous mistakes, all the while we felt like we just kept swiping our credit card against our dwindling savings, cha-ching!!! But more than anything, I felt like I couldn't really let on to Wendy just how I was feeling. I knew she was on a bullet train to Meltdownsville and my own doubts about the project would have only helped to accelerate her voyage. Talk about a big league pickle.
Rather than each of us airing our deep dark emotions to aide our partner in their trip down disaster lane, we kept pushing along in the project and making every possible attempt to take everything just one step at a time.
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