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Melrose and Energy

Category: gardens and old home renovation | Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 2:57 pm

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As I consider the near-term needs at Melrose as well as the long-term issues that will likely arise in the decades to come, one thing is starkly clear. Just as the rest of the country needs to address issues of energy use and conservation, so too, people who have old homes have got to find ways to heat and/or cool their homes in energy efficient ways. I have been trying to address this issue for a couple of years as it relates to the 200-year old house I have in eastern North Carolina, and I am depressed by the options and their associated costs available for my consideration.

While North Carolina enjoys what, by any measure, can be called a temperate climate, its summers are long, hot and humid, and its winters are short but cold. Not New England cold, but cold enough to require heat and insulation and such other common-sense measures as are called for to keep from freezing one's buns off.

Keep in mind that Melrose is generally not occupied except for the occasional weekend in the winter, so we have the luxury of having the house temp set at 50 degrees most of the time. Even doing that, however, the fuel bill can be many hundreds of dollars a month. I know that cost likely pales in comparison to heating bills in colder climes, but mine is a bill for a house that sits almost always unoccupied. In the summer, we set the thermostats at 80, and the energy bills are still significant. The one saving grace is that the exterior brick walls are 18-inches thick, providing insulation that no wood or brick veneer house could ever claim. On the other hand, it is a virtual impossibility to further insulate the exterior walls.

The point of this blog is, however, not to bemoan the cost of energy. Instead, it is to bemoan how few options are available to someone who wants to find alternative means of heating and/or cooling. As someone who remembers very clearly the energy crisis of the 1970s, it is easy to become depressed that in the intervening 30 years, we have done almost nothing to prepare for today and an infinite number of tomorrows.

I have some outbuildings at Melrose and I thought their roofs would make good locations for solar panels. But research into the cost of such panels to provide energy for Melrose only served to further depress me. The initial cost of installation would be prohibitive for anyone but the very wealthy, and even at today's energy costs it would take upwards of 30 years to reach a breakeven point.

I also thought about wind energy. But all of the literature has said that the area of the country where I live does not have the wind resources needed to make worthwhile an investment in wind energy. I confess that I take that insight with a grain of salt, because just simple observation tells me that there is wind enough to exploit. But it isn't dependable.



And again, the cost is high enough that should you already be involved in restoring an old house, you likely won't want to or can't incur yet more expense related to energy projects.

The last area of disappointment came when I looked into government incentives, tax breaks, etc. to implement an energy saving program. What I found both at the federal level and within North Carolina shows clearly that if you are looking for significant encouragement from your governments to prepare for a petro-poor future, don't waste your time. Presidents and congresses, Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians and Bull Moosers have all shirked their responsibilities in this regard, and there is blame enough to darken the political legacy of everyone in government from city councilman to federal potentate.

The only way I can imagine either myself or the millions of others who will need to find alternatives to current dependence on oil taking meaningful action is either (1) for the cost of alternative energy solutions to drastically come down, or (2) the subsidy from governments to help make conversions to alternative solutions affordable, or (3) a combination of one or two.

I am well aware of the need to do all of the small things in Melrose, such as weather stripping, caulking windows, etc. I am focused on doing that - really I am. But those steps, as important as they are, will not result in the kind of major improvement in energy use needed in a place like Melrose. I suspect that if you just look at the subset of people who own and love old or older homes, you will find the need I am expressing here is nearly universal.








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Melrose Offers No Victories Without Defeats

Category: gardens and old home renovation | Posted: Fri May 30, 2008 8:14 pm

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There are some Sundays when we pack up the car to head home from Melrose and we feel a sense of regret that we can't stay longer and make even more progress. At such times, we feel our paint-stained hands closing around victory, or what passes for victory at this 200-year old money pit. Such was the case a few weeks back when we finished the major refurbishing jobs in what we refer to as the parlor. The floor had been brought back from the dead. The walls, de-wallpapered and skim coated, were painted, and we could see the end in sight. It was like seeing the promised land. We hadn't yet crossed the Jordon -- there were still window repairs, floor molding and a few other things - but, as I say, we felt victory in our grasp.

Then came a fateful meeting with some roofing experts who happened to be completing a major roof job in town and who were enlisted to do a impromptu roof evaluation of the Melrose metal roof. I knew the roof had been poorly maintained for the last 40 to 50 years. I knew it leaked more or less like a colander. But I hoped that there was still life in that ol' metal rust bucket of a roof. So, I summoned my unique brand of escapist optimism, and latched onto the hope that when the roofing men came down from their inspection, they would say that with judicious repairs and ardent future maintenance, the roof would survive at least long enough to outlive me. Clearly, I was delusional.

Their report was factual, informative and distressing. The roof, they said, is not worth doing repairs on. It's rusted nearly though in dozens of places. What paint that still adheres to the metal is only there on temporary leave and will flake off before the cicadas fill the summer nights with their racket. Listening to the report was like hearing your mechanic tell you that not even Click and Clack could save your old warhorse of a car from the crusher. The roofers said the roof needs to go, and the price? You don't want to know.

Victory in the parlor; Waterloo on the roof!

I won't say that the roof news wasn't a blow. I had to double my Prozac. But, what was the alternative? Don't fix the roof? If I failed to do what was called for, generations of people who care about old houses would say unkind, perhaps even damning things about my by-then long departed self. But I happen to be one of those cares-about-old-houses sorts myself. And I'm having the roof replaced. God help me.

But back to the victory part of the story.

With the parlor more or less ready to use, we turned our attention to the kitchen. Truthfully, "we" didn't do diddily. My wife turned her attention to the kitchen, while I continued to piddle in the parlor. My wife, a teacher by day but a closet tiler by night, knows a thing or two about cutting and putting down tile, and she proceeded to install an entirely new tile floor, generally turning a 1960s space into a functioning kitchen suitable for modern kitchen-types of things. Once again, the victory flag was hoisted if not on the ramparts, then at least on the front porch. Two rooms done in the same year. Positively breath taking. Being gluttons for punishment, we now look longingly at the dilapidated dinning room space, and think that we will mount a full scale frontal attack in the weeks to come. Victory makes the victor positively giddy.

With summer about to swelter down upon us, I thought that it might be a good idea to have an air conditioning company do an annual maintenance on the two Melrose air conditioning systems. An ounce of prevention and all that sort of thing. So, I put a call in to a reputable company and sat back awaiting news that we could, with peace of mind, turn the AC on in the coming cat-and-dog days of Eastern North Carolina. As an aside, I need to mention that I told the same company, which does all manner of electrical things, that I also wanted all of the electrical outlets on the first floor tested and, if found faulty, replaced. I had already had more than one instance where the outlets sparked when jiggled. I admit that there have been times when I have sparked when I was jiggled, but the electrical outlets were a different kettle of voltage altogether.

Just the other day, the bill for the AC check and the outlet check came with an expectation of a big check in return. And along with the bill, was a notice saying that while doing all that checking, the workmen had found the heat exchanger thingamajigie on one of the heating systems had exchanged its last, and I was advised (1) not to use the heating system until repairs are made (something about dying from carbon monoxide poisoning next winter) and (2) replacement of the entire unit is the only sensible course of action. That'll be umpteen thousand dollars, thank you. My wife consoled me with the thought that I do not have to take action on the heating system until at least late summer or sometime in the fall. To which I now think ....

Victory in the kitchen. Appomattox in the heating system.


Last edited: Tue Jun 03, 2008 8:21 pm

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Bringing Back Melrose - The Grounds

Category: gardens and old home renovation | Posted: Wed Mar 12, 2008 6:57 pm

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Spring has sprung in Eastern North Carolina. The farm land is being prepared for the cotton, corn, soy beans, and peanuts that will soon rise from that good earth. Fruit trees are in bloom. The climbing rose in back of Melrose is leafing out, and everywhere you look, the point is driven home that winter is in the past tense. We hope.

We're now trying to get down to Melrose every other weekend, and for the first time, we're now going down on Fridays after work and staying two nights in the otherwise empty house. A few weeks back, we took twelve apple trees down and had them planted in an area now optimistically called the orchard. We're told that in about four years, we'll start having apples. My hope is that time and energy will allow turning lots of those apples into cider, and to give excess apples to people of the area. I really look forward to the apple cider making under autumn skies.

The orchard area is only a matter of feet from a street that borders Melrose land.. Since I have long agreed with Robert Frost that good fences make good neighbors, I started looking for some climbing roses that would be hardy as the devil, tall as a fence, and flower for the better part of the spring, summer and fall. Somewhere in my mad dash through internet sites on climbing roses, I came across the name of a variety I had never heard of, and found a source at a Canadian company called Hortico. The three bare root bushes I bought will be planted this weekend, and I'm hoping that when full grown they will discourage dogs, deer and other critters from wandering into the orchard.

When we first bought Melrose, the outside was a full blown mess. It was overgrown, volunteer trees and bushes were everywhere, and trash in large black bags had been piled for years in the back and fertilized with copious amounts of dead leaves. There was also the occasional cast iron piping, discarded tools, and old wiring. It was beyond mess. It was galaxian in scope. Since then, I have had the black bags and eons-worth of old leaves carted off, along with some of the most obvious other clutter. Volunteer plants have been retired to the brush pile, and attempts to plant grass have been made (more about that later).

If there was one mistake we made initially, it was to have cut down a wall of trees and bushes and kudzu and honeysuckle and Lord only knows what else that formed a barrier between one side of the Melrose property and a fairly large complex of municipal buildings that sits next door. When the nearly impenetrable wall of greenery was taken down, I immediately knew we had made an error. All of the municipal complex which has been hidden was now visually cheek-by-jowl with Melrose. It will take years and untold numbers of plants to fill in that space. Why did we take down the wall of stuff? Well, it had kudzu and honeysuckle. That seemed enough of a provocation at the time. In retrospect, I think I could have come to love kudzu and honeysuckle.

The one good thing that came from that project was the presence amidst that jungle of a couple of struggling trees which were heavily draped in mammoth vines. A lot of limbs on those trees had to be sacrificed during jungle removal, and when the work was finished, one of the trees looked for-all-the-world like it had been created by Dr. Seuss to grace a page in Horton Hears a Who.

The front grounds at Melrose amount to a great piece of land going out to the main street, on which grow nearly a half dozen ancient oaks. They are massive and lovely, but they rain leaves, broken twigs and branches on the soil below. There had once been a a white picket fence along the street, with a gate opening onto a long walkway flanked on both sides by large English box woods. So, from the street, a visitor would have looked up the boxwood alley to Melrose's front façade with its four great antebellum columns. It must have been quite a site.

Today, the fence is only remembered thru faded photographs. Most of the boxwood is gone, and what remains is having a near-death experience. Lichen covers the branches of the only two boxwood bushes worth saving, and even that effort of resuscitation may be futile because of their age. Beside one of the two bushes is a large and neglected gardenia bush that I intend to revive if the gardening gods will only bless my efforts. And close by is a scraggily tea rose bush that, against all odds, puts out flowers during the summer months. I admire its courage and am trying to salvage it as well.

There is a long, circular drive from the street up to the house, and along its edges grow several large bushes, including two wonderful sasanqua camellias that are now in bloom. I'm fortunate to have them and the others that are at home on the front grounds. However....

Bill, the fellow who is helping me bring back the grounds around Melrose, is a grand person to work with, and so when he tries something on my behalf and it does not work as expected, I tend not to blame him, but to look for some other reason. Much of the front property is just a big open space that may once have been the place where former owners put a glider swing or lawn chairs to cool themselves in the shade of late afternoons. But, by the time we arrived on the scene, that space generally was barren, pretty much covered by oak leaves and dead branches. Being the inveterate suburbanite that I was then, I immediately hoped to see a lawn restored to that area, and I immediately placed an order for grass seed to be sown. That was last spring. Much of the seed did sprout, and for at least a month, there was greenness where once there was brownness. Sadly, the whole idea began to wilt and die during the ensuing drought that hammered all of North Carolina in 2007. By summer's end, most of the new grass appeared dead, and the oak leaves and dead branches seemed once again to be winning.

Recently, Bill and I stood looking at the front grounds, commiserating on the apparent failure of our grass growing venture, when I had a thought, something that happens once or twice a year to me regardless of whether I am trying or not. I looked at the area where grass appeared to have gone with the wind, and I looked at the camellias that are doing wonderfully, and I wondered why? Then I began thinking about all those oak leaves that had fallen over those front grounds over all those generations and I wondered whether the soil there was too acid for grass to thrive, but was just peachy for acid loving plants like camellias. Bill allowed as how that just might be possible, and has taken it upon himself to have soil tests done to see whether I'm a crack pot or possibly sane.

Something else that Bill has done is gather up most of the oak leaves that had matted the grounds all winter long, and when he did so, we found that not all of the grass had died-- most of it, but not all. That at least holds promise that should I want to follow the original idea of having a lawn out there, perhaps doing enough liming over a long enough period of time will let grass thrive there. Except...

In view of high gas costs, global warming and how little use most lawns ever get, I'd like to have something other than a lawn on the front grounds at Melrose. If possible, I'd like to use that space for plantings that will thrive in the acid soil that had built up over the decades. I'd love more camellias out there, if I can get them established despite the ongoing drought.

There are two other areas of the Melrose grounds that occupy a good bit of my thinking.

One is a large pile of bricks representing all that is left of the detached kitchen which once served the needs of Melrose's owners. It burned down long ago, and the old bricks from which it was made have provided a haven for vines that have nasty stickers and proto trees with sick smelling sap, not to mention the likely presence of critters creeping and slithering. It's the slithering ones that give me pause. Still, I have begun attacking that thicket, and hope by summer to have only the brick pile in all of its ugly glory. After that, I don't know what to do with the pile. Eventually, it would be nice to have the bricks cleaned of mortar and used to edge plants, etc. Then, I would put a marker on the spot of the former kitchen to note for future generations where it was. We'll see.

While the old kitchen burned down, three other out-buildings did not go up in smoke, and being the nutty professor of gardening and landscapdom, I view them not just as buildings, but also as adjuncts to an overall landscape design. One building in particular is much on my mind. Back in the days when Melrose was at the heart of a farm, the building in question was used to store, among other things, hay. Matter of fact, there is some old hay in there now. Problem is that the tin-roofed building has a nice barn double door that faces away from present-day Melrose property. The doors open out onto municipal land, whereas I'd like it to face out to the orchard. What to do? What I think about is one day having the building hoisted up and turned around. Either that or cutting a door in the back of the back One or tuther.

Of the two other out buildings, one is a small barn-like structure in which is now stored a great pile of old things taken from Melrose over heaven-only-knows how many years. There are old and much rotted shutters, old spindles, rusted pieces of plumbing, etc. One day, one poor blighter will have to go in there and decide what to do with all of that. With any kind of luck, I'll pass into that great garden in the sky long before I pull that task out of the job jar.

The third building is my favorite- a small, square building perhaps eight or nine feet across, that sits on stilts, so that it is about four or five feet off the ground. A nice set of wooden steps leads to the entrance. The moment I first laid eyes on that little building, I imagined it as a three-season getaway from dogs and grandchildren and such. It's all part of my Thomas Jefferson complex, where I see myself off alone contemplating the meaning of life or, at least, deciding on when best to start making apple cider. One day, for sure, I will retire to that spot with cold lemonade and think about just how wonderful and decent life can be.


Last edited: Tue Jun 03, 2008 8:33 pm

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Moving Forward at Melrose

Category: gardens and old home renovation | Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 4:20 pm

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It's a funny aspect of my blog history that I have a perfectly nice garden at my home- one which I have spent more than 10 years developing. And I never blog about it. Yet I blog, blog, blog about this place in Eastern North Carolina where there is no garden. True to my nature, I will continue that tacky history this time as well.

The ol' home place called Melrose is no longer on the market. It was taken off the market after I experienced overwhelming paranormal insight that came whispering in the wee hours of the night, saying that Melrose should stay in the family. That, plus the fact that housing market prospects are worse that a field of cotton waiting for boll weevils.

In the weeks since taking down the house-for-sale sign, I have reviewed the current status of the house and the grounds. I have come to the conclusion that all in all, things aren't all that bad. In the house, I had previously had the wallpaper taken down, only to learn that beneath the multiple layers of paper was, in almost all instances, drywall. In the process of stripping the paper, the drywall was awfully nicked and gauged. I was advised by the fellow who does much of the work on the house that one way to rehabilitate those walls would be to put on a skim coat of plaster, which would provide a smooth surface that could then be painted. Readers of previous blogs about Melrose will appreciate the absence of any consideration of using wallpaper.

I consulted several resources concerning the usefulness of going the skim-plaster route, and learned that the general idea was good, but the material to use is not plaster, but joint compound. Who'd a thunk? I found a fellow who lives not far from Melrose who will cover the walls at a very reasonable price, and that work is about to begin. Thank the Lord! He (the drywall man, and not the Lord) will do the three downstairs rooms that need the skim treatment, leaving a surface ready for painting by me or various sundry members of my family. Suddenly, the prospect of having a livable space by late winter or very early spring is not an insane thought.

Except.....

There is the small matter of the floors in all the downstairs rooms (not to mention the upstairs rooms). The floors, with one exception in Melrose's newest addition, are all original wide-plank wood that has not been cared for since the presidency of John Quincy Adams. Or perhaps it was Millard Fillmore. One or the other. But it has been a long time. As best I can tell, the floors have aged to a dusty gray, over which has been layered over many decades some kind of reddish-tint. Assuming that there was not mass murder in the house, I am left to ascribe the reddishness to a long-ago red paint job. On top of the vestiges of that intentional red paint are various examples of spilled paint, dollops of hardened joint compound, drips of compounds not yet analyzed , ground in dirt, and the occasional droppings of bird poop. Whatever else you can say about the floors, they have character.



There were very few givens when I started my research on what to do with those floors. I could leave them as they are, but that was a non-starter. I was advised by someone who knows what he is talking about (I do occasionally hear from such people) that under no circumstances should I allow the floors to be sanded with a drum sander. Historic floors deserve better. Therefore, it is a given that no drum sander will ever darken Melrose's doors or floors. Because I work with that idea as a given, I first had to decide what I hoped to achieve with the floors. My conclusion was that I want the floors cleaned of all the junk and stuff that either Jefferson or Fillmore left behind after one heck of a party at Melrose. If the floors retain that dusty gray with reddish tint, that's fine. I have no certainty what the reddish tint is, but it is not unreasonable to speculate that it's a paint put down long ago when it was fashionable to paint floors. If that is the case, I certainly do not want to erase all hints of the tints.

So, how to do that? You might be surprised to learn that there is no clear cut answer. Cleaning old, old, old floors without doing damage appears to be more art than science. My best resource, the one who said never to let old floors be sanded, suggested using a floor cleaner or paint stripper, applied carefully while on one's hands and knees. In addition to taken incredible amounts of time to do just one room, this suggested approach is useful for promoting existing arthritis, lumbago, and spinal curvature.

For the longest time I could not find a tool intend to do what I needed. All the tools I initially found were laden with testosterone, and meant to bring wood floors to their knees. Trees have knees, but do floors? I rather doubt it. Anyway, when all seemed hopeless -- rather like Indiana Jones when he's caught in the ancient Egyptian temple with deadly snakes and nary a way to escape (the reader can readily see I lean to the melodramatic) - I came across an internet mention of a product just introduced by Dave Orick, he of vacuum cleaner fame.

Orick has a sander, buffer, rug cleaner and lots-else machine. It works on every conceivable floor surface and makes wonderful strawberry daiquiris to boot. The sanding action is really for light sanding to remove surface gunk. It has a typical floor buffing action rather than the drum sanding action so often used to humiliate and mutilate floors. To a certain degree, this somewhat expensive machine is a pig-in-a-poke because I have not used it yet. I hope to do so very soon, and if it works as I dream, it will be worth its weight in undamaged wood flooring.


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WHAT IF YOU JUST DO THE WHOLE PLACE IN KHAKI?

Category: gardens and old home renovation | Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 4:36 pm

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As fall has huffed and puffed by, I found myself in deepening meditation as to how I can achieve Nirvana at my Far East (North Carolina) antebellum temple known as Melrose. To achieve that sublime state, I began by asking the fellow who works on Melrose- known here as DH- to take all of the wallpaper off of all the walls in all of the rooms of the house. In other words, I wanted the stuff off, down and out.

The wallpaper in Melrose was early 1960s. Possibly earlier. Possibly it came over with Miles Standish. No one knows. But, it was old, ugly, tattered and stained. No amount of nymphs cavorting across Arcadian vistas can counter balance that which is hideous. Other than that, I had no ill feeling toward it.

My fall-ish meditations have also brought me to consider what might replace the paper that by now has taken its rightful place in the local landfill. Central to those meditations has the fact that I have a peculiar aversion to wallpaper. It certainly is not because I dislike all wallpaper. I don't dislike all wallpaper. There are many wallpapers that I have seen and liked, and I feel certain that in the name of diversity I could learn to like even more if time and circumstance were right. My problem with wallpaper, and I blush to admit this, is that I fear it. All right, I've admitted it. I've outted myself. But, I have been through analysis for years to learn the underlying reason for my fear of wallpaper, and I think I know the reason.

It might be universal or it might just be a guy thing, but I find my fear of wallpaper is three fold. First, it is bloody expensive. Oh sure, you can get inexpensive wallpaper, but wallpaper is a bit like diamonds- if you're going to get one, you might as well get one of quality. Using that cockamamie reasoning, just wallpapering a bedroom using the talents of someone who really knows what they are doing with wallpaper can set you back a bundle. I've seen the work of rank amateurs who put up wallpaper. I did it many years ago and the sight is still enough to cause vertigo. Good wallpapers deserve good wallpaperers. Kinda like good wine deserves elegant crystal. Not paper cups.

Then, there is the issue of wallpaper and it being more or less permanent. Once you spend a small fortune to wallpaper a room-- well, there you are- stuck with it, if not forever, at least for a long enough time that it feels like forever. Suppose I papered a room in elegant and expensive wallpaper. Elegant? Me? Not likely, but let's pretend. And, further suppose that within two years it has come to look like a wall of invading kudzu. So, I decide that I want something different. In that event, God have mercy on my poor blighted soul. Poor snook that I am, I would awaken at 3 a.m., my cat slobbering on my chin, to the realization that I am dissatisfied with wallpaper that cost more than the silk and leather wallpaper at Versailles. Lacking the resources of the Sun King, my only escape would be to drop the whole idea, let the kudzu invade and plan on having the wallpaper in perpetuity.


While my neurosis about wallpaper starts with its cost, and goes through its long life span, it ends with the whole subject of color. I like color. I really do. My skin is more or less pinkish. My hair is brown (kinda, sorta), with a soupcon, perhaps even a dollop of gray. And I am not, despite rumors to the contrary, color blind. I just have no talent at mixing and matching colors.

My point can perhaps best be made by an intimate admission about my wardrobe. The individual who invented the color khaki should be enshrined in the Pantheon of mankind's greatest benefactors. Khaki goes with everything, without exception- well, perhaps not with fuchsia, but everything else. Positively! Halleluiah. Huzza, huzza.

Khaki was made for me; hence my subscribing to my own theory that every man's wardrobe should consist of a nearly infinite number of khaki pants The man who has khaki pants wants for nothing. Everything, but everything goes with khaki. So, today I have on khaki pants and, freed by that, I boldly put on a blue shirt. I know its blue, and I love it for being blue. But more importantly, I know it goes with my pants. Had I put on blue or gray pants, I would have agonized over the choice of shirt color, ultimately choosing a white shirt because white, like khaki, goes with everything. Having chosen khaki pants, however, I am assured that I can go off to work in a blue shirt without looking like Clarabelle. And if I choose to wear blue socks, even if I have chosen blue socks that do not match my blue shirt, there is this vast expanse of khaki pants separating the shirt from the offending socks. No one will notice if I have broken age-old social codes. Why? Khaki- that's why! God bless it, everyone.

But back to wallpaper. What does khaki have to do with Melrose and wallpaper? Truthfully, nothing. My wandering into khaki land merely allowed me to espouse a long held theory about men's clothing and to give thanks to Mr. .Mc Khaki, or whatever his name was.

Still, there is the question of what I now will replace the wallpaper with. Since I have gone on and on concerning the dark side of wall paper and the salvation offered to males by khaki, I will address the question of "what next?" during my next visit.


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Sagging Shutters and Fixing Leaks

Category: gardens and old home renovation | Posted: Thu Nov 29, 2007 3:59 pm

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As I have gone about addressing the needs at Melrose, my ol' pile in eastern North Carolina's ag-land, uppermost in my mind has been securing the shell of the house so that the rain does not pour in, the wind does not whistle in, and various scofflaws do not come in. In moments of delusion, I actually think I have been successful in this prime goal, but sanity always returns and I am disabused of such stuff-and-nonsense, as my mother used to say. There I am deluding away, having a cup of coffee in the morning, and a call comes from DH, the fellow who does so much of the work at Melrose. He'll call to bring me up to date on whatever project is underway, and all too often his update includes an 'oh, by the way' about another leak that was discovered after a recent rain. Rains in Eastern North Carolina have been scarce, as they have been for the whole state and region. So, without rain, it is easy to become complacent. No rain, no leaks, no worries. Then comes a rain, followed by a call from DH.

To DH's knowledge, all leaks are accounted for and patched. But that is until the next rain. The roof is metal, and how long it has been in place is anyone's guess. I feel certain that it was put on after Sherman came through, but how long after is just conjecture. Speaking of Sherman reminds me of the oft repeated story for why Melrose survived the war of northern aggression. As the story goes, the detachment of Union soldiers who came into the town where Melrose is located might have damaged or destroyed the house but for the fact that the leader of the Union detachment was a Mason, and he learned that the owner of Melrose was a Mason. Rather than burn down a fellow Mason's home, Melrose was allowed to stand. The problem I have with that story is that it is very similar to stories of how homes were saved all over the South.

Anyway, back to roofs. Patching a leaking roof is a time-honored practice, but my thinking increasingly is moving in the direction of "Shouldn't I be thinking about replacing the roof with something that will last at least to the end of my life, and hopefully long beyond that?" I confess that the cost of replacing the whole thing at one time is bound to be too costly, especially with all the other things that need tending at Melrose. So, I am going to investigate replacing the roof in stages. Fortunately, because the house was added onto over the past 200 years, it has different roof surfaces that cover the various additions, resulting in several separate and distinct roof areas. Each could, I suppose, be replaced as time and money allowed. At least I hope so.

Increasingly, I am seeing homes which have metal roofs with a baked-on painted surface and are, I think, far superior to the metal roofs of Sherman's or any other earlier time. I particularly like the fact that you can get the new roofs in different colors. I've been thinking that a nice chartreuse would look good on Melrose, rather than the stogy green it now sports, but I'm concerned the good folks who are my neighbors might tie me to the business end of a cotton combine and proceed with their harvesting should I choose such a color. Still, one is tempted....



Two other issues I am dealing with concern the cost of heating Melrose, and the condition of the shutters that grace every window at the house.

Heating Melrose (and air conditioning in the spring/summer/autumn) is not simply an issue of money. It raises an interesting philosophical question concerning caring for old homes in the years to come when energy costs likely will be even more burdensome. Old homes by their very nature are not energy efficient. The technology available when they were built did not allow for that. Wood and coal were plentiful and global warming was still two hundred years away.

If Melrose were occupied full time, it would cost a king's ransom to heat Melrose to a comfortable temperature in the winter, and the future does not appear to offer any relief. So, what's a poor plantation owner to do? One thing that has occurred to me is to investigate both wind and solar power options as a means of at least softening the impact of heating and air conditioning. My bet is that it is possible to make Melrose energy independent, or darn close to it, but to reach that point will require lots of time and lots of money. The alternatives, though, are dealing with ever higher costs or leaving the house to fend for itself with thermostats set at levels in summer and winter that would make the house unattractive for even periodic visits. I have been upstairs in Melrose in the summer before air conditioning was installed, and I feel quite certain that forcing someone to sleep up there in that heat would be a violation of the Geneva Conventions.

The shutters on Melrose fortunately do not raise issues of human rights. However, they do raise my blood pressure. While I have not counted all of the shutters on the house, I do know that there are 24 just on the front of Melrose. Knowing the total number on the house would require use of a calculator and me taking an extra dose of Paxel. I recently had the bright idea of bringing home a couple of shutters at a time, stripping them, doing whatever repair was called for and then re-hanging them on my next trip to Melrose. At the time, it did seem like a good idea, even if it did require me to live 170 years to get all of the shutters stripped.

Well, I brought home a couple of shutters in seemingly good shape, set up the carpenter's horses and proceeded to strip away. What I discovered is that when you put enough layers of paint on wood over enough years, it no longer matters if the wood beneath rots away. The paint itself maintains the shape of the shutter, giving the appearance that all is well down below where the sun don't shine.

Given that the shutters are likely 100 years old or more, the one I began with wasn't all that bad. Still, the lower left corner joint was rotted so bad that after I had cleared away the rot, virtually nothing was left of that corner. I'm not a carpenter and could not rebuild the damaged area, so I began to think that if all of the shutters presented similar problems, stripping dozens of other shutters would be a fool's errand. I try to avoid fool's errands whenever possible, so I hot footed it down to a builder's supply and learned that a very similar shutter to the ones on the house is available. But the cost per shutter would make you shutter, and I only ordered two, all the better to avoid bankruptcy.

When I shared all this with DH, he was incredulous. Why buy new shutters when he could repair the old ones? Plus, you can't buy shutters that sag. The fact that all of the shutters now on the house sag 20 degrees from square merely adds to their authenticity. As luck would have it, DH is restoring old shutters for another owner of an old-house. Bottom line is that I will have the two new shutters to replace any old shutters that are beyond even DH's mending touch, and we'll try to salvage the rest/ I'll be responsible for stripping the shutters since I find that task to be fulfilling in a mindless sort of way, and DH can work his magic to bring the shutters back from the verge of disintegration.

With all of this focus on the outside of Melrose, you might think that the interior is being neglected. Nothing could be further from the truth, and I will address that soon. I also have an ancient apple tree that I hope to salvage by doing some judicious pruning this winter. You can't get much more scintillating than that.


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Poo-Patrols and the Methane Momma

Category: gardens and old home renovation | Posted: Mon Nov 19, 2007 6:33 pm

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Right off the bat, I want to provide assurances that the title of this blog is not a harbinger of worst things to come. There will be no deep dive into poo-dom on my watch. Instead, I am forced to come to grips with new realities that impact my life as a gardener, not to mention forcing me to trip the light fantastic as I negotiate my way across the lawn.

With my recent marriage, so much has come into my life that enriches it, and I am very much aware of my blessings. Not only do I have a wonderful wife and friend, but I also have a really neat step son, a new cat and two really great dogs. So, the math in my house is now one female wife (in today's world, it is advisable to point out the gender of one's wife), a daughter, two female dogs and two female cats. Then, there is my step son and me- the testosterone orphans in a calm sea of estrogen.

It is about the dogs that I write here. I knew them long before my marriage and we enjoyed a relationship of mutual respect and growing confidence. After all, they embodied so many of the characteristics I have come to cherish in my life. They are fiscally responsible, they do not wear pants in such a way as to suggest that they are plumbers, and they demonstrate a large measure of intellectual curiosity. It is true that they were given to wandering their neighborhood with wild abandon. But, to be fair, they could always be counted on to return at the slightest sound of a massive bag of Alpo being ripped open. In planning our life together, my soon-to-be wife and I had made arrangements for an invisible dog fence to restrain their mad dashes, and- just as important- to protect the formal garden I have worked on for the past 11 years. I thought I was ready for a squire-ific peaceful life on our mini estate.

Any dog owner out there undoubtedly now realizes that I have never owned a dog before. My knowledge of dogs pretty much came from watching Lassie on 1950s TV and Rin Tin Tin at the movies. They never shed. They never barked except when that doofus Timmy fell yet again into another well. And they certainly never poo-ed. It was, after all, the 1950s.

Boy, have I ever been disabused of any of those notions. I find myself announcing on a regular basis that I am headed out to the back lawn on a poo-patrol. That area now qualifies as one of the largest canine rest stops in the Carolinas. How it is that just two dogs- albeit fairly large dogs, but nothing like the stature of the Hound of the Baskervilles - can be so productive is a wonder and a mystery worthy of investigation by the National Academy of Sciences. We Americans are so often beaten about the head and shoulders because we refuse to join the rest of the world in use of the metric system, and for that reason I will try here to be international in my reporting. The productivity of those dogs must be measured is the kilograms. I recently had outpatient surgery on my right shoulder, and I must be mindful while on poo-patrol to only use the right arm for the picking up. It is the left arm that must, as we say in the South, do the heavy toting.

Now, to be fair, I shouldn't single out our dogs (they are our dogs when I remember them with particular fondness, but her dogs when I am on poo-patrol) for such public exposure. Thanks to the invisible fence protecting the garden, my patrolling is limited only to the lawn. Honesty forces me to note that a goodly number of All Creatures Great and Small live nearly invisible lives in our midst and have no compunction at all at using my garden as a porta potty. We are regularly visited by deer and rabbits and raccoons, all of which leave what Southern ladies of another era liked to refer to as "calling cards." No one pretentiously showing their garden with pride, as I recently did, wants the tour to be punctuated by discussions about what card came from what caller. No indeed!

And while I'm bearing all, there is one more thing I need to share. One of "her dogs", which shall for purposes of anonymity be called Lilly, is as loving and gentle a creature as the Creator has ever blessed us with. She's now in her reclining years and wants nothing more now than a warm rug, a tennis shoe to carry aimlessly from point A to point B in the house, and the reassuring comfort of her mistress's company. I am a mere after thought in this scene of domestic tranquility, but I often find that I am in Lilly's company as well, particularly as I sit with my wife and watch a movie on TV. Lilly has a problem that seems to afflict so many of those who are aging, myself included. Not to put too fine a point on it, she has periodic eruptions of methane. Actually, periodic is not as accurate a word as it should be. Frequent is far more specific. The reliability and regularity of Old Faithful doesn't hold a candle to Lilly. Come to think of it, it would not be wise to hold a candle too close to Lilly due to that regularity.

I've actually speculated that Lilly, who I call the Methane Momma, is singularly responsible for global warming. The bovine crowd has been singled out by scientists as having an important role in causing global warming because of their flatulence. I beg to differ. I think that cows and others of their ilk have gotten a rotten gaseous deal. If I had the time, I would research whether there was an appreciable increase in atmospheric methane prior to Lilly's middle age. My bet is not. However, I feel certain that the research results would only confirm my theory of Lilly's culpability.

Still, when global warming has caused the seas to rise and waves are lapping at the steps of Melrose, our Southern manse that currently is 80 miles from the rising Atlantic, I will love Lilly all the more. I'll simply pause the movie we're watching, cross the room to open windows for cross ventilation and return to watching an old Lassie episode.


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Welcome to Melrose

Category: gardens and old home renovation | Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 1:20 pm

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for those who have asked to see Melrose, here is picture of the exterior. As I become mor proficient in putting pictures on the blog, I will send some others.

[img]<a href=http://phi[/img]



Last edited: Fri Nov 16, 2007 9:13 pm

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Question from the Techno Challenged

Category: gardens and old home renovation | Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2007 2:47 pm

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can someone tell me how to incorporate a picture into a blog? Several people have asked for pictures of Melrose, but I have yet to figure out how to do that. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.[/img]

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Me and the Ol' Dear

Category: gardens and old home renovation | Posted: Wed Nov 14, 2007 8:39 pm

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A year ago, I sat on the front steps of Melrose - the 200-year old faded beauty I have in Eastern North Carolina - and felt totally overwhelmed by the scope of all that needed to be done to this house, which had been left to me when my wife died in 2005. Immediately after her death I had fully intended to follow through on her dream to have Melrose restored and for it to serve as a "family seat" or a "country retreat" for my family. Throughout that first year, I had various projects underway, some on the inside of Melrose, and others on the grounds surrounding the house. The two-acre grounds had been such a mess, that just having someone haul away the accumulated trash of decades seemed like a good place to start. Much of that got done, and I felt the better for it- not unlike having an enema. But the inside of the house was another matter. It was filled with furniture and boxes upon boxes, all of which had been moved from the house we had sold on the North Carolina coast in preparation for the move to Melrose.

Each time I went to Melrose, I intended to do something - to invest some sweat equity that would move the whole project toward some far-off time when all would be done and life would be bucolic. But, no matter what I did on those quick down, quick back day-long trips, it amounted to less than a drop of sweat on the snout of a local mole. The restoration project was so vast, my time was so limited, and the dollars to hire workers were not inexhaustible. Hence, that day came when I found myself sitting on the Melrose steps, dejected, depressed and deflated. It was during that semi-seminal moment that I made a decision to sell the house. It now has been on the market since last spring.

But, funny things happen on the road to a house closing, and as it happens, that decision was not the end of the story. It appears that in a quirky, roundabout way, that might just have been the end of the beginning.

Soon after the decision to sell, we set about moving the furniture and boxes to a storage facility. I thought I was moving the stuff to make it easier to sell the house. And it did serve that purpose. But, because my mind is only slightly larger than that found in a fruit fly, having the stuff out of the house permited me to take in the uncluttered spaces as I had not done before. At the same time, I was still involved in projects intended to return the house to sound condition. I even spent three days in August perched on a portion of the metal roof, scraping and painting, sweating and swearing and even managing to sit in a spot of tar that was being used to mend leaks in the roof. Unknowingly, in the searing heat and humidity of an Eastern North Carolina summer, I had begun bonding with Melrose.

When fall arrived, my new wife and I came to similar conclusions, which we shared one night during dinner. Something- maybe stars in a particular alignment or (God forbid) the influence of the resident ghost in Melrose - something had the both of us thinking that getting rid of Melrose might not be the right course of action. I have been letting that idea marinate in sweet and sour sauce ever since, not sure whether it has more to do, as Scrooge said, with a bit of beef or a blot of mustard, than with ghosts or inspiration.

All of this has caused me to announce to a suspecting family that if the old dear does no sell by spring, I will take it off the market, and prepare to occupy Melrose, not as Sherman would have done with fire and sword, but with paint brush, toilet bowl cleaner and floor buffer. If the house sells by spring, I will view it as an act of fate fulfilled. But, if it is not sold by spring, I will take it as a sign of my karma.


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