118 Henry Street

When the West Bedroom was originally completed and time to move DeShawn upstairs into his planned space, he was afraid to go. He didn’t like the idea of being alone on the second floor, and the way the closet doors opened into the attic stoked his fears. So we decorated the bedroom as a study and gave him time to grow up a little. During the interim, we built out the closet so it wasn’t so foreboding.

The scared little boy of 2006 has grown into the fearless “tweener” of 2010 and wants to take his anointed place in the “best” room of the house.

In the Zen physics of old house living, any move upstairs must also involve a corresponding move downstairs. Ergo, the current series of mini-projects.

With DeShawn’s leave of the Master Bedroom, Carole and I can move our bedroom into the final space. With our bedroom moved from the Front Study, all the computers/bookshelves/etcetera (some of which currently reside in the West Bedroom) can move into their final space.

As part of the downstairs part of the move, we decided to get Carole’s workspace out of the East Bedroom and into it’s final space. The East Bedroom is, at this point in our narrative, the most “undone” and primitive of all the rooms of the house. Right now, it’s mostly a storage area having had little but de-construction work done on it. Carole has a small, open floor area to do her projects and the whole room is really too dusty for any cloth or sewing.

Appending Carole’s work area move to the “Move DeShawn’s Bedroom” project adds the restoration of the kitchen back wall to the task list.

More or less, here is what needs to be done in each of the affected rooms:

West Bedroom (no big deal)

1. Finish putting sash locks on the windows
2. Make the cable TV jack live
3. Install some window blinds

Front Study (couple of days under the house)

1. Re-wire approx. 1/3 of the old knob & tube electrical circuits of the 1st floor
2. Terminate wall jacks on the network lines ran with Howard’s help

Electrical circuit 2, to be more specific

Kitchen/Addition (opening the box on kitchen restoration)

1. Restore the back kitchen wall
2. Some electrical re-wiring for new fridge and dryer placement
3. Rough out plumbing for the washer
4. Rough out dryer vent
5. Modify gas line to existing heat stove to target for cook stove

Image redux from Part 2

Master Bedroom (too much to do with this project)

1. Way too much!
2. Some cleaning

And, yes, in case you were wondering, we are doing all of this work ourselves.

The June swim season is almost over with only the Aquatics championship to swim. DeShawn has had a good season, the equivalent of 0.970 in baseball. The below video is from the last regular season meet, at Camden, this weekend.

In the video, all the kids are tired from 4 continuous weeks of swimming in the 100 degree heat, so their times are slow. DeShawn always manages the good start, a formidable advantage in a fatigued field.

Our swimmer in the blue cap.

The award winning breast stroke

During some of the previous breaks in our narrative, we have stayed busy, preferring to work on the house rather than to write about working on the house. Not so for this most recent hiatus.

The cumulative effects of normal, though unpleasant, family issues, the nationwide recession, and uncertainties with both my and Carole’s jobs, did nothing but de-motivate our emotional and financial investments in 118 Henry Street.

Perhaps our sense that things are stabilized, if not improved, will prove correct.

A cycle ends and begins anew