Earthquake Damage

It turns out the damage to our foundation is worse than I thought. I have to call the insurance company Monday to see what they say about it. When James got home he looked at it closer than what I did and he pushed the bricks back in on the corners and under the corner of the laundry room/back porch. It looks like the whole foundation under the kitchen is going to have to be replaced and then some repairs around the rest of the house.

Some Exterior Details

Well, it's official...the epicenter of the first earthquake was my parents backyard! The USGS has officially said that the center was Mesa Lake, which is where my parents live. How cool is that?! They are also saying that we are having an earthquake storm and to expect more (possibly worse) earthquakes over the next few days. Great.

I took these pictures yesterday, but couldn't get them to upload so I'm posting them now. These are all exterior details of our house.
I can't wait to strip this down and refinish it. Both of the front doors have the same details. And the black part isn't uneven, it's just cobwebs.
The inside and outside of the door knobs and locks match, it's just the inside picture shows the detail better. If any one out there knows how to date these, please let me know.

I have no idea what these are, but they are on the top of the storm windows. And they are about 14 feet off the ground (I love zoom) so I can't get up there to check it out because I can't move the ladder.
This is the outside of the doorbell. This is another one that I can't wait to strip and refinish. The only problem is I can't figure out how to get it off the house. There are no nails or screws in it. And the actual doorbell on the other side of it won't pry off the frame either. Notice how the detail on it matches the lock plate for the doorknob? Unfortunately it doesn't work right now. I need a new button. You can see where I scrapped the paint off it to see if that might work, but it didn't.

The other day I finally got James to agree on a paint scheme! It's going to be dark gray, light gray, blue-gray, deep blue, and bright white. I guess it'll qualify as a painted lady when we're done since our house is victorian style and we're using more than 3 colors. Downside is that we have to wait 2 years to start work :( Since I'm going back to school we really don't have the money to do it until I'm working again. I'm figuring it's going to be expensive (even though we're doing it ourselves) because we have to remove all the shingle siding, repair/replace any bad spots in the wood siding, and then scrape, prime, and paint. At least we have a ton of windows and doors (3 doors and 16 windows on a 1400 sq ft house) so that'll be less paint we need.

Earthquake!

Now that the internet is working right again I can explain the last post. We had an earthquake this morning. It was a 5.2 (officially...when I posted before it still wasn't official) and the center was close to here. We were still in bed, but awake when it hit and I knew it was an earthquake but we still checked to make sure it wasn't a tornado. We looked around the house to make sure nothing was broken, and luckily nothing was. The dogs were scared, the laptop was almost on the floor, and a piece of trim on a bookcase was sitting at an angle. When the sun came up I checked out the foundation (it's 130 year old brick that already needed some repairs) and sure enough it absorbed most of the shaking which caused damage. There are bricks that are recessed now, morter broken and laying on the ground, gaps, and cracks. Which means that we need to reinforce it immediately because they said that this happened on a fault line that has been inactive so there is a good chance of another possibly stronger one coming.



Right after it happened I turned on the TV and they said it was felt in Terra Haute which was about the time my cousin called to see if we were ok. He said they were all fine down in Princeton. I then called my parents and my mom was laughing! She said there was stuff falling all over the place and flying across the rooms, and it sounded like an explosion there. And they were already having aftershocks. It turns out they were right at about the center of it. The center was between West Salem and Allendale, IL and that's about where they live. I called my best friend who lives in Allendale and she said it scared her and there was stuff falling off the walls but they were ok too. It turns out that it was felt all over the country...Chicago, Nashville, Detroit, Minneapolis, Louisville!



When we had the last earthquake in 2002 they said we weren't suppossed to have any more again. Now they're saying there may be more. That means I'm going to put off hanging the giant mirrors that we have (they're each about 3-4 feet tall and 3 feet wide) and I'm going to move my huge glass collection to a safer place (Not sitting 8 feet up in the air on the open top of the cabinets!)

Investigating the Porch

I said the other day in my last post that I'm going to start investigating the front porch to find out why it looks like there is a porch post missing when there obviously was never one there. At least not for a very long time any way.
This is what was sitting under the center of the porch. It looks like it may have been part of a post that maybe broke or was never needed. It's not finished and it's broken.
This is the right side of the gable overhang. It looks like this in the same place on either side. With out getting a ladder out (which I can't do) it's one of 2 things. Either something has been removed, or the gable is heavier than it looks and it's breaking. Which really wouldn't be good. Or it's a combination...something was supporting it and was removed, therefore the overhang is now falling.

So the point is that I'm really no closer to figuring it out. And now I'm worried about the roof. I may have to go talk to the neighbor again and see if she may know anything. Her parents owned the house from about 1940-2006 (when we bought it as an estate sale) so if something was changed in the 66 years before we bought it she will probably know.

I saw a picture of our house on the front page of houseblogs and it's been bugging me. I couldn't figure it out at first. Yes, I know I had the angle of the camera off, but that wasn't it. So I opened up the original on my computer so I could get a really good look at it...and I finally figured it out!
It looks like a porch post is missing! There is no evidence that one has been removed though. So now I'm going to have to do some investigating to find out why it looks like that. And fix it because it's driving me crazy. And yes, I realize that if we have lived here for a year and a half and I just noticed it that probably no one else ever has. It's just one of those things. You know what I mean?

A Completed Project!!

On Saturday we made a 2+ hour trip home with this...

So we could make this...
Look like this
It took forever to get the tractor to our house for several reasons. It was at his parents house (about 15-20 miles away), and we ran about 10mph all the way, breaking down every few miles till about 5 miles from home, then it gave up and had to be towed. I followed him in the truck, and had to keep pulling him to get it restarted, then when it gave up his dad came and took over and towed him the rest of the way.





In the end it was all worth it though. That gravel was delivered over a year ago, the picture was taken in august (I think) and its now level! And we have an extra parking space! He tried to start filling in some of the holes and smooth the ruts, but the ground was so wet all he was doing was making even worse ruts in other areas of the yard. So next weekend he's going to get all that straightened out. As long as we don't get any more rain.





I won't be making any more posts for a little while because I am having oral surgery tomorrow. They haven't shared with me yet if they are cutting or pulling, or if they are numbing or knocking me out. I have no idea what to expect so I am planning for the worst (knocked out and cutting) and will probably be out of commission for a few days.

Show Off!

Just for fun I had to show this off. Its my new car!
2000 Mustang convertible fully loaded, leather seats, 5 speed, low miles! Love it! I'm so excited...this is kind of my new year gift to my self. I've had a little 4x4 for about 4 years now and this is so much more me. I love cute little sports cars. And that is my hubby poking around in the trunk. This is probably the closest to a real picture of him you will ever see on here. He laughs at me every time I call it a cute little sports car. He says it muscle cause thats what the insurance classified it as, and that mustangs are not "cute".

And a little preview of what my summer will be like: Check out the windows. They're in sad shape, especially the ones in the laundry room (the row to the left) they are so bad the panes are about ready to fall out. So this summer James and his friends are going to remove them and then I am going to restore them. Should be fun. I have never done anything like this before, but another one of our friends is a pro at this so she said she might be able to help me, depending on when I start.

I finally got pics of the house!

This is the front of the house from the highway. Isn't it cute? Oh, I got the bistro set on the porch for $10 at a yard sale last year! And the house doesn't lean...I'm just not very good with a camera.
Another view...excuse the weeds, the weed eater is "sick"
This is the other side. That door goes into the laundry room and is also the entrance we use. The front doors are not in use due to an issue with the skeleton key. As in we're afraid to carry it. And that is another load of rock for the driveway, even though it's slowly spreading to the yard...