New Google Map

It looks like Google has updated the satellite shot of our neighborhood. I'm still new enough to our home to be surprised to see the relationship between our house and major landmarks nearby. Here is a link to the satellite/map hybrid view:

Foxcroft 'hood

Our home is right in the center of the group of houses in the woods. The dominant features are Kinnick stadium and University Hospitals to the east. Also in that vicinity are the old field hockey field, outdoor football practice field, UI Recreation building, the indoor "Bubble" practice facility, and UI baseball diamond. The photos must have been taken in about 2005 since the recent football stadium renovation is not shown. To the north and west of our home is a 12 acre ravine of woods. Beyond that is a commuter parking lot for the University and Finkbine Golf Course.

All God’s Children Got Shoes

Well maybe not, but some of the upstairs baseboard now has base shoe. I installed base shoe Sunday in the sunroom and the hallway. Our local “big box”store (Menard’s) has pre-stained and varnished base shoe on sale so I got some to try it. The color match is acceptable, not great, but at the price and not having to stain and varnish it is OK. Here are some pics of it installed:





And while I was going back and checking things on the blog I noticed my Very Scary Halloween Update had the wrong photo. Here is the corrected version so you can actually see our spooky house:

Very Scary House Update

It’s Halloween time! Since we have picked all the pumpkins ahead of last night’s frost it really feels like fall. Halloween is big here at Foxcroft(but then what holiday isn’t?) This year Lisa bought the best holiday decorations I’ve ever seen. Two big plastic sheets with cat’s eyes on them. We hung them in the front gable windows upstairs, and at night with the bedroom light, combined with the lights on porch, our house looks like a giant monster with an open mouth





The really scary house stuff though is that I cleaned the garage last week. The garage is truly my bete noir, it is so racked out of square in the front that the doors won’t close, it needs a new roof and has some rot along the sill plate. Of course the quick answer is to demolish it, of course I’m trying to figure out how to fix it. I’ll need to use a turnbuckle system to pull it back to square it in front, but keeping it that way will be the challenge.



Now everyone’s garage gets messy but ours was pretty amazing. I took 8 wheelbarrow loads of DIRT out last week, the back 1/3 of the place was buried about a foot deep. Two years ago I took out 6 bags of dry concrete that had been laid on top of the dirt at the back of the garage, some time in the 1950’s. My guess is that this berm was to keep someone from driving through the back of the garage. The result of all the dirt however has been the garage has been a small rodent breeding sanctuary. I found a mummified squirrel skeleton (keeping with our Halloween theme) that explained the bad smell last fall.



Here is a shot of the floor, only the edges of the garage are cemented, the center was gravel to allow oil to drip out of the car.



So to finish the spooky theme, here is a picture from the night of the Iowa – Ohio State football game of the Outback Steakhouse blimp over our house. This was my best picture, the first one looked like all those old fuzzy UFO photos.

Random House History: Repairs

I've posted before about the treasure trove of information we received along with our house. (All we had to do to access it was sort through 75 years worth of accumulation.) I ran across one of those great pieces last night, it's a 3 inch by 6 inch memorandum book that Bess would jot down what she paid for house repairs, and materials along with other tidbits, such as how much fabric it would take to make curtains for 3 kitchen windows and the back door "9 yd a yd wide for two 1 1/4 in hems."



For as organized as Bess was, a big head scratcher is why isn't this thing chronological? It skips around from page to page. I think the earliest dated entry (there are lots without dates) is
April 19, 1932
Pool lot 60.00

I know this refers to the pool that Bess and Helen built in the back yard, but was that the cost of everything? That seems high... They also didn't start digging it until 1933, I thought they had the ground already, maybe they expanded the back yard?

Another favorite is this page:


From the top left it reads:

Mr. Switzer painted
kitchen + cupboards
Aug, 1947 19 hours
labor + material 115.00

Rufus Wagner's "Joe"
removed dining nook seat
"gooed" the roof- new screen
in H's window- repaired
library window 26.59

1935
Singer Sewing Machine 50.00
" " table 23.92

June 16- 1939
China Closet 23.95

The right hand page from the top:

Bought GE Refrigerator
Aug 1, 1939- 128.00
+ (160 deduct for old one)

May 19, 1948 (W.A. Gay)
86# hind quarter beef 49.07

April 27, 1948
Heavy wire to house (220) Nate Moore 55.08

March 31, 1948
Wagner Connell Co.
shower, electric water heater 40 gal
stool- 327.25

So I know 1947-48 was a big update year (20 years after the house was built) they took out the half wall and one seat in the kitchen nook, repainted the kitchen, upgraded the electric service, and converted the basement room (kindling room in the blueprints) into a bathroom.

Here's what the nook looked like originally:

 and what it looked like when we bought the place:

As much as I like the look of the original I do appreciate the extra room you get when walking in the back door.

Lisa suggested that as a preservationist I tell Pete that I will pay him historical wages!

Who has time to work on the house?

Apparently not me during September. I have managed to paint some cupboard doors and get the baseboard in the girls’ rooms finished, but too many other things happen around here in September. Including:

Iowa Hawkeye Football

We are a block from Kinnick Stadium so every home game is like Mardi Gras. The stadium went up the year after Foxcroft was built and I have a lot of old photos of the place, including this one shot from our front porch in 1934:

Kinnick just finished a 2 year 89 million dollar renovation and before the first home game they dedicated a statue of Nile Kinnick (University of Iowa Heisman trophy winner in 1939) the day before the first home game. Let me give you some background on Kinnick: He was the grandson of an Iowa governor, the UI senior class president, Phi Beta Kappa, and chose to go to law school after graduating in 1940 rather than play pro ball. He dropped out of law school to join the navy as a pilot in WWII. He was killed when he ditched his plane in the Atlantic after developing an oil leak on a training flight rather than risk the carrier crew with a landing on deck. In his acceptance speech for Heisman he stated he was glad to be battling on the gridirons of the midwest rather than the battlefields of Europe. He was the epitome of "scholar athlete." Bess, who built Foxcroft, watched Kinnick play in that 1939 season, and wrote in her daily diary after Iowa upset #1 Notre Dame: "Iowa 7 Notre Dame 6. I still feel faint!"

I took the girls to the dedication and got some good photos:

The Hawkeyes beat Montana 41-7, then went on the road to beat Syracuse 20-13 in double overtime. Then they were back at home for the annual battle with the Iowa State Cyclones. Rowan went to the game with me:

Both school’s bands played at halftime

And of course the students mobbed the field after the game

The rest of you can see the excitement of Kinnick Stadium this coming Saturday when ESPN Gameday will broadcast all day from inside the stadium, and at 7:00 PM CDT the #13 Hawkeyes will play #1 Ohio State in a nationally televised game on ABC.

This will be a huge event, and I admit I am dreading it a bit. Two weeks ago for the Iowa State game, tailgaters (people who party where they park their cars) started next door at 6:00 AM. That game kicked off at 11:00 AM (a frequent starting time here) Many people in our neighborhood rent parking spots in their yards at $20 a game, so we get lots of partiers. Most are not a problem, however we had a girl from the neighbor’s tailgaters passed out in our driveway at 9:30 AM. With a kickoff 8 hours later than usual I’m afraid that many folks will start partying at their regular time and be unconscious by 4:00 PM. Lisa and I plan to have the girls stay at grandma’s out of town. Otherwise the crowd noise (70,000+) will last until at least 10:30 PM and they won’t get to sleep. Then imagine those folks all walking through our neighborhood in the dark, and driving home. They will either be deliriously happy for upsetting the #1 team in the country or really angry for losing to the #1 team in the country. Either choice is likely to be loud and perilous. Wow "delirious" and "perilous" in the same paragraph, and I'm not on a ladder!

Besides all the football last weekend was the 36th Annual Iowa Friends of Old Time Music’s Fiddler’s Picnic. I am proud say I’ve have been at 23 of the last 24. Here is a picture of Rowan playing on stage with other violin students. The guy playing backup banjo in the back with the funny hat on is me.

So maybe, I’ll start getting home projects done again soon. Right…

What’s the Difference Between a Bishop and a Carpenter?

One has a Cope and Mitre, the other cuts a cope or miter. Installing the baseboard has made me think religious thoughts. Here is a link to what I first thought of when considering how to cut the trim: Cope and Mitre.

Pete and I installed baseboard in the sun room and down the hallway on Sunday. I finished some more backband tonight so as soon as we backband the doorways inside the girls’ rooms we can start baseboards in both of those rooms. Then I need to get quarter round and we’ll be finished with installation and I can try to reglaze windows before it gets too cold

Saving Time in a Bottle...

We "buried" our time capsule this weekend. The rough opening for Rowan’s door was too big, so it made a perfect space to place a time capsule before trimming the inside of the doorway. So I burned every digital photo I had of our second floor construction onto a CD, and put it into a plastic bag along with a letter saying who we were, and that all of us signed. Since we put it in Rowan’s room, she also wrote a separate note. We also enclosed xexox copies of the original blueprints for the house.

Here’s the bag with the CD and the letters:

And the blueprint copies:

And with the hole covered:

A funny story: I left several time capsules in our previous house, and when talking with Brian and Sarah, who bought our place, they told us about finding one, almost. I had left a 2 liter pop bottle with pictures of all of us and a letter in wall cavity when remodeling the bathroom. While on their honeymoon last fall, Brian and Sarah got a call from their contractor saying they had found a time capsule while they were working. Extremely excited when they came back from their trip the happy couple asked to see the time capsule, and the contractor sheepishly told them that after reading it they sealed it back in the wall!

The Other 90% of Time...

A favorite quote of Mine: "The first 90% of the job takes 90% of the time, the last 10% of the job takes the OTHER 90% of the time."

I have baseboard stained and varnished. I had backband stained and varnished and yesterday Pete and I put up backband around the door casing we had installed. The salvaged backband was enough to do the bathroom, laundry, and hallway sides of the bedroom doors. Here's how it looks:

We also put backband around the window in the sitting room.

With this completed we can start to put baseboard up in the sitting room and the hallways.

Last night Carl, my neighbor, delivered more backband that he milled from 5/4 stock that I had. This should be just about enough to do the bedroom doors on the inside. I'll need to start staining and varnishing again...

25 Overnight Guests? Sure!

Team DLO pulled in on Friday to spend the night with us. For those not familiar with RAGBRAI it is an annual bicycle ride across the state of Iowa, held the last full week of July, beginning on a Sunday and finishing on a Saturday. This year was the 34th version. It is the largest annual bicycle ride in the known universe with 10,000 “official” riders plus many more riding unofficially. The route always varies and this year the last overnight was in Coralville, adjoining Iowa City/University Heights. One of the big stories this year was that Lance Armstrong rode two days, and set off a great deal of excitement. Let me state that this ride is not a race, you go through small towns and see the best the rural life has to offer. Think about being able to eat all the home-made pie you want without gaining weight!

Lisa and I have both done the ride in the past and when an old friend asked if her bike group could stay here, there was no hesitation on our part. Lisa’s only condition was that she could go to Newton on Wednesday night and ride with them on Thursday and Friday. She is always good about getting training rides in. I rode with her one day two weeks ago for a total of about 8 miles.

The support bus pulled in about noon Friday, along with the van and trailer. The drivers haul tents, clothes, beer, and other necessities. Drivers are the unsung heroes of RAGBRAI. They unloaded and checked things out.





Riders started coming in a little after 2:00. The last group pulled in just before 6:00. The riders were coming 76 miles that day from Marengo. Wednesday and Thursday nights Team DLO slept in vacant lots with no toilet facilities or showers. Just walking into air conditioning was a huge luxury for them. This has been a very hot and humid RAGBRAI with temps in the mid 90’s and heat indices in 105 range. Since our geothermal system pulls hot air out of the house past the water heater, we have a large supply, but to be sure I enlisted Mike and Amy next door to help with showers. Between their two and our two we had everyone cleaned up in no time. Many also enjoyed the girls’ wading pool too.



The members of Team DLO are representative of what makes RAGBRAI great. They were: unfailingly polite, interesting, fun loving, and courteous. They hail from Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Colorado, and New York. We put 4 into each of the upstairs bedrooms, three in the living room, two in the music room, three in the girls room and two in the basement. Two folks slept outside in their tent by choice.

Saturday is always a relatively short day, only 54 miles to Muscatine. Lisa managed to shame me into riding so we took off at the relatively late time of 9:15. The temp when we left was 84 degrees. We rode to West Branch (10 miles) and stopped for bananas and water, we then went through Springdale, and went to West Liberty (18 miles) where we stopped at 11:30 for lunch. It was 95+ by this time. We managed to find some shade near the park, and hang out for a good hour.





We rode to Attalissa, where we stopped at Buelito’s to say hello to the owners, my band frequently plays there. We got to Muscatine about 3:00. Everyone in the team met and we rode in formation down to the Mississippi River. RAGBRAI tradition is that you dip your back tire in the Missouri on Sunday when you start and you dip your front tire in the Mississippi at the end.



Here are Lisa and I with Jo Ann at the end.



We rode back in the team bus, we had Lisa’s parents meet us along interstate 80 and picked up the girls so that they could ride home in the bus with us. They were glad to do this, since they were at Grandma’s on Friday and missed the festivities. They now consider themselves equal to Mike and Amy next door since we too have had a bus here, just like the Hawkeye bus that comes for football games.

Getting to the Bottom of Things, and RAGBRAI

Now that all the upstairs floors are finished (except for two closets) I’ve spent the past week starting on baseboards. I dug out all the oak 1x6 that I had bought last winter and measured to make sure I’d have enough to do all of the upstairs. My rough estimate, which is high, is 225 linear feet. I have 244 linear feet of boards. I have 10 fourteen foot boards and 8 thirteen footers

To start I need to cut a 30 degree bevel on the 1x6 to match our first floor baseboards. Pete is on vacation this week, so I took all his saws.



After cutting the bevel I sanded the saw marks out with a random orbital sander. I had talked to the neighbors behind us, whose house is still for sale, about using their garage to stain and varnish boards, and they said “Sure.”

Here is my layout now. I have 6 thirteen footers finished with two coats of varnish. I stained the rest of the boards this afternoon and will start varnishing tomorrow.





It’s good we have upstairs semi finished, tomorrow night (Friday) we will be hosting 25 bicyclists from team DLO (old backwards) who are riding on RAGBRAI 34 this week (RAGBRAI is Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa) Tomorrow is the last overnight in Coralville in their week long trek. Lisa rode today and will ride tomorrow. We have both done the ride in previous years, and it is a blast. Given the heat this week, I think most will opt to sleep inside rather than camp. We can easily get them in. I’m considering this an early tailgating experience.

Seven Days of Frenetic Work

Since coming back from vacation we have made great progress on a number of projects. We’ve been working so fast I haven’t had time to post. But here’s a quick run down:
New gable

• Finished trim


• Primed and painted


• Took down scaffolding

First floor bath

• Laid tile


• Grouted

Upstairs floors

• Stripped, sanded, stained and varnished