This was the scene last Saturday morning, before the work crew did their thing.
It was a cool, crisp morning and the mist was rising off the river.
Then, creaking ominously up the hill, came the Big Blue Monster. He was hungry.
Incidentally, the bridge crew had the day off -which I can't remember happening since their project commenced. This was providential for us, as Don (member of the the bridge crew) was free that day, and volunteered to run the equipment for us.
We didn't even know Don. Wasn't that nice of him?
He is a veritable demolition artist.
After the "pull down", Don dug large holes for our footings. Bill, Ben, and Don then set the lines for the extension of the back wing.
Since then, Bill and the kids have mixed & poured cement to fill the square footings. They also placed re-bar and sonatubes in the holes. The next step is to fill the tubes with cement (or concrete; I never know which term to use!) .
My day started with a bang. A real one. A barrel-chested, humdinger, jump up and slap your grandma kind of a bang.
My first sleep-drugged thought was that maybe a large section of our house had fallen off. That happens around here sometimes.
-like it did last week.
"Hey", inquires Jon. "I wonder why this fell?" Matthew merely stands by, hand on hip, unaffected by such calamity.
Not really. They both were on the same page about the house crashing to the ground.
But back to this morning's noise. I creep downstairs in my nightgown to see what the clamor was all about. Through the living room window, I spot yellow.
Yellow is good. Yellow gets the job done.
Yellow is our friend. Wait. I see something red approaching. Something evil this way comes.
I slowly step towards the front door.
Red is here. It brings gravel. Mounds and mounds and mounds of gravel. Enough to build another Tenochtitlan.
More than enough gravel to pave a road to China and back.
Red gets the job done, too. Red enjoys announcing the completion of a task. Red has a swinging metal door that, when it meets the back bed of the truck, shakes the dead from their graves.
Top 'o the mornin' to ya from the foot of the hill in Madrid, New York.
We are ripping off this 1959 addition and replacing it with a family room, guest room, office, and bath.
Everyone around here knows that when I say "WE", I really mean W.E. Hull, Lord of the Manor and Receiver of Undying Gratitude from Lady of the Manor.
In this picture, W.E. Hull is employing a crow bar to loosen things up a bit. Please note the curious and blaring tone of pink on the walls. Also note the Adirondack-themed wallpaper border.
Good-bye, pink walls! Fare thee well, pine-cone and moose-bedecked paper! Your days are numbered.
After the windows were yanked, this is how things stood. So serenely quiet!
And then the harumphing equipment arrived. The Cat was manned by this young man.:
He made many, many tracks in my yard. I would have said "lawn", but that would just make me cry. "Yard" is so much more....nondescript.
If the noise of a growling front end-loader doesn't rock your socks, this industrial jackhammer will. It will rock anything attached to your body, including teeth. It will also rock every nail in your house and every molecule in your poor brain.
A jackhammer of this magnitude will send housewives fleeing from their kitchens with aprons over their heads, begging for mercy.
"Do you or do you not want a new kitchen?" says W.E.
"I do." says Housewife.
-and that is not the first time she said "I do" and it changed her life.
The much-anticipated lunch break was taken outside. No one spoke much. The quiet was much too precious to waste. The only noise was the river tripping over stones at the bottom of the bank. Large machines were then re-fired for The Pull Down.
I wanted to get a video of The Pull Down, but fear gripped me and I ran away.
CRASH. I would like to thank the Demo Team for all their hard work. When I get my new kitchen, they will be richly rewarded.
This spate of days full of dappled sun, cool wafting breezes, and skies so blue they take one's breath away is summer's parting gift.
The mornings are crisp now, as crisp as the skin of an early apple. The sounds of construction from across the bridge sing brightly as they dance across the waterfalls, and they pepper the air with anti-sleepyhead messages: "Get up, you slug-a-bed. Time's a-wastin'. Grab that paintbrush and slapdash some primer on those window frames while the day is young."
School needs to begin in this house. The head schoolmarm is polishing her mental chalkboard with bustling ideas of the educational kind. Algebra 2? check. Botany? check. American Literature? check? Music? Physical Education? Modern Art? check, check, check. We are beginning a sort of literary circle which involves reading and food, two things that go well together, certainly. The first meeting involves a reading of Thornton Wilder's Our Town while munching blueberry scones and sipping hot beverages. This is the plan, anyway.
My trusty trim brush is getting a workout. New windows grace our old stone home and freshly painted trim is in order for all. As I carefully cut in with razor-sharp precision (ha), my neighbor the blue heron whets his stick-legs in bed of white froth at the bottom of the falls, hunting his breakfast. We both have work to do.
We serve dinner to assorted friends. Last evening found us on the front porch once again, laughing and eating. #1 Daughter presented us with her very first cheesecake, a culinary masterpiece without blemish. Topped with our choice of sour cherry sauce or wild blueberry sauce (or a dollop of each), it quickly vanished into our happy mouths and straight into legend.
As autumnal schedules commence, I linger while looking back over my shoulder. One foot marches forward, the other drags behind while wearing a damp sneaker perfumed with river water. Summer has made her mark upon me once again.
The bridge project includes the re-paving of the road in front of our home. The crews have already ripped it up numerous times to insert new water, sewer, and gas lines. This involved the digging of large holes and many truckloads of gravel being deposited in the wee hours of the morning.
Anyway.
The road crew set the level of the new road last week. Much to our dismay, it is quite a bit higher than we imagined. Mind you, we are grateful for the new road, new sidewalks, and all the other new stuff coming our way. But our old stone home is situated one froggy-leap away from traffic, and now that traffic will be higher than the bottom step of our porch, things get complicated.
What to do, what to do?
Soon there will be no reason to walk to the bottom of the stairs and enter the road. The new sidewalk will be installed on the other side of the road -and a tall curb will separate our stairs from moving traffic. No shoulder here!
The stone wall and stairway are original to the house and we are reluctant to mess with them.
Nevertheless, if the last set of stairs will be rendered useless, the wall and steps could be re-designed and re-purposed.
We are exploring the possibility of extending the wall on the right and continuing the landing to lead into our side yard. This would give us easy access to the proposed vegetable gardens. Hopefully, we can re-use the original stone and wooden banisters.
If we make the plan ahead of time, perhaps the road crew could lend us a hand with their equipment. You never know!
My latest addiction is a website for old Madrid newspapers. By using the search engine, I have unearthed some interesting information about our old stone home!
First of all, it is nice to know that one hundred years ago, our home was referred to as "the stone house", although there were a few others in the vicinity.
So after typing in "stone home", I found this article: I love the part where Miss Edith Hall (who never married and lived in the stone house many years) ran into the flaming gristmill to save the books! Hurrah for Edith!
The other day, my husband and I hopped into his newly-acquired red convertible and drove to Canada. Our destination? Ottawa -with a few unplanned stops along the way!
Only a few miles past the border, we encountered the historic town of Spencerville. This beautiful grist mill is a museum. It beckoned to us. We pulled off the highway to stretch our legs and to see how our new convertible looked in the parking lot next to this lovely stone mill.
The college student who was our informative guide showed us around the place. Here on the ground floor is some of the mechanism that brings the power from the water to the grindstones.
I appreciated this antique advertisement that was on the wall of the mill.
Outside, a few of the time-worn millstones are on display. If you are a follower of this blog, you know my infatuation with such things.
Amazingly enough, we only drove a few more miles when we spotted a sign for another historic mill. This one is in Manotick, Ontario. It was a perfect day; sunny and breezy. Just the right kind of weather for an outdoor lunch with a view of the river and the mill!
We enjoyed the free tour and the displays. I learned a lot about how a gristmill works. I must admit, I am still a little foggy about the whole process. (This is a girl who buys her flour in a bag from King Arthur!)
Here is a nifty do-dad thing-a-ma bob, without which a farmer cannot obtain milled flour from his wheat. Neither can he get milled grain from his corn. The lever controls the placement of the topmost grist-stone.
This photo shows them apart. The grinding happens in between them, like a sandwich. Cool, huh?
This is the hopper. I know that grain gets poured into it. I'm not sure about exactly where in the process this happens. But I DO know that this mechanism does NOT hop.
Give me credit for that, anyway.
We will be coming back with the kiddos sometime soon, you betcha. And then Ben will explain it all to me very slowly with carefully chosen words that don't freeze my non-mechanically inclined brain.
I love the fact that there was a working gristmill just outside my window. I love hearing the waterfalls all night long, remembering how valuable their power was to a town such as ours, so very long ago. After touring these two humble museums, I understand a little bit more what it was all about.
This was the scene last Saturday morning, before the work crew did their thing.
It was a cool, crisp morning and the mist was rising off the river.
Then, creaking ominously up the hill, came the Big Blue Monster. He was hungry.
He is a veritable demolition artist.
After the "pull down", Don dug large holes for our footings. Bill, Ben, and Don then set the lines for the extension of the back wing.
