Hot water!!!!!

Well officially after a year, we have hot water and a working shower!! OMG the amazing advance of have hot water at the turn of a valve!

We got super lucky and found this 600$ Rheem electric hot water heater for 200$ because it had a few dents. It is brandnew, in the box and with the manual. Of course we had to drive to Kansas City to pick it up but we made it a fun outing!

Of course at the moment we have it hooked up via water hoses and until we get 100amp service we can have it on all the time.

 

Our shower is a mix of found parts, hooked together with washing machine hoses and a couple plumbing doo dads. I refused to spend a ton of money on it, as we plan to renovate the bathroom to include our clawfoot tub and all that...So there is no point on spending money that will need to be tossed...plus it works great!

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Dropping the ceiling....

Well this is an off n on project. When my partner was in the hospital, I would go out on the semi warm days and work on it. The Church is in really bad bad and again bad shape. As we need a place to live, we must work on the parsonage first and hopefully get to the church when we can. But I have to keep it standing. As the structure is severely rotted and ate by termites. I need to get down as much weight from the roof as I can. Thus this entitles removing the drop ceiling, plaster and insulation....oh what fun!!

 These photos show how bad the original plaster was above the drop ceiling.

There is a half a dozen bullet holes in the church, which is very odd but knowing the racial tensions of the past it doesn't surprise me. It would be interesting to know the story behind them.

I had always thought the fire damage to the church was that from the two big fires that wiped out a huge chunk of Salisbury in the late 19th century but when I was removing the ceiling. I noticed that the one bys that the drop ceiling was attached to was burn and that would indicate the fire happened after the drop ceiling was installed. I then have to ponder, was the church fire bombed in some racial act in the 50's/60's? I may never know. But this on top of the rot of the structure is what is really threatening the church.

We still have half the ceiling to go, but it will be done soon as time permits.

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Time for 100 Amp!!!

Now that we hit February, my partner was able to get back to work and we got a tax return. We can get started back on working on the property! We are approaching the successful end of adding a 100amp service to the parsonage. I am hoping tomorrow afternoon I can give the ok to the city to switch the meter over!

First we had to remove a bit of siding to add the support for the meter and a 100 amp shut off as we had to run a 55ft cable to the breaker box. This huge squirrels nest was found, it went up another 4ft easily.

Besides the nest, we also found another newspaper clipping from when the parsonage was built and it talks about Troublesome Tramps on the railroads.

Here are some supplies and here is that cable we had to run in the attic, oh that was fun! I had to crawl into the attic and drill the holes, then we had to run it. I just about had the second hole drilled, when I realized I didn't charge the drill battery!

Here is the cable ran, going to the new 22 space breaker box and running out to where the meter and shut off will be installed.

Here is the new with the old, this is the 60amp fuse panel that was installed in the 70s and here is the new breaker box.

Breaker box all installed and existing wiring all hooked up! We still have to go around and rewire the entire parsonage as it is just two wire with no ground. What we are installing will have a dedicated ground system.

 

And  here we are today with the meter box installed and the shut off installed. Tomorrow I hope to get it all wired together and wired into the breaker box!

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Eeekkkkk Three Months!

Well I just seen its been three months almost since I post and figured I better add something! I do hope people follow me on facebook stlukeamechurchsalisbury I always try to write down something after a hard days work.

 

 

My partner, hit some ice on the road and we lost one of the cars on the 9th of December and so that pretty much broke us for sometime and about a month later. He ended up getting a really bad infection in his leg and that lead him to the hospital for near two weeks. So that really broke us! One bill was 130,000$! So needless to say we need another vehicle and I hope to get a truck but since we didn't have full coverage we didn't get any money for the loss. We have no idea when we will be able to afford another vehicle.

Making dinner one night, I heard a crash and thought it was the cat again but it turned out a sheet of dry wall opted to tumble down.

Of course no month was complete with our digging up more stuff from the yard!

Come the beginning of January we got a very nice surprise from the Second Baptist Church here in Salisbury, they brought us over a ham dinner! It was awesome!

 

I trucked home a Pellet Stove that I thought would give us nice heat....Turned out, someone robbed it of all its blower and it is now a project on the back burner...

That pretty much sums it up until February, it was just so cold during that time and with the accident it was very hard to do much around here. So not much was missed.

Montgomery Wards 1953 Range....

 

Here's another piece, from those properties. We opted to run gas lines are some point and we need appliances to match the philco refrigerator and youngstown kitchens double sink farm house sink that was already in the parsonage. 

 

As you can see I may have bitten off more then I can chew, it is like a mini version of the church property and needs everything!

I was working on de rusting with vinegar in the kitchen but it has gotten to cold for even that! So this is another on the back burner project lol

Digging up the past!!

Why yes, I am still digging up bottles!! So many bottles!! Most of these are coming from the slope at the rear of the property, I am attempting to dig this all up and lay all the broken concrete/plaster/rubble in the bottom and top with dirt. Its hard to do as there is so much in that slope!

 

The main majority is medicine bottles, but there is marbles, buttons, doll heads, metal pieces, shoes, soda bottles..you name it! I just keep filling up buckets with all the stuff.

One creepie thing I found! My shovel hit a skull!! With this being a church, one knows there may be a grave or two and I thought oh boy! I found one! I carefully dug around, looking for a clue that it wasn't and I assumed it wasn't but I still wasn't positive. Thankfully I had a confirmation that it was a sheep! whew!

When ever we get all this done here, all these bottles n "stuff" will be cleaned and we will sort as best we can into age groups. It will make a great display and history lesson!

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Landscaping, plants, more plants and hardscapping!!

Can't go and call the place St Luke's Garden with out a garden right? 

I have been planting so much stuff this fall that I can't even remember what is where! The first picture shows the privacy garden that goes around the rear property line by the parsonage. Here it shows crape myrtle and daylilly. Since then, I have added daffodils, irises, shasta daisy, peony, amaryllis and sure I am missing some! The second photo shows a line of dinner plate hibiscus.

This shows the entrance to the new vegetable garden. These are also from the salvage job, we saved a really old grape vine and the trellis from there. Since this photo, I have dug up the area around it to continue the privacy garden. In that area I planted, Irises, peony, tulips, daffodils, crocus, carnation, catnip, asters, lilacs and a few I am forgetting!

That salvage job netted us a mound of Irises, grape vine, rose, hostas, lilac, rose of sharon. I have been randomly planting those around the entire property. I have also planted more spring bulbs, perennials, shrubs and all sorts! I am really striving to get rid of 95% of the grass/weeds and just have tons of color. It is hard though, as we still need so much work to the structures that I don't want the plant life to get damaged. 

Before the leaves started to fall, we also got to work on the recycled concrete landing before you will step up onto the wood porch. Plans are to get it all filled in with broken concrete and then find a nice ground cover to blend it all in. The top part landing will also be broken concrete. Thinking of carrying this design all the way over to the church. The thought is to get something solid enough that one could push a wheel chair around with easy but not such a hardscape like solid concrete. 

Right before the snow, I also managed to get the blackberry canes that I pruned down moved over and will hopefully get me a good little crop. I also relocated a black raspberry bush that a bird planted for us by one of the trees. Plans are to train these up on some sort of support to give a good harvest, of course bird netting will be need I am sure! 

 We also did some ditch burning, which I may have enjoyed a bit to much lol I have given up on getting the city to clean out the ditches. I figured the fast way would be to burn all the build up of everything.

You might have caught a glimpse of these asters in some previous photos. These are also on the bucket list, to divided! We brought them from Arizona and the absolutely went nuts! They also provided a ton of food for insects, I plan to divide them and get them all over the property. Great for late season color and need no maintenance.

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