Funnily enough things had calmed down for a couple of months. After we fixed the under-stoop leaks we got a handle on what needs to happen in the sunroom. It turns out that they never caulked or sealed around the door to the outside, so beneath the sheetrock and hard insulation was just CMU blocks with a metal door wedged in. And since CMU isn't even there are gaps between the CMU walls and the door frame. And from those gaps water comes in all the time, rotting out the sheetrock and making the sunroom generally inhabitable. Once it gets warms we'll be ripped away all the sheetrock edges, sealing it up, patching the sheetrock and hopefully having much less water and much less cold in there. One can hope.

But after that discovery there were 3-4 blissful months where we found NO new mistakes around the house, just the same old ones we are living with or slowly tackling. I think at one point I even made the mistake of uttering "wow things really seemed to have calmed down with the house…I think we have a handle on it now" Well life came along and bitch-slapped me for saying that, of course, and in just the last couple of weeks two more issues revealed themselves. Awesomeness.

First off, we've always had an issue with our front load washer up on the platform the cellar making a lot of rattling noise during the spin cycle. It wasn't too big of a deal; we just always ran it on low spin and dealt with the noise. But I did some research and found these vibration dampener pads that seems up our alley so I bought a set. When we went about to install them we discovered something very disturbing. The platform the washer and dryer is on was buckling like crazy in the center and in the back corner behind the washer the top of the platform had completely separated from the leg holding it up and was simply hanging in mid-air supporting a couple of hundred pounds of washer/dryer weight. The top of the platform had been attached to the leg with…you guessed it…ONE SCREW. Of course we discovered this in the middle of a washer load so we had to lift the washer plus tons of water and wet clothing off the platform to get underneath there and beef the thing up. A trip to Home Depot and a couple of 2x4's later we had reinforced the platform and beefed up the legs. We also attached the legs to the back wall, which we honestly thought had been done but closer inspection revealed even yet more lack of common sense on the builder part. Sigh. You know you are in trouble when I can build it better than a "pro" can.

So the washer/dryer table still needs some cosmetic work but it's not going to collapse at any moment and the vibration pads seem to help a bit. In the future we are going to install a center leg to give the platform more support—there is just too much weight and vibration on it long term for the way it was built. Double Sigh.

The next weekend after near washing-machine disaster Brooklyn was blessed with freezing temperatures and winds up to 50 MPH. That Saturday night we were making dinner when we heard a loud "THUD!" outside. Eric and I looked at one another trying to think what it could be…upon further investigation it seems a small piece of our cement board siding on the façade was blown off by the wind. This piece was about 3'x 2' and it was (of course) from all the way up at the top of the house, 4 stories above the street and from right over the area where the front door of the house is. Further inspection of the video footage from our camera showed this piece of siding hitting the top step and shattering into a couple of pieces. Literally 30 seconds later one of our tenants comes out to put their trash out and walks right under where the cement board fell—and this stuff is HEAVY! Had it hit her, it might have cause irreparable damage…or even death. Yes, that's right; our house is now potentially DEADLY—watch out!

The next afternoon Eric was on his way out to an appointment when he noticed a HUGE piece of the cement board precariously dangling from the same area, 4 stories about the street and right above our front door. This piece measured about 6'x3' and appeared to hanging from just…you guessed it…ONE SCREW! Eric was on his way out so I spent the next couple of hours calling around to contractors that did roofing and siding…a special lift would be needed to get up that high. However since this was a Sunday and a holiday weekend it was a pretty fruitless search. I contemplated waiting until the next day but the winds were supposed to be super high the rest of that day and night and it seemed very to fall at any moment. Finally I decided to call 311 and tell them the story to see what I should do. They told me, of course, to call siding places even though I told them that was a dead end street. Then they told me to wait until Monday. When I said I was afraid it was going to fall and kill someone they decided to connect me to 911. I had the same conversation with the 911 operator and after expressing my fear of impending doom several times they finally agreed to send the cops over. About 10 minutes later the cops were here and I stood outside rehashing the whole tale to them. And they told me to call a contractor or wait until tomorrow, saying there was nothing they could do. Awesome. For the hundredth time I expressed IMPENDING DOOM and finally the cops decided to call the fire department. Five minutes later the FDNY was here with a big truck. I explained the story to them and they were the first ones to get it, to not make the same stupid suggestions that I said I already tried. They said they would take the ladder up there and get the piece down, as well as assessing the stability of the surrounding pieces. Maybe 10 minutes later they were down on the ground with the piece of siding (which they had plucked off the façade like it was held there with tape!), telling me that all the other pieces looked okay but that this one looked to have been installed incorrectly. They also said to not mess with 311, 911 or the cops if we thought this was happening again—just to call them directly and they would take care of it…FDNY rocks!

Oh and just so you know, that piece of siding probably weighed about 40-50 pounds and certainly would have done some serious damage if it fell. How exactly it was installed I'm not sure, but it LOOKS like maybe they pre-drilled 4 whole into the board to attach it to the framing and maybe the holes didn't line up so they drilled either large holes or another set of holes right next to that one…well the wind either allowed the screws to shake inside the large hole or it allowed the board to move enough to weaken the area between the two sets of holes, and once that happened the board was probably moving around all over and slowly starting detaching itself one screw at a time. I'm really not sure of the reasons, but it doesn't look good for them given the size of the holes up. Either way part of the front of our house is now naked and once it's warm again we'll need to bring someone in with a lift to figure out how to reattach this large piece. Luckily since the boards are shingled we might be able to cut off the top couple of inches and just have less of an overlap for this board. We'll see. We'll also be left with a ~2' x 2' area with no slate since the smaller piece shattered. I'm betting we can't get a small replacement piece of this material, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

It's certainly been a wild ride…but it would be great if it ended sometime soon…I think I gotta get off and throw up!

Monk and Jules chill together in the bed while Mr. S stretched out:

Close up on Jules and Monk huddling:

Mr S. and Jules trying to figure out how to make the stairmaster work

Mr. S the evening we brought him home after getting neutered. He was sooo crazy, yet so tired and confused…poor little guy…he recovered fast though

Mr. S today, looking big yet still a kitten…about 6 months old

Finally, Mr. S hams it up for the camera once again

So we've added two more tricks to our basket of food gathering strategies—first a community supported fishery (CSF) where we already signed up for a winter shrimp share and where we can also get lobsters, crabs and a variety of fish from in the coming months. Everything comes down from Maine once per month for pickup at a local butcher by the Williamsburg Bridge called Marlowe and Daughters. I picked up our first 5 pound shrimp delivery this afternoon, conveniently pre-washed, shelled and de-veined then frozen and separated into 1 pound bags. Can't wait to make some shrimp!

Even more exciting was our first delivery from butcher Fleisher's (about 2 hours upstate from us)—we recently found out this entirely organic and grass-fed butcher delivers once a week to Brooklyn and with their fantastic prices and amazing low delivery charge we are sure to be making this a regular thing. Our first bounty from them:

Right to left, clockwise: 2 lbs. grass fed short ribs, 4 pounds split chicken breast, 1.5 lbs. grass fed boneless rib eye, rack of lamb, 2 lbs. grass fed stew for beef, 2 lbs. boneless lamb stew, chicken stock and lamb stock (which they threw in for free!), 2 lbs. ground beef and 2 lbs. ground lamb. The whole thing plus the delivery charge was about $160 and this will probably be 17-18 meals worth of meat for us—fantastic! Last night we had our friend Colin over and we made the boneless rib eye (with an espresso/ancho chili rub) and it was AWESOME. Hardly any fat on it, perfectly cooked and wonderful…up for tonight, short ribs braised in red wine and balsamic vinegar—yum!

We've also signed up for our CSA again for the 2010 season. Here's hoping for less rain and more tomatoes!

First off, the question of everyone's mind is "what's up with your kitten?" Well we are happy to report at around 6 months of age Mr. Brian Setzer is doing great—he has residual scarring on one of his eyes that will likely never go away but it doesn't seem to affect his eyesight or his cuteness so it hardly seems like an issue. He's also a crazy play buddy for monkey who is himself still technically a kitten so the two of them spend hours out of each day switching between play-mode, fight-mode and sleep-mode with one another. Jules seems to have accepted this and even though she's not Mr. S's biggest fan, she has been known to tolerate him. Look for a separate cat-centric post soon! But here is one photo of the handsome man chilling with Jules in the blue bed (this was a one-time deal…never happened again):

Around the house things have been moving slowly but surely. Our plan for working on the sunroom this summer was disrupted by the discovery that our bottom entry way was falling apart. We spent most of the summer working on that and confirming that no more water was coming in before finishing the area. But after months of looking like this:

It now looks like this again:

Also filed under "things we've been waiting for forever and never thought would be finished" is our awesome dining room table. Alex, who built our stairs and front doors, designed and built these and I believe we ordered them back in February. At the time I joked that I just needed to have them before Thanksgiving. And wouldn't you know it, days before Thanksgiving we got them, although sorta unfinished and we are still waiting for two more chair and for the leaf to be returned with the new finish on them. But here it is in all of its glory:

The table top is wrapped in cold rolled steel with a channel of resin down the center, dyed a blue-ish green color. The leaf expands the table another 2 feet and also has the resin strip in it. It's heavy…and gorgeous! From the other side:

The design of the chair is based on a 1950's NYC school chair, albeit also in steel. The back channel is actually made from flex steel so when you leave back on it there is some give and it REALLY supports your back. Everyone who has sat on them thinks they are amazingly comfortable. However they can be cold so we make sure to wear pants when sitting at the table…chair close up:

Also updated is my new found love of minimalism with regard to literature. I can thank my kindle for that, but seriously the amount of space that all my books took up when I barely look at them was getting silly. So I weeded out to only the essential physical books and digitized the rest of my collection. That allowed me to get rid of my old bookcase in the office which was really on its last legs…here it is empty:

And here it is now with the new shelves I got that fit perfectly into the old fireplace space. It really makes my office feel much larger and less cluttered:

We also completed the wiring of the new lights around the paintings in the stairwell, as well as all the patching and painting on that wall so it's now ready to show off:

So things are looking pretty good around these parts. Still on deck, now for this spring/summer, is tackling the mess that is the sunroom. But until then we are staying warm and hanging here with our plethora of cats. More updates soon…

Looking cute on a little blanket:

Sleeping on my arm while I work…

Next to a dollar bill for scale…

Showing off his scraped up feet…

Getting love from Monk…

Napping with Monk…

Getting pets…

Seeing his brother outside…

Hanging with Jules…

Playing with Monk…

So yeah I think it's pretty safe to say we are keeping him!