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Published: August 10th 2015
The closing on the house was May 29
th. This was the Friday of Memorial Day weekend. There are usually plenty of parades that you could find and this was no exception. In checking out the papers we found that Greenwich, the village that we just purchased our house in was having their parade on May 29
th. We figured we should get into taking in events in “our” new village so drove to Greenwich to watch the parade. It was definitely the typical small town American parade complete with marching bands, scouts, plenty of fire trucks, various local kids’ sports teams and motorcyclists with their patriotic US flag flying proudly. Small town America at its best, it was obvious that the people in this parade had great pride in this little town; clearly we had picked the right community to buy a home.
In checking out some of the local events we found that there was going to be a hot air balloon festival in a neighboring town, Cambridge. We decided to drive there and see what was happening. We were treated to some beautiful views on our ride there. Unfortunately the wind was stronger than predicted so the hot air
Congress Street Park in Saratoga
where we had our HS Prom brought back memoriesballoons couldn’t launch in the morning. We did check out the activities in the village for a short time, but we decided to drive out of town to the New Skete Monastery, we had read that they were having an open house this weekend. We have been to quite a few monasteries and churches throughout our travels over the last few years so why not check out one close to home. We were delighted to find that one of the fathers was giving a talk about the history of the monastery and the development of the Eastern European Orthodox Church (which the New Skete monastery belongs to) vs. the Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox. When the monastery was first established the monks tried their hand at farming, but as most of them came from the city, they were not very successful. After a few years of experimenting they knew they had to come up with some way to produce some money for the continuation of the monastery at this location. Someone had given them a german shepherd in their early years and it eventually led them to developing a dog training program specializing with shepherd’s. They have since published several
Memorial Day Parade in Greenwich
complete with fire trucks, scouts, marching bands & motorcycles quite popular books on the subject and have a reputation that has enabled them to expand the monastery. It was a fascinating visit and reminded us in many ways to the churches we visited while in St. Petersburg, Russia last year. Unfortunately we didn’t have time before they closed to visit where the sisters lived a few miles down the road. They specialize in making and selling cheesecakes in a very energy efficient bakery. We have heard they are wonderful – probably a good thing we missed stopping there as we probably would have been tempted to buy.
We got started on the house the first week with taking plaster and lath down off the walls. It definitely brought back memories of our time working on the house in Trumansburg. Fortunately this process is quite quick and you can see the results of your labor within hours. We decided to hire some high school students to help us this summer to help speed the process. Bob connected with the local high school guidance counselor for some names of students which was a big help to us. As always we both enjoy working with kids this age and they keep
us motivated to keep working!
We had been told that one of the big events in Greenwich is the Whipple City Festival so we put that on our calendar. We found that in the early 1800s the name of the village of Greenwich was known as Whipple City, thus the name of the festival. It turned out to be a beautiful day weather-wise and we spent a good part of it visiting the stalls and listening to music located in the village gazebo. Festivals seem to bring out a wide variety of fried foods – some more unusual than others – this time we saw everything from funnel cakes to fried bananas and even saw they had deep fried oreo’s. Fortunately we didn’t have any problem with skipping all of these! We didn’t miss out on purchasing some fabulous locally made chocolate and a bottle of wine – definitely more to our liking! One of the attractions at this event was “re-enactors” from the Revolutionary War, Civil War, WWI and WWII. We had a chance to talk to some of them and found out their story about getting involved in this activity. A lot of time and effort goes
into making their costumes as authentic as possible. Some of the groups were fortunate enough to obtain the real thing especially with the WWI and WWII uniforms and firearms.
Great Sacandaga Lake is nearby and we pass signs to it daily so decided to take a short day trip to see it. We had both been there years ago as kids, but as we always consider ourselves “water people” we figured it would be a pleasant excursion. This time was a little different from years ago in that we saw it as “tourists” and got out to read the signs telling the history of the building of the Bachelorville Bridge, stopped to take those “scenic” photos and checked out a covered bridge we spotted. A fun way to see something that we had only vague recollections of from our childhood.
Work on the house has definitely becoming part of our routine. We set the alarm each morning, have breakfast, pack a lunch and drive about 45 minutes to Greenwich to work on the house. Quitting time is about 5 or 5:30PM when we drive back to Corinth after a tiring day of work. We typically keep our “work
week” to Monday through Friday and treat ourselves to weekends off. With the alarm going off each morning during the week we have started to feel that it is more like work than retirement! Oh well, we did this to ourselves and we know that it is necessary for the short term to get the house ready to move into. The house we are living in is up for sale so we need to keep pushing to get our place done so we can be ready to move when necessary.
On the weekends there is still work to be done – Bob is still working on building the 2 vanities and linen closet for his aunt and uncle and Janice usually spends one of the weekend days cooking for her Mom and ourselves and mowing lawn. We do try to check into a few activities going on in the area when we can.
July 4
th weekend is a big one here in the US. When we were living here before leaving on Tsamaya we would spend this time on the lake. This year we checked out what was going on and where we could see a fireworks display.
Fortunately for us Glens Falls, NY which isn’t too far away was having a fireworks display and a concert put on in the park by the Glens Falls Orchestra. It sounded like a good option and it turned out to be just that! We packed a picnic supper, our folding chairs and enjoyed a wonderful concert full of patriotic songs with a few of them being “sing alongs”. The fireworks display started when they were playing the last song and continued for quite some time afterwards. The weather cooperated nicely giving us a great evening out. Doing this brought back great memories of all those evenings we spent at the Taughannock State Park listening to music and enjoying a picnic dinner. The big difference was that we didn’t know anyone in this crowd, so different from our Trumansburg days. It is nice to know however that there are events like this in the area to take advantage of.
One night when leaving “work” at the house we stopped a little earlier than normal. We usually pass one of the locks located on the Champlain Canal, lock #5. Janice had read that there was a park located there with a
Beautiful Countryside
A view as we drove from Greenwich to Cambridge, NY - nice to have this so close to us few hiking trails so we decided to stop. We had an enjoyable time walking to a nearby waterfall and taking in the canal. We are definitely “water people” as every time we cross a bridge we are always scanning both sides to see if there are any boats going past! We do this daily on the way to Greenwich as we cross over the Hudson River. Just maybe we are missing being on Tsamaya “a little”.
One of the things we really enjoy about where we are living now is that there are numerous trees around providing us with plenty of birds to watch and many beautiful flowers in the gardens. Sitting on the porch gives us a feeling of being away from it all even though we are only a short drive away from Saratoga Springs. We have had quite a few great sightings of 3 sharp shinned hawks with 2 of them actually taking baths in the bird bath! Plenty of baby turkeys are strutting around the yard with their moms and 3 different hummingbirds are having their fill at our birdfeeders. All in all a great summer for enjoying the wildlife around us.
Janice has
enjoyed doing some “pick your own” since being back. She got lots of great strawberries one day with her sister, niece and grand-nephew and another time we reaped the benefits of picking blueberries with her sister. Now we are thoroughly enjoying corn-on-the-cob which we have missed for the 5 years we have been away – what a treat living in farm country!
Tanglewood is only about 1 ½ hours from us so we took a ride over on August 2
nd and thoroughly enjoyed a concert by the Boston Symphony Orchestra with guest cellist, YoYo Ma. The weather cooperated beautifully and it gave us a great break from thinking about the house project – what a great way to relax and enjoy one of the many wonderful venues in the area.
Bob can visualize major changes in the house much better than Janice and with those ideas in mind we are making some major changes in the house we just bought. The house has 3 bedrooms upstairs and the only bathroom is downstairs. The kitchen was small and one way to enlarge it was to take a small breakfast nook and the bathroom and make it part of the
kitchen. This eliminates the bathroom so the plan is to put an addition on the back of the house for a bathroom and storage area and transform one of the upstairs bedrooms into a bathroom. The end result would be a 2 bedroom house, so of course Bob came up with the idea that we could “just raise the roof” over the kitchen and make a new bedroom, returning the house to a 3 bedroom – simple, right… The more Bob talked about it, Janice could “see” the plan and it became “full steam ahead”.
We did most of the work ourselves when in Trumansburg with the exception of the kitchen, but this time we figured we needed to hire some more projects out. We have been very fortunate to find a local contractor that is building the bedroom on top of the kitchen and doing the sheetrock for us in all of the rooms upstairs. We also are hiring out someone to put in the foundation for the 2 car garage (really it is a woodshop with a small area for a car) and the addition on the back of the house.
Things have been progressing very
well until July 28
th. Today we found that one part of the foundation under the kitchen is in very bad shape and needs to be addressed before adding more weight above it. With this new wrinkle, the work of the contractor came to a halt until we can get the foundation fixed. This became problematic as the slate roof was off the back side of the house. The contractor put a tarp cover over it, but we of course got strong winds and plenty of rain quite a few days running. All we can say is that fortunately we have much better luck keeping water out of our other home, Tsamaya! This one in Greenwich is not so lucky. Rain decided to come in to all but 2 rooms in the house so the wet-dry vacuum came to the rescue as well as help from lots of buckets and any other container that would hold water. Bob worked on tying down the tarp better which helped some, but we found that the tarp had quite a few holes in it. A new tarp was installed the next day although we still have a corner of the roof uncovered. Unfortunately can’t
improve this situation so we keep hoping for dry weather – keep your fingers crossed for us.
The excavator we had been in contact with has been on vacation and the mason goes on vacation next week. This will put us behind at least 3 weeks on this part of the project. As Bob says though there are plenty of other projects to work on (plumbing, electrical, more plaster & lath to take down, etc.) so the time isn’t wasted. It was very disappointing to find this problem, but now that we have had a few days to think about it, we have to be thankful that we found out now so it can be fixed before causing us more problems down the road. It also gives more time to get some of the prep work that needs to be done. We also will be taking another wall down of the kitchen to make it easier for the foundation repair - the up side of this is that with new construction the wall will be straight making it easier to put in the kitchen cabinets! Guess this is when you have to figure that the glass is half
full, and not half empty. We have since found out that the excavator can start work on Monday, August 10
th (a memorable day for us as it is our 41
st wedding anniversary!) and the mason will start on August 11
th. This is definitely great news and as long as the weather holds for doing concrete work we should be back in business soon with the foundation fixed and the contractors can resume work on the bedroom.
We are finding that even though we bought an old house it is in many ways like building a new house. The biggest similarity is with all of the decisions that have to be made in a short period of time. Janice has been working on researching the various choices in kitchen appliances, bathroom and kitchen faucets, flooring, sinks, and countertops. This seemed to be a much easier project in Trumansburg doing only one room at a time we had time to live in the house before making those decisions. We have not had that luxury now – decisions and orders have been made before even spending one day or night in the house. Hopefully it will all come together in some type
of coherent way – time will tell!
We just found out that the house that we have been house sitting in has been sold so the pressure is on to get at least 1 bedroom, a bathroom and a semblance of a kitchen together by the end of September so we can move in there. With all of the things that need to be done on the house, thinking about moving and Bob finishing up the woodworking for his aunt and uncle we shouldn’t take time off, but… for our own sanity we decided that we want to do something enjoyable to celebrate our 41
st anniversary. The Battenkill River is close to us and we have heard it is a great place to kayak so we have reserved a tandem kayak for Sunday, the 9
th. We are really looking forward to getting back on the water again – it should be fun!
Sorry it has taken so long to put up a post about our progress on the house, but hopefully you can see that there have been quite a few changes. It does seem at times like we are removing more and more of the
house (which in fact we are doing), but hopefully we can start construction again with the foundation being repaired in the very near future. We have to keep thinking positive!
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