Tired of snowstorms

I just want you to know that I am tired of snowstorms. There have been a ridiculous number this year, and the accumulation is way out of control. I took these pictures this morning. This first one is of our backyard play structure. This is at a different angle and includes a better view of the fence. I'll admit that the snow can be pretty on the trees. It's just that my back is starting to hurt just thinking about shoveling. The deck was shoveled as of two days ago. So all that is on there is fresh accumulation. This is the fourth time (I think) this season. Here is a view of the sad trees in my front yard. Yes, that's my front yard. I went upstairs and got an alternate view of the play structure. This one includes iccicles! A more boring picture of our backyard. You can see our poor snowman (or what's left of him). Here is the view to the street from upstairs. It is hard to see how big the snow banks have become. The worst ones are by my other driveway, but I couldn't get a good picture of them from inside. Finally, here is a view of the roof and the chimney for the fireplace we don't use. Two bad we have already used snowpocalypse and snowmageddon this year. I have a feeling we aren't done yet. We are also worried about when this all melts.

Shout out to Wooster Roofing

Let's be honest: there are a lot of things wrong with my house. Most of the things we knew about going into the purchase, some we did not. One item that falls into the first category was the flashing on the roof. The previous owners had put on a fairly nice roof, but had then put some awful patch-job on instead of real flashing (see "before" pictures below). Last winter there was a leak in my daughter's bedroom and this summer we saw evidence of a couple other leaks. It was time to act.

So I called around, read customer reviews, and got a couple estimates. After discussing with my wife, we picked a local company called Wooster Roofing. Yesterday they started the job and today they finished it up. I think it looks fairly nice (see "after" pictures below). This flashing, along with our new gutters, and some better drainage (i.e. gutter extensions) should help us keep water outside of our house (including the basement). Yay!

Before	After

If you are looking for some roof work in the Massachusetts area, give Wooster a call. I am pleased with the results. So far. Maybe I won't be the next time it rains, but I expect I will be still.

New England's Best Movers

On Thursday I put our old couch on craigslist. Within a few minutes I received an email from someone who wanted it. Last night he came by and picked it up. A similar thing happened with our old wood stove. This time I was expecting it so I pulled the ad as soon as I heard from the first person. Anyway, another success from craigslist. One can almost always count on somebody wanting something that's free.

On to the point of this post: New England's Best Movers. The fellow who picked up my couch used the opportunity to give me some business cards. He has recently started a moving/removal/delivery/anything company called New England's Best Movers. The emphasis in the name is on moving, but it sounds like they'll do just about any job.

I have not actually used their service (yet), but the guy was nice and I thought I could express my gratitude for taking our couch away by giving a little shout out. They are based in Revere, Massachusetts.

Flooding

My basement flooded for the third time today. It was the second time it flooded significantly. Although the previous owners of the house claimed this was not going to happen, we figured it would. Part of the problem is that the gutters are in bad shape. That will be one of the first things we fix with our tax return this year. Our home inspector said that is the first thing to look at if our basement floods.

Luckily I have experience with flooding basements; it just comes with living in Massachusetts. The basement in my parent's house used to flood while I was in high school. They had a sump pump in one corner of the basement, so we would use towels to direct water and sweep it into the sump pump. That's how I roll in my current house. No sump pump, but the garage is at the basement level. The water gets pushed into the garage and then out into the driveway.

Unfortunately, a lot of the basement paint is coming up with the sweeping. Not that we were that attached. It is a half-decent basement that I expect we will use well someday, but for now we use it mostly for storage (in Rubbermaid tubs).