How the Chisholms Continued to Dismantle Their Home This Past Weekend:

Among other things, Joshua pulled up the carpet on the first floor and on the stairs, Dad installed some recessed lights and the electricity for the chandelier and the ceiling fan, and Laura primed some walls. Another team effort that accomplished a lot of work in short order.

While Joshua and I are away -- enjoying the Chisholm family reunion in Oregon! -- the drywallers will go to work. A few days later the flooring guy will go to work. Then we will paint and be done with ALL of the projects we will ever have to deal with as homeowners ... right?

BYOC = Bring Your Own Chair

Since we have an empty house and nothing to do, Friday night we had a bunch of people over for a BYOC. We spent the evening sitting on the floor (no one thought the name of the party was important, I guess), drinking some brews and eating some of the local fine dining (pizza delivery!). It was nice to catch up with people and get to know some of our newer friends better.
Matt brought his harmonium bicycle, which was a crowd-pleaser. Basically, he has an accordion attached to the handlebars of his bike and when he rides the tube that is attracted to the front tire makes enough wind to blow through the accordion and he presses the keys on the keyboard to play songs. Pretty freakin' awesome. (Sorry, we forgot to take a picture ...)

While we were sitting on our front step, Bea, a woman who had lived on this street for 40 years and in this house for 20 years stopped by to say hi and see the house. She said that the house was always full of people -- at one time 12 people were living there! -- and good times. A few of her friends have stopped and attested to the fact that our house was the party house on the block. (Parties in the sense of coffee and conversation with a lot of people while kids ran rampant throughout the house.) It's nice to know that the house is well-loved and we hope to keep up the tradition of hosting tons of people while we live there.

We gave her the photos we found -- they were addressed to Bea's cousin, Carmella. Bea told us the sad news that the youngest boy in the photo just passed away. He was only 31 years old (he was 2 years old in the photo). It felt good to know that we saved those photos and were able to give them back to the owners.

Saturday there was a big arts event at my work for most of the day. I have been talking to so many people recently -- my job is basically to interview people and especially focus on the neighborhood where our apartment is, so I spend most of my day chatting with people at their work or locals on the street -- that my jaw has been seizing up from smiling too much. Damn happiness and being productive!

After the arts event, I joined Joshua at the house and began taking down the rest of the ceiling. We took down the wooden slats, the plaster, the lattice work under the plaster. There was about 6-8 inches of debris on the floors of the living room and dining room when we were done. We have successfully filled up the entire backyard with debris from the house -- the ceiling, the wood paneling, etc. -- so we cannot wait to put the curl test to use. As you can see in the photo, Joshua is has been wearing his Utilikilt while we work on the house.

Now we are just waiting to get an electrician, heating specialist, drywaller, and flooring guy in to work on the house in the next three weeks. It has been difficult to line up all of these guys ... Joshua worries that if they don't come soon, we may not have any house left!

Sunday night we went over to Patrick's mom's house for the hero's welcome home (for vacation) BBQ. It was great to see Patrick and my college buddies. I'm looking forward to playing kickball next weekend with them. Because that is what adults do: tear down houses and play children's games!

The Slippery Slope Begins

A sad day in the Chisholm household.... we caved and accepted a free television from friends.

Forgive us family and friends as we can no longer maintain the role of "this-couple-I-know-who-doesn't-even-have-a-TV" in your lives. However, in our defense, it will only be used for watching DVD movies and stored in our hall closet.

How We Know We Live in Philly: The Curl Test

In the City of Rocky, the actual rule for knowing if you can put certain items out on the curb for trash pick up day contains the following instruction: Grab the bundle, if you can do a bicep curl without having your forearm muscles strained then it is okay to leave with trash. The actual weight amount is no more than 40 lbs.

This is awesome for several reasons:
1. The fact that they use your bicep strength as a test.
2. The fact that they suggest to the public that 40 lbs is a reasonable amount that most people can curl without engaging their forearm muscles.

Now Joshua is curling 280 lbs these days and Laura is coming in strong with 75 lbs, so this rule suits us just fine. But, since we are such community-minded people, we are concerned about the older generation who can only curl 0.7 oz.

Thompson Home Improvement Begins Philly Expansion

Recently Thompson Home Improvement (Laura’s Dad/Frank) of Carlisle, PA has started an expansion from nursing homes to South Philly rowhomes. Here are some of the before and after pictures from our first day of working on the house.

Obviously we are very talented … just look at the improvement that the house suffered in one day! (Notice the ceiling and the walls ... the floors are just trembling with exciting about their near future.)

We found some awesome treasures around the house. Flick-off action doll in the middle and photos of “Vince, Frankie and Baby Andy” which were given to “Carmella” … she decided to store these precious photos behind the baseboards in the dining room.

Joshua learned a valuable lesson from Frank: “No eatty the spackle, Mr. Chisholm!”
South Philly Thompson Home Improvement Crew after a long day of work. Can you guess who the contractor is? Yup, it’s Joshua because he is wearing the official shirt. Just ask Home Depot’s employees.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank Frank/Dad for all of his help, guidance, creativity, tools, the house-warming present (a ladder!), his eternal patience, a dinner at the fancy crepes restaurant, his flexibility and his humor. Man, we would not have even known where to begin on this project without his help. Thank you!

Without his help, the house probably would have ended up like this:

I cannot describe how happy I am that I did not remain employed at the Independence Seaport Museum for the summer.

Although, every so often, I am tempted to go back so that I could have the opportunity to

throw these --->

at him ---->

(In case you are confused.)

Our Immediate Family Includes Our Ice Cream Maker

This past weekend I went down to Baltimore to teach at Getaway Sailing, where I worked for the summer after I graduated from college. It was fun to be out on the water and "talk boats" for eight straight hours for two days in a row. Even though it has made for a 11-day work week, it is strangely refreshing for me ... some times I think that it might be more relaxing than an actual weekend.

I'll be teaching one weekend a month during the summer as a way of getting out on the water. Then in August (after I complete my internship and before school starts), my father and I will embark upon our big sailing adventure. We are going to be sailing a mid-sized boat around the Chesapeake for a full week. We are both totally jazzed about the adventure. Joshua will join us during the weekend, which will be awesome because I will have my two favorite men on board for a sailing trip!

My roommate from college, Heather, was kind enough to put me up in her cute little house in Baltimore for the weekend (again). It is always fun to see Heather; I'm looking forward to a weekend trip to the beach with her and my other college roommates in July.

In updating her about our lives, I mentioned our amazing ice cream maker. I realized that Joshua and I are always talking about the marvels of our ice cream maker. When we got it as a wedding gift from my soccer team in Seattle (Hello, PuddleJumpers!), it was the only gift we debated (for weeks) about returning for something more adult ... like a toaster. Eventually curiosity got the best of us and we tried it out. No joke, this thing makes 2 qts of ice cream in 25 minutes and all you have to do is add milk and sugar (and all the candy pieces you can stand) to the machine and turn it on. It is the greatest invention ever and I probably sing its praises more often than is socially acceptable.

If you are in the area, please stop by our place and we will enjoy some refreshing ice cream together!