Archive for June, 2006

Help Us Decide…The Legend of the Piano

Saturday, June 24th, 2006

When we moved in, there was a piano in the basement…a really old piano. After talking to some neighbors, we discovered that the piano belonged to the original owners who built the house in 1928. When they moved out in 1993, the piano, which had been moved to the basement for storage (not a good idea) was apparently too heavy to move, so they left it. And there it sits today.

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So, here’s where you come in. We need to decide what to do with it. We have three options that I can think of. Leave a quick comment and let us know what you think. Here are the options (we’re open to others if you have any)…

  1. Leave the piano in the basement and make up a cool story to go with it – aka The Legend of the Piano
  2. Recycle the piano, i.e. reuse the wood for other projects, somehow dispose of the innards
  3. Just get rid of it and avoid the hassle altogether

Just to clarify, we were hoping to get it fixed, but it’s beyond repair, as it has 2 cracks in the soundboard. So, what do you think?

Posted in Basement, Our House | 11 Comments »

Back from New Orleans

Saturday, June 17th, 2006

Last November we went to New Orleans to help gut homes for a week. Less than a month later, we returned to stay for six months. Our role (through a non-profit organization) was to coordinate the 75-150 people that came each week from all over the country. They were broken up into work crews of 5-20 generally and we matched those teams up with work that needed to be done.

It was an awesome experience getting to do a small part in impacting thousands of people’s lives, helping them move forward once again. As hard as it is to believe, almost 10 months after Katrina, there are still thousands of homes that haven’t been touched. I just heard about an elderly gentleman from N.O. who ended up here in Rockford. Long story short, he hasn’t been back since Katrina and has no idea what the state of his house is. I’ll be returning soon for a week and have promised to go by and get pictures for him so he can see what is left.

Needless to say, we weren’t doing much in the way of work on our house in Rockford, IL. We were, however, helping my cousins (who live in the N.O. area) to fix up a house in our free time. It was a lot of fun and would have been great content (a 2800 sq. ft. 1960’s home that was getting a complete makeover) for blogging about, but we just didn’t have the time.

Anyway, we’re back now, getting settled back into life as it was and are getting ready to do a lot of work on the house in the next few months, so you can look forward to more posts in the near future.

Oh, I almost forgot! We found out five days after we got to LA in December that Danielle, my wife, is expecting. It’s a boy and she’s due August 14th. So, among other projects, we’ve gotta get the nursery ready, as well as a new guest room for visiting family and friends (since the old guest room will become the nursery).

Posted in Our House | No Comments »