Lowes of Seabrook, NH has the most incredible customer service I have EVER encountered and with all the shopping I have had to do lately for both our bathroom and attic projects, I am really noticing how much the employees at Lowes stand out from and above the rest.
I will digress for a minute to rant about how badly I have been treated in some of the other retail locations I have frequented lately. What really gets me about these places is that I am quite sure they all work for a commission off of the sales the make and considering this, I have to wonder how they can keep their jobs. I have been shopping for tile lately; it's the part of these projects that I have really been looking forward to and it really burns me that these terrible sales people have taken the joy out of it for me. It is a miracle if I am even asked if I need help in these places and when I seek out a sales person, they couldn't be more indifferent and difficult. Now, maybe at 25, I don't look like I mean business(I think I actually look more like 16, so that could be part of the problem) - maybe they don't realize how much money I am about to spend in their establishment? Tile is one of the biggest parts of our "design" budget. Bottom line, I can't go more than 5 minutes in one of these tile stores without having the thought run through my mind: do you actually WANT to make this sale? Its amazing that some of these places are still in business.
The sales reps at Lowes, however, are completely the opposite. They are always friendly and helpful - they love seeing the baby and always ask about her when she isn't there. They want to know how our projects are coming and are always happy to advise us in their area of expertise when we are clueless on how to proceed. These people are certainly not making a commission of the sales and are likely being paid very little for their time and yet they couldn't make me feel more welcomed in their store and I am always treated as a customer should be treated there.
So, CEOs at Lowes, your employees in your Seabrook, NH location deserve a big raise and a Christmas bonus. Work ethic like that should really be rewarded!
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Thursday, November 5, 2009
The History of Our House (part1)
When we bought our house nearly 2 years ago, Eric and I decided that an important part of our restoration process would be determining the original owners of our house, learning about who they were and then learning at the very least who, if only their name, the subsequent owners of the house were. Well, it turns out that there is a lot of research involved and many different steps in obtaining the information we seek, so it is only now that we are getting around to learning our house's history.
This morning I took a trip to the local county registry of deeds and researched all the deeds for our house back to what I believe is the first record - this being the owner of the land on which our house would later be built. And so, the story of our house begins:
On September 22, 1860 Hiram D. and Lucy F. Wentworth of New Bedford MA, sold 1/5 of their property in Amesbury for $333.45 to a William Proudman, who at the same time purchased land touching one side of the property line at "Sandy Hollow Road." The land was situated in an area known as "Amesbury Mills." Only 3 years later on May 17, 1863 William Proudman sold both the property on which our house is located and the additional land he purchased, to an Enoch Stevens.
Enoch Stevens, though probably not responsible for the construction of our house, turns out to be important enough to have some information given about him in 2 of the deeds I came across. I learned that he was a Shoe Manufacturer and seemed to have an interest in the town's development because I learned in the deed where his land is sold, (by auction after his death) that he "laid out" at least 2 of the roads in the surrounding area of our property - which roads they are are yet to be determined.
Now, at this point I cannot be sure if Enoch Stevens is responsible for the building of our house, or whether it is a later owner of the property who built it, because in the deed the statement: "a certain piece or parcel of land containing...four small dwelling houses standing thereon" appears for the first time. Its tough to determine if one of those four houses is ours, or if they are one of the others in our neighborhood or if those houses no longer exist at all. Because the property size is so large and some of the roads have either been renamed or no longer exist(like Sandy Hollow Road, mentioned above), knowing exactly where those houses were would require more research and not something that can be resolved from reading the deeds alone.
The owner who purchased the property and houses( in what was then known as Mill Village) on July 31st, 1869 by auction of Enoch Stevens estate was James W. Briggs. He is a very significant figure in Amesbury history, being one of the manager's of "The Brigg Carriage Co." While googling I came across an interesting bit of information about him and his brother:
Edward Briggs is another important figure in the history of Amesbury. The Briggs Carriage Co. evolved into a street car business which in the early 1900's was willed to the Southern Car Co. at High Point, North Carolina. It is stated in the property deed that Edward R. Briggs, is from High Point, North Carolina and presumabley connected to both the Briggs and Southern Car Co.
At this point, our house's history is then riddled with a number of strange deeds all around the same time. The property is first deeded to Richard Briggs by Edward on November 18th, 1907. It is in this deed that, for the first time, the description of property sounds like where our home is located. It mentions not only the street that we live on, but the nearby cross street. Then only 10 days later, Richard deeds the very same property to Kate Briggs, the wife of Edward Briggs. Then on September 26th, 1913, Kate deeds some of the property back too Edward who then, on the very same day deeds this property, 51 rods worth, to Ellen Briggs, perhaps a daughter.
Then only two years later on January 2nd 1915, the property which I have now learned contained both my neighbor's house and my own, went into forclosure and was bought by Robert C. Clark for $430 by public auction. Robert then sold my neighbor's house to Richard Briggs, thus creating the property boundries of today.
I have all the deeds for the house to present day, but have not been able to research and read the deeds entirely at this point. There seems to be some interesting information there, but its hard to decifer as a layman and will need some direction to understand some of the ins and outs of it all.
I plan to do many posts on future findings with regards to more recent owners of the house and the ones I have already discussed. I want to know: when exactly was our house built? Could our house be one of the "small dwelling houses" mentioned in a deed as far back as 1869? I will be visiting the local library and the assessor's office. I want to find old sketches of the house or old pictures so we can finally know what this house looked like when originally built and what elements were later additions. I think it will be a long time before I can have many of these answers, but at this point I feel satisfied knowing what I now know.
This morning I took a trip to the local county registry of deeds and researched all the deeds for our house back to what I believe is the first record - this being the owner of the land on which our house would later be built. And so, the story of our house begins:
On September 22, 1860 Hiram D. and Lucy F. Wentworth of New Bedford MA, sold 1/5 of their property in Amesbury for $333.45 to a William Proudman, who at the same time purchased land touching one side of the property line at "Sandy Hollow Road." The land was situated in an area known as "Amesbury Mills." Only 3 years later on May 17, 1863 William Proudman sold both the property on which our house is located and the additional land he purchased, to an Enoch Stevens.
Enoch Stevens, though probably not responsible for the construction of our house, turns out to be important enough to have some information given about him in 2 of the deeds I came across. I learned that he was a Shoe Manufacturer and seemed to have an interest in the town's development because I learned in the deed where his land is sold, (by auction after his death) that he "laid out" at least 2 of the roads in the surrounding area of our property - which roads they are are yet to be determined.
Now, at this point I cannot be sure if Enoch Stevens is responsible for the building of our house, or whether it is a later owner of the property who built it, because in the deed the statement: "a certain piece or parcel of land containing...four small dwelling houses standing thereon" appears for the first time. Its tough to determine if one of those four houses is ours, or if they are one of the others in our neighborhood or if those houses no longer exist at all. Because the property size is so large and some of the roads have either been renamed or no longer exist(like Sandy Hollow Road, mentioned above), knowing exactly where those houses were would require more research and not something that can be resolved from reading the deeds alone.
The owner who purchased the property and houses( in what was then known as Mill Village) on July 31st, 1869 by auction of Enoch Stevens estate was James W. Briggs. He is a very significant figure in Amesbury history, being one of the manager's of "The Brigg Carriage Co." While googling I came across an interesting bit of information about him and his brother:
- "They built their own plant on the margin of Clark's Pond, consisting of one large four story wooden building, and three additional brick factories added in later years. So successful was the firm that they cleared a large section of land near their works and erected thirty five dwellings for the accommodation of the mechanics employed by them. The two brothers have each passed "over the river." James, the elder, died in 1891. Richard, the active business partner, died in the full tide of prosperity in 1894, loved and honored in the trade and in the community. The business established by them remains a lasting monument of their skill and financial ability, and is continued by the sons of J. W. Briggs."(source)
Edward Briggs is another important figure in the history of Amesbury. The Briggs Carriage Co. evolved into a street car business which in the early 1900's was willed to the Southern Car Co. at High Point, North Carolina. It is stated in the property deed that Edward R. Briggs, is from High Point, North Carolina and presumabley connected to both the Briggs and Southern Car Co.
At this point, our house's history is then riddled with a number of strange deeds all around the same time. The property is first deeded to Richard Briggs by Edward on November 18th, 1907. It is in this deed that, for the first time, the description of property sounds like where our home is located. It mentions not only the street that we live on, but the nearby cross street. Then only 10 days later, Richard deeds the very same property to Kate Briggs, the wife of Edward Briggs. Then on September 26th, 1913, Kate deeds some of the property back too Edward who then, on the very same day deeds this property, 51 rods worth, to Ellen Briggs, perhaps a daughter.
Then only two years later on January 2nd 1915, the property which I have now learned contained both my neighbor's house and my own, went into forclosure and was bought by Robert C. Clark for $430 by public auction. Robert then sold my neighbor's house to Richard Briggs, thus creating the property boundries of today.
I have all the deeds for the house to present day, but have not been able to research and read the deeds entirely at this point. There seems to be some interesting information there, but its hard to decifer as a layman and will need some direction to understand some of the ins and outs of it all.
I plan to do many posts on future findings with regards to more recent owners of the house and the ones I have already discussed. I want to know: when exactly was our house built? Could our house be one of the "small dwelling houses" mentioned in a deed as far back as 1869? I will be visiting the local library and the assessor's office. I want to find old sketches of the house or old pictures so we can finally know what this house looked like when originally built and what elements were later additions. I think it will be a long time before I can have many of these answers, but at this point I feel satisfied knowing what I now know.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Discoveries
My neighbor sparked my interest in learning more about my house's past when she shared a picture with me of her house, circa 1900 I would guess, and just a sliver of our house could be seen on the right side, enough to know that there was once a decorative widow walk
on the roof of our house and that the front of our house, which I had always assumed was an addition because of its awkwardness, was actually original to the house, but as an open porch - actually a beautiful open porch that Eric and I are very sad was changed. We hope one day that we can make the now mud room something that enhances our houses appearance and doesn't detract from it, but we have a long way to go before that happens!
This discovery made me want to know more; like who originally owned/built the house, could we see complete pictures of what our house once looked like, did our house have any interesting history. I knew we would have to go to the town library and the county's registry of deeds to learn most of that stuff, but I decided a google news search of our address might turn up something of interest...and it did, but not exactly what I was looking for.
Sadly, on February 27, 2000 a woman, one of the previous owners of the house, was strangled by her boyfriend who lived with her. She was killed in her/our home. Now the saddest part: she had 4 children ages 11, 10, 4 and 2. After making this discovery I looked for a few more articles about the incident and found that her boyfriend had killed her because he caught her with another man. Of all the things I had hoped to learn about my house this was not one of them.
Now this bit of information is something that we already half knew/suspected. We had two different people make reference to this, but until now had not been able to find any more information about it. When we were looking at our house our Realtor told us that he thought a murder had been committed here, but we couldn't be sure about it and it didn't really change our feelings about the house. Then shortly after Dalila was born a man stopped by our house who claimed to be the victim's brother. Because he wanted to come in and see the house, we had to turn him away( I wasn't comfortable with having a stranger in the house, especially with a newborn), so we weren't able to get any more details than what he provided with his introduction.
I know some people might think that our house is cursed or haunted, but I don't feel this way. It was a horrible thing that happened, but our bringing new positive energy into the house I think helps reverse any negativity from that event that could still be lingering. I also don't think her ghost is haunting our house, or if her spirit is here, I think she protects the house more than she haunts it.
on the roof of our house and that the front of our house, which I had always assumed was an addition because of its awkwardness, was actually original to the house, but as an open porch - actually a beautiful open porch that Eric and I are very sad was changed. We hope one day that we can make the now mud room something that enhances our houses appearance and doesn't detract from it, but we have a long way to go before that happens!
This discovery made me want to know more; like who originally owned/built the house, could we see complete pictures of what our house once looked like, did our house have any interesting history. I knew we would have to go to the town library and the county's registry of deeds to learn most of that stuff, but I decided a google news search of our address might turn up something of interest...and it did, but not exactly what I was looking for.
Sadly, on February 27, 2000 a woman, one of the previous owners of the house, was strangled by her boyfriend who lived with her. She was killed in her/our home. Now the saddest part: she had 4 children ages 11, 10, 4 and 2. After making this discovery I looked for a few more articles about the incident and found that her boyfriend had killed her because he caught her with another man. Of all the things I had hoped to learn about my house this was not one of them.
Now this bit of information is something that we already half knew/suspected. We had two different people make reference to this, but until now had not been able to find any more information about it. When we were looking at our house our Realtor told us that he thought a murder had been committed here, but we couldn't be sure about it and it didn't really change our feelings about the house. Then shortly after Dalila was born a man stopped by our house who claimed to be the victim's brother. Because he wanted to come in and see the house, we had to turn him away( I wasn't comfortable with having a stranger in the house, especially with a newborn), so we weren't able to get any more details than what he provided with his introduction.
I know some people might think that our house is cursed or haunted, but I don't feel this way. It was a horrible thing that happened, but our bringing new positive energy into the house I think helps reverse any negativity from that event that could still be lingering. I also don't think her ghost is haunting our house, or if her spirit is here, I think she protects the house more than she haunts it.
Monday, October 12, 2009
A Few Improvements!
Our new bathroom is taking a long time to complete and there is a lot of waiting in between steps, but that doesn't mean we aren't keeping busy! We recently have been working on giving our house a little more curb appeal because considering the vinyl siding falling off our house, the peeling paint on the window trim and the crumbling brick steps - we have become( if were not already) "that" house on our street. It only took 3 days to complete( well its almost done) but the entrance to our house is finally looking nice! Below are a few befores and afters and some explanations of what we did :)
Before
After with new granite steps
Before
After with new granite stepsWe honestly didn't have to do much to get the steps installed( we paid the granite company to do that), but the prep work was pretty intense. We had to demo the old brick steps, which was the easy part, then with a sledge hammer, remove the concrete beneath it. Then we had to level and compact the ground so it could handle the weight of the granite. We also had to get rid of all the old bricks and concrete. That turned into quite the event when the only place we found that would take the materials was a gravel pit - we paid a guy in an excavator
to scrape the rubble out of the u-haul trailer( hell yes we paid the $8.95 or whatever it is for insurance!) which was super scary - I dont think I could ever accurately describe what this experience was like!! You really don't know the strength of one of those things until you are in a car being pulled back by one of them as it scrapes bricks from your trailer! Maybe we were taking a risk by doing this - but after spending hours loading that thing up, we just didn't have the strength to unload it ourselves and luckily for us, we made a good choice - the guy didn't even dent the u-haul trailer! It was seriously crazy.
Ok so on with the improvements. You can see from the pictures of the new steps that our door is "a contractor special" straight from Lowes or Home Depot. This door isn't all that bad, but it really didn't fit our old house and because the do it yourselfer before us took all the short cuts he could, it leaked and let tons of cold air in during the winter. The water leaks were damaging the floor of our mudroom and we decided we couldn't go another winter with the door like this.
My Dad's friend, Steve, works construction and at a demo job he removed a wonderful old stained glass door that he saved for us. It has been sitting in our mudroom, waiting to be installed for about a year now and we finally got to it this weekend. This wasn't a straight forward install - because the door wasn't prehung we had to hang it ourselves, make sure it was weather tight and of course, make sure it looked professional. We had to cut the opening for the door 6 inches wider and because of this had to remove much of the vinyl siding. We have put up some primed thin plywood for siding( we are still finishing this part) as a temporary fix - we plan to take all the vinyl siding off our house next summer and restore and replace the clapboards underneath, but the mudroom was an addition to our house and it does not have the clapboards like the rest of the house. Unless we removed all the siding, we wouldn't be able to match the new clapboards up to the old ones and this would make the house look very funny once we removed the vinyl siding on the main part of the house. So maybe it doesn't look the best that it could, but we have to take baby steps towards the end result and sometimes that is going to mean temporary fixes. Ok, so on with the pictures...
Here are the pictures after day one of the install:
And here is the picture of the nearly finished project after day 2:
You can still see some of the black ice and water shield behind our makeshift siding and trim, but we will be covering that today. Regardless, it completely changes the look of our house - it really restores that "old house feeling." More pictures to come as we finish the project up!
to scrape the rubble out of the u-haul trailer( hell yes we paid the $8.95 or whatever it is for insurance!) which was super scary - I dont think I could ever accurately describe what this experience was like!! You really don't know the strength of one of those things until you are in a car being pulled back by one of them as it scrapes bricks from your trailer! Maybe we were taking a risk by doing this - but after spending hours loading that thing up, we just didn't have the strength to unload it ourselves and luckily for us, we made a good choice - the guy didn't even dent the u-haul trailer! It was seriously crazy.Ok so on with the improvements. You can see from the pictures of the new steps that our door is "a contractor special" straight from Lowes or Home Depot. This door isn't all that bad, but it really didn't fit our old house and because the do it yourselfer before us took all the short cuts he could, it leaked and let tons of cold air in during the winter. The water leaks were damaging the floor of our mudroom and we decided we couldn't go another winter with the door like this.
My Dad's friend, Steve, works construction and at a demo job he removed a wonderful old stained glass door that he saved for us. It has been sitting in our mudroom, waiting to be installed for about a year now and we finally got to it this weekend. This wasn't a straight forward install - because the door wasn't prehung we had to hang it ourselves, make sure it was weather tight and of course, make sure it looked professional. We had to cut the opening for the door 6 inches wider and because of this had to remove much of the vinyl siding. We have put up some primed thin plywood for siding( we are still finishing this part) as a temporary fix - we plan to take all the vinyl siding off our house next summer and restore and replace the clapboards underneath, but the mudroom was an addition to our house and it does not have the clapboards like the rest of the house. Unless we removed all the siding, we wouldn't be able to match the new clapboards up to the old ones and this would make the house look very funny once we removed the vinyl siding on the main part of the house. So maybe it doesn't look the best that it could, but we have to take baby steps towards the end result and sometimes that is going to mean temporary fixes. Ok, so on with the pictures...
Here are the pictures after day one of the install:
And here is the picture of the nearly finished project after day 2:
You can still see some of the black ice and water shield behind our makeshift siding and trim, but we will be covering that today. Regardless, it completely changes the look of our house - it really restores that "old house feeling." More pictures to come as we finish the project up!Saturday, September 19, 2009
Completely Off Topic
I just have to laugh at this:
I just downloaded Jay-Z's The Blueprint 3( I am giving it a chance, but I have very low expectations for hip hop these days, so I don't expect much) and I couldn't help but LMAO when I saw that there is a track featuring Kanye West entitled "HATE" and though I haven't listened to the song I know its going to be about haters. Ironic much? Kanye West has to be THE.BIGGEST.HATER.ON.THE.PLANET(I don't think I need to remind/inform anyone of his hating ways)! I think his self absorption has him confused - people aren't hating on him, they are just hating him and that's assuming ANYONE cares that much.
I just downloaded Jay-Z's The Blueprint 3( I am giving it a chance, but I have very low expectations for hip hop these days, so I don't expect much) and I couldn't help but LMAO when I saw that there is a track featuring Kanye West entitled "HATE" and though I haven't listened to the song I know its going to be about haters. Ironic much? Kanye West has to be THE.BIGGEST.HATER.ON.THE.PLANET(I don't think I need to remind/inform anyone of his hating ways)! I think his self absorption has him confused - people aren't hating on him, they are just hating him and that's assuming ANYONE cares that much.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Do you ever?
Sit up late at night thinking about how you really should check your credit card balances but are to afraid that you have spent WAY too much? That's what I'm doing right now. Life feels very expensive these days and this bathroom project isn't helping...
Plus my sleep deprived brain allowed the man at the lumber yard to order us 8 feet of windows instead of 6. 50% fee to cancel order at this point so I guess we will have 8 feet worth of window somewhere in our house, but it won't be in the bathroom!
Ok enough late night rambling.
Plus my sleep deprived brain allowed the man at the lumber yard to order us 8 feet of windows instead of 6. 50% fee to cancel order at this point so I guess we will have 8 feet worth of window somewhere in our house, but it won't be in the bathroom!
Ok enough late night rambling.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Laundry Room
In spite of our plumber troubles, we still ended up with a great laundry room. We just finished it yesterday and it couldn't be better! Here are some pictures:
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