The beginning

Some background information.... Sean grew up in Plattsburgh, NY. It's WAYYYYY upstate, almost to Canada. Montreal is about an hour away. It's always been his dream to come back to live on the lake. Last fall Steve, Tiffany and I came up to scout out some properties. We found a house in Port Kent (about 12 miles south of Plattsburgh) that we all fell in love with. It's been vacant for quite some time and has had some vandalism, among other things. Steve and Tiff assured me that with some work and time, it was a feasible project and could be an amazing estate. Sean, trusting the three of us, agreed and we set to work on negotiations. Almost 9 months later, we pulled in with trucks and trailers to start the project. Tiffany and Dylan (her 6 year old) have agreed to come for the first 3 weeks and help start the work. Everyone else will be arriving for a family reunion for the 4th of July weekend. I'll be updating this blog with pictures and stories from our adventure. Just to give you an idea of how the whole thing started, I'm going to copy an update from Tiffany. She did a pretty good job of describing the drive out here. I could try to duplicate it, but I think seeing it from her perspective makes for much better reading.


"My sister-in-law, Emily, has purchased an eight bedroom, 3 bathroom mansion in upstate NY. It was built in 1876, and it’s stunning. It overlooks Lake Champlain from the shores of Port Kent, just above the ferry dock. Steve and I toured it with her last Fall and helped convince her that although the house was broken into and has some cosmetic damage (walls, floors) it’s a gem. She agreed, and it’s been a long journey for her to convince Sean (Steve’s brother) of the same. He finally relented and after they figured out the purchase Emily had to organize the move while Sean barked orders, I mean support, from his job in Iraq. Steve and I have remodeled three houses, and so because I’m either crazy or stupid, (probably both), I agree to help her move across the country and stay with her for 3 weeks to remodel the house as much as we can before the entire family arrives for a reunion over 4th of July holiday. I am taking our daughter Dylan with me, on what will be her first road trip. It’s a doozy. What follows is the timeline of what I now affectionately call the Trip From Hell. Day One: The crew is Emily, Myself and daughter Dylan (age 6) towing a U-Haul in one truck, and her dad Mel, and our friend Eric, towing a 20 ft trailer behind the other truck. We’re up at 6 am to embark on the 2,000 mile trip. The trailers look really heavy even for trucks the size of school buses. Does anyone think the trailers look too heavy? Here we go. Oh boy, we are behind the boys and the white trailer is all over the road. Driving behind it is like watching 20,000 pounds of your impending death barreling down at you at 65 miles per hour. My daughter asks, “Are we there yet?” We are not yet out of Colorado Springs. Uh, what was that noise? That noise was a tire that just blew on the white trailer. We have not even reached the Kansas border. On the plus side it didn’t cause an accident and we’re all stopped safely on the side of the road. On the negative side Eric and Mel are risking life and limb changing a tire with no shoulder and careless drivers buzzing by at 80 miles per hour on the Interstate. Eric is really wondering at this point what he’s gotten himself into. Was that an elephant that just drove by? Good news is they change the tire safely. Bad news is that was our last spare for the white trailer. We find another spare in Goodland Kansas for $500. Yes, $500 (it’s a Sunday, apparently on God’s day people in Kansas have permission to rape you on pricing). With all these shenanigans we’ve now lost a couple of hours. Emily, the boss in charge who thought we’d reach Indianapolis the first night, (?) is not happy that we’re still in Kansas. She starts talking about driving through the night stopping only to sleep at a truck stop somewhere. Some of us are not so happy with this proposition but we push forward. She is, after all, the boss. It’s after midnight (STILL THE FIRST DAY) and we arrive in Kansas City just as flash floods and tornado warnings hit the city. Suddenly driving through the night doesn’t look so promising. We pull over at the first exit and try to find a hotel that will take the dog. No go. I am now on the phone trying to make a reservation at a dog friendly Red Roof Inn 20 minutes away. The boys are trying to check out a hotel down the road. This hotel has a sign that says “NO TRUCKS OR TRAILORS”. The boys do not see this sign. I’m still on the phone when we pull up next to the Excursion and trailer. Is that a tow rope they are getting out of the car? Why are they tying a tow rope to the front of our truck? What is this I hear about pulling? I look to see the Excursion and trailer on what seems to be a road on a hill next to us. Yet it isn’t a road at all. It’s a grassy hill. The truck and trailer are not moving. The truck and trailer are stuck in 6 inches of mud. Are you f******* kidding me? Did someone think it would be fun to go 4-wheeling with a 20,000 pound trailer at this time of night and in this weather???? What in hell were they thinking?????? F****** Men!!!! The next few moments are a bit fuzzy to me, as I get out of the truck and my head spins around and my eyes roll back into my head. There is a voice screaming and I suddenly realize it’s mine. It’s not a pretty scene. After we all scream at each other (or was I the only one screaming???) for a while we decide to split up. Eric and I take Dylan to the hotel, and Emily and Mel wait for the tow truck. On the way to the hotel lightening is striking so close to our car that Dylan says she thinks it hit the U-Haul trailer. Eric tells her not to be silly, it’s not lightening, it’s just street lights blowing out! (I’m not sure why this little white lie is supposed to make her feel safer but I go with it….) One tow truck and one wrecker later, Emily and Mel arrive at the hotel at 4 a.m., which officially brings our first day to a close. Day Two: What is that noise? That noise is my phone ringing. It’s Emily. Shit, it’s 9:15. I’ve over slept and she’s mad. Wait, she’s not mad, she’s crying. Hysterically. What room am I in? Now she’s at the door. What is she saying? I’m not awake. Wait, what? Police? Mel is also crying. Oh God. Apparently the white Excursion and white trailer are not where they parked them last night. They are gone, and Mel has the keys in his pocket. He swears he locked it. Well, I say, they’ve been towed! No, she says, the police have no record of them being towed. They are sending out a police officer to take our report. Report? Theft report? How does someone steal 40 feet and 40,000 pounds? I tell her not to worry, that certainly they have to have been towed, and I get into the shower to clear my head. Dylan says Police Mommy? I tell her everything will be alright. Nothing is wrong. Nothing IS wrong, right? All I can think is that the white trailer is made to tow a vehicle and someone thought the Excursion was towing a Lamborghini and thought they hit the jackpot. They are going to be very surprised when they open it and a little girls bicycle falls out. The next thing I think is I need to find a church as soon as possible and take Emily to confession because she’s done something somewhere to someone and really pissed off the universe. I have never in my life met someone with such bad luck. Christ, she’s pounding on the door again. Wait! The truck and trailer are back! Huh? What the hell?? Sure enough, they are back, 10 minutes later, where before there was thin air now appears the truck and trailer. And who steps out carrying Starbucks and Krispy Kreme but Eric himself. Apparently no one had thought to call Eric or ask where Eric was in all the commotion, and forgot that we‘d given him an extra set of keys. He hears that Emily called the police on his ass and he stares in disbelief. Yes Eric, you have officially entered the Insanity Zone. Didn’t anyone tell you this is what you signed up for???? So we have the truck and trailer back. They are in one piece, even after being pulled out by a wrecker truck the night before. We’re off and actually get in a few hours of driving! Was that the Kansas City arch I just saw whizzing by my window? Next our air conditioning goes out in the Expedition. It’s 92 degrees. Dylan says “Mommy, I’m over heating……….” We stop at a gas station and Eric notices another problem. The hitch on the Excursion is bent at an odd angle. It’s also almost completely off the ball of the trailer. Emily and I momentarily see our lives flash before our eyes as we wonder how the thing didn’t pop off in route and land on the hood of our car, and then we decide it best that we find a new hitch. Immediately. A short detour later and we find a place that sells hitches. Apparently the original, that probably got bent when it was being towed out of the mud, had a “tongue” weight of 500 pounds (towing a 20,000 pound trailer???). We buy one with a tongue weight of 1,200 pounds. The best $100 we spent on the whole trip, as the new hitch brings much needed stability to the trailer. It’s not fish tailing all over the road anymore. Eric is happy. We like it when Eric is happy. We make it all the way through Missouri and to Dayton OH that night before stopping. Emily feels better, even though we were supposed to be in NY by the second night. Oh well. Day Three: Life is a highway. A long one. Eric’s has had it with this journey and wants to be home. We all do. We are finally in a groove and on the third day we whip out the rest of Ohio, some of PA, and NY. We arrive at our destination after midnight. Emily has been dreaming of this moment and wants to stay in her house the first night, not in a hotel. Never mind that the house has been vacant for 13 years. It’s dark. It’s dirty. At this time of night it’s part musty mansion, part Amittyville Horror. I have to remind myself I’ve been here before (during daylight hours) and I was the one who convinced Emily to buy this house to begin with. I’m now wondering what in the hell have we gotten her into to? "

Since then we have all kinds of challenges. We bought appliances, but until then we were living out of a cooler and a microwave. The small trailer was unloaded and returned to Uhaul, but we still have some things in the big trailer. Tiffany has sanded, stained and top coated the front two rooms of the house. I have pulled up carpet in one of the other rooms. (it's lime green shag. The owner's sister has requested that we save it and the camo carpet from another room for them because they are "good carpets.") The wallpaper is a whole different project. The first night we were here Dylan said, "some people shouldn't use so much wrapping paper in their house." That pretty much sums it up. It's pretty scary. Dylan also found a bright red nightie that has become her favorite new toy, much to Tiff's dismay. I had a huge laundry room issue yesterday which is not quite resolved yet. Hopefully I can get that taken care of today so we can do some laundry. We're all getting a little short on clothes. The greeter at Lowe's and I have become quite familiar with each other.

Godiva has taken several tours of the area because there are no fences. She has met many nice people (I hope) but has always come back in about a half hour. I invested in tags with her name and our address on them yesterday.

Overall things are going ok. Lots to do, but with Tiffany's help, we're getting a lot done! Speaking of...she's inside sanding floors while I'm typing this. That doesn't seem quite fair, so I better go pull my share of the work. I will update regularly.