The benefits of good inspectors

It's been a busy week on the house front. Looking back, it's downright astonishing that, as of this writing, it's yet a few hours shy of a week since the first time we looked at Mill St.

The thing about having really good house inspectors is that they efficiently disabuse you of the notion that you have found The Perfect House, which you must buy at all costs. Mill St. went much better than Edmands Rd. did -- there wasn't anything obviously devastating. The house has been decently maintained, and is in generally fair shape. But the roof of the addition is going to have to be ripped off and reworked (obvious ventilation problems), and the Masonite siding is at the end of its lifespan (Mike Scaduto sniffily refers to the stuff as "cardboard", and explained that it was pulled from the market not long after this house was resided). So we're about to drop the offer price a bit to compensate -- we'll see if the sellers bite.

Mike pointed out a few structural issues that made him nervous, so I brought in Rene Mugnier, a structural engineer he recommended, to look it over. The conclusion seems to be that there are some issues, but nothing clearly devastating. The chimney is ever so slowly and majestically falling off, but that can be fixed for a reasonable amount of money. The main beam over the garage seems to be slightly insufficient, so it'll be another few grand to reinforce that. There is some ongoing settling and related minor foundation cracking, but that looks more like a mild maintenance nuisance than a severe problem. There are some other matters of concern, but it seems to be manageable.

So far, the deal's still on. If they accept the revised offer, we continue to run at high speed. In the meantime, today is another day of gradually packing up the house. We've finally begun to really empty out and move some bookcases, which goes a long ways towards making it feel like we're making progress...

The benefits of good inspectors

It's been a busy week on the house front. Looking back, it's downright astonishing that, as of this writing, it's yet a few hours shy of a week since the first time we looked at Mill St.

The thing about having really good house inspectors is that they efficiently disabuse you of the notion that you have found The Perfect House, which you must buy at all costs. Mill St. went much better than Edmands Rd. did -- there wasn't anything obviously devastating. The house has been decently maintained, and is in generally fair shape. But the roof of the addition is going to have to be ripped off and reworked (obvious ventilation problems), and the Masonite siding is at the end of its lifespan (Mike Scaduto sniffily refers to the stuff as "cardboard", and explained that it was pulled from the market not long after this house was resided). So we're about to drop the offer price a bit to compensate -- we'll see if the sellers bite.

Mike pointed out a few structural issues that made him nervous, so I brought in Rene Mugnier, a structural engineer he recommended, to look it over. The conclusion seems to be that there are some issues, but nothing clearly devastating. The chimney is ever so slowly and majestically falling off, but that can be fixed for a reasonable amount of money. The main beam over the garage seems to be slightly insufficient, so it'll be another few grand to reinforce that. There is some ongoing settling and related minor foundation cracking, but that looks more like a mild maintenance nuisance than a severe problem. There are some other matters of concern, but it seems to be manageable.

So far, the deal's still on. If they accept the revised offer, we continue to run at high speed. In the meantime, today is another day of gradually packing up the house. We've finally begun to really empty out and move some bookcases, which goes a long ways towards making it feel like we're making progress...

CI Reviews

What the heck -- one can review recipes, right?

Yesterday's entertainment was reading the July/August issue of Cook's Illustrated. Having a decently quiet (rather house-focused) weekend, we wound up playing around with it, in between packing boxes. Two recipes tried; both qualify as "tasty pain in the ass".

We made the "Ultimate Oatmeal Cookies" yesterday. Or at least, mostly -- we turned out not to have the dried cherries, but it made a lovely excuse to chop up some of the enormous block of dark chocolate that we've had sitting on the sideboard for years. The cookies are enormous: one batch makes 16 cookies, each a fair dessert unto itself. They're quite good, soft inside and gently crisp outside, and probably worth making as a change of pace occasionally.

More extreme on both the "tasty" and "pain in the ass" scales was the "Rescued Orange Chicken". The premise of this particular article was that most Chinese Orange Chicken is overly sweet, goopy, and kind of chewy; they decided to come up with a recipe that really works. They succeeded -- the resulting chicken is crisp, the flavor slightly spicy, a positively intense burst of orange with only enough sweetness to compensate. (Which is kind of remarkable, given that the recipe involves half a cup of brown sugar.) OTOH, it takes most of two hours of near-solid work. The marinade/sauce is mildly involved, and the chicken needs to be marinated, dredged in egg white and a cornstarch mixture, deep fried pretty carefully and thence drenched in the now boiled and thickened sauce. Definitely not a dish for everyday, but in the same category as their chili recipe, worth the effort on a weekend day when I have some time to cook. Goes well with the Nashoba Valley Barley Wine that we opened up in the interest of killing off some bottles instead of moving them...

CI Reviews

What the heck -- one can review recipes, right?

Yesterday's entertainment was reading the July/August issue of Cook's Illustrated. Having a decently quiet (rather house-focused) weekend, we wound up playing around with it, in between packing boxes. Two recipes tried; both qualify as "tasty pain in the ass".

We made the "Ultimate Oatmeal Cookies" yesterday. Or at least, mostly -- we turned out not to have the dried cherries, but it made a lovely excuse to chop up some of the enormous block of dark chocolate that we've had sitting on the sideboard for years. The cookies are enormous: one batch makes 16 cookies, each a fair dessert unto itself. They're quite good, soft inside and gently crisp outside, and probably worth making as a change of pace occasionally.

More extreme on both the "tasty" and "pain in the ass" scales was the "Rescued Orange Chicken". The premise of this particular article was that most Chinese Orange Chicken is overly sweet, goopy, and kind of chewy; they decided to come up with a recipe that really works. They succeeded -- the resulting chicken is crisp, the flavor slightly spicy, a positively intense burst of orange with only enough sweetness to compensate. (Which is kind of remarkable, given that the recipe involves half a cup of brown sugar.) OTOH, it takes most of two hours of near-solid work. The marinade/sauce is mildly involved, and the chicken needs to be marinated, dredged in egg white and a cornstarch mixture, deep fried pretty carefully and thence drenched in the now boiled and thickened sauce. Definitely not a dish for everyday, but in the same category as their chili recipe, worth the effort on a weekend day when I have some time to cook. Goes well with the Nashoba Valley Barley Wine that we opened up in the interest of killing off some bottles instead of moving them...