Downspouts, interrupted

After only a year and a half in this new old house, I finally got around to disconnecting our gutter downspouts from the sewer system.  It wasn’t difficult at all, once I remembered the Rule #1 of KC home improvement: When in doubt, always go to Strasser Hardware on Southwest Boulevard.  That’s the only place that had the proper plugs to top kill the old standpipes.

Apparently it used to be the fashion to direct your rainwater into the storm sewers instead of onto the grass where it can be soaked up and re-used by mother nature.  This is a bit of problem here in the older park of KC where we our storm sewers are still combined with our poo sewers – when it rains a lot all at once the whole thing overflows poo into local streams.  Here in Westport our poo overflows in to Flush Brush Creek, on the banks of which sit the Country Club Plaza.

Now the Feds are finally requiring the City to fix these problems.  In addition paying much higher water bills to raise the billion dollars needed to build new sewers, regular folks can do lots of little things like disconnecting downspouts and putting the newly popular rain gardens and rain barrels.

Here’s some local info on disconnecting downspouts and some more info from Portland, where they know a thing or two about rain.

So, we are now doing our part to keep our poo out of the Plaza.

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Our house in 1940

This is our house in 1940, thanks to photos taken by the Jackson County Tax Assessor’s Office and FDR’s Public Works Administration. The house was only 30 years old, so the old folks on the front porch might be the original owners. Our block was platted in 1897, when it was still in the Westport city limits.  The house wasn’t built until 1910, after the 1899 annexation of Westport by Kansas City.

These photos are kept at City Hall, and they will provide you with a digital copy that you can get printed. The KC Public Library has many more resources for researching the history of your house.

This is the house in 2008. It is largely intact.  The biggest change is the addition of asbestos cement shingles over the original wood clapboard siding. At some point the porch railing got froo-froo spindles and the front and rear windows sprouted aluminum shutters.  Also, the old Sanborn fire insurance maps show that the garage has replaced some chicken houses at the back of the property.

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Good-bye, ranch house. Hello, shirtwaist.

We just finished moving, and have already taken advantage of the front porch and being within walking distance of the grocery store. Next on the list is walking to The Foundry (and stumbling home). We are still off of West 39th Street in Volker, but now much closer to Westport.

Hiring movers was the best decision ever.  We had them move the big stuff, but really wish we had just let them move everything.

The dog has taken to the new place really well, but is still working on sniffing every nook and cranny at least seven times.

The new place is a classic Kansas City Shirtwaist, a local variation of the traditional American Foursquare.  It is excellent condition for being 98 years old, but there is still a lengthy list of projects to be done before its hundredth birthday.

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Popcorn Ceilings Must Die

The MLS database that holds info on houses for sale really ought to have a field for popcorn ceilings.  You can already search for various things like garages, basements, swimming pools, etc.  There should also be a checkbox for popcorn ceilings, so you can just exclude those houses from the very beginning.

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Mutant bug?

I’ve been trying to identify this bug in my basement for several months now. It looks like some kind of mutant grasshopper and jumps around like an ADD kid on meth. But thanks to Hive Logic, I now know it’s probably a camel cricket.

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