New-Old picture of my house

I just received this.  When I get more details, I will edit this post.  This is a picture of my house sometime in the early 1900′s.  Note the horse and buggy parked out front.  I am soooo thrilled to have this picture!  The turret (the cone) is long  gone and I have had an architect [...]

Getting Saturday’s Projects Lined Up

Unfortunately, it is work on one of our rent houses and not our own house   The Alexandria Housing inspector tested the exterior paint on one of our bungalows and it tested positive for lead paint.  Bleh…..  I scraped and painted one window on the house before finally calling it quits.  I intended to go [...]

City of Alexandria, District 1 Council Race

I would like to congratulate Ed Lavardain for winning the District 1 council race.  Sir, you have your work cut out for you!  I appreciate Mr. Lavardain’s education, positive attitude and beautiful manners.  When given the opportunity on camera, he never bashed his opponent or said a derogatory word.  That is commendable.  I have to say, [...]

Alexandria’s West End

My family and I have lived in our Monroe Street home for two years now.  During this time I have listened, learned, met with neighbors and tried to figure out exactly what it is I could do that would help make my neighborhood better.  I looked at other’s failed plans and, although they were good, they [...]

Gustav Aftermath

Well, you see the picture below of the dumpster.  Here is the same picture, except with a pecan on it!  Lol. I have more detailed comments on my other blog at: www.cenlahistory.wordpress.com but here are some pictures of what our backyard looks like now.  If the dumpster were not there, my car and my brother’s [...]

Gustav Aftermath

Here are the pictures of the area around our house.  The power is back on!  Yay! We had power for a long time last night.  In fact, we felt like a beacon on a hill — everyone around us lost power around 7 or so, our lights shone bright until about 9:30.  I thought that [...]

One Pecan Down…

No sooner did I hit “enter” on that last post did one of the pecans come tumbling down.  It took out my car and my brother’s truck.  Luckily, we had that large dumpster in the backyard and it took most of the brunt.  If it would not have been there, my dad’s Blazer would have [...]

Gettin’ Ready!

On Friday I arrived home to find that my husband had the above dumpster delivered in time to make good use of our Labor Day holiday.  Yipee!  We had already started some demo of the upstairs, but this dumpster gave us the authority to take our sledgehammer-ing to another level.  We now had somewhere to dispose [...]

Proposed Bus Station: Bolton and Florence Avenue

In the Town Talk today, there is an article noting that plans for the proposed Bolton Avenue/Florence Avenue bus transfer station are on track.  Ms. Cook and I attended the council meeting, last year, where an item on the agenda was to approve the city’s purchase of the property for possible development of a bus transfer station.  In [...]

Revitalization of Neighborhoods/Historic Districts/Tax Credits

Well, the whole purpose of starting this blog was to advocate for our blighted Alexandria neighborhoods.  I myself live in a blighted home on a blighted street.  I applied and received the certification to receive state tax credits to the sum of 15% after all approved projects have been completed.  It took me a year [...]