The light and sounds from the gas station really bothered me. While the station’s operation generated little noise – their customers had loud vehicles, booming car stereos, angry shouting people, and the thunking sound when the gas storage tank portals were driven over were intermittent and constant. And the stupid tire compressor, located 6′ from the property line, accessible by anyone 24/7, was audible in most of the rooms of my home.
If this had been a new development, the site plan would have required a buffer zone, with plantings to absorb some of the sound. The lot as it is would have NEVER passed current site plan approval, as it would be considered too small to incorporate buffer zones, adequate traffic flow plans, etc. It seems like another facet of the Class War that older “suspect” areas like EOA are subject to. A station planned (as in planned 70 years ago, then changed significantly) like the one next door would never happen next door to a new residential development.
Even though I had light blocking blinds, with curtains on top of them, light still crept under and around. The difference in the elevation between the area with the canopy and pumps, and my property on a lower grade meant that their excessive lighting had a greater effect than if we were on the same plane.
As spring began, I realized that I could not tolerate another summer’s worth of late night noise, puncturing my sleep. I could hear all this with my bedroom windows and storm windows closed. With no AC my windows upstairs were open May through September.
The house is modest, with two bedrooms upstairs. There is a small room off the dining room on the main floor that had been the sewing room. I decided to move my bedroom to the former sewing room, as it would be the darkest and most quiet.
It wasn’t as simple as just moving my bedroom contents to a different room and vice versa.
The switch meant that I had to fix the largest bedroom to accommodate my sewing machines. This was the only other room that could fit the tall bookcases that I stored my findings and tools in (the room I used as a bedroom had sloping walls the bookcases could not fit under). The walls and ceiling in the sewing room and large bedroom were terrible and needed extensive plaster repairs. I also needed some strange wiring undone to have an overhead light in the new bedroom. The previous owner installed three sconces – but ran the wires down the wall inside these weird wood structures the sconces were mounted on. This made arranging furniture in a tiny room nearly impossible, and I didn’t like how the mounts or sconces looked anyhow. Even if the wiring had been run inside the wall, I could have worked around the sconce location but the dumb mounts took up too much wall space.
The realtor’s (much lightened) photo shows the sconce situation. What were those mounts – giant needles ?
I assumed the plaster had been cut to run the wires down so I was surprised when the mounts and sconces were taken down and the actual situation looked like this:
It was pointless to leave the rooms as is, as the problems were ugly and dysfunctional.
I did all the plaster repairs and painting myself. It wasn’t just patching a few nail holes. The previous owner had done some terrible things – including numerous patches with drywall that was too thick. The electrician needed to have a portion of the ceiling opened up to run the new wiring, which I had to close in afterwards.
Getting a electrician who would return my phone calls was a challenge. Even local companies in the immediate area who advertised small residential jobs wouldn’t call me back !
I had to purchase plaster, plaster washers, drywall screws, mesh tape, oil primer, adhesion primer and wall and trim paint for three rooms. Displacing the contents of even one room at a time is disruptive and stressful. Plaster repairs take a long time to do, as thin coats need to be built up, then have to cure before they can be primed/painted. This was a less offensive solution than having some goons knock out the old plaster to slam in new drywall. Repair also generated the least waste.
I had to hire movers to get the bookcases and heavy machines up a flight of stairs. I had to wrassle my antique bed apart and get that down a flight of stairs by myself.
Once I was finally in the new bedroom, it WAS quieter. I wasn’t hearing any more 4:00 a.m. cel phone marathons in the parking lot . The twerp manager, who took many cigarette breaks, was a real chatterbox . The latest in pounding EDM tunes didn’t jar me awake now. Perfect ! And it only took months of labour and expense to get there.
Thanks gas station. You really helped improve my quality of life, by forcing me to change my priorities. It’s not like I could have used that $ 1000.00 or so for other useful expenses like food or vet bills.
(Not that the rooms didn’t need fixing – they did – but I had other projects that were forced aside so I could just get a decent night’s sleep. )
This is how much fixing the large bedroom room needed, including major work on the ceiling. I had to empty the three bookcases already in the room, then shove them around as there was nowhere else for them to go upstairs, due to the sloped ceilings:
It took a very long time to get to this:
Then I had to do it again, to the future bedroom, including repairing the oppressive little L shaped closet that goes partially under the stairs:
The little closet was its own nightmare:
I was able to buy the paint at 25% off for this room, which was a small relief at least.
Then I had to fix my former bedroom(also painted the same dark army green as the former sewing room). The plaster was the least bad in this room, but it still needed lots of patching. Did I mention that each room had trim paint that was improperly applied so I had to scrape then paint out the charcoal grey with an adhesion primer before I could paint the trim ?
I finally got to this. You can see it wasn’t as simple as “just switching rooms”:
Hey – look out the window. There’s the gas station !
Black Picket Fence 