Cape May - the ferry and downtown

My sister was visiting from Georgia so we decided to go to our house in New Jersey so that we could get some work out of her. One afternoon, we let her have a brief break from spackling and scraping and drove down to Cape May.

We first went to see the ferry that goes from Cape May to Lewes, Delaware across the mouth of the Delaware Bay.

You can drive your car onto the ferry and it costs $30 to $44 for the car each way plus $8 to $10 per passenger depending on the time of year. The journey is approximately 85 minutes long.

The exit to the bay.

The have a nice new spiffy terminal.

In summer, it would be quite nice to sit out here. On a cold spring day, the wind blowing off the water is quite chilly. No a place to linger.

So we drove into downtown Cape May and parked by this rotunda. In summer, I suspect parking is impossible. On a cold spring day, they were glad to just have visitors.

A lane leading to the main street that has been turned into a pedestrian mall.

I noticed this plaque. Read his story.

Yet another sign and no, I did not enter.

A rather deserted street mall. No doubt packed in summer.

We liked the sign.

Most of the shops were still closed for the winter.

However, the fudge shop was open and this girl in yellow was calling out to people as they walked past inviting them to try a sample of the fudge. She had an unusual European accent and it turned out she was from Bulgaria and studying at the local community college. She had to be really cold.

We walked  towards the ocean and came across the area where the old guest houses have been turned into bed and breakfasts.

Initially the house architecture is the the most interesting aspect, but after a while, the colours fascinate even more.

The purple really is something.

So back to the architecture and detail.

We took pictures of this street in our blog of the lights at Xmas.

Many of the houses have rocking chairs on their front porches.

This one was quite unusual.

One of the distinguished guests.

It's fascinating to walk along these streets and think about what it would have been like a hundred years ago with all the rich people from Philadelphia coming down here for the summer and staying at these guest houses.

This is probably the most elegant of the houses in the street.

A flower of sorts, or is it a cabbage?

Perhaps I should brave the crowds and come back here in summer sometime, just to see Cape May in action.

Finishing the baseboard

We checked with a tool rental place and found that there wouldn't be too much change out of $100 for renting a nail gun and compressor for a day. A hammer and nail set would have to suffice.

Some quarter round that I stained. Marianne stained the floor. It was pretty easy to install.

More of the quarter round but you can see the floor prior to staining.

The wider baseboard.

My most successful corner. I'm not going to show the others. In an old house, very few of the walls have 90 degree corners, though this house wasn't bad. I had to do a lot of fine tuning of the cuts.

Some years ago, I got a set of big pliers from Lee Valley and I found the center one with the angled jaws very handy for removing old nails and also to hold a nail as I nailed it in. They are quite long pliers and very handy for all sorts of tasks. Marianne calls them the entrenching tools.

Eventually I was glad that I did not rent the nail gun. Because the nails had to go through the baseboard into all kinds of materials, it would have been very difficult to judge how to preset the depth on the nail gun because each nail would have been different.