Hey

Oh, what a day so far. It's amazing the difference a nice meal and a clean house can make. So much difference, in fact, that I'm re-writing this post.

We lost power this morning around 7:45. That happens pretty often, so aside from cursing the wet clothes in the washer, I didn't think much of it. Got the boys up and we ran a few errands, thinking things would be fine by the time we got back.

We got back around 10:30. Still no power. OK, there's no storm, no hurricane, and I *know* our bills are upt to date. I called to see if they're working on something (and perhaps we just didn't get the notice). Hmmm, nope. Guy says he'll send someone out.

I set the kids up with a picnic breakfast consisting entirely of foods that don't require we open the fridge! Interesting, to say the least. Called the doc, described the bite (which looked more red, just as swollen, and a little pussier today). They said they could see us at one.

The Power Co. guy pulled in around 10:45. I unplugged the cell phone and climbed out of the car to greet him. Shut the car door. With the keys in, auxiliary power on, and doors locked. (Dang.)

That's when the time frame gets a bit Blurry - Power Guy tested the wires, and determined our transformer was hit by "something". He's guessing lightning. Considering something fell off it this weekend, I'm not surprised. Then he commented on the out-of-code meter box. (Yes, it's out of code; no, we didn't do it. That's the one part of the whole set-up we haven't fixed yet.) I mentioned (hopefully in a casual, non-panicky voice) that it's grandfathered in, and since the problem is at the transformer and not the service head, we're still good, right?!?!?. (Because I've spoken to the Head Mucky-Muck about putting in underground power lines, and he said once they cut it at the power head, they cannot put it back together until the box is brought up to code.) He laughs. I wasn't joking. RIGHT????

I scoured a slew of possible hiding spots for the spare key, and came up empty. Couldn't reach Zorak. Power Guy keept eyeballing the meter box. I could hear the battery on the Suburban draining, and could feel the panic beginning to ball up in my stomach.

Children clustered around Power Guy. Dog got into the picnic food.

Suddenly, like something out of Convoy, three more Power Co. trucks pulled up. Did you know it takes four power company trucks and eight workers to replace a transformer? The guys were very cool. They also completely blocked the driveway. (Because our transformer is IN our front yard, and serves both us and the neighbors - one of the joys of buying subdivided family properties.)


The clock was ticking on making the appointment... the dog, freshly sated on dried apricots and rice porridge, got stowed in the basement before he could pee on every truck the power company owns...Smidge and John emerged from the house decked out in construction garb, then proceeded to stand on the porch and hit one another with PVC hammers they'd built...

I wandered around, trying to figure out where we could have another key hidden, wondering if an arc would hit one of the workers before heading for a child, and how close to me do I need to keep the children in order to be able to either throw them out of harm's way or (more likely) get a very good look at their glowing eyes should an arc hit one of them. (I am also guessing a similar thought is the reason behind the number of workers for this procedure.)

Just as the power was restored and I'd given the children more food, I FOUND the key! WOOHOO! 12:45 - we can mostly make it. I ushered the boys and Emily of the Goopy Toe to the Suburban and we high-tailed it to town... in the land squall. Yep, full-on rainstorm that makes the word "rainstorm" sound sissified. (Which is why I call 'em landsqualls - much more fitting.) First one I've had to drive in this year. No squids, but that was a bit of a surprise. I think we saw a dolphin or two thrown across the windshield.

Doc said ant, or spider. Either way, use topical antibiotics. She's fine. I felt like a dork, but I'm not going to apologize. If I don't know what I'm up against, I'd rather feel sheepish for asking than wretched for not.

We got home around 3:30, and haven't stopped moving since. So much to do when the day is topsy-turvy like that! Zorak, the Man of My Dreams, offered to take the big boys to the game so I could stay home and get the littlest ones to bed. (Again, at 8:00 - what do people with small children do with these game times?) Really, if we'd had a normal day, where the boys (and I!) could have napped or rested, or stopped moving and panicking for a bit, perhaps we'd have all gone. But I'm very glad I didn't have to drag them out tonight.

Thank you for your feedback, and particularly for your sweet words. EmBaby is in high spirits this evening, and I'm glad she'll be a-okay. :-)

Kiss those babies!
~Dy

Just One More...

Today, I worked on the exterior of the boys' bedroom window. All. Day. Long. Just when I thought I had mastered the approach for these things, I discovered there are *many* ways of "fixin' up yer windah". Help me. Although I got an earlier start today, I did not get to the point of priming. That felt like such a defeat. I know it wasn't, but it felt that way.

I spent most of the day trying to disentangle the mass of caulk and paint from the mortar without bringing the whole house down on my head. Mostly, this involved using small metal objects (I went through quite a few utility blades) and my thumbs to create enough leverage to remove the caulking. It hurt. A lot. (On this window, they didn't smear the caulk too much, which was thoughtful. They painted over the caulk and all the way onto the brick with many layers of paint... which was, for whatever their intent, probably just the ticket.) Whatever works, I guess. I'll be more gracious when my thumbs stop bleeding.

Zorak, meanwhile, was able to reap the benefits of the weeks and weeks of prep work he's put in by putting the stain on the gable ends of the front of the house. It's dark, very dark. The can says "oak", but it's a burgundy color. Wow. It's pretty dramatic. It also makes the new porch look a little peekidy. (What is the real way to spell that? I went with phonetic. That's all I had.) He tore down a couple of things that didn't look "right", and got them fixed. They do look much better. I'll point them out when I have better closeups.

Anyway, I tried to find a before-before picture, without the porch frame on it, but of the thousands of photos we've taken since we moved here, there are almost none that show the house in the distance, let alone the eaves, awnings, etc. Gotta love that zoom lens! I'll blog about the building of the porch later.

Everything to the right of the porch (about the middle of that first batch of windows) is too high for us to reach, even with our expando-ladder, so it's not done yet. That's going to have to wait just a little longer. On the bright side, we are pleasantly surprised to note how incredibly difficult it is to access most of the windows on the house. Er, it will be pleasant when it's no longer we who are trying to access them...

And so, this concludes the latest rash of posting on the renovation of the Forever Home (aka - This Old Shack). :-) Thanks for sharing this particularly wild adventure with us. I'm off to switch out the bandages on my thumbs.

Kiss those babies!
~Dy

Ouch!

Something bit EmBaby. She's actually a walking display of various critter bites, at the moment: a few mosquito, a spider or two, a gnat, a suspected chigger, and some kind of biting fly. Yep, she's pretty sweet. And bumpy.

For the most part, we don't worry too much, but she got these today, and they really bother me. If they aren't better by morning, I'm certainly calling the doctor. In the meantime, though, have any of you ever seen something like this?

 

 

They're on her big toe (which really isn't all that big), but as you can see, there are two distinct whitish circles. Those are raised and welty, and the area around the bites is swollen and red. They don't seem to be bothering her terribly, but they're making me slightly crazy, wondering what they could be.

Kiss those babies!
~Dy

Funny, We Don't Remember Planting These...

 

Sorry, Farmer Brown

I know you needed the rain, but we just couldn't be too depressed about the reprieve!

Since it didn't rain, but did threaten to (and we do work better under pressure), we scuttled about being as productive as possible today. The porch window *frame* is cleaned and primed now. I decided to treat the windows the same on the exterior as I did the trim vs. the sashes inside. (Ignore the bit about how some aren't done inside yet, either. It's the theory I was after.) Tomorrow we'll caulk that up nice and clean. (Getting the old caulk smears off the brick took hours today. You want a finish that will last for an eternity? Smear caulk on your brick surfaces. Wow!)

I'll clean and evaluate the storm windows, and then start scouting for a source for screen frames. We need to replace the ones that are kinked from too many drunk kids climbing in through the windows.

Zorak has worked like a man possessed through all of this. He took the eaves, which were in the same condition as the window frames, only, well, rotted in some spots, to this:


And today, to this:


That's pretty stark white, isn't it? It's so... drastic. This is only primer, and I'm thinking right now I'm glad I lost the Great Color Debate of '07 (I argued for granite grey and pure white). Zorak, of the muted earth tones party, won out, and we'll be putting antique white on this part of the house (both the eaves and windows). That will be good, because right now, when you stand back and look at the whole picture, the lovely white eaves pretty much highlight the poor condition of the roof. *oops!*

And lest you think we're all work and no play, we do play. Sometimes we play with our food, even!

I think from now on, my weekend posts will probably cover the renovations. The theory behind this plan is that I will be more motivated (or under the gun, as it were) to have something I can actually post each weekend.

Kiss those babies!
~Dy

The windows

I started on the porch window. Removed the storm windows, which will be cleaned, repaired, re-screened, and painted before they go back up.

I scraped most of the paint from the frame, and removed what was left of the caulking... Well, it was all still there, it just didn't span the gap in most places. With luck, the implications of that, multiplied by the number of windows in the house, will soon be forced from my memory for good. (Oh, and the surprise yellow - you can see it in that shot above, there.)

Things were moving along quite nicely. Zorak was busy beside me, doing the fine sanding on the overhead areas. The kids were playing, the birds were singing. I was getting pretty excited about this whole thing.
And you know how you start to gain momentum once you've begun a task you've been dreading? You really don't want to haul back on that. So, I figured I'd go ahead and scrape the bars and muntins while I was there, feelin' good, gettin' it done. They needed it -
Yeah! Let's do it! Let's clean these bad boys! Let's -
OH MY WORD, Honey!! Honey, it's rotted! I've broken it! It just... oh, my... popped. right. off. *whimper*

Zorak looked at it and didn't flinch. That's because he recognized it as window glazing, not strangely rotted wood. Whereas I had convinced myself, back when I was painting all 80,000 linear feet of them on the interior, that they were fake muntins!

No, those are individual panes of glass. How quaint! There are no points in there, just the glazing holding them all in. Thankfully, we don't live in a quake-prone area...

So, we didn't get the eaves primed. Then it began to rain, and from the look of the satellite images, it's going to rain most of the week. We need the rain. The eaves probably don't particularly care for it, but the farmers will appreciate it. And we can always prime next week. That'll give me a week to learn how to glaze windows!

Window Pictures

Remember I told you they'd painted the shutters that burned in the fire and rehung them on the house? We have no idea how they did that - it's charred just as evenly on the painted sides,too. Other than actually roasting the shutters, we're not sure how the entire lengths of them charred without the first part to hit the flames burning into nothingness. Every shutter is like this, too.
Of course, the real question isn't, "Wow, how'd you get it so evenly charred?" It's, "Wow, what were you thinking, putting those back up?" This one didn't dissolve, which is why we got pictures. You can see there is relatively good wood in at least some of it, which would make the question, "Dude, ya couldn't have used some of that child labor that keeps popping in around here to scrap that off first?"

These are not going back up. We really hate the fake shutters, not because of the appearance, but because, coupled with brick (I'm just going to have to form an "I hate brick" club. Yes, we may be the only members, I know, but sheesh, the drawbacks to this stuff are astounding!) ANYway, the shutters are not going back up, and yes, we know that'll draw away from the "architectural interest" of the exterior. I'm okay with that, because while your standard fake shutter may look benign on the nicely-painted outside, beneath lurks monsters of all forms...
The red circles indicate the wasp nests on the wall behind just one shutter. Eleven. And that's not a particularly thick infestation of them. It's pretty much like that across the board.

And that is the shutter shudder for the day. :-)
Dy

3, 2, 1, PRIME!

PROGRESS!!!

Tomorrow, the eaves -- next week, the WORLD!

Or, just the porch. We'll play it by ear.

So excited!

Dy

End of the Week's Lessons

Fortunately, the sun has a wonderfully glorious habit of rising every morning. When the sky lightened, when the birds awoke, I knew I would never again see anything so splendid as the round red sun coming up over the earth. (From My Side of the Mountain, by Jean Craighead George)

James is enjoying the story for the pure, inherent adventure that beckons to every young man. It says, "You could do it."

I'm enjoying the story for quotes like the one above. They say, "I'm looking back now, and am able to convey in words what I felt when I was young."

Another good one today came from Childhood's Happy Hours, (a book we had to supplement with today when we discovered I did something very, VERY bad with the page orders when I printed the second half of the even pages of Jolly Robin *sigh*). Anyway, there is a short story called "The Reading Class", in which a little girl plays school with her doll and her cat. He finished up and then came to talk to with me about it. He thought it was sweet, and funny. Then he quoted me a bit from it:

"Lilian returned to the library, and seating herself in one corner of the large arm-chair, put Isadora in the other. 'Now, Isadora,' said she, 'behave yourself while I look at the pictures, and if I find anything pretty, I'll show it to you.' Isadora, like the well brought-up dolly that she was, obeyed."

He chuckled, and said the story was full of little things that just made him smile because he got them and he appreciated that.

John read "My Lady Wind", and we had an interesting discussion about the wind as voices that spread rumors (the spark) and how such carelessness (fire) can destroy many lives and homes. Didn't see that one coming. I don't know what John learned from it, but my lesson today: don't underestimate children's poetry books.

Smidge, announced while doing "maths" (that's where the 's' from the beginning of his other words goes - mystery solved!) today, "I'm ready to learn to read." Well, alrighty, then. Can't get more upfront an invitation than that, can we? In good Spalding fashion, we began with learning the basic writing strokes, and he's on cloud nine.

Zorak is home. It's virtual Friday. Good, good stuff.

Kiss those babies!
~Dy