Month: September 2021

This week I concentrated on more scraping and painting. The process has evolved into a routine that I’ll describe below. We also took in a car show and craft fair, mentioned in my last post. Today we attended a Rendezvous. It was another busy week!

The north and north-west corner of the house was the focus for scraping and painting this week. Generally I start working from the ground and reach up to about eye level. After that it is all ladder work. The routine: Scrape and sand an area, followed by a first coat of paint. Scrape and sand another area, then put a second coat on the first area and a first coat on the second. Repeat for all sections. Here are the results for the north wall:

After painting the red I painted the blue trim above the windows and touched up the white trim. Re-doing the trim is going to be a project in itself, probably sometime next spring. With the current first floor painted to this point, the view from Main Street is much more cohesive.

Last Saturday we attended a craft fair and car show in Osage. (Mostly car show.) We examined all the vendor tables and many antiques, then walked through the car show. Here are a few photos of that event.

The outing was a good break for us. So much so that today (Saturday) we drove to another outing, this time to the Ft. Atkinson, Iowa, Rendezvous. Ft. Atkinson is just under an hour’s drive from us. We had seen ads for the event and decided to attend. Here are some photos, with video to follow in a few weeks.

We enjoyed the outing and visit to Ft. Atkinson, new territory for us. I don’t know if we will attend this event every year, but it’s an option. I have video of the cannons firing and of Gary and Annie playing, but those will have to wait for a future post. As I will be on the road again shortly, my next installment may be a few weeks from now.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Penny

Fall weather is just about perfect for attendance at outdoor events. Today was no exception, although it wasn’t sunny; partly cloudy and a slight breeze was very comfortable. We stood in line for school bus transport from the Ft. Atkinson Community Center to the historic fort. How many years has it been since either of us rode in a school bus? Did those school bus seats get smaller or something in the intervening years?

Today is Dog #2’s birthday — “Sassy Brunette” turned 12. Bruie was actually born in Iowa a dozen years ago. I’m remembering the crazy December car ride from Colorado to Iowa to pick her up from her foster family. Ice covered the interstate after a major storm, and dozens of vehicles were off the road along the route. An adventure.

Happy Trails.

This week saw us completing the painting of the peak on the west wall of the laundry room, a milestone for us. A few other events of note passed as well.

In my last post I included a few photos of Pam on the scaffolding and painting the ginger breading on the west wall of the laundry room. I am pleased to say that painting is now complete. Below are before and after photos of that wall.

We think this project turned out very well and will serve as a model for doing the other ginger breading on the house. Bob the Builder picked up his scaffolding a couple days ago and charged us only $75.00 for the use of it, a very reasonable price.

I am going to include a photo of Heart House taken from its Southeast corner as I think it shows off more of the house painting and siding replacement accomplished this year.

The scraping and painting has taken a toll, however. I am still fighting a very tender back and had to take a day off to recover. Hopefully this is a passing ache and I will be able to get back at it tomorrow. I had started scraping the north side of the house, working from the ground. I was able to prep the wall part-way up around the bay window and got the first coat of paint on that area, but there is much to do yet. I want to get the north side done up to about two boards above the bay window, the same as we did on the east side of the house, before winter sets in.

A major irritant, over the last few days, has been an outbreak of mosquitos. Pam and I have had to use a fogger and Deep Woods Off mosquito repellent in order to do any work outside. The mosquitos are very aggressive and, no matter how much we prepare, they always seem to find an unprotected body part to attack. We suspect the swarms are the result of the massive rains we had a couple weeks ago, as up to now, the mosquitos had not been much of a problem although a few were always present.

Another phenomenon involves our oak trees. This year we had a bumper crop of acorns, not seen in either 2019 or 2020. I was raking up – literally – snow shovels of acorns and putting them in the trailer for disposal at the dump. It was hard to walk in parts of the dog pen and yard because of the loose footing below our feet. And we are not alone; it seems our neighbor’s trees are producing as much as ours. It may be a good year to be a squirrel!

Fall projects have begun. Pam removed several of our sunflower plants as the heads were maturing and dragging the plants down. A few plants remain to provide some color to the garden.

Leaves are beginning to fall at an increasing pace, a portent of a leaf-covered lawn to come. I’ve ordered a new battery for the leaf muncher and performed some maintenance on it as I know I will need its services before long. Just for the record, the old battery was the original in the unit, purchased in 1999 or 2000.

We are heading out to an antique and craft fair this Saturday. (I am writing this on Thursday night.) The show is in Osage, 25 miles or so away from Elma, at the Mitchell County Fairgrounds. My next post should have a few photos of this outing. We are not looking for anything in particular but it will be good to get out and look over the tables and vendor offerings.

Photo Archive

Since fall is in the offing, I decided to include a few “fall” photos. As a reminder, we lived in Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin, before we moved west. All these photos are “Wisconsin” fall colors.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Penny

I’m trying to get motivated for another round of exterior painting, all the while battling swarms of mosquitoes. (The temps are cooler, that’s something.) For some reason, after four days of scaffold climbing, my joints are reluctant to engage in continuous trips up-and-down ladders. Go figure.

A second wind would be welcome right about now.

Happy Trails.

I have three topics for today’s post. They are: Painting the east wall of Heart House, working from scaffolding to paint the gingerbread on the west wall of the laundry room, and a summary of my ATV trip over LaSalle Pass during my last Colorado visit. Plenty of phots are included.

We were able to finish quite a bit of the first floor painting on the east side of the house. This required a lot of scraping and wire brushing, much of it from ladders. Pam’s sister, Becky, had done some of the prep work when she was here visiting. Pam and I much appreciate her contribution!

In the same vein, Bob the Builder was able to deliver some scaffolding for our use this past Thursday. Pam wanted some repair work done on the trim of the west wall of the laundry room and follow that up with painting the gingerbread in the wall’s peak. The trim repair was completed and Pam has begun painting her 3-color combo in the peak. As of this writing, the work is still in progress.

Below are three photos of the west wall work-in-progress.

I should have photos of the completed work in my next post. One side note: Pam and I are pretty stiff from climbing, scraping, and painting from ladders and scaffolding. We may need a couple days to recover from our exertions. However, the results are looking pretty good! (Also: Pam is wearing her bug repellent head net while painting. The mosquito population is ginormous after the heavy rains, and swatting at bugs while on scaffolding is not an option.)

My last “big news” item concerns the ATV trip I took over LaSalle Pass the last time I was in Colorado. This route was a pleasant ride with a couple surprises. Let’s take a look.

Along the way I came across an old farmstead, complete with an old barn and a “soddie,” a sod home built into a hillside.

I did not try to enter the home as the roof had already collapsed in the rear and the rest of the place won’t last much longer. Nearby was the barn featured above.

The trip was a pleasant way to spend an afternoon. Located north of Wilkerson Pass on Highway 285, the trailhead is about 20 miles from The Lot. There are several more trails in the same area that I hope to explore on future trips.

Finally, a personal note. I had my latest check-up at the Mayo Clinic this past week. My blood draw indicated the Eligard treatments are doing their job of reducing my PSA levels, just what the doctor wanted to see. As a result, the doc changed my injection schedule from every 3-months to every 6-months. I will get my next injection in February, 2022, then my last injection in August of that year.

The week was busy and we feel we accomplished a great deal of work. With the days getting cooler and shorter we want to get as much work done as physically possible while the weather is optimal. I need to take one more trip to The Lot to winterize the RV trailer, bring home food that might get damaged by freezing, and just close things down in Colorado for the winter. While I enjoy the fall colors and weather, I am not looking forward to winter.

Photo Archive

Here is an assortment of family photos.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Penny

OK, folks, I am not a fan of painting 18′ up on scaffolding. Nope. Not a fan.

However, I’m intent on painting one gable with what [I think] will be the final shades of blue ginger breading. I can observe the colors over the winter — in many lighting conditions — and also have an actual example to point to when we [hopefully] find someone to paint the second story exterior next year. This is not a color choice in a location that can easily be changed in the future.

But doesn’t the first floor on the east side of 702 Main look vibrant?

Happy Trails.

My sister Kitt (AKA Carol/Carolyn) and her partner Matt visited us last weekend. It was our first face-to-face since Thanksgiving of 2019 — just after Pam had moved to Heart House but before I had retired. Our move was still in progress then, and I was driving back and forth from Colorado with loads of stuff.

In 2019, Kitt and Matt had helped us move some boxes and assemble the queen bed frame upstairs. They had brought with them a Thanksgiving Dinner which, in addition to being very tasty, was very much appreciated by Pam and myself.

Not many people saw the house in 2019 — there have been plenty of updates, repairs, and lawn work since then to observe and discuss this visit.

Kitt and I had a good time talking about childhood memories. Kitt is older than me, so I had memories that differed from hers a bit. It was interesting to note the differences in point-of-view that a few years makes!

While some meals were eaten in Elma, Kitt and Matt treated us to a night out at a pub in Charles City and the Sunday Brunch at Klunder’s. Both places were new to us and the food was very good. Thank you, Kitt and Matt, for this courtesy.

Of course, there was much to discuss about the house repairs, updates, and yard work that had been accomplished since the fall of 2019. The garage addition, a major piece of work, did not occur until the summer of 2020, for example. Pam’s work in the Library and the Snug, as well as in the front parlor, became a focal point of many discussions. Kitt and Matt mentioned they departed in 2019 thinking how much had to be done, and commented we had moved along very well in all of our projects to date.

The one disappointment was the weather. Elma and the surrounding area received over a foot of rain over that weekend. One local said she had reports of as much as 16 inches of rain in some places. While our basement stayed dry, we heard of several homes getting flooded basements and damaged water heaters and furnaces. One place, about two blocks up the street, looks to have suffered major foundation damage. It is now being rebuilt.

Several side roads flooded but we didn’t have problems getting to and from the pub and restaurant. I did snap a couple of photos of flooded areas near one of our routes.

By this weekend the flooding had subsided and some of the road damage has been repaired. A Rochester-based TV company had broadcast from Elma with interviews of yard and home flooding in town. Click on Elma Flooding to see that report. We had small ponds in low places in our yard but had no water in our basement. I guess we were lucky!

Before and after the visit (and rain), Pam and I continued to scape and paint the house and work on other projects. This is slow going as we try to remove as much old paint as possible before putting on the new coats in either red or white. Pam took some time to add blue detail work to most of the porch posts.

Another project undertaken concerns the job sink we plan to install in the laundry room. (This is part of a project that will relocate the clothes washer and re-route water lines to the upstairs bathroom.) We received our quote from O’Brien Plumbing & Heating to do the work and wrote them a check for half the cost as a deposit. This will get us on their work calendar but we don’t know when. We suspect they are booked up as much as a month in advance (due to damage caused by the recent rain) so our project will not be completed for some time. However, there is some work I could do beforehand.

The job sink will be a galvanized tub sitting on a stand. I need to build a platform that will hold the faucet and spray attachment and equip the platform with a backsplash.

Not ever having done this before, I decided I needed to “prototype” the faucet platform using some old wood I had in the garage. This worked out OK and I can now move on to buying the good lumber, building the platform, and covering the assembly with polyurethane to make it water proof. Below is a photo of me building the prototype.

Out in the yard, the garden is making some news. I now have a couple pumpkins and watermelons developing although they are still very small. Pam continues to get a few blackberries off the plants we put in last spring. The sunflowers are probably at their peak.

With cooler and drier weather on the horizon we hope to get more scraping and painting done on the house. It seems clear we will miss our goal of getting the entire first floor painted this year, as the work is going slower than anticipated, but we will persist until cold weather sets in. Any work we get done improves the appearance of the house and adds protection to the wood and trim over the upcoming winter.

Photo Archive

These photos are from 2013 when we drove to Boise, Idaho to hear Felicity sing with her vocal group “Northwest Harmony,” part of the Sweet Adeline organization.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Penny

September 16 marks two years since we purchased 702 Main in Elma. Much has been done, much remains to be done. All in all, old house renovation has turned out to be the “retirement transition project” we thought it would be. (The COVID pandemic having been something of a bump in the road in this regard.)

Hours of daylight decrease and winter looms. Pace and possibilities in projects take both into consideration.

Happy Trails.