Slower Week

As expected, the snow and cold weather put a crimp in activities this past week. The upcoming week is forecast to be much nicer!

The snow we received was not significant and far less than our relatives to the north saw on the ground. However, along with the cold temperatures, the snow was a good reason to stay inside and work on craft and computer-related projects for a few days.

Activities for the week included another lawn clean-up, cutting back dead flowers, reorganizing parts of the garage, minor work on the catio gutter, adding an access port to the “catio addition” and building 5 inside storm windows. Weather stripping was added to the front door making a much better seal against the cold north wind.

The “Catio addition” is the old window air conditioning cover which was removed when we took out the large first-floor window AC unit, no longer needed after the installation of central AC. The cover is made out of wood and tin and was lined with styrofoam insulation. In keeping with our “re-purposing” mindset, Pam though the cover could be made into an auxiliary cat bed or feeding station. I included a photo of it last week but mentioned I had to cut an access door in the side to enable Pam to put food and water in it. That job was completed. A little touch-up paint and it will be ready to go.

Building inside storm windows was another “indoor” project. In this case, “indoor” means working in the garage addition. I moved my table saw into that area and was able to rip lumber to make the frames then used a window sealing kit to stretch clear plastic, secured with specialized tape, over the frames. So far I have done both upstairs bathroom windows, the kitchen window, and one of my bedroom windows. The laundry room window, using plastic sheeting instead of a window kit, was a challenge as the window frame was missing a piece of wood that had to be replaced before the storm window could be built.

In general this is a time consuming process as each piece has to be custom-cut for a particular window. With non-standard sizes to begin with, settling over the years, and multiple layers of paint, each window presents a unique challenge. This is my first real attempt at this type of construction, and I am learning as I go, so progress is slow.

There are five more “regular” windows to fit with inserts then I get to figure out how to make inserts for the four large bay windows. That will be a particular challenge. I really should make inserts for the two colored glass windows in the stairwell, but access to that pair is difficult. We will see if I attempt it.

In the end this work may not save a lot of energy but a few windows are very drafty and we hope the inserts will block some of that unwanted air circulation.

Along those same lines, I replaced three trim boards on the east side of the house. These will be painted blue and have red boards above and below them. (If you go back a couple of posts you will see a sample of this on the photo of the painted back porch.)

Again, each piece has to be custom fit. To make the new trim match the old boards I had to rip a few boards of a wider width down to the size of the boards I was replacing. Without a table saw this type of work would have been just about impossible. Between these trim boards and the window inserts both the table saw and miter saw have been getting a lot of run time.

Another of my inside jobs was to finish a video of the new walkway being constructed between the house and garage. A glitch that prevented the video clips from downloading correctly from the camera took several hours to overcome, but finally I had all the clips shot during the course of the work. The link to the 8:48 video is: appleattic.net/Galleries/ HeartHouse/Vpages/Walkway.html

I started working on a new gallery of photos from my July motorcycle rally in Colorado, but that will take several hours to complete. Given the weather is supposed to take a turn for the better this week I may not have a chance to complete it for a few weeks.

As I write this Election Day is just a couple days away. I encourage everyone to vote if you have not already done so.

I am gong to close this post with a little anecdote. Saturday night Pam ordered up a couple of pulled pork sandwich meals from the fire department, who was offering them as a fund raising event. When giving directions for home delivery, she said “Its the old Victorian on the corner of Main and 7th” to which Kevin, the delivery guy, responded “The one being painted red? That’s a good color.” It goes to show that people in small towns notice and have opinions on everything going on in their community. (Eventually, when all the painting is completed in a couple of years, we’ll be the red Victorian on the corner.)

Photo Archive

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

Pam’s Penny

This week I came to the practical realization the Heart House exterior painting project is going to take double the time I had originally planned. I started scraping baseboards around the east porch (you can see this scraped siding in Himself’s photo of the new trim boards above). With my “hands on” experience, it became clear to me how much wood rot exists and how much subsequent repair will be needed before applying the barn red and blue/white trim paint colors.

Himself was already aware of this; he tells me he’s been mulling if we can afford to replace the house’s wood siding with cement “hardy board” siding, such as was used on the new and old portions of the garage. We can perhaps afford this in selected areas with the most water damage, like the bay windows. At this point the budget doesn’t support complete siding replacement, however. We have to pick our [financial] battles carefully going forward.

The “new” plan is for the two of us to work our way around the first level of the exterior in 2021, repairing and painting as we go. This will likely include determining the fate of some of the original windows as well. Once the first level is done, we’ll consider our experience on the first level, then re-evaluate how to complete repairing and painting the second level.

The first level, of course, includes the three porches. Two of them have been [mostly] painted this year. The huge wrap-around porch on the front of the house will be a project in and of itself. <sigh>

Privacy screen, aka wind screen on the NW corner of the dog enclosure, was installed this week. We’re trying to break up the wind tunnel effect between houses that resulted in actual breezes through the west side of the house last January-February. At some point in the future the arbor vitae will hopefully provide a hedge in that corner for the same purpose, but they’re too small at present to do much good.

Happy Trails.