Kitt and Matt

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.