The past week was interesting from both an activity and weather perspective. We had snow, a visit from a painter, and a set-back on the VHS project. All the details are below!
Thursday morning we were greeted with a layer of fresh new snow. More arrived Saturday morning, heavy, wet, and soon to melt (I hope.)
The snow brought birds back to the feeder. During the warmer days they had been somewhat absent.
Hopefully the snow will melt over the next couple days as high temperatures are expected to be in the mid to upper 40s.
Thursday was also a good day as we had a visit from a painter we had contacted. A young man, named Dalton, had responded to Pam’s request for a quote to finish painting the house, or at least the portions that don’t need additional repairs. The prime goal is to get the areas under the peaks (the ginger breading) painted along with the north and west walls. (Areas above the east porch and near the tower need repair work and would not be included.) Part of the east wall, above the bay window, would be painted as well. Here is photo of the west wall as it now stands.
Note the ginger breading Pam had painted last fall above the laundry room window at right.
Dalton arrived and took a guided tour around the outside of the house and viewed the work to be done. He was aided by photos of the house to which Pam had added circles, arrows, and text explaining what work was to be done. We asked Dalton to replicate the laundry room peak’s pattern in the other peaks. This involves hand painting which will add to the cost of the job. Dalton made notes as he went along. He indicated he would get us a quote sometime next week, and if accepted, work would commence this August. Yes, he is already booked out that far but that is still better than the 2023 date given to us by the first painter we had contacted. Now we are waiting for the quote and will decide if we can afford it.
On Tuesday Becky and I took a road trip to view some properties Becky had seen on-line. We visited several towns along the Mississippi River, including Gutenberg, MacGregor, and Elkader. Becky and her brother Larry are looking for a home with a minimum of two bedrooms and two bathrooms so each can have some space of their own. A river or water view is highly desired. One place of interest, in Elkader, had a view of the Turkey River but one wonders if there would be a view in summer when the trees are in full foliage. It was an interesting trip and I enjoyed getting out and about a bit.
Pam has completed the painting in the downstairs bathroom and I re-mounted the towel racks. The walls look quite good now; Pam plans to replace the flooring as the next phase of this project.
One of my projects took a major hit; the hard drive where I had stored all my digitized VHS tapes and related files malfunctioned and erased everything. I was bummed out, but luckily the original edited files were still on my iMovie program. I was able to re-save them in PC-friendly .MP4 formats, but the related files (HTML pages and poster photos) had to be recreated. I lost hours of work due to this hardware failure, but am now caught up to where I was about a week ago. It may be time for a new external hard drive as mine are several years old at this point and are of limited capacity. (Video files are quite large.)
It was quite a week. A road trip, two snowfalls, painter visit, and VHS re-work were all on the docket in addition to normal activities. As a comedian recently said “I don’t want to brag about expensive trips, but I just returned from the grocery store and gas station.” Life goes on as we hope for better weather to arrive.
Photo Archive
Kind of a mix this time.
That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!
Pam’s Penny
Spring, where are you?
Happy Trails.
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