Archive for July, 2003

Working on the Porch

lisa July 18th, 2003

Work has begun on the porch. Seth and John have been out nearly every day and the basic stuff is complete (see the gallery for pictures). Tonight Mark, Seth, John, Alex, Dave, and Greg put up the beam that goes across the front. It was a really heavy beam! We initially projected a two week timeline for the porch, but it’s going to end up taking more than a month. We have another two weeks to go.

We’re using ipe wood for the floor planks because it’s strong, hard, and fire-, rot-, and insect-resistant. Cool wood, especially when you buy it from an environmentally responsible company like we did.

Things in other parts of the house are also progressing. I’m working in the parlor this weekend (patching the walls) and hope to have it ready to prime and paint next weekend. Tuesday night I spent an hour sanding the walls. Last weekend I scraped the paint off of the heating pipes in two corners of the room, then primed them with a Rustoleum metal primer. They look pretty now - pretty for pipes, that is! There are five more pipes to do on the first floor. It’s not a hard job but it takes a while to scrape all the paint.

Mark is planning on doing some more cabinet making in the kitchen this weekend. And on the second floor, we finished gutting the “bird room” (the northeast bedroom) and putting up wallboard. The plasterer can’t make it out here for another couple of weeks, so unfortunately it won’t be ready for use as a guest bedroom when my family arrives at the end of July. So I’ve booked them a hotel room =(. At least the parlor will be done and we will have a nice comfy place to relax while they’re here.

Mid-summer garden update

lisa July 7th, 2003

My garden is suffering from a lack of rain, so I’ve had to water all the new plantings quite a bit to help them through. I love this red beebalm. The tomatoes and cukes both have blossoms so there will be fresh veggies soon. Unfortunately, I hear that some tomatoes won’t set fruit when it’s over 85F during the day and 72F at night. Luckily it’s still getting down into the sixties at night. The daylilies on the east side of the house have started blooming and are putting on a good show. Those are just ordinary orange lilies that came with the house. The hybrid fancy ones that Dorothy gave me haven’t bloomed yet.

Work continues

lisa July 7th, 2003

This past weekend, we went to two cookouts and a bluegrass show, and did some hard labor. Cleaned up all the brick from the old fireplace that was in the driveway - sorted out the whole bricks for later use in a pathway and tossed the broken stuff into the dumpster. That was a three hour job. Then Sunday we demolished the northeast bedroom and took out all the old horsehair plaster. We had to rig up a chute out of the window into the wheelbarrow, which was complicated. And it was so hot all weekend that doing physical labor wasn’t easy - had to keep hydrated and carefully monitor ourselves.

We’ve hired Mark’s friend Seth and Seth’s partner John to work on the porch. With a little loan from Mark’s stepmother to cover our shortfall, we should be finished with that in a couple of weeks. Then we will try to refinance.

There are a few new pictures in the gallery.