All in a (last) week's work (or how my house is trying to kill me)



Okay, so you know about the leaky roof and the rain falling inside on my hardwood floors. Thankfully the good people at the local Big Box Hardware have TEAMS of people that can repair and replace a roof. So we called in a local rep who, on his first day managing the Athens store, has to drive 1 ½ hours to our place to do an estimate. This is a city guy. I mean BIG CITY guy. He thought he was in "cattle country" out here. Hate to tell him he ain't even close. 

So my hubba hubby is outside when he arrives and chatting away as the guy takes photos. I exited the house to introduce myself, step on a piece of slate paving stone my hubby has discovered, and promptly fall over on my butt and roll down the hill a bit before my car assisted in stopping my momentum. So yes, welcome to the country – and I have no physical coordination. Impressive.

Despite this, I'm going to have a beautiful brand new roof on my house at a good price and the bad wood will be replaced and we will have no more leaks. Yep, this takes the major chunk of our cash, but it will be worth it to have a good "hat" overhead cause the weather is taking a turn for the crazy again.

We've had some seasonable temperatures over the last week or so. I have friends planting berries, others out hiking, and the State Parks (especially Elijah Clark) have been flooded with visitors and fishing boats. Its been NICE. Today, the weather took a dip: this morning it was just over 34°F and barely squeaked out above 55°F by mid afternoon. And, NO LIE, the weather is going to go down to the 20's tonight. 

  Hubby and I worked on drywall and trim in the morning and headed out to improve the well house

Old: Uninsulated and Open

during the warmest part of the afternoon. Scrounged a nice big board from the pile of building materials left behind and set out to close up all the open areas. You can see how it looked before from the photos, but maybe not how poorly insulated it was. The new photos definitely show how much better enclosed it is now. We also added some of the hardboard insulation to the inside walls, wrapped the pipes in insulated cover, and set a utility light out with a bulb to generate a little heat. This baby is sealed! 


New: Closed and Insulated

But all was not well with fixing the well house – no, all was not well at all. 

 We kept misplacing things, losing nails in the grass, I sent an ant farm into rebellious protest against my work boots, hubby had difficulty with the saw, kept forgetting gloves and glasses, and our efforts to hammer indicate an area where more attention and practice would be helpful. Hubby was getting so frustrated I decided to help with his major pet peeve: organization of tools. I carefully found all the tools lying around and set them on the roof of the well house within easy access: duct tape, hammer, bucket o' nails, pencil, and a sturdy piece of wood about 2" thick and 2" wide and 3' long. Some of the old insulation was blowing about and I didn't want the birds getting it, so I set out to pick up the trash. 

Did I mention that it was also very windy today with this cold front moving into our area?

No sooner had I started back to the trash bag with my handful of icky old insulation than a BIG gust of wind blew that board right into my face. Literally hit in the face with a board! Fortunately, the board was so light that – despite its velocity – I don't appear to have gotten hurt very badly. No blood, no broken teeth, just a sore little nose and yet another case of "it could only happen to me."

So the upcoming blog will be filled with wonderful changes: the new roof should be in place, we are eradicating the hideous red ceiling (under 3 coats of KILZ), and the Laundry/Half-bath is turning from its aqua blue mess into more natural tones of brown and green.  Photos will follow.

Stick with me and keep checking weekly: blogs will hopefully become more regular as we move our house into the 21st century with internet and everything!