Friday, November 26, 2010

Winter: window-mania!

Still thinking about the basement. In the meantime, we've realized that we've been overlooking a pretty major project that spans many upstairs rooms: finishing all the windows. Ugh.

As we've done a variety of rooms, we've called many of them done when we still had one last project left - usually stripping the window sashes, and doing miscellaneous window-repair tasks. A pile of window stops found during the last cellar cleaning reminded us, then when we realized we can't put the interior storms in without the stops around our bedroom windows, it suddenly became fairly important to get some work done on this front.

So, I'm declaring this the Winter Project of 2010-2011. I've begun stripping the stops for our bedroom. Hopefully we can get them back in by the end of the weekend. Snow on the ground is a good motivator for getting drafts sealed up...then I'll chip away at the rest of them all winter, and leave the stinky painting and staining for spring. The stripping really is the worst part.

I need checklists for morale, so here's the one that will live on the fridge till I'm done.
What's bad for morale is remembering that each sash above is really a pair of sashes, so I have twice as much work to do as it looks like. Let's repress that thought for a while.

Here we go...

Sunday, November 21, 2010

So this is how the other half lives?

Ken very kindly helped a friend do some electrical work on his cabin. In exchange, the guy wanted to do something for us - so we jumped at the chance to have some 'free' help.

We chose...the rocks! We got another (last!) pallet of rocks back in May, and laid them out to complete the stepping stone path around the front and side yards. We then dug in about 10 of them. Then summer got a hold of us and we were involved in loads of other projects. So most of the rocks have been sitting on top of the ground - perfectly positioned - since then. The good news is that they killed the grass underneath, which makes the soil infinitely easier to dig out.

The better news is that the friend thought that digging in our rocks would be a great trade for Ken's help. So he's been here several days on and off setting them down in the ground. He's got almost all of the largest section done - and it's looking fantastic. It's super-cool to come home and find someone doing your project for you! Very weird, and such a nice treat.

So, here they are - hopefully the oil delivery guy won't spend all winter tripping on them now.