Detour in a Floor

We took a detour from House #1 to work on House #2.  The laundry room needed some attention.  The residents of the room have been helping to remove the floor.

These are the residents:

 
They were doing an excellent job of taking up the floor, but they needed our help. 

 
We have the power tools.  Up came the rest of the floor.  It is a cement foundation and floor.  It has been repaired, which is why the former residents put down tile and vinyl on top and more vinyl on top of that vinyl. 

Once we removed the floor, we could see the room had been flooded many times.  You could see where the bottom of all of the paneling was crumbling due to water damage.  This wasn't a one time water problem. 

The paneling had to go, it was one of the causes of the smell in the room and there was some mold (not the deadly kind) three inches up the entire way around the bottom of the room. 

But wait, there's more!

Behind the paneling was fiberboard drywall.  We hadn't even found the foundation yet!  The paneling didn't stop the water over the years.  The fiberboard had also wicked up water.  None of the boards were wet, but you could see the years of damage. 

 
Finally, the original foundation.  It's in good condition.  No major cracks.  Needs a good scraping and some paint.  The rest of the walls and ceiling need removed, too.

 
So we did.  That's a little bathroom to the right.  The walls need removed and the bathroom remodeled, too, but at this moment it can stay because it is functional.

 
The ceiling was more fiberboard and a whole lot of nasty, but no mouse droppings.  Just dirt and tap from the old roof above.

 
The original rafters of the room are in good condition, too.  (Although we aren't certain why a few extra supports were put in on the left side of the room.) With the closet gone and the fiberboard walls removed, the room is much larger. 

Huuuuuuuuuummm

Look how blue the sky is!

Now look even closer at that photo.  I'll give you a hint. 

See him now.  He's out local friendly humming bird.  He visits out feeder hourly. 

He is a beautiful blue and green.  I want to get a better photo of him at the feeder, but he's so fast! We noticed him sitting on the wire one day.  Just sitting, hanging out.  Kinda like he does at the feeder. 

Then this weekend, as we were taking a break from digging the new garden, we noticed him sitting on the wire again.  He flew away to the feeder in the back of the house and flew back to the wire. 

He doesn't mind coming to the feeder when we are working near or sitting outside. 

A few minutes later, a cardinal landed not far from him on the wire and the humming bird chased him away! Not once, but twice!

We think he's got a nest in the pine tree!  I can't imagine a baby humming bird. 

And Window Makes 10

 

Our weekend goal was to finish the windows.  We worked hard at this goal, too.  Saturday was a long day.  Walt Kowalski had the tricky work with the ladder.  I did the inside stuffs and the removal of the old windows. Not monumental, but important to the guy 30 feet up in the air. 

 

 

 
We dropped lots of screws and nails and a tape measure once.  Thank goodness it wasn't the drill.  Walt Kowalski still had hold of one end of the tape measure.  He just pulled it back up to him. 

 
Ok, so it wasn't 30 feet up. More like only 20.  Still steep.

You can see the neighbor's new fire pit. 
 

Ta Da! All windows and two doors replaced. Now we can finish drywall and move on to finalizing the plumbing.

Planting in the Rain

My sister gave me some hostas from her garden.  I love hostas.  So do the deer, but that's another story. 

Walt Kowalski bought me some new plants for my birthday.  He has good taste in plants. Not the same as the deer.

We have hostas on two sides of the Cat Ranch, with the majority on the wall behind the house.  The wall that needs weeding.  Also another story. 

There is a big garden on the side yard.  I call it a holding garden.  It's where things end up when they are removed from one location (on hold) and a new location has yet to be determined.  The plants are a mismatched variety.  All plants are in the ground, not in pots, so they have a better chance of living.  All are healthy.  So are the weeds.  That's another story.

It's also a garden that has been robbed.  I robbed all the hostas from this garden for the rock garden on the other side of the house.  Grammy robbed this garden of many iris plants.  The groundhog and deer robbed this garden of the broccoli and beans a few years ago. 

So right now it's full of an abundance of daylilies and peonies and a few iris flowers.  All of these will be relocated in the future.  We'd like to move the daylilies to the downhill portion of the driveway and the peonies along the wall.  That's for next year. 

Walt Kowalski was feeling sick in the morning, but he's such a trooper and turned the soil alongside of the house. 

 

 
As the rain clouds formed around us, we dug and dug and dug.  Then the rain drops came, but I was determined to finish planting.  I made it just in time as the skies opened and rain poured down. 


 

We left room for a few other plants in the middle.  A couple I want to move from the holding garden and maybe something new. 

A-a-a-chooo

The other day I looked out the back door and noticed the neighbor's tree.  At first glance, I thought the tree was brushing up against the power wires and was smoking because it was on fire. 

Then, upon second glance I realized the wires weren't even close to the tree.  It was pollen! 
 

It's a big tree.

I'm in big trouble.  Send tissues.  Truckloads. 

Kink in the Neck

More outside painting!  No rain, just humididididty. 

The goal: a final coat of paint on the new siding on the front porch and a primer coat of paint on the ceiling of the front porch.  The ceiling was stained and varnished, but the wood was in good condition.  I just needed a little love. 

It was a big ceiling with lots of grooves.  So was the siding. 

 

 
There was a piece of trim around the top.  When I removed it, it was full of black coal dust.  Every time I think I'm done with black boogers, I get more. 

 
Walt Kowalski hauled all of the old window frames to the backyard. (We just get it cleaned up and make a new pile.)

It looks good.  The with white trim, the gray will look very nice. 

Odds and Ends

 

The front corner of the basement, not far from where the new electrical panel is located, is damp.  No, when it rains, there is a stream that trickles through.  When it rains, the water pools in this corner outside.  First, the water in the gutter in this area doesn't go down the spout, it pours over the side of the gutter.  Then the plastic downspout extension goes back into a smaller piece of metal downspout that goes into a smaller broken pipe.  The water is running over the pipes, not into the pipes.

 

 

 

 

The other day I was looking out the window on the second floor .  I just happened to notice the gutter was totally full of water and it hadn't rained in a few days.  No wonder the water pours over, the gutter must be clogged!  Easy fix.  I shimmied out onto the roof, empty plastic bags in hand, to clean the gutter.

 

The gutter wasn't clogged.  The downspout extended 3 inches up into the gutter.  The rainwater from the roof had to rise more than 3 inches to get into the downspout.  It never had time to get that high before it ran over the side of the gutter and poured onto the front porch and into the basement  There was no clog, it was put together wrong.  *sigh*

 

A quick snip with the tin snips, and now the rain water can drain out of the gutter and down the spout. 

 
Add 50feet of new pipe, put the downspout together properly, smaller pieces into larger fittings to catch the water.  And a realization that part of the problem is the neighbor's rain pipe isn't connected either.  It's pour their roof water into our basement.  We'll be good neighbors and fix that for them.  Walt Kowalski said he'd even use some glue to keep the pipe together.

 
The new pipe needs buried.  This side of the house is low.  We might be able to get away with removing the old broken pipe in the ground, setting the new one in place, and covering the entire area with stone and dirt. 

We also finished the drywall in the back bedroom. Once we closed in the window, all that was left was insulation in the wall.

Seams and screws and seams and screws and seams and screws.