Cleaning up

Nathan did some power washing today on the outbuildings.  We have some house paint left over and are going to spruce up these buildings while the weather holds.

Albert trimmed out the laundry room windows.  I will be painting them in the next couple days.

More flooring to clean up in the kitchen nook.  

In the formal entry, Albert and Nathan using a heat gun to remove the stubborn lino.

And all the many tack nails to pull up before drum sanding the floor.  All of the fir flooring on the main level will be refinished.  

A Lesson in Patience

We rented a drum sander and edger today to begin the long process of refinishing the floors in the dining room and parlor.  

We were not sure if the floor was even worth saving but it was! 

After a full day we mostly finished the dining room and got a good start on the parlor.  I was afraid the sanding would make a huge mess with the dust and all and so wanted to do the floors before all the painting was done.  Since it is actually a clean operation, we can go ahead with the painting before finishing up the floors all the way.

The fall crocus are in full bloom.  There must be hundreds of bulbs in great masses of flowers.

 

Front Porch Painted

We have finished up the front porch and you can see that it is not unlike the original.  I am quite pleased with it.  We will probably add the railings or else place flower boxes instead.

And now a couple shots of the gardens.  Here is the front bed with the hydrangea Pinky Winky in the foreground that I purchased from the nursery.  It will fill out nicely in a couple years and will add a soft spot of color at this time of year.  Behind it is Casa Blanca lilies,  monarda (bee balm) and to the left, orange montbretia.

We have figs ripening!  I will be able to harvest enough to eat fresh and to preserve a batch for the winter.  

 

Front Porch

  We have started on the front porch, here Albert is putting up the ledger board on which the floor joists will hang.

 Below photo shows the joists installed

 And then the step foundation.

 The porch floor boards are a new man made product called Azec.  It comes in several colors and will never need any maintenance or painting. We chose a similar mud brown to match the same paint as the back porch.

 Now up goes the roof.  We kept the same look as the original porch, but instead of just the one peak, we went for a hip roof.

 Below you can see the rafters framed up.

 End of the day shadows.

A Mistake

Yesterday I painted the porch what I thought was going to be a very nice rich, deep gray.  According to the chip, anyway.  As you can see, it did not turn out that way.  Looks like white, right?  To say the least, I could not get up to the paint store for a different color fast enough. 

Here is the completed paint job with the right color.  More of a brownish gray.  Color picking out is not my forte by a long shot!

We also are taking this time of good weather to improve the drainage on the east side of the root cellar. 

Albert had to dig the ditch deeper to install a drainage pipe at the proper level to flow out and down from the building.

We also had another load of pit run brought in on the south side entryway.  We will be putting on the porch on this side soon.

And just so you know, Mom says that these are porches, not decks. There was no such thing as decks back in the day.  Decks were on ships, not houses.

Deck On

Today we finished up the deck, next is the 3x8 cement pad going out from the last step.  It will also be necessary to have some sort of a railing/barrier on the west side wrapping around to the stairs.  Possibilities are a bench, planter boxes, or a 3-4 foot railing.  Landscaping will suffice for the near side as it is not quite so high as the west (far) side.

Here is a photo of the root cellar garden.  Lots of alliums  looking like round purple balls floating in the air.  The figs are ripening nicely on the fig tree to the right and the hummingbirds have been busy at the orange montbretia on the left.

Deck Begins

We have just about finished all the primer paint coat on the new sheet rock, so decided it was time to get back outside to begin work on the three deck/porches we will need to build.

We had saved all the yellow cedar decking that was on the east side of the house and now are going to install it here on the north side going out from the dining room.  Above photo is the joists and the still hanging original post where the really old porch was.

Here is the yellow cedar decking that needs to be cleaned up before installation.  There was an oil based stain on it originally.

So out come the power tools!  An electric planer did the trick of removing that old sticky stain without gumming up too badly.

Then the next step was to sand the groves out that the planer made and make it smooth.

Here it is partially installed and all clean.

Tomorrow we will begin on the wide and shallow steps. No railing will be necessary as the deck is not that far off the ground.