Diggin'

 It's been a long while with no particularly interesting updates. 

This past spring I was staring out my back door at the looming treeline while drinking a cup of tea and thought to myself, self, you really ought to push that back. I could see where the old treeline was and where the new treeline has filled in with scrubby invasive trees.  I texted my neighbors my plans and started cutting and piling, and cutting some more, until I reached the "big" trees out back. The big leaning tree sort of marked the edge of where I wanted to go. Each of the piles in the picture below was at least 6' square(ish).

This effectively doubles the size of my backyard.

 

Over the course of the summer I'd go out and cut and pile, with the intention of pulling an open burn permit in the winter and lighting them off one at a time. But those are awfully big piles, and all the darn cute chipmunks seemed intent on making them their winter accommodations. I had no desire to make things more comfortable for the chipmunks, nor did I want to light their houses on fire in the middle of the winter. I don't have a truck and this would have taken a month's worth of trips to the local brush dump (that is barely ever open), and hiring a landscaper to take it away was not in the budget.

Instead I went out and found myself an old style tractor trailer wheel, as big as I could comfortably manage. Rolled it up the hill and started cutting, and piling, and burning one handful of twigs in the Wheel of Fire at a time. I keep the ceremonial package of hotdogs on me at all times.

Slowly but surely.

One pile at a time.

Now I found myself with another issue. Stumps. So many stumps. From little bitty 1" stumps that I could lever out of the ground with a wonderful tool called a "Puller Bear" to 4" stumps that required a shovel and a hatchet.

An "easy" stump. With piles and burning still happening in the background.

A difficult stump. I thought I had cut all the roots.

But wait.

One. More. Root!

I have discovered that Black Locust trees spread by runners - great long roots will stretch from tree to tree, and where ever that root gets close to the surface, it'll pop up a sprout. Left alone long enough, these dang things for a ticket, like what I had. The other thing is that Black Locust has thorns very similar to that of a great woody rose bush. Gloves are a necessity, even after the branches have been down for months.

A great example of Black Locust running. Off camera to the far right is what I guess is the original stump, which runs to the stump to the right in this image, that runs to the stump poking up at the left of the image with that giant stinking root. Then that great whacking root ran up the hill to another stump off camera to the left. Then it disappears into the woods. I'm not chasing it any further.

 I got the stump (above, left) out. But the stump on the right is just not budging. Plus there's the original stump still to be dealt with. I got to chatting with my buddy Chris about it last weekend, and he offered to bring his little tractor over and take care of it for me.
My shoulders have told me this is a good time to graciously accept help. I hope we can find time to do it before the snow flies. We've had such a long and beautiful fall, I don't wnat to push my luck. 

That's where I stand at this point. Once it's all clear,  I'm going to stick in some fruit trees, and move my garden up there. It gets much better sun than the currant location by the house. I'm kicking around ideas about converting the area where the garden beds are now to a patio of sorts. Quotes have been been rather high, so I'm going to have to think about how much I can do myself.

Cheers!

I'm still here

Hanging on by my fingernails it feels like.

The house is still in one piece. I'm still in one piece (though with a banger of a head cold that went into my chest and had the terrible luck to turn into bronchitis.)

I'm starting to see a little bit of daylight, where I'll try to post an update. 

Yesterday, an acquaintance of mine passed away after many years fighting cancer. This morning on April 7th, it snowed. 
She loved the snow. 

You will be missed, Natavia.

 

New Year - What Happened and New Goals

Hi there. Happy 2025.
It's been a time. 2024 saw the end of the nightmare bathroom, the spiffy new roof, and precious little else done to the house. I was busy traveling and working on one freelance project that wound up totaling 1,804 pages, and another that was only about 250 but which I had a hand in writing.
I suppose a bathroom and roof that cost nearly a quarter of the value of the property when I bought it is enough for one year?
I'm happy to see it done, but boy oh boy.

 

One tiny project I squeaked in under the wire of the year was new basement posts. The ones down there were metal pipe - perfectly up to code, if they weren't all starting to rust or rusted out at the bottom. I conned my friend Ian to come up and show me how to use the railroad jack to replace them with nice sturdy 4x4's.

Two new posts under the living room to replace the pipe that was there.

A post and a pipe. Each post is up on a firebrick, with a sheet of aluminum flashing between the firebrick and the wood to keep moisture from wicking up. The aluminum got trimmed down after the fact.

Here is where the pipe has been replaced from the picture above. Originally there was only one support there, but it's where the front of the house meets the back half of the house, and there was nothing supporting the back "sill" that spanned the width of the house. We decided to double post it, one for each side, which is why I was short one post for over by the water heater.

One pipe was completely rusted out, and the reason why my dining room was so bouncy. The rest were ok, but headed in the same direction. It was fun to find out that the cement floor had been poured *around* the pipe posts, and I needed to cut the pipes off in some cases. Now I have to back fill the holes so the radon continues to get sucked out from under the foundation properly.

After removing the pipe posts, I removed and capped the plenum that used to bring hot air from the furnace to the bathroom. The bathroom has it's own separate electric wall heater now.
I'm going to have to make a trip to the scrap yard.

The floors still squeak, but the dining room floor is FAR more solid. This was one of those things I've wanted to do right after the bathroom and before I start re-pointing the rest of the basement. My shoulders and back are already grimacing at the idea of it, but I'm about 2/3 done.

So last year!
• I had Tad and Ridgemark Remodeling finish the bathroom and put on a new roof.
• Ian and I put all but one new post up in the basement, and that last post really is a nice to have, not a need to have.
• Tad's electrician got the roof fan functional again.
• All the bathroom stuff that was living in the shed is now applied to and living in the bathroom, giving me back the space to for things like lawnmowers and grills in the off season.
• I rebuilt the little flower bed around the mailbox using found bricks from around the property.

Done back in the fall. You can tell by the Mums. :)

This year!
• I need to get that last basement support post in.
• I may preemptively upgrade my water heater.
• Continue re-pointing the basement.
• I need to get 4 more copies of the small 250 page report printed (I have a proof coming in in a few days).
• I need to figure out how to get the mammoth report printed in such a way that it's both user friendly and cost effective.
• I'd like to redo the walkway from the driveway to the house. The blocks were not installed right and are heaving, making shoveling difficult. Not that I get much snow anymore. But still.
• I need to finish Moon's Window for May -

I've actually reconfigured it slightly from this shot, because I've decided leading it (rather than foiling it) will be more structurally sound, but it's still the same design.

• Carry overs from last year - I'd like to rebuild the fire pit and rebuild the well cover.
• I want to completely rip out the front "flower bed", i.e., wild kingdom. It's a steep little hilly mess in front of the house that the woodchuck has taken up residence in, and that can't continue. Also, it's sort of an eyesore. I don't want to just grass it over, but I'm not sure what else to do that won't give Chuck cover to excavate toward my foundation.
• I need to keep trimming back the brush that uses any excuse to try to reclaim everything.

 

May we always be grateful for the past, find joy in the present, and remain excited for the future.

From all the residents at 107 Brigham Hill; human, cat, wild rodents and birds, Happy New Year!

Top of Mt. Misery in CT.
(To call it a mountain is a bit of a stretch, but it was pretty.)

Bathroom time out #2

 In between road trips and bathrooms in states of disarray, I'd also been working on a commission window for a friend of mine. We'd started talking about it last year about this time. I'd worked up a design for him by Halloween, and we'd settled on a timeline and cost in about Feb? March? It had been long enough that I thought he'd lost interest, but no, he'd just not seen my email.

There is something going on with Blogger - When I go to upload pictures, they are all coming in backwards. It sort of ruins the pace of storytelling, and also makes it really disjointed - but placing each photo one at a time would take forever.

Here we go, sort of in reverse order. :(

During this period of time, In between Moon's Moon window,  I also did a bunch of little projects.
First, a hood for Erin. Dags are a pain in the butt, but here we are. This one was entirely hand sewn:

Dags with stitched embellishments.

The front of the hood, with the long dangly lirpipe. That was the style.

Side view of the Hood. Based off 14th Century sources. It was good, solid work.

I had a bunch of Travel Auction devices I needed to paint and deliver.
All of these were done and delivered by the end of July.

Now! Moon's Moon, in reverse order. Hrmph.

The window!
Perhaps my most ambitious to date.

Moon's Moon!

Here we see the water almost done.

Because this is in reverse order, the water is receding!

The water is made up of two different art glasses - both of which have a super defined texture, and a lot of variation. These are pattern pieces laid out on the "light" blue (which is streaky with teal and lime green too. It sort of looks like seaweed.)

Some of the dark blues placed.

The pattern pieces on the  "dark" blue for the water.

The ship laid out.

All the wee bitty pieces for the ship.

I had glass and pattern pieces strewn all over my basement.

I got a new tool for this project! A circle cutter. It's finicky, and works best on nice, flat, even glass. This was the test piece. Note: None of the glass for this window is nice and flat or even.

The Very Cool opalescent glass I found for the moon.

The pattern laid out.

At the store, buying glass. Here's a better shot of the "light" and "dark" for the water.
The gentleman at the store saw the pattern and exclaimed, "I have it! I have your glass! Go look at the Youghiogheny section!"
I avoided that section because that is some High End Glass with High End Prices.
But he was right. I looked it it and it is the Ocean.

Here is the frame it will eventually go into. I still need to finesse it a little, and it will need to be reinforced with bars. This will not be a light window.

The window from the inside of Moon's Tiny House.

The outside of Moon's Tiny House.
Soon, Moon. Soon I will finish your window.
(Luckily, this is a seasonal space, and is well closed up for the winter.
This area is not exposed to the elements, but because this tiny house moves, the window is being constructed to be removable.)

A Grand Dump of Bathroom Pictures! (Part 2)

Once I returned under-slept but relatively unscathed from our grand tour of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, South and North Dakota, and Montana, I found the bathroom had changed while I was gone. Not a lot visually, but a lot structurally.
They had done the roof in my absence (the whole roof - It badly needed it) and in the process discovered there were 8! Eight! layers of roofing material over the bathroom. A mix of asphalt and rolled rubber, they were worried that the sheer weight alone would trigger needing a new dumpster. I think we avoided it though.

There was plumbing!

A a vent stack pipe in the corner!
Super exciting because up until this point my house hasn't met code. This fixes a huge problem.

All new rafters, also up to code!

John the Carpenter revealed that there was a hand-hewn post hiding inside the mystery box in the dining room. This was likely reused from somewhere even older than the house.

Labeled electrical! With a vent fan!

The vent stack was framed in to make a chase. This eats up about a square foot of floor space in an already small bathroom, but it's worth it. (And frankly, I didn't have a choice.)

Slowly pealing back the wall between the bathroom and the dining room. The Mystery Post is still hanging out in the wall to the far right.

John left me this piece of the original Victorian Tongue and Groove so I could see the beaded profile. I didn't wind up saving any of it in the build, because at a certain point, I just wanted it Done. In hindsight, could I have reused it and run a small bit as wainscotting behind the toilet? Sure.
But Done.

Still Pealing. Old lathe it the far left.

Framing in the wall that will enclose the tub and help create a closet in the bathroom.

Brand new tempered window. This is also a code requirement due to proximity to the shower.
(I might slip and pitch myself headlong out the window.)

A floor! I don't have to worry about falling into the basement on my way to the portapotty in the middle of the night!

Wait. Water? Oh no.

There's no reason for the wall to be wet here. Not like this. Me, the plumber, and the GC Tad chased pipes and waited for it to rain for days - weeks, really. We could never get this to replicate once it dried.
The only think I can think of is that the washing machine (which backs up to this wall) needed to be moved. I think the hoses were disconnected, but it's so tight they couldn't get a bucket in there, and the hoses must have drained out, soaking up the wall.