A Long Walk in the Woods

I haven't explored much of the conservation land that my house is bordered by front and back. That's a shame, because Grafton really does a lot in terms of conservation. This afternoon, I ran out of steam for inside projects and decided to get out for a while. First I shoveled the driveway and cleared the car of the 2" of precipitation that had accumulated. The precipitation seemed to be equal parts sleet and rain, and made for a heavy mess.
Neighbor Mark was headed out with his dog Lily just as I was finishing up and thinking about nosing around. I would have gone with him but Lily pretty much hates my guts. As far as I can tell, she hates everyone who isn't Mark. So rather than up, I went down.
I rambled around, saw some deer, raccoon, dog, squirrel, human, and fat-tire bike tracks. Oh! And I found what is called a "Specimen Tree". A gentleman had stopped this past summer and asked if I knew where it was. Now I do!

From a distance, it looks like just a big tree.

Then you get closer. Notice my hat hanging on it for scale.

I *love* a good info sign!

It was sort of like standing under an elephant.
Each limb was a big tree in it's self.

After the excitement of the Big Black Oak, I turned around and wandered home.
The whole woods, once pasture, is riddled with stone walls in various states. It's also invested with invasives. Everywhere I turned, all I could see was Winged Euonymus, also called Burning Bush. Sure, it's pretty, but that feels like the only thing going on in the undergrowth instead of baby white pines and baby oak. Heck, blackberry would be preferable. Where there wasn't WE, there was Asian Bittersweet choking the dickens out of the established trees. I was happy to see a lot of grapevine though. Maybe it'll shade out the Bittersweet.
I admired the view coming back up the hill.

Pretty tree lined abandoned road, with rock walls on either side.

With a cute little house at the top.

Oh hey!

That's my cute little house!

And with a pretty new sign and everything.

So that was today. There was also some drywall touchup, and cleaning of Bedroom #2 in prep for paint. I put another coat of oil on the cherry, but I think I need to bring it upstairs, it's just a little too chilly in the basement to really absorb well. I didn't do anything to the closet door since it felt like the primer was still drying.

2019 - A year in review

I had grand intentions of putting together Christmas/New Home cards back at the beginning of December. Things got away from me, and they never happened, for many reasons. I don't have cute kids and puppies to photograph. Instead, I have Buzz the Electrical Box and Robby the Radon Unit.

Template courtesy of Minted.

But! It is the time of the year where you should bask, a little bit, on the thing you did get done. Looking back, it's not inconsiderable.

January:
• (Technically December) Got the electrical updated.
• Moved in.
• Insulated a lot of little things
• Cleaned a lot of hardware and did some research into it.
• Painted a lot of closets
• Cut some brush
• Started to make some internal storm windows
• Discovered I had mold in the attic

February:
• Made more storms
• Got some roofer quotes to deal with moisture issue
• Didn't get laid off
• Washed a bunch of rooms
• Researched salvage places
• Thought about what to do with the dining room

March:
• Painted more closets
• Contracted with A&G Gutters for gutters
• Fixed the chimney clean out door

April:
• Cut more brush
• Gutters went on!
• Flowers and snakes came out
• Pulled a LOT of poison ivy
• Got the screens rescreened and weatherstripped

May:
• More weatherstripping
• More plants woke up
• Put in the flower bed at the top of the driveway
• Patched holes in the basement cement
• Did a shotgun day of brush hauling to the brush dump

June:
• Edged the front foundation
• Accidentally blew a hole in my foundation via the old coal chute
• More things bloomed
• Hacked back the lilacs near the back door/edged the bed
• Replaced the kitchen sink fixture (*Still isn't quite right. Harumph.)
• Replaced the GFCI outlet in the kitchen

July:
• Uncovered the back wood line and long lost rose bed
• Went on a poison ivy rampage that would last the rest of the summer
• Installed a de-humidifer/pump and started to dry out the basement
• Painted the basement steps

August:
• Edged the driveway
• Uncovered/Painted the shed door (*Lower putty already failing, will need to be readdressed.)
• Fixed basement stairwell walls/ceiling

September:
• Painted Front door/replaced weatherstripping
• Got the driveway sealed
• Cleaned the shutters
• Painted the bulkhead doors
• Got the mold remediated

October:
• Fixed ventilation in roof
• Started uncovering front flower bed
• Confirmed NO KNOB AND TUBE.
• Got the house insulated! yay MassSave!
• Cleaned tape off hardwood floors
• Continued gutting mudroom
• Spackled Bedroom #1

November:
• Fixed toilet feed line
• Leveled mudroom
• Finished spackling/painting Bedroom #1
• Replaced derelict "flowerbed" with gravel alongside the house
• Continued reclaiming the front flower bed
• Got the septic emptied and the chimneys cleaned
• Filled in coal chute
• Got tile for Mudroom/Porch

December:
• Continued working on mudroom and porch
• Started working on Bedroom #2. So much spackle.
• Tarped shed roof
• Made a few more storms
• Chipped brush

Shortly, very very shortly, I hope to have the tile down in the mudroom and porch. Then I can start to put things back where they belong. I've been working on a pretty new coat rack for the porch out of a piece of cherry Ian picked up for me. Also, I can finally get an adult sized refrigerator to replace the one that died back in September.
I'm almost to the point of being able to paint bedroom #2, but the spackle process has been long and tedious in that room. there's a large rolling ceder-lined closet that was left behind (which is great!) but it's very large in a very small space and has been difficult to maneuver around.

So much spackle. The plate (where the roof meets the ceiling) what badly encased in plaster and drywall.
I've basically coated the thing in drywall compound and now I'll sculpt a clean line out of it.

Spackle isn't much fun. Or fun to photograph.

The trim has been painted over at least 4 times. It's not in terrific shape.

Enter the Speedheater!

Trim is stripped.

Hardware off the closet door.

Cleaned hardware.

Trying to pick a paint color for the kitchen.
The more I think about it, the more I think I might stick with the Revere Pewter from the mudroom,
though I do like the far top left Russet color.

About one year ago, I deployed this long acting radon test to check on the work I had done.
The day before Christmas I sent it back. Hopefully I hear back soon that the great Radon Rodeo was a success.

Santa Ian brought me workbenches!
Now I have space to do all the messy things inside!

So I stripped the bedroom closet door.

This was under all the paint. A wonderfully swoopy capitol A. Was probably the maker, since it was on the bare wood?

Starting to fit up my fancy coat rack/shelf. One minor hitch...

The brackets came with top ears. I don't need them for what I'm doing, so I very carefully hack-sawed them off
and then hit the bare metal with some black paint I had around.

I'm doing the cherry in tung oil. Which means lots and lots of light coats of oil.

And lots and lots of light sanding between the coats of oil.
This is not a job for my sander though - this part I'll do by hand.

I also primed the closet door while I was at it.
The wood was so dry, I had to treat it with a mixture of 50% linseed oil/50% turpentine.
Which meant I had to prime it with this oil based primer.
For the record, I hate this primer. It will give me a headache in 3 minutes flat if
I don't wear a respirator when I'm using it *outside*.
I should probably change out the cartridges on the respirator.

Wishing you all a very happy holiday and a healthy new year!

A holiday PSA

I should be sanding spackle, but instead I took an inventory of my Hallmark ornaments.
I have sorted by collection and year. Separate column for singles.
Now I need more rubbermaid totes.

If you have a collection of similar, I suggest you do the same. If catastrophe befell and I had to replace them, I'd have had no Idea where to start. Now at least I have a Google sheet.

Holi-daze

It seems that time escaped me again. Not to say that I haven't been puttering around the house, but work has been very busy, and then we threw in Thanksgiving. I know I've gotten a lot done, some without pictures (like spackle, because who wants to take pictures of spackle.) I'll try to recall through pictures, because that's more fun.

Since the intention is to tile the mudroom in preperation for a fridge and the space is so small
it made sense to tile the porch at the same time. Therefore it made sense to do all the paint work to that space too.
Here I'm stripping the multiple layers from the porch window.

The tile isn't laid yet, but here it is butted up tot the wall color (Revere Pewter) and the Super White trim.
I'm debating replacing the door with a half glass since it's so small and dark in the mudroom.

The shed roof was leaking badly, so the Saturday after Thanksgiving Ian helped me to tarp it.
The festive blue matches the door nicely. It's drying out slowly.

The big pile is near the shed is gone! Using a tiny bit of burning in my tiny little firepit,
a whole lot of chipping with my new-to-me chipper (Thanks Clockwork!) and a little bit of hauling the big stuff
to a different pile,  the shed pile is gone.

I got my Christmas lights up before one of the decent snows we got!

I decided that the mudroom should get trim around the bottom to hide whatever sins might occur with the tiling.
The rest of the house is mostly 1-by, so I got some 1x4 and gave it a good coat of Super White.
What? You don't do carpentry in the kitchen?

Trim!

While I had tools out I cut another one of the fakey interior storm windows for the living room.
This time I decided to cut a joint for the center supports. I've left it unasembled, because I can use this one as a pattern for the other 4. I've borrowed Ian's chop saw to make faster work of it.

Drying Trim.

While I had paint stuff out, I painted up the shelves for a china cabinet.
I had to replace the original shelves which were terribly warped and had some left over sample paint. Ta da.

We have had some awfully pretty snow.

A bit of grapevine that was headed to the chipper, last year's wreath ribbon,
and a bit of greenery from a local shop filled out my wreath. I looked around and realized
I have no evergreens on the lot.

Right now I'm working on fixing the walls in the "Harry Potter" room, which is small and difficult to photograph, and spackleing is not exciting. On the docket is the tiling, and also some coat rack/shelves for the porch. Ian picked up some lovely cherry wood for me. Now I just need to sand the dickens out of it and figure out how I'm going to assemble it. That might be my Holiday break project. (Around the spackle. All the spackle. Eventually paint.)