Found things

 Back while Ian redid the shed roof, I started looking at the retaining wall/old barn foundation. Due to neglect, some of the big rocks have tumbled out, and a lot of dirt has washed down the hill. Compounded by leaves that were never raked out and turned to compost, the hill was starting to slide into the shed. I moved what rocks I could, and raked out the debris. In the process, I found stuff.

No idea what this is. It's about 8" long. No marks that I can find.

Bits and pieces. This glass was exceptionally thick-walled.
Someone planted Early something. Peas?

Whatever this was, it came from a large circumference bottle or jar.
Bigger than a quart, in my guess.

Found this tucked in the rocks. I cleaned it up and hung it in the shed. The gold is still shiny.

I think these are old radiator valves? A ton of these went in the dumpster for scrap. Never mind my house doesn't have radiators, in this condition, they literally can not be reused by anyone.

The Holy Grail - Proof that plausibly, once upon a time, my house had weighted sash windows.
I held onto this. Window weights are getting hard to come by.

As cleaned up as it's going to be for now. I think short of an excavator, or some really fun leavers and pullies, the two remaining rocks will have to live where they lie. I'm doing some investigation on how to get them back up in their proper positions. It would make accessing the back of the shed a lot more convenient. You can see how the water pressure has bowed out the wall over time.

The upstairs hallway and stairwell, continued.

This past week I've been plugging along on the upstairs hallway. Ian and Windy had fixed the walls to the point where it just needed a little fine tuning and some paint. At this point right now, the hallway has seen:
• Ian and Windy fixing the plaster/drywall and giving it a first prime
• a second prime to all surfaces
• 2 coats of ceiling paint (Muresco. It hides so many sins.)
• reattached the ceiling light
• 2 coats of wall paint (Ben Moore Regal in "Ewing Blue", which has turned out a little more coastal/beachy/relentlessly cheerful than I anticipated, even thought I tried swatches.)
• cleaned and reattached the wall plates
• Ripped out the carpet on the stairs
• 2 coats of primer on the stairs
• 1/2 a coat of Ben Moore Floor and Patio paint in white on the stairs. (Doing the every-other-stair technique.)

I had swatches all over that hallway.
That blue gets Really Cheerful when there's a whole wall of it.

Cheerful blue from one end. I need a better lightbulb.

Cheerful Blue from the other side.
Here it almost looks white, unless you have white to compare it to, which leads us to...

Here it is next to white. It's a lot brighter in person.

I was painting these walls and finally couldn't take the carpet on the stairs any more. I mean, I was so carefully fixing this space, I couldn't just leave the stairs. Last week I got out the wreaking bar, yanked up the carpet and tack strips, carefully filled most of the holes, sanded it and started painting that too.

Why Not.

I couldn't take it.

Even if that cat loved sharpening her claws on it and rolling around on it,
I couldn't do the carpet any more.

Demo is my favorite part.

There was padding under there, but you couldn't really tell by walking on it.
It was so dirty.

There was a reddish brown and dark green in the middle; grey, and at least 2 coats of different light blues on the edges. Why waste the paint if you're just going to carpet it?

At some point, probably when they put on the back bedrooms, they replaced the bottom two treads with left over hardwood floor scraps.

One coat of primer! Already so much cleaner!

Second coat of primer! On to the real white paint.

That's what I've been up to. I've ordered some better matching hardware for the closet doors, as well as a fancy custom handrail to replace the very generic rail that was there. Originally, the stairwell probably never had a rail, but modern codes frown on that sort of thing.

At this point, I can finish painting the stairs. Then I want to wait for the wall paint to cure for a little bit so I can tape off parts of it and paint the trim. Then it's the hardware  and the hallway will be done for now. I will still need to refinish 2 closet doors, but that can wait until winter.

I can't wait to call this area done.

An important update; The mystery pipe conclusion.

 I'm not sure if I mentioned it here, but last week I started trying to dig up this weird pipe sticking out of the lawn out near the road. I thought it was a sheared off old metal pipe fence post. I dug and dug, until I hit a collar. Then I stopped and called DigSafe. This was no left-over mailbox post.

DigSafe determined that it wasn't gas or electric, so I could go to town digging as far as they were concerned. But I wasn't convinced. That sucker wasn't budging for anything. I called the town water department. The lady on the other end wasn't convinced it was their problem either, but said she's talk to some folks and get back to me. She did, later that day, leaving me a message telling me that it was a "stub".
When the water company ran a main down the road a number of years back, they put little stubs in so that properties could tie in later without needing to dig up the roadbed. That's cool, but now *I* wasn't convinced. This (above) didn't exactly look like an intentional arrangement.

The water lady went on vacation. I waited for her to get back and called in again. I wanted a set of real live eyeballs to look at this. She wasn't pleased that I was wasting her time, but she finally relented to send someone up. A little while later, a man in a big town pickup truck pulled up. "Yup," he said, "it's a stub. But it's seen a snowplow or two."
He went on to explain the long wrenches that would be fished down the pipe to turn the water on and off to the street. (Mine is pretty shallow.)
He also told me that should I ever want to tie into the main, they would definitely have to replace this part anyway (up to this point is their responsibility), so he could just cut it off. He left to get his saw, and about an hour later he came back, marked the street, and cut it off for me.

Thanks Water Guy!

Now all I have to do is take measurements (just in case) and back fill it.
One less thing to bounce my poor lawnmower off of!

Getting a good head of steam

Last week a lot got done in a short period of time.
While I don't have any progress pictures, I do have before and afters of the shed roof.

Before: A 3-tabbed shingle roof, covered with moss and lichen.
(Last year, with the driveway freshly sealed.)

 

 

 

During: A trusty blue FEMA grade roof. I looked up how they recommend dealing with hurricane damage, so if you ever need a roof tarped, I have learned a few things.

After: It's up and done! With many thanks to Ian for doing the bulk of the work while I was trying to work at the same time.

The dumpster goes away today. I pulled all the stuff out of the bushes from when I demolished the mudroom closet, all the stuff from when I demolished the weird wooden surround around the chimney, lengths and lengths of rusted-beyond-use pipes from the bushes, a bend-pipe trellis? part of an arbor? out of the bushes. Then, when I saw how much room I had left, I called my neighbors and asked if they had anything they wanted to get rid of.

While waiting for the dumpster, Ian also cut me a beautiful new clothes line, the posts are rough oak, and the arms are rough pine. The old one had been holding out for me, but every time I hung up a wet towel, it crept closer and closer to the ground.

Before: This was taken well over a year ago, the angles had gotten much more severe.
It took minimal effort to push them over. I just sort of leaned on it.

After: The reason it took minimal effort to push over the old one is because this whole slope is sitting on a ledge. The close post is down about 32" until we hit ledge. The distant one is about 22".
It will hold up the cloths to dry though, and that's all that matters.
I sanded them to get the splinters off and then hit them with a coat of linseed oil. Not that it will do much, but it made me feel better. Today I'll string it now that the oil has soaked in.

And today I also just started the process to order the new handrail for the indoor stairwell. Temperatures come down, and progress picks up.