The mold has been mitigated, and the bulkhead painted.

Tuesday I took a day off from work because the Mold Men were coming!
Puroclean sent a two-man crew out and one of them spent a good 5 hours up in that cramped filthy hot attic crawlspace documenting and cleaning. There's no action shots, but they did send me a nice document with some before and after pictures.

The top is before cleaning, the bottom is after.
The profusion of roofing nails made it difficult to get super detailed.

I plied them with gallons of water and a bag of potato chips when they were done. After the bill was taken care of, I had what I'd been waiting for.

(They really need to take my check and get their printer heads cleaned.)

While the nice men were dealing with the issues in my attic, I couldn't just hang out and do nothing. I also didn't want to be underfoot, so I went outside and started cleaning up a flower bed in a funny cement planter that needs to go. I figured I could empty it and back fill it with gravel to create a pad for a generator. I got out all the yard tools and started wacking away at it when I discovered the most curious thing.
Crocuses. In September.

Before

After

Crocus. Actually not a true crocus, but a "Naked Lady"
Autumn Crocus, which is a member of the lily family.

Well. I couldn't be killing these lovely little flowers trying to move them right now, so I had to find something else to do.
I was standing right next to the bulkhead, as seen in the right of the before and after photos.
The kind of rough, a little rusty, in-need-of-love bulkhead doors...

Ok. New plan. Paint the bulkhead.

Scrubbed.

Before. I didn't want the little rust to become big rust.

I love my palm sander. Once of my best purchases.
Took it from course up to fine , paying special attention to the rusty spots.

First coat of white Ben Moore Direct To Metal paint. I remain skeptical.
I had to drill out the handle.

First coat. I rolled it, and it's kind of patchy. I'm not a fan of this whole "Paint + Primer" trend.
I just wind up putting on multiple coats anyway.

Coat number 2 drying a few days later.

After a number of hours of dry time, I through the plastic over it while I went to VT and it was supposed to pour.

New handles! So much cleaner!
Such a crappy picture, making it look like it glows!
(It doesn't glow.)

So that was a nice little project to get out of the way. I have to deal with the poorly painted and pealing flashing above it, but the doors are in better shape now.
Next up will be the front door.
I'm anxious. But it will be ok.

Perky.

Shutters!

Well, it was another action-packed weekend.
Not really.
It was a "getting my crap together" weekend.
I needed to follow up on my new-to-me car and get it a sticker Saturday (check.) Then I came home and tidied - straightened up the shed, cleaned the first floor of the house, put away a ton of tools that had accumulated in the dining room while I worked on the stairwell. Put stuff back in the new-to-me car that had come out of the old one. Gathered up all things that needed to be laundred for the next day. Then I took the shutters off the house. They were filthy, and I thought it would be easier to scrub them on the ground than bobbing and weaving around on a ladder.

Before - with shutters.

After - without shutters. And Holy Wasp Nests, Batman.
Luckily none were currently occupied.

The scrubbing. Before and after. This one shutter took about an hour of scrubbing.
After trying out a bunch of stuff (borax, oxyclean, magic erasers, et all), in the end,
CLR mold and mildew remover and Magic Erasers did the best, fastest job.
For a moment I considered just replacing them, but looked it up and at the size I need them
they would have been over $100 a pair. Hruumph.

Nice clean shutters drying in the sun. They are not uniformly clean, but they are better.
I think it will look fine from the road.
That vinyl hangs onto crud like no one's business

Oh. Hey.
BTW, CLR will eat (or at least discolor) the brand new seal coat on your driveway.
*sigh*

I kind of like it without shutters. I bought some of the house wash stuff that you screw onto your hose
and gave the front of the house a bath before I go sticking the shutters back up. I'd given thought to leaving
them off, but the siding has faded so you can see the shadow of where they were.

Sunday I woke up and took myself out to breakfast (a rare treat). From there I hit Home Depot and then the laundromat before coming home to mow the lawn. (I should have hayed it. Three weeks was 1.5 weeks too long.) Hung out the clothes to dry and finished with the scrubbing.

I talked to the guy at my local hardware store (Koopman's) and I need to pull a permit for the shed roof, and get him a sketch so that he can give me a price on the materials. I'd really like to button up the shed for good before winter. I'll see if I can afford it.

In other news, the Mold Men come this Wednesday! Yay, more expensive home improvements I will never see!

Basements, driveways, and mudrooms, oh my!

I was a long weekend for a variety of reasons. But!
I got the basement stairwell as done as ti's going to be:

The paint is a light blue-grey semi-gloss.

Pre-lightswitch plate and railing re-install. The motion sensitive LED battery light is nice.

I've since added back the switchplate and railing. It's as done as it's going to be.

The guys showed up at 8:30 to start sealing my driveway - all 172' of my driveway. I felt they did a really good job, and the end result around 4 pm looked like:

Do not cross for 4 days!

All nice and black!

So that's ticked off the list.

At some point this weekend... Saturday morning? I discovered that the freezer is no longer freezing on my fridge. I lost a bunch of stuff, put the still frozen stuff in a cooler and hoofed it over to a friend's house to stuff in their chest freezer for now. Knowing I was going to have to replace the fridge, and wanting to replace it into the mudroom instead of the kitchen, I started demolishing the mudroom Sunday morning.

Closet doors off.

Shelves can't stay and accmomodate a modern fridge.

The closet was added before the outer wall of the mudroom shifted.

Closet and shelves out. Electric box will need to just be moved.
(That is the cold air intake to nowhere.)

Next up - Remove the rest of the closet shelving/rod parts, fix the walls, pull up the carpet. Try to determine where the electrical comes to that wall from. Try to get the electrical in the wall and not spidering out as a web of conduit. Eventually fix the floor, level things, and get the fridge in this room.

The idea is to put the fridge and a stacking washer/dryer on that back wall next to each other. I know putting a dryer basically on top of a refrigerator is a bad idea, but there's precious little room in this house to accommodate both. I might start with a washer and do a lot of line drying (eventually).

The Continuation of the Basement Stairwell Walls

I've been hammering away (not literally) on the basement stairwell walls. I must have done at least 4 sessions with the spackle at this point. Last night, I sanded them and washed them down for the last time before trim and primer.
Just a tip - don't play carpenter angry. Don't paint angry either. Sometimes it can't be avoided if you want to get the work done though.

Right side w/ trim and primer.

Left side - trim and primer. Can hardly tell there used to be a hole around the light switch.

Trim and primer.

I did not put up the trim "the right way" at all. I wound up using long narrow brass screws (that's what I had, brass is generally the devil to work with) because trying to hammer finish nails had the plaster shaking and cracking, and I didn't need more of that.
I've been trying to avoid taking the right rail down, but in order to paint the wall well, I'm going to have to. Because it's screwed in over plaster, I'm going to try to free the rail and leave the supports on the wall (lest removing the supports wakes a sleeping crumbling plaster beast.)
So, a few more steps forward. Tonight, first coat of paint.

Basement stairwell walls

Last night I sanded down the walls to figure out where the high spots were, and slapped some more spackle on the divots and holes.

Left side - Fixing up pretty nicely, actually.
One more sand and this one should be good enough to prime.

Right side - this side is a bigger pain in the next because the rail is in the way, and there was more damage.
The patch above and around the light switch is slowly getting better.
This side will need another round of spackle and sanding before priming.

Stay out!

That last picture is from where the wall of the right side of the stairwell joins the stairs above. It's the most amusing, ridiculous thing. The hole is maybe 7-8" long, and maybe 3" high, and blocked with 4 large framing nails (?).
I'm not entirely sure what we're keeping out (or in). Mice would dance right through the gaps. Rats? (Have seen no evidence of rats.) Squirrels? Cats? Wombats? A rogue wallaby?
I don't know, but I'm leaving it alone as a point of interest.

Not much of a visual difference, but I'm puttering away on it.

When I'm allowed too, anyway.
Good thing it's hot, she's not all over me for my lap right now.

Busy weekend of sheds and walls

I finally was able to complete the shed door this past weekend. It took about 8 hours over the course of the week, dodging rain drops, and making trips to the store for things I needed. But it's done -

Patch applied, I think this was post sanding.
Worked up from 60-120 grit, wiped it down with a tack cloth.

First coat of primer. I wound up putting on 2 coats to smooth it out.

First coat of paint. It was a lot more blue than I thought.

Final - 2 coats of paint and an overnight dry dulled it down a bit.
I need to pick up some black Rustolium in a can for the hardware, but other than that it's done!
Next - the roof.

In between the rounds of work on the shed, I decided to deal with the basement stairwell. First, because the mosquitos in town now carry EEE, so I can't be outside in the evening unless I'm dosed with bug spray. Second, because even though the dehumidifier makes the basement warm, it's dry, and feels nicer. Third, all the stuff hanging on the wall right at the top bugged me.
Plus, I could practice spackle in a place where it doesn't really matter.

Before cleaning and removing a rail. Dual rails are great, but it make the stairwell really narrow.
I will store it so that in the future if it's a code issue, I can slap it back up.

Post TSP scrub and rail removal.
Just scrubbing the left wall made a huge difference.

Patches patched. Some were pretty deep, so I am going to let it dry
for a good 24 hours before smooshing on another coat.

One downside to dating a historic preservationist, (hi Honey!) is that you pick up things by the very virtue of being at trade get-togethers and having evening conversations. He's a professional, and I mean well. I know there's right ways and wrong ways of doing things, and in the case of this basement wall, it probably should be stabilized with plaster washers and injected adhesives and all sorts of things. Pricey things. I know this. But... forgive me... I just want it to not have lath showing, so I'm smooshing spackle and fiberglass tape over the worst of it and smoothing it out (sort of.) The worst part is right over the light switch, which you can't see very well in the pictures, but at least it's not a gaping hole anymore. The patch might fall out in a year, but until then, for a basement stairwell, it will be good enough. Rather than tape and fill the corners, I think I'm just going to get some 1/4 round molding to cover the gaps. I think electrical runs around behind there, so I don't want to make it super difficult to get at.

Stay tuned for the continuing adventures in basement stairwells!

Some Pig.

Shed door progress

You can't tell, but I'm making progress!

It might rain!

I've been tuning up the shed door. There's been patch involved for the holes, and a lot of sanding. It seems that there was a light coat of varnish on the boards that mildew got under, so I've started with 60 grit to strip all that junk off (and take the patch down.)
I have to stop tonight and pick up more sandpaper, since I discovered last night that I jump from 60 to 150 in my sandpaper library. A few years back I bought an electric sander to finish my sister's wedding cake stand, and it has proved it's worth time and again.

I love my sander.

I also succeeded in killing the hornets, so the driveway is officially all edged.
Thank goodness. Time to get sealed. Keep your fingers crossed that it doesn't rain on the day my guy is scheduled to do it.

All edged! All grass removed from the cracks!

Stuff in the yard

I spent a huge amount of time this weekend (between 10 and 12 hours) edging the driveway. The fist day I was using a flat head shovel and a paring knife, and then upgraded myself to a step-on edger. It was a significant improvement, I tell you.

Before

During

Still during. There was a lot of during.

After. This was Saturday.

Sunday got me down to the road (at least on the right side.)

Things you find buried by the edge of the driveway.

I have about 40' more left to do, but there was a ground hive of yellowjackets I needed to take care of first. Last night, under the cover of darkness, armed with a flashlight and a can of Raid, I did the deed. This morning, there was no activity, so I think I'm good, but I'm going to watch the hole for a few more days to be sure.

While doing yard work things, I was going in and out of the shed. The door kept hanging up where the flashing was rubbing on the ramp. Eventually, I tired of fighting with the door. This was the door -

(Photo from June.)

I got out my hammer. And my screwdriver. And I yanked all that crap right off the door.

They had enough nails and screws on that thing to withstand a hurricane. The proper application of brute force and annoyance had it all in the trash bag in less than an hour.
Low and behold, there's a door under all that nonsense.

Behold! A door!

Granted, the metal flashing had been holding the moisture *against* the wood, so there's a few inches of rot and insect damage in the lower left hand corner. Nothing looks active, so I scraped out the loose stuff. It is not worth the aggravation to try to replace the planks.

Metal flashing didn't help here, what with the water splashing back up on it from the ramp. (no gutter)

I picked up some bondo-style patch, which has been applied. I'll sand, prime, and paint it at some point this week.

In other news, the phlox is still going strong.