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.)

Say goodbye to the coal chute!

(Or whatever it was.)
Saturday I got busy removing the coal chute so that the foundation could be blocked and stop leaking so much cold air into the basement (right under the heat vent for my bedroom.)
I got all kinds of tools. I thought at first I could do it sort of modified wedge style, by drilling pilot holes and then pounding a chisel into it to force it to crack along a plane.
That theory didn't last too long. The masonry bits I have just weren't really up to the task.
So I sat there and pondered for a little bit and decided the only way this was going to work was to beat it into submission.
I got out my 3 lb hand sledge and an old cold chisel and started beating the snot out of it. One of the corners was already cracked, so that's where I started.

Before - This is an old picture from when I first started trying to get rid of it.
You can see where on the left they had over poured the cement right onto the step.

The corner that was pre-cracked, and the score lines I started.

Sledge and chisel, You can see the vertical cracking coming down from the score lines.

Getting the first chunk out was the worst. Because it's cement, it didn't crack nice and smooth,
so you had to widen the gaps before it would release.

Eventually the crowbar came out. Leverage! It made things a lot easier.
So did the 8 lb long handled sledge hammer that eventually came out to join the party.

The cement carefully chiseled off the granite step.
You can see the pilot holes where this step was cut using feather and wedge.

Before, earlier this summer.

After - No more coal chute. The front is much more symmetrical now.
The two capped pipes are for running the dehumidifer drain line out in the summer,
and an extension cord for season decorations.
Now it just needs another step to go on top of this step (to bring it to code), and the front of the house is good to go.

I just liked the way this pile of tools photographed in the late afternoon light.

When I was done beating up the cement in the front of the house, I gutted the porch. It wasn't all that difficult, as nothing was nailed down very securely. Finding somewhere to put all the stuff that was out on the porch while we're working on it is something of a challenge.
But it all came up or out. There's an old hope chest that was left behind by the last owner that I think I'll re-purpose into a bench for sitting out there to put on your shoes.
Last but not least, the tile for the mudroom and porch came in. Fun times ahead. This will make picking a wall color much easier!

Tile is not light.
1'x2' tile is even less so.

A regular old contractor circus

Tuesday I worked from home in order to be around for the septic guy and the chimney guy.
(They both turned out to be guys. All the contractors I've dealt with have been guys, 90% over 40. Let's give that thought a moment. Mommas, please let any of your babies grow up to be contractors.)

Anyway.
Both gave me windows of arrival. Both arrived promptly at noon. There was a fair bit of shuffling large trucks, and then letting them get to work.
Good news is the septic wasn't nearly full. It never occurred to me that it would have had to been pumped into order to pass title 5 last year. It'll be a couple of years before that needs to be done again. I did get the opportunity to look down the hole. It is indeed a field stone cistern, about 8 feet deep and about 6 feet in diameter. I think he felt bad because it was so empty, so the guy spent quite a while out there, back washing the cistern to break up the solids that had settled into the corners of the downhill side. It's as power washed as a cesspool is going to be. There is some fine root action going on there, so that's something to keep an eye on.

In the mean time, the chimney guy was doing his thing. I got to look up the exhaust chimney, and it was dirty, so I had him clean that. Things to note: the exhaust chimney has a clay liner and a stainless steel liner that pipes directly into the furnace. This renders the clean out door I replaced mostly moot, but it looks better. This chimney has a cap too, but... we'll get to that.
The rear chimney that I dearly wanted to put a wood stove on has a pretty narrow flue - 4.5" x 8". While it is possible to put a stove on it, it would mean having to get a custom formed liner. All in, outfitting the house for a stove (wood or pellet) using that chimney, (per this company), would be between $10-15k, which is just far and away outside what I can reasonably afford. (Granted, that's the all-in price if I understand them correctly. Stove, liner, interior work, combustibles clearances, etc.)
If I had that kind of money, I should be getting a new roof. This chimney also had a cap, which is good, but...
Whoever put the caps on these chimneys did it with all the finesse of a rhinoceros. I watched as the guy pretty much flicked them off with little to no effort. I have no idea how they've stayed on through the wind storms we've had, other than I'm on the protected side of the hill. Because of the slip-shod epoxy job, moisture is staying trapped on the masonry, and is causing the mortar to fail. To this end, the front (exhaust) chimney needs to be repointed from the roof line up, and a new mortar apron formed at the top to hold the cap down and shed water away correctly. The rear chimney, which at this point feels useless, needs a new mortar apron but no repointing.

In the end, I'm disappointed. There's two things I wistfully wanted in a house and I got neither (wood stove and porch). I got a house I could afford within a reasonable distance from work, so that's the trade off.
At least now I know (and knowing is half the battle.)
But I can still be disappointed.

Daylight savings sunrise.

Quick!

Before it snows!
Friday before leaving for TTRAG, I ran around and whipped the rest of the screens off the house and put most of my fakey-storm windows back in. Then I grabbed a bunch of reflector posts and put them in around the edges of the driveway before the ground could freeze. It looks like an airport now, but I'm ready for snow.