And the Beat Goes On

 "...Don't stop for nobody
This time I'll keep my feet on solid ground
Now I understand myself when I'm down
Like the sweet sound of hip music
There'll always be something new
To keep the tables turning..."
 - "And the Beat Goes On" by The Whispers

"There'll always be something new to keep the tables turning," should be my theme song, really. 

Last year -the second repeat of 2020- was a bit of a ride. I got all the garden beds made and had only fair success with my crops, after being plagued by pests and drought. My dad came down and took care of some ice damaged trees for me, and I exchanged some design services for some other tree work from a friend, but in the long run, my garden is not as full-sun as I thought.

I survived more layoffs, a break-up, a stunningly *awful* "vacation", and the bathroom contractor stealing my deposit. I spent $$ on getting: the step in the front of my house fixed, the driveway sealed, the radon system cleaned and fixed, the lawnmower fixed, fancy mortar mixed up and installed, and eight magical windows replaced in the house. 

I hiked many more miles around New England, and tried to get out some.

The view from one of my typical morning routes.

I was able to swing 2 weeks of vacation off around the holidays, and had a plan to finish the dang living room if it killed me. The new windows were in thanks to Window World of Boston, so there was nothing stopping me now except lethargy and ambivolance.

New windows, but no trim.

Threw the old curtains over everything to protect it.

View of the Van Cortland Blue wall.
Even a year later, though pretty enough, it bugged me that I thought it would be darker.

With that in mind, when I started priming the walls I just sort of... kept priming the walls.

With trim! And Primed!

New blue! "Newburyport Blue" (matte). Much closer to what I was thinking. The mirror my grandma gave me for my 16th birthday just looks so... sophistocated... on this dark blue. The walls are Stonington Grey (matte), the trim Super White (gloss).

While I was at it, I painted the hallway Stonington Grey to match. I did not repaint eh door or sidelights because they are metal and super cold to the touch right now. I might repaint them in the spring. Or not at all. The grey is a shade darker than what was there.

Part of dealing with the living room meant dealing with the ant-eaten baseboard trim that had been long-since removed. I had two planks which I was able to take to work and get planed down to 7/8", and then brough home to try to work out how to get them back up.

They aren't perfect. Just don't look very closely and it's fine.

I don't have a miter box, so instead I was just very very careful. Again, not perfect, but only off by about 1/8" when I went to overlap the boards.

Being a very smart bear, I put in a lovely hole for a box for this low voltage coax cable to pass through.
Forgetting where the wind braces in the wall are. You can't see it, but the upper half of the hole on the diagonal is completely blocked by the wind brace behind the paper. This lead to a merry chase of figuring out how the heck I was now going to cover the stupid hole in the wall.

After dry fitting, I primed them in the basement while contemplating my coverage options.

After a number of false starts, this is where I wound up. This is the type of plate usually found in places like office cubes, and the back has been heavily modified, but again, it's clean, and it's done. They came in a two-pack, so I modified the hole in the floor on the other side of the living room to the same style (where the internet comes up from the basement).
Is it "right"? No, but neither does it look like a drunk beaver attacked my floor any more.

It's me, hi, I'm the drunk beaver.

This did allow me to find out that the undersides of my floorboards are printed with the word "Everlasting". So that's fun.

The room does look really, really nice now. The floors are in rough shape, but I think there's really only one stressed out layer of varnish in most areas. At this rate, I've refinished miles of trim, how hard can a floor be? But that's for warmer months.

 In between waiting for coats of paint to dry, I've been continuing to repoint the basement with my precious, accurate mortar.

15 sacks of mortar from Pennsylvania

Rocks from my neighbor's yard. Our local BuyNothing group is fantastic for weird requests like "Can I come take rocks out of your yard?"

In a fit of thoroughness I rinsed off the rocks.

And then I piled them up roughly by size near the bulkhead so I could grab them when necessary. It's crazy to me to think that now this pile is mostly gone already.

I started at the edge of the bulkhead door. This is 2 sacks (80lbs) worth of progress.

Two more sacks.

At this point we had a huge rain event that came up from the south, blowing the rain into the south side of the house where (you guessed it) my fresh mortar was curing in the basement. In thign picture, water was actively seaping in and dripping down the rocks. It seems to have set up regardless, so we'll see.

4 more sacks got me around behind the radon tank.

At this point I've sort of lost track of how many sacks of mortar are on the wall. All I know is that I've got it down where it's about an hour per sack, and I can only do 2 a night.
My chiroprator this this is a *great* hobby, and everyone should do it. And then go visit him.

At this point I noticed the radon tank was acting up - it's supposed to shut off after a predetermined amount of time, and this was just running forever. I manually shut it off and called the installer. They came out and cleaned it ($225) and discovered I had a bad timer ($75). It's all fixed now and taking the radon out of my house correctly again. I'm hopeful the bleach taste works it's way out of the system quickly.

I made it over to the furnace! Bigger rock faces means it goes faster because there's fewer seams to fill.

This is how the magic happens. A pan, a hoe, about 3/4 of a gallon of water, and a 40 lb sack or mortar. Mix until it holds it form and is workable, for at least 5 minutes.) (I wind up working the water in for at least 15 usually.) You don't want it too thin or it just oozes out of the wall. You don't want it too dry or it doesn't stay put in the cracks.

Around the corner and past the hole into the crawlspace under the bathroom!
At this point, I have 4 more sacks left. I'm pretty sure that will get me up to and past the water pipes you see there that feed the bathroom/outside.

After I run out of mortar, I'm going to have to figure out the next time I can get down to Telford, PA to get the last of it. I'm hoping only maybe 20 more bags? I'm going to have to remeasure and do some noodling about that.

Other things I've been up to is some painting for SCA projects:

Auction device front

Auction device back. I got to do the device for one of the precious few female knights in the SCA. It was like painting for a unicorn.

Had the paints out so I did up this little ornament for Ian as a xmass gift, and as a little challenge for myself. It incorporates all three symbols of his peerages: Laurel leaves for his Laurel (Arts and Sciences High Achievement), a pelican in her piety for his Pelican (Service High Achievement), and the white belt for his Knighthood (Armored Combat High Achievement.)
The little gold shield with the black spear are his personal arms.

 

And a whole bunch of hiking:

Behind my house in the Williams Preserve

Mt Pisgah up in Northborough

Lower part of Mt Greylock in Adams back around Thanksgiving.

DCR land over in Westborough

Hodges Village West loop out in Oxford.

My sister convinced me to try her trekking poles a little while back, and after some hesitation, I discovered that for anything over 2 miles I really, Really like them. Keeps you from getting "fat fingers", and I feel like it keeps my upper body more engaged. Plus the added stability allows you to be able to pay more attention to your surroundings, not just on your footing.

Uxbridge State Forest - Dean Pond

So what's the next year going to bring? That will be the next post. :)

 

It better bring more catnip, is all I'm sayin'.

A belated happy holidays

 While I'm trying to gather my thoughts for a "year in review" and a "what to expect form this year" post, please know I haven't forgotten about the blog and I hope you all had a very happy holiday season.
Stay happy, healthy, and warm!

 

Thanksgiving already?

Well, here we are at Thanksgiving. I have some time off coming up, and a brandy-new table saw in my basement thanks to surviving 15 years with my employer. Let shinnanigans happen!

Really, I haven't gotten terribly much done in the last month. A bunch of normal fall yard work, and winterizing things. I was well on my way with a leaded glass projects when I accidentally cut my thumb really good slicing apples for the dehydrator. You're not supposed to work with lead with open wounds, so that paused that for a while. Ditto for not working with nice caustic lime mortar. Thumbs are constantly beat up and take more time to heal

I did some wick tests for making candles. Any of these wicks will work for beeswax votives, but they need to be burned *in* a votive container, otherwise the wax all melts and runs out. The 1/0 was the best I think.

Got some hiking in. One of the trails crosses some tracks. I made sure to look both ways and listen long and hard before I scampered across.

This was the last stunning day, 11/12. I was out in shirt sleeves, watching dragonflies and garter snakes.

One week later I was packing for a SCA event. I wore the hat most of the day; only pulling the coronet out for court later that night. (I should have left the hat on.) I can't count how many layers of ski clothes I had on under all my wool. I was doing ok until the chemical foot warmers gave up late in the day. (I had extras in the car, I just didn't think to go get them.)

When in New Jersey, you drive the extra couple hours south to Pennsylvania to load up on lime mortar from the source (limeworks.us). These 15 bags ought to keep me busy for a while.

One of the people I stayed with Sunday night sent home a catnip fish for the princess.

 She approves!

I got the call today that Window World of Boston have the windows and are looking to schedule that installation. It looks like my Christmas break will be finishing the living room, I hope.

In other news, the jackhole bathroom contractor refused delivery of the certified letters I sent out asking for my deposit back. I have to talk to a friend of mine who was a consumer advocate and figure out where to go from here - feels like either small claims court, or the MA Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation. I'll see what she has to say. I got the legal insurance as part of my benefits package at work in October, so worst case after 1/1/23 I'll call and turn a lawyer loose on him.

It's getting cold. Last night I finally caved and put the electric blanket on my bed. I got too used to warm motel rooms and other people's guest rooms. Three night was all it took to get soft. :) One of my next projects will probably be to fashion some new nicer fakey storm windows with my new table saw. I don't have a fancy mortiser, but you know what? Screws work fine.

I promise, I will get back to you, #2.

Happy Halloween

 I haven't forgotten the blog, I've just been pretty busy with my stained glass class.

Finished up this pretty little piece. Learned how to use cement (vs putty) to finish it.

Started a new piece.
This is a 50% to scale recreation of a window found in Vermeer's painting "The Little Street" c.1658

50% to size meant the lead was suuuper small and difficult to work with.

Got it done in time for the last class and started cementing the first side. It's a real pain in the butt to cement deep leads and antique glass.

Vermeer's "The Little Street" - the lead pattern I'm doing is the second floor window.
I've decided this is a "showing off" pattern - it's much more annoying to cut than regular old rectangles or diamonds.

Happy Halloween!

What else have you been up to?

 Oh, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. A whole lot of projects that add up; at least in terms of time. 

One thing I've been meaning to do is get the water runoff from the gutters further away from the house. So one afternoon, I went to Home Depot, got an underground drain pan thingger and some gravel and dug a trench.

Here I was laying out how I thought it should go, but that plan soon changed since having a 90* turn at the top seemed like a bad idea.

I didn't get any good "during" shots, because I was covered in dirt, but here it is after. It lets out at that dark spot in the upper center. I don't think I buried it deep enough. The next one I will set out forward an extra 2". Hard fast rain almost overshoots the catch pan when it's more centered.

A slightly better angle - the outlet is under the rock, but I didn't go deep enough, so the rock is going to have to disappear. Gets the water at least 8' away and down the hill from the house. Now I just need to do the other corner of the front of the house.
(The ruts are from the little excavator they brought in to raise the step. I need to get more dirt to flatten out my yard.)

Naturally the first day it rained I watched it work and took pictures!

I started a commissioned window job, and also started taking a leaded window class at the same time. While some of the class has been a little basic for me, I have learned a lot of tips and tricks.

One tip I learned is that when working out from the center of a half-round, the center is what you would think of as the "top" (not the little center of the "bottom"), so I had to flip it over and modify my work.

Here it's all fitted up and leaded. I soldered it last night, but I need to get it some re-enforcement bars, which I'll pick up at my class this weekend. Those will get soldered on, then it will get cemented, and it'll be done! I can't wait to get it up out of the basement into the sunshine.

I belong to the Society for Creative Anachronism - which is like a social club for history geeks. I donate a custom painted placard to the Royal Travel Auction once or twice a year. I had run out of blanks, so I went to Home Depot, grabbed a 2'x4' piece of 1/4" birch plywood and made a bunch more.

Then I took the last winner's heraldry (registered in the 80's) and started painting it. There's a whole process - priming, gesso-ing, transferring the image from the printout to the board, sketching in the details, and then painting multiple colored layers until finally I hit it with a couple of coats of exterior-grade poly.

At this point, I've only got the base coat of red on. It's coming along.
I want to get this one done before the next one has to get going!

I also have homework for my leaded window class. For project #3, we were given a choice of about 10 different patterns. I chose this one because a lot of the historical reproduction-type windows I'd like to do are very geometrical, so I need that sort of practice.

 

Tonight I'm just going to cook dinner, fold the laundry that has been stacking up on the sofa and is threatening to topple over on the cat, and watch TV, maybe paint a little on that red lion. I'm staying out of the basement, because once I go down there after dinner, I don't come out until well after bedtime. I've been messing up my sleep schedule this week, which is not good. Tomorrow after work, I'll go down and grind the edges of the glass pieces for project #4. This weekend if the weather is ok, after glass class I have to mow the lawn and try to get that other drain in the ground, get the rebar on the blue fan-light window, and if I'm feeling spicy, I might take the living room door outside and strip it.

No news from the wayward bathroom contractor who was supposed to be here today. I'm starting to wonder just how hard replacing windows really is so at least I could get the living room done. I had a couple of contractors out to quote just the windows, and it was almost $8k for 8 windows (and that was the cheap end.) I know that there's more to it that "rip out window, slap in window"- leveling, flashing, insulating, etc,) but yikes. I really wish they had just left the old wooden windows alone. Those I could fix. These vinyls from the 90's are a hot mess.
So, who knows, maybe I'll add window replacement to my bag of tricks.

Panoramic view from the Marshfield seawall. It's massive, and tall. Since I'm down on the south shore for the glass class anyway, (and I never go down there without a good reason,) I took myself on a field trip. It was a beautiful day.

Back to the basement

A while back, I had some extra mortar from when I repointed the chimney. You might recall that I took that mortar and started repointing the east wall of the basement. There had been some loose evidence that it had been mortared in the past, but it had long since disintegrated. I was basically starting from scratch.

Those two bags of fine grade lime mortar went further than I had thought, covering about 40% of the wall. I had an opportunity a number of weeks back to go on a bit of a road trip with my mom to pick of 10 more bags of mortar, only this time it was "course". I didn't have much choice in the matter unless I wanted to drive all the way down to the manufacturer in Pennsylvania. Besides, it's a basement wall, who's going to know the difference?
Well, visually it's different, yes, but working-quality-wise it's also different. Now I'm no mason - I don't even pretend to be one. I'm just a woman, in a respirator, wearing long chemical resistant gloves, smooshing fancy mud on my wall. But I'll tell you - the fine mortar smooshed nicer. It... smoothed? better.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not going to stop with what I've got now. I'm determined to get at least part of the basement off-limits to outside infiltration from rodents. Even if it's just the east and part of the north wall this year. I also plan on painting the whole thing with a layer of lime wash, so that should, (theoretically), even the surface out a little.

Assembling the materials - Vacuum to suck the loose junk out of the joints, a spray bottle of water to moisten everything for better adhesion, the sack of mortar mix, 2 gallons of water, a cup for scooping the mix, gloves, tools for mixing, and yes, a kitty-litter pan for mixing it in.

I wore full sleeves, gloves and a respirator. I don't fool around with this stuff.

Before - this is how far I'd gotten last time. That is an old defunct ground wire from the previous electrical system I can remove, and a water pipe from when the house was tied into a different system. I just haven't gotten the ambition up to get the right blade to cut it off yet.

I was reminded that one part of this process is going out and finding smallish stones to help fill holes so you aren't just piling in mortar.

This is how far I got with two bags - about up to the electrical panel (that vertical 2x4). A third bag got me almost all the way to the corner with the door. The mortar goes on grey, but dries off-white.

I have 7 more bags out at my folk's place that I need to bring back with me this weekend. It take about 1-1.5 hours per bag, but that's because I'm painstakingly hand mixing it about 1/4 bag at a time. I think I'm going to look to speed this up a little by doing 1/2 bag batches in a 5 gallon bucket with a drill/mortar bit. (It would also be easier on my back that way.) If I was doing real-mason repointing work, having it in a bucket would not be practical, but my scoop and smoosh by hand method doesn't care if it's in a bucket or a pan.
It might just be me, but it already feels like there's less air infiltration down there.

***

Another job in the basement is the next window I'm doing:

New window pattern for a paying client.

For this window, I needed a new tool.
Meet my very happy came-bending jig.

It works beautifully - nice smooth arcs.

I have the glass - the clear/seedy glass for where it's white in the pattern, and a mottled light blue for the outer panels. But the glass I got for that center little blue half-round is not playing nice with the light blue. I'm going to have to find something else.
I got in a few books on fanlights in the past couple of weeks - unfortunately, very heavily British-Isles influenced. Fun facts: Fan lights were usually constructed with wooden muntons (not lead caming), and the grand majority of examples I've seen have the arcs pointed in the opposite direction. (So it would look more like flower petals than a spider web.)
One book did have a slim chapter on American examples, and there are two examples of a "spider web" orientation:

Linden Place, The Colt Mansion in Bristol RI, built 1810

(Photo from the Linden Place entry on Wikipedia.)

The Crosby House, in South Brookfield MA, c1795

(Photo via: Historic American Buildings Survey, Arthur C. Haskell, Photographer. 1935. (d) Ext-Detail North Entrance. - Colonel J. Crosby House, Main Street, Brookfield, Worcester County, MA Photos from Survey HABS MA-133. Library of Congress.)

So while my little window doesn't match these beautiful (and still standing!) examples, at least mine does pay them homage. By having these two books, I have access to hundreds of pattern examples now. I'm shooting to have this window wrapped up by mid September.
I just need to find the right dark blue.

***

Summer is thinking about winding down, and the garden, which never really recovered from the intense drought we had around here has pretty much called it quits. I have some potatoes to dig, and a handful off carrots. The tomatoes are still trying to go gangbusters, but with limited light now, I don't know how far they are going to get. This weekend, I go out to the folks to treat the bees for mites, and hope the temperatures don't shoot over 85 for the next 10 days.

The bathroom guy has started to talk about showing up. If you have any spare fingers to cross, I'd appreciate it if you could cross them for me. 

An update in Pictures

So happy I planted zinnias. I think I might go back to the mini variety next year though.

My ground is hard, and the carrots are protesting.

Prep for SCA camping underway. These are the metal tent pegs that hold up my Canvas single-bell wedge tent. I paint them red for a few reasons: 1)Easier to see so you don't trip on them, 2) Harder to loose in the grass, 3) red is one of my heraldic colors.

 

 

Sunset at Pennsic War, held every year at Cooper's Lake Campground in Slippery Rock PA. It's always a heck of a time. Caught up with a lot of very old friends, made a lot of new friends, and I'm already plotting how to make next year better.

The cat sitters warned me that a storm had come through and taken out some trees. None were directly on my property, but I was sad to see this monster oak had fallen just up the road from my house.

Got a second generation of swallowtails started in the carrots

This big lady and I scared the crap out of each other. She's welcome to eat bugs in the flower bed, but I have no desire to find her any closer to the house.

Did a good 8.5 mile hike in Oxford arorund Hodges Dam the Sunday after I got back. Doing consistent 20 minute miles when I'm not stopping to pick up garbage.

Sunset over the Community Farm fields. I'm very lucky to live close to views like these.