Long time, all the things!

Insulation was wrapped up on Monday, with only a couple of blown out walls.
The insulation guys were very nice, but drywallers they are not. This problem was the studs at the far end of the house were all over the map, so in some sections there was just too much pressure behind the drywall once they put in the insulation, and it cracked the drywall panels down the midde. The back bedroom is going to have to have a whole lot more love now.

This was one of their better repair jobs in the hallway.

 

 

 

It's a lot quieter, and I think the temperature is more even in the house now. I would highly recommend the MassSave program for anyone looking to add insulation to their older home. It was well worth the run around.

Friday night, after poking the spackle in the bedroom I'm working on for a few minutes, I decided it was ON between me and the masking tape on the floor. If you remember, Ms Mary was a firm believer in modern adhesives, and decided loops of masking tape were the best thing for keeping her area rugs in one place.
I can approciate keeping your rugs in one place, but there are better ways. I have no idea how long that tape had been down, but it wasn't coming up for love of money. I tried hot water. Hot water with soap. Hot water with vinegar. GooGone (took off the floor finish with the tape). Wallpaper remover. And you want to know what worked?
WD-40.
I should have know this. A million years ago when I was fighting heavy list in the SCA, that's how we would get old decals and tape off of our helmets. I had to let it sit for a good while, but in the end, it worked brilliantly.

Tape.

Tape everywhere.

WD40 to the rescue!
(I tried to score the tape a little too, so it could soak faster.
In the end, it didn't seem to make a big difference.)

TaDa!

I feel so much better about the floors now. The floor refinisher people were going to charge me $150 and hour if they had to try to get it up themselves. I've added WD40 to the toolbox as my go to adhesive remover.

Saturday I had to fix a wee gap out on the porch. After the insulation guys had done their thing, I went and swapped the screen for the storm window in the porch door. The suction it created whenever I would open the porch door, or then the door into the house, would suck a little poof of insulation out of the ceiling every time. It's was like my very own fake snow machine, and I was tired of vacuuming it up.

The tiny gap where the ceiling meets the wall.

A little foam insulation and a piece of pre-primed quarter round.
No more gap. No more fake snow!

After that was done, I moved on to the mudroom. Dealing with this room is necessary before I can get a new fridge. I had mostly gutted it, but made sure it was good and empty, then ripped up the floor and patched/primed the walls.

Closet doors removed (weeks ago.)

Most of the closet surround removed (weeks ago)

Closet bar and carpet removed (Saturday)

First coat of primer.

Second coat of primer.

I have to try to pick a paint for this small, windowless space this week. You'll notice that the far left wall is being ignored. And for good reason - it's going to be studded out because right now it's just a plank wall between the mudroom and the back of the bathroom. I wish, dearly, I could make that electrical crap disappear into the walls, but I can't really. Maybe it can be made prettier though.
At least some of it will be dry walled over on the left. The floor will be leveled, and I'm thinking some sort of tile for this floor, since it will be under moisture-producing machines (the fridge and washing machine will eventually both live in here.)

Sunday was much of the same, but sanding/priming the bedroom upstairs. I could still be there, smoothing and tweaking the spackle, but at a certain point I had to call it good enough. And so for now, this room is good enough.

Not much to see here.
Spackle Spackle Spackle.

This room has gotten a coat of primer all the way around (walls and ceiling.)
Tonight will be a coat of ceiling paint and another coat of primer on the walls.

It will feel really good to get this one room done.
Of course, I need to pick a color for it too.
Dang.
I'm beginning to understand why people would buy a contractor bucket of Navajo White and do the whole house one color.

Here we go!

It's insulation day! (1 of 3, anyway.)
We discovered fun things about the construction of my house, and what outlets are on the same circits as other outlets. It was exciting!

Working their way around the house.

They have been really good about trying to keep clean.

Hole waiting for insulation.

White paint over burgundy paint over white paint.

Sprooots!

I over seeded the lawn a little while back in a vain attempt to make the bare patches better.
I don't know if it's better, but the seeds sprouted!

Well, there's your problem

See the little louvered vent above the second floor windows, right under the roof peak?
That's a gable vent.

Ian and Windy were over the last two days getting the ventilation set to right in advance of the insulation people coming on Monday. Part of the deal was to make sure that the gable end vents, visually obvious from the ground, were wide enough to ventilate correctly.
I got a text this morning, as I was on my way into work to call about the vents.
"It's blocked" he said, " the one in the old side of the house, away from the driveway. With drywall and insulation."
"Huh?"
"The opening. Is blocked. Also, the "opening" is low."

Ah. To open it completely would expose the gable vent to an area that is currently the master bedroom.

"Send a picture?"

Bonus: abandoned wasp nest.

The solution (of which there are no pictures) was to open as much as could be opened above the ceiling level, to at least get SOME airflow in that end of the house.
And other bonus: They left the clapboards on and just vinyl sided over it, so I know the house was white, and the trim looks burgundy*.

*Edit 10/17 - The more I look at it, it appears that the house was burgundy and then painted over white. I think that's siding, not trim.

Success!

Wayne the Electrician came over, and after lots of snuggles by the resident cat, he inspected the whole house, top to bottom. I learned about metal sheathed wiring vs knob and tube, and sort of what was going on in my walls.
Best news? No Knob and Tube!! Next stop - ventilation and insulation!

It's the thought that counts. right?
(Stove is electric.)

Getting chilly

With news that it was supposed to get down to freezing, I went home last week and leveled the rest of the hosta, (and whatever else got in the way.) There's nothing more icky than trying to do fall cleanup around soggy, mushy frost-bit hosta, so that had to happen.
It's sad, because it's the end of the season, but also so satisfying to put things to bed. I need to get a few yards of top soil to bring the beds up a little, and I'm hoping to acquire a chipper/shredder to mulch the bed with leaves.
So much of the weekend was spend outside.

I'd forgotten how much bigger the yard is when the greenery is low.
I left the phlox for now (trimed down a bit) for the birds to perch on in the winter.
I need to transplant the peonies (left) to somewhere with more light.

I need to neaten up this bed, but I ran out of ommph.
I have no idea what the iron pipe there is for, but it's pretty solid.
I need to do some drastic dividing/reorienting.
These burned pretty bad and bloomed late. I think they want more shade.

You can't tell what happened in this picture, but this was most of Saturday.
I went on a wild bittersweet/privet/wisteria hacking spree. So much bittersweet.

Not quite cold enough to knock off the last of the Naked Ladies, so they got a reprieve for now.

In other news, best electrician Wayne found time to come over and give the house a knob and tube inspection. Tonight's fun includes me wandering around taking covers off outlets and light switches to make his job faster. I'm going to take a pad of sticky notes and label the rooms so he know how many he's looking for when he walks in.

Pushing the woods back

Over this past weekend, I started pushing the woods back again. Flower beds need to be cleaned out and put to bed for the winter, and the Hosta is showing signs that it was lightly grazed by frost - I want to get it cleaned up before it turns to mush. It's so icky to clean up after it's frozen and thawed.
I started around the driveway, just trimming back what my sister and I cleared in the spring. I worked around to the front near the road, and gave that a good cleaning, finally getting to the telephone pole which eluded me in the great front clean up. Then I started up the side of the front lawn, reclaiming a flower bed that hadn't been touched in years. This basically involved clear cutting it back. I left a few phlox and asters to bob in the breeze for the bumble bees.
The bed was made up of hosta, phlox, iris, ferns, moss, and a rose that might be intentional. It also contained bittersweet, grape, poison ivy, blackberry, and multiflora rose. I actually left the poison ivy alone, and after carefully cleaning around it hosed it down in Roundup. As I worked my way up and close to the house, the bittersweet and rose were so thick it had choked out the poison ivy. But now I was in the territory of nature's own razor wire.
I also gave the yard a good trim, lowering the deck slightly so that I can over seed the grass. I'm sure it could use airation, but it could also use a good smoothing. Moles have gotten in and made a mess out of the south side of the lawn, but I spent much of the weekend walking all over it. I'm not don yet, so hopefully they will take the hint.
The pictures aren't all that interesting. There isn't much for scale or comparison.

Took two days to get through this bed. Another day to get up to the septic cover.

Looking toward the road - there was a tree being smothered under there.
The mound that's left there is a giant multiflora rose

Turning slightly to my right - there's the tree, and there's the cap to my septic.

And turning more right - there's the cap to the septic, and the path to the school-bus sized pile of yard waste that the brush is hiding.

So Busy

Last I left you all, the mold guys were done doing their thing. I had tried to do some yardwork and was defeated by surprise flowers.
Well. I made up for some lost time this past weekend.

Before.
Note the rust at the bottom of the door and sidelights.

During - There's no pictures of the sanding step, but it was in there.
Here I've cleaned the door, masked off a bunch and hit the problem areas with a rust retarder.
Also, filled the pinholes at the bottom with a filler.

During - Sanded down the filler, and hit the door with the first coat of oil based primer,
which promptly gave me a headache.
Subsequent coats were done using my respirator.

The weather stripping around the inside of the door was all shot at the bottoms, so I ripped it out and replaced all of it.

Second coat of primer?

And done! All in, there are 3 coats of the Ben Moore DTM white paint on the sidelights
(left over from the bulkhead) and 2 (3?) coats for Kilz Oil based primer on the door
(which was terrible to work with) and 2 coats of Ben Moore's Exterior grade
in "Prussian Blue" left over from the shed door.

In between coats on the door, which spanned two days, I decided to replace the exterior light. It was an adventure (I still don't know what breaker it's on, but it's on the left side of the box somewhere) and in the end, it was replaced and looks nice.

Pretty! I've since replaced the bulb with one of the fancy looking Edison LED bulbs.
Details, you know?

TaDa!

Now to work on getting a step there to bring that door up to code. There's a place up in the Fitchburg are that has reclaimed slabs of limestone that might look nice for short money. Now that the water isn't pounding on that area (yay gutters!) it's an option. The front of the house just looks so much more handsome now. I'm quite pleased with the way it turned out. I hope it holds up.

Other things that happened -

Found behind the outside light in the wall. It was loooong ago dead.
But it led to Operation Winter Prep, since the nights are getting colder.

Step one: Operation Winter Prep.
There are seven deployed in the basement, baited with dried cranberries and peanut butter.
I tour them every day or two.

Winter Prep step two: Fill in the hole in the foundation.
Here the frame was still sort of in place. A claw hammer and crowbar later it was gone.

Here I've started to dry fit the rock my coworker friend Erika gave me out of her yard.
They are mostly perfectly sized, I just need to go back for a few more.
I'm also going to get a length of PVC to put through the wall here
so I can still run the dehumidifer out of the house after I mortar it shut.

One of my "mammoth" sunflowers that I planted late, and in a bad location.
The biggest one is about 8", petal to petal, but so perky.

Last night after work I started whacking away at the front yard over grown mess. There are no pictures. It's a disaster of piles of debris. I'm about 1/5 done and that was 2 hours. Maybe I'll take pictures and share that process later.
So far I've uncovered Hosta, Tall Phlox, Rose (Intentional? Not sure?) Iris, ferns (Sensitive and something tall and plumey) - Also Blackberry, Goldenrod, Bittersweet, Grape, and Poison Ivy. I'm trying to leave some of the goldenrod and still-blooming phlox for the bees, but everything else is getting cut back. Just short of scortched-earth is the only way to reclaim this and keep my sanity.

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.