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.

Accomplishment!

 Granted, I accomplished this with the liberal use of my own money, but accomplished it none the less.

I got the front step fixed with the help of two nice brothers from Millbury, Juston and Jim, sons of Jim the stone mason. They came with their little digger, trucks and tools, and raised the step so that it meets code again.

Before - the stone is flush with the ground. This made for a long step out of the house, and was called out by the inspector years ago as not up to code. You can tell how much it had suck past the bottom of the flashing at the bottom of the door.

The brothers had to go get their other truck full of gravel, so I got a picture of their cute little digger.

The mice had been tunneling and living under the big flat rock. This area has since been back filled with about 10" of 3/4 gravel. No rodents will find that enjoyable now.

It's hard to see, but it's up now! The step is now about 6" down, instead of about 13" that is was.
I was glad that the guys were very happy to just reuse the same stone.

While they were here with their digger, I asked if they could relocate the rocks that had rolled out of my retaining wall near the shed. They said sure.

Before.

This was an old retaining wall - beyond is the old 3-sided foundation for a barn to the right. It was never dressed or pretty. The rocks just flopped out over time.

The problem was the space was so narrow with the shed right there, they couldn't get a good angle to lift them. Instead they just broke them up and re-stacked the pieces.

After! I can walk through now!

 

That's a pretty big thing I'm able to cross off my list. It wasn't inexpensive, but it was all done in one day and I will never have to do it again.

One thing I will have to do again and again every 3 years or so, is seal the driveway. The last time I had it sealed,  they didn't do a very good job cleaning it first, and the seal coat is completely gone in areas only 2 years later. I borrowed my dad's power washer and scrubbed the whole driveway. Naturally, the day they were supposed to come seal the driveway it rained, so that's been put off until next Saturday. We need the rain, but not next Saturday.

The little power washer that could. It did a nice job.
Then I took a torch and burned out all the grass I could find clinging to the cracks.

 

My garden is doing ok, but isn't a fan of this unrelenting heat. The zinnias like it.

I'm already rethinking the garden for next year.
Step #1 - metal rabbit fence all the way around (right now it's only metal on two sides). The little buggers chewed right through the plastic even thought the raised beds make it so the fence starts almost 10" off the ground. That's ok, because -
Step #2 - Get 2 16' livestock panels to trellis on. I can reuse the rabbit fence that is up as a trellis right now for the sides of the garden instead.
Step #3 - figure out row covers. I'm down to 2 sad cucumber plants and 4 sad zucchini plants because of bacterial wilt. It didn't matter how many sticky yellow traps I used, or how many yellow and black striped squash beetles I squished. It's really disappointing to see the plants start to die back and there's nothing you can do about it.
Step #4 - clear better access to the back side of the garden. This will probably mean removing some lilacs, but they are mostly suckers and haven't really bloomed in years. Maybe thinning them out would make them happier.

In other news, the bathroom is still un-started. I'm leaving for a vacation for a couple of weeks, So I can't imagine anything substantial is going to happen. Honestly, the only thing I'm comfortable with him doing while I'm gone is the basement stuff. The cat has a sitter that comes in 2x a day, but I don't want these strangers tromping in and out with her under foot, potentially getting out or hurt. So, still a whole lot of nothing.

More projects.

Since June 9th or so, I've been fighting with the Zombie Lawnmower. I thought  had to all worked out, but then it spit out the self-propel belt at me. I replaced that with some help, and thought I had it fixed, and now the blade won't engage. I think I'm going to haul it home and see if my dad has any ideas. I think maybe I have the wrong size belt, but I'm not sure.

Anyway - Maybe a little vacation will help realign my perspective. :)