Ready or not!

Bry took a personal/sick day on Friday so that he could make it to a doctor's appt. for his wrist and knee and get some extra work done on the house.  So we had a long weekend, including a nice relaxing Sabbath being iced in.

Here's what we (well, Bryan, really) accomplished last week and this weekend :

He ripped out the shower downstairs (it froze last week when the temp got down to a shivery 0 degrees)  that space will now become more studio storage.  Yay!   Then he spent several hours replacing insulation that was moved out of the way during wiring and pluming projects and spraying several cans of Great Stuff in holes, cracks and gaps.  This raised the overall temperature in the South Studio by 10 or 15 degrees and made the upstairs and living room noticeably warmer.  Hooray!

He finished the insulation in the Living Room and got most of the wallboard up and the outlets for the Living Room wired.  So now we can put in a Christmas tree and hang lights and stuff.   The tree will go in the corner near the big window.  The ugly TV will go upstairs for the season.

He also got the space for our gas fireplace framed up with backer board in place and ready for tile.  Our oil company is coming on Tuesday to install a new gas line and hook it up.  It will be a wonderful addition to the house, making the living room very cozy when we want to cuddle and read or watch a movie there and it will be a big help when we need to let the big woodstove go out so that we can empty the coals - usually once every week & a half or two weeks.  Eventually Bry will build a nice mantle around and above the fireplace which will include a place to hang stockings, shelves for books, movies and/or trinkets and (someday when we can afford it) a flat screen TV hidden behind a mirror.

He got a good start on the installation for the upstairs shower.  (We're currently on sponge baths or charity showers at Mom & Dad's or Jonathan & Nichelle's!)   Hopefully later this week we will have either the shower or the bathtub ready to use in the upstairs bathroom.  Oh - one other little piece of wonderful news - the Upstairs Bathroom is the most comfortable room in the house in terms of warmth.  You can get warm fast in front of the Fisher Stove down here in the studio but it is a rotisserie style of warmth - you need to keep turning to get warm everywhere!  But the bathroom has a nice, cozy and even ambient temperature.

Molly has been making these wonderful 20 point Moravian Stars (see top photo) all weekend out of some gorgeous card stock I bought a while back.  You can find instructions on how to make these stars in several places - we found ours on Jenny Harada's blog.  She advises using old Christmas cards but Molly wanted to make lots and have them be look like they belonged together so a packet of color & pattern coordinated card stock is perfect.  I buy that stuff to use as background for me bead and jewelry photos so I only need one of each nice sheet, the packets usually have 3-4 of each pattern so everyone wins!
And yesterday we took a wander out back and cut our tree.  That was fun - there was lots of slush under the snow under the layer of ice.

Check in later this week for more decorations.  It's still rough in here but I'm sure the kids will make it festive!




. . . .

Yes!   A shower at the Beorningstead!















And this is what Molly wants to bring home. 

How can we refuse?

(Please - help me find a way to refuse!) 






It's so soft.

And cute.

And fuzzy.

And it rides on her shoulder.

















And it hasn't actually pooped on anything or clawed up any sofas or barfed any hairballs yet so I'm still susceptible to the cuteness.   Beorn is remaining strong, though.  He says it must live in the barn and she can visit it out there.  He remembers stepping in cat puke and having shredded furniture with much more ire than I do.

Molly took some beautiful photos this weekend.











We all love the Dinner Bell.  However, seeing this photo, I can sense trouble a-brewing.  One of these days, Maxx will start yanking on that chain and all 50 feet of it will come slithering down out of the sky onto his head. 

He will cry and then someone will have to climb up onto the roof to wire it back on.










We have running hot and cold water.
















We have a potty to flush.

Yes.  This is a teeneency little room.  That's O.K. 

It will be very handy when Sissy is using the washroom upstairs and Maxx begins pounding on the door insisting that he has AN EMERGENCY! and needs to come in right now.  Very few things rouse contention as quickly as that scenario. 


There are also two working lights in the kitchen, one on the front porch and an outside motion sensor light above the side entry door.  Thanks, Mom!


This is a poor photo because it was getting dark and we were in a hurry to get home for baths and bed.  We're making progress!!

We spent the day today working over at the Beorningstead.  Boy do my arms ache.  I uncovered a huge nest of ladybugs in the lawn.

Bry put in the pump and I did some raking &  garbage collecting outside and some cleanup inside.  I so want to be over there right now.  I'm trying not to be discouraged about the roof and am trying to convince myself that there is still some way to make the move before garden season. 

I took lots of photos for documentation purposes but I'm not up to posting them and explaining all about them tonight.  But here are some fun shots that I took and altered with TiltShiftMaker.  I've been wanting to play with this tool for a long time.  It's pretty keen.

There's one of the brook from the bridge






One of Maxx in front of the bridge


 One of the front porch





 And one of the whole Beorningstead from Jonathan's house.






Spring.  The trees are budding.  Pretty soon, it will be hard to get a good photo of the place from that vantage point.

The roof, which was tight and secure all through the storms of summer and record rainy season of fall, has decided to leak.   Everywhere.  Thousands of little rivulets, puddles and pools.  Dribbling down into my studio and warping the ceiling in that room.  This is maddening. 

On the one hand - it is only the back roof, relatively small, over the part of the house we intend to put the main bathroom and, eventually our bedroom.  Because of Bry being so sick post surgery, we did not have time to install the insulation and wall board as planned over the winter.  No building supplies were ruined.  No labor was wasted.  That is a good thing.

The ceiling in my studio was ugly anyway.  We've talked about putting in a skylight in the bathroom because there is no window there but since we didn't plan on doing anything to the roof, decided not to.  Now maybe  we'll put in a small sky light over the bathtub.  (How much costs a little skylight?)

On the other hand, we wanted to move in over Spring Break.  We were all set to install the pump, finish running the plumbing, install and prep the sub-floor, install the shower, potty and vanity, insulate and put up wallboard and prepare the spot for the tub over the next three weeks.  Now those three weeks, and probably more, will be spent pricing, procuring and installing roofing materials.  That will delay our move-in which will delay our ability to really push the Ft. Jackson house (Which is really at it's most lovely at lilac & poppy time) on the market.

We're not sure yet what the extent of the repair/replacement will be.  The back roof is OLD.  The reason it is leaking is because the original tin roof was installed with nails that have no gaskets or other kind of weather proofing.   For decades, those nails have been doing their job, keeping the roof on, without leaking.  We don't know if it was because the house spent the winter without heat (doubtful - that part of the house wasn't heated anyway) or if this spring was just THE END for that particular aspect of the house's construction.  That's likely.  It's been there for at least 30 years.

A good roofing screw will have a bit of rubber thing-gummy under the head so that when you screw it down tight, it creates a water tight seal against the tin.  When we fix this roof, we should be able to expect it to last for the next 30 years or so.  Happily, the rafters are still good and solid so this will only be a repair, not a re-build.  We are a little concerned because most of our available escrow money is tied up in - guess what - insulation, wall board, sub-floor, plumbing and fixtures for the bathroom that is supposed to go under that roof.  We can't get more $ out of escrow until those are installed and the bank inspector comes to check out our progress.  We can't install these beautiful things until the roof that will protect them is repaired.  We can't repair the roof until we have more money to buy materials. 

What fun!  We can probably get some more escrow money freed up when we finish the downstairs wiring, install light fixtures in the front of the house and put wall board in the kitchen and living room again.  That roof seems to be sound - it is newer and better constructed.  We may also need to come up with some creative ways to boost our income in the next little while to provide more cash for this process.

Anybody want to buy a scarf? 

So it has been a while.

We closed on the Beorningstead on October 18th and had this fantasy that we would be in by Christmas.  On Halloween, Maxx came down with the Swine Flu.  The following week, I came down with it.  It wasn't so bad, really.  Maxx got Tamiflu and I was only feverish for a day or so.  But then, two weeks later, I came down with and earache from the 7th circle of Hell and was literally out of commission for 5 weeks with pain, dizziness and an inability to think.  Bry diligently worked away at installing plumbing and wiring and had lots of wonderful helpers while I was utterly useless.  In spite of all that work, we did not get far enough to move in before Christmas.




Then the cold set in and Bry had sinus surgery and nothing has happened over at the Beorningstead for about 3 months.





Now Spring is almost upon us and things are warming up a bit.  (Did I mention that it is always 5 to 10 degrees warmer down at the Stead than it is up here in Ft. Jackson?  Slightly lower elevation and better exposure on the lot does the trick nicely.)  I was over Saturday and took some photos of the progress.

There's insulation in the kitchen, new windows in almost every room and I have never been so excited about a piece of wire sticking out of a wall in my life!

Oh - and we have a potty there that can be bucket flushed.  We're almost civilized!


















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