Lady Bugs!

That's right! Those weird looking things all over my rose of sharon trees last weekend were harmless lady bug larvae. Good thing we didn't pull out the insecticide - I want lady bugs around to eat any aphids we might have. Plus - how can you kill a lady bug??

Yucky Bugs!

I spent a good portion of yesterday morning weeding. At one point, Jim and I were weeding our side, and Joyce, my next door neighbor was weeding her side of the property division. It was kind of nice to visit and work at the same time.

While weeding the beds with the Rose of Sharon trees, we started noticing these bugs:



They were everywhere - literally - crawling all over the trees and in the beds. None of us knew what they were.

I was pretty grossed out - Jim was ready to go get some pesticide!

This morning I found out what they were. Do you know what they are??

Thank Goodness for Columbus Day Weekend

I'm in a bit of a frantic panic to get stuff done today before I'm off to class, so only a brief description of what we did over the weekend....

I continued prepping and filling the 1/2 posts... they need time to cure, so I probably won't get to painting them until next weekend.

We also bought the beadboard for the porch ceiling. (note that the Homer guy was irritated at me asking him to cut the 16' boards, but was very pleasant when he came back over to help and Jim was present)

We painted those boards on Sunday,



and then on Monday, we were able to put them up. Looks pretty good too. We're getting better and better at doing the miter - a skill that will now be useless, since the floor and ceiling are now done.



It was very nice to have the lights up, as it got dark around 6:30, and we didn't finish until 8.

Well, "finish" is a slight overstatement - we have a very short final board 2" wide to fit on the front... and then there's also some moulding that needs to be put up. But at least now the trick-or-treaters can come to the house without (too much) fear.




Oh - and I significantly chopped down the rhododendron. Still there, just much smaller.

Porch Progress

Friday afternoon, the shipping company called to schedule the delivery of the porch floor - it's for Monday afternoon (today). So that was the incentive for this weekend's flurry of activity.

Jim left to work on his '36 at the shop, and I started ripping out the hand rails and the floor. Don't worry - I have saved the original turned balusters. I might use a few of them as legs on a cabinet for the sewing room - a project I've been thinking about since I made the vanity for the 1/2 bath:



But I do have all of the balusters in a box in the garage for now. If some soul reading these words wants them, let me know. Otherwise, I'll probably lug them to a salvage yard at some point in exchange for some other goodies.

As I ripped out a few of the handrails, I realized how loose the porch posts were, and made a call to Jim, saying we probably ought to put up some stabilizers. I think he had planned to spend most of the day doing car things, but ended up coming home and helping me out. Anyway, here's the demo that I started, although I had also removed the exposed deck boards at the point where Jim came home:



I especially like how they put that special piece of paper in between the two floors. Not sure what the function of that was - maybe to hold more water to speed up rot. Strangely, it appears that the under layment of 1x6 deck boards was the original floor - the house finishing was built up around it - siding and such. Either that, or they replaced the original floor and shoved the new floor into the crevices. Not likely, at least not for the previous owners, as they seemed to have only done one repair/remodel of everything around the 50s, and that was probably the tongue & groove floor on top. Why take out a rotting floor, when you can just cover it up?

So while I was having fun demo-ing the porch by myself, I was much slower than the two of us together, and soon the porch looked like this:



You may notice in the second picture how one of the despised rhododendrons is now just a bunch of stumps! yes, that's right... I love my chain saw and hate ugly overgrown and diseased flowers... I just left enough stumps to pull the remaining plant out. And you can't see it, but the hideous overgrown hosta has also been removed. I had considered replanting it in a shady section of the yard, but decided it was too ugly and uninteresting. The plant clearing, by the way, though it may seem like a completely random activity, proved to be worthwhile for this project, as it opened up the way for the wheelbarrow...

At this point, Jim and I really didn't know where to go next and how much of the framing really needed to be replaced. Jim, I think, secretly wants to live in a brand new house that just looks like an older house, because he starts talking about how he thinks you have to start with good stuff (interpretation: new boards) underneath or it will be a waste of time. But he admitted that he does not know construction well enough to make a good call.

Luckily, our neighbor John, who is also a general contractor, pulled into his driveway about this same time. He checked it out, gave us some advice, let us borrow some tools, and we were back working.

To replace these lolly columns (which were rusting out and only 6 inches deep)...



...we (meaning Jim) dug some holes about 4 feet deep under each of the post locations:



That did it for Saturday...

When I got home from church on Sunday, Jim had already started with John's borrowed cement mixer. We placed the 8-inch diameter forms into the holes and then filled them with cement, adding a bolt at the top to attach a new post.



One of my jobs was to find the position of the bolt, right underneath the corners of the porch. Since we didn't have an actual plumb-bob, I substituted a nail tied to some sewing thread. Maybe not perfect, but good enough.

We didn't get the cement forms very well centered under the posts, but John said that didn't really matter - the posts just needed to push down on the cement. Jim decided to leave a mark:



My other job was to scrape the remaining original paint - on the bottom most clapboard and then also on one of the turned posts. Somehow I have been able to do about 1/2 of the entire house without problems with the Paint Saver Pro, but on this one tiny project, I managed to cut the electrical cord with the rotating blades :(

I also have to document this:


And the good news is that we cleaned up early so that we could head over to Angell Animal Hospital. They gave us the OK to pick up Taya a day early! She has stitches in her belly, some shaved spots where they put the doggie IV, and a shaved spot with a doggie transdermal patch. But she's eating food and home again.

Heat Wave

Yesterday started a little heat wave here in New England.

Fortunately (or unfortunately) I have been stuck in summer intensive classes the past two weekends - which also means that my work on the house has essentially come to a grinding halt - I can still hear the squeel of the brakes!

But I love to work outside when it's warm. I even love to work outside when it's HOT! Call me crazy - or blame my father for making us (I mean, creating the opportunity to) mow lawns all summer in the southern Indiana heat, which I like to refer to as 90/90 - 90 degrees, 90% humidity.

So as soon as I got out of school yesterday afternoon (yes, that would be Saturday), I trucked over to Homer and picked up some mulch. 10 bags, to be exact. Then I weeded and spread the stuff out along the side and the front. It's amazing how clean mulch makes everything look.


Now, I probably should have been trimming out more of the balusters to use my time more effectively. And I know most of you would have rather spent your time in a cool basement on a 90+ day, but not me!

While weeding, I came across several dandilions. How big can a dandilion get?, you might ask. Well, this one must be in the running... Here it is a day after being hit with a full trigger of Round Up:

Ya. I don't think it even flinched.

And here is a little montage I like to call "Plants around my house that I hate"




ONE DAY, these will all be taken to the Natick Recycling Center to be chopped up into little bits for easier composting! ...well, maybe I'll be kind to the hosta and just split it up into like 20 parts and put it someplace shady.

So I know you have all been asking yourselves
- where's Jim? What's he up to these days -
Ah, yes, well, this has been his little project:

It's a Ford 1936 3-window coupe. He loves it very much. He loves it so much, if he wasn't already married to me, he'd marry it. He says it's now drivable...
I can't wait for a summer time cruise.

Pre-Weekend Baseline

I have a list of a trillion things going on in my mind for this weekend. It's the last week of classes for school, so of course I have to meet up with my groups on Saturday & Sunday. And I told one of the girls from church that I'd help her sew her dress on Saturday afternoon (but she hasn't called to confirm, so that's a little shaky) But I still want to do some work on the house, so here's the current status, and we can review at the end of the weekend to see how far I got...

Baluster Cutting - 6 of 50 complete

Porch Beam Paint Scraping - 2.5 of 4 complete

Shingle Making - 2 bundles cut to width (I have no idea how many I need, but all the corners need to be trimmed)

Grass Patch Growth - 5 out of 7-14 days


I have a serious problem, because obviously, it's too much to complete in one weekend! It's like when you go to a buffet and you load your plate up with food, only to realize half way through eating that your eyes are bigger than your stomach... I'm that way with house projects. And I always have to have more than one thing going on at a time. I think it drives Jim nuts...

So the other thing I'm looking at is porch flooring. I like the "idea" of real wood floors on the porch, but since this is highly susceptable to rot (as evidenced by the 2 layers of rotted floors there now), I'm highly considering using an Azek cellular pvc deck board from Vintage Woodworks. They have a 3 1/2 inch version that I think would look right. It just seems like putting together a tongue & groove floor would be asking for rot.

Here's what my Porch Design book says:
"...a very traditional wood floor can be made of 1 by 4 lumber. Many "old-timers" feel this lumber should not be "flooring" (with tongue & groove or shiplapped edges), as this will tend to trap moisture."

And I always do like to follow the advice of "old-timers"......

I got their color sample kit. Here they are with my paint chips on the current porch floor:


The one on the bottom is the one I'm leaning towards. It's called "Clay". While it's difficult to see in the photo, it sort of has a greenish cast to it, and matches the paint tones quite well.

So, here we go - update to follow!

And the Season Begins...

We had a suprisingly warm Saturday. They were predicting cold & rainy, but it cleared up, the sun came out, and we ended up near 70. I had a school group meeting in the morning, and should have done homework in the afternoon, but with that kind of weather, who can resist doing a little yard work??? (especially when your neighbor's tree fell in the yard a couple months ago)

I bought a chainsaw and chopped that sucker up. It took me about 3 trips to the dump to get the little stuff out of there. Then I called Tony to see if he wanted the wood for next winter. He sounded happy. Later Jim told me that he had already promised the wood to Pete... Well, if I had known.... Anyway, they can fight it out for the wood. I just want it out of the yard!

I also bought a scrollsaw to start work on the porch ballusters. I've decided to make sawn balusters, rather than replacing the turned balusters. I like the look of them better. Of course, I've never used a scrollsaw, so there will be a learning curve, but I'm up for the adventure.

Here's a picture from a catalog of the baluster I want to replicate (notice how the center design is similar to the rosette from the earlier post):


So I adjusted the size to the right dimensions and printed it out to make a paper template. Then I tested it cutting a piece of poplar on the saw.

I went through 7 blades, and didn't finish my sample piece :(
But I guess that's how you learn...
Here's what I ended up with after the 7th and last blade broke:


Monday I talked to a guy at work who does a lot of workworking and asked him for advice. He gave me some pointers and also told me to go to Rockler to get new blades. I went there today at lunch, and I think it's my new favorite store!!! I also talked to the guy there about getting a router/router table set up - that may be what I do with my income tax return... hmmm....