Heat, Stripping Paint, and Neighbors

A warm July day.

It's been hot this summer, or at least I think so. The records at the Binghamton NWS office don't really agree with me. According to their records, June was warm, but May and July were slightly below average. August is running near average. So why do I think it has been hot? I believe it is because this is my first summer in nearly 40 years that I have not been in an air conditioned office most of the day. This not something I had considered when I dreamed of retirement. It does have us considering having whole house air conditioning installed in our home.

The beautiful wood beneath the paint.

Another part of my perception of the heat is my increased activity. Almost every day we are working on projects around the house, and that of course makes the heat more noticeable. Our current project, for example, is a hot one. Again my big mouth got me in trouble. I mentioned to Cindy that I thought the paint in the pantry could be stripped off the bead board revealing the stained wood beneath. I found a stripper that removed the paint but not the varnish and it worked perfectly. That's not to say it was easy at all. The two of us are wedged in this tiny room, the fumes are awful, and the paint tends to gum up and stick in the crevice along the bead. It is coming along nicely so we decided to strip the shelves in the back of the pantry as well. I haven't decided what to do about the floor. I might sand it, paint it, or even cover it with tile.

The night I began to call it the spooky house.

The spooky house next door continues to be a story. The owner has spent a lot of money on questionable workers to restore the place. I haven't been inside recently but if the repairs to the outside are any indication, I don't have a lot of confidence that a quality restoration is underway. The workers left a god awful mess of construction debris and general garbage which they just now cleaned up. The home has many issues, not the least of which is the yard. The house is shoe horned into a pizza slice shaped property leaving it with virtually no backyard. The driveway is accessed through city property, and cannot be built on since I have a right of way to access my second driveway. The owner does not believe my assessment of our property line, insisting that he had more land than he does despite never bothering to look it up. So I decided to pay a surveyor to properly find the pins and mark the line. I still don't think he believes where the line is so I will be installing a fence when the price of materials drops. Until then, I will be putting up a temporary plastic construction fence to keep the workers and debris out of my yard.

Plaster, trees, and Cape May

Obligatory home photo.

 Well hello. It has been the longest break ever from the blog. There are a few reasons, and more excuses, but certainly not a lack of material. Repairs and renovations have been made, trips have been taken, and we have generally emerged from the pandemic. One solid reason for the break is my broken "d" key here on my Lenovo laptop. Spell checker catches most of the dropped "d's", but if I miss one, I'm sure you'll forgive me. 

Before

The biggest completed task was the repair and painting of the walls an ceiling in our enclosed second floor porch. I ordered a kit from Plaster Magic specially designed for D.Y.I.ers repairing plaster walls and ceilings. It worked quite well and was relatively easy. The repair involves repairing and securing the loose plaster and then fixing the hole. The only additional item I had to buy was joint compound to skim coat the repair area. Then it was a matter of sanding, priming, and painting. I'm still working on the windows, repairing and glazing. That job needs to be done for every window in the house. 

After

Next big job kind of fell in my lap. The owner of the spooky house next door had hired a guy to take down some huge trees in "his" back yard. In conversation with him I realized he had no idea where the property line was and was about to have a large tree cut down in my yard. I wanted the tree down so I ended up paying for that tree, while the neighbor paid for his trees. Problem is all the branches and logs from all the trees ended up in my yard and it literally took me weeks to clean up the mess. Luckily, a farmer driving by wanted the massive logs to burn and he took those heavy things away.

We took a week off, finally, to go to Cape May and Wildwood Crest In the middle of June. The week pretty much consisted of us sitting in lounge chairs drinking cold stuff and reading novels. For me, it was my friend Dan Padavona and his creepy procedurals. ,We ate out at a few of our favorite restaurants, but also often dined in our room, that had a kitchenette. It was our first true vacation since retiring back in August. 

My position for most of vacation.

We have some plans for travel after Labor Day, but until then we are content to work on the house, and take a few day trips. The beauty of retirement life is traveling to the hot spots after everyone goes back to work and school.

I promise to update the blog more often, and maybe fix my keyboard. But just remember that I'm retired now, and deadlines and commitments are foreign to me. Upcoming blogs may include an on going practical joke, window repair and glazing and maybe a video blog.  

Emerging from the funk

It's snowed a bit back in December. 
That's not a drift.

 It's been almost 2 months since my last blog. It's not as though nothing has happened since then, and I have a backlog of DIY home improvement updates, it's really more about a complete lack of inspiration. I think this is at least partially due to the overall malaise of a long winter and continued covid-19 restrictions. Well, the sun is out today, and despite a near zero morning low, I'm feeling like spring is in the air, and it's time to get going on this.

Before

An ongoing project this winter has been the repair of the basement floor. The main issue is where the concrete and chipped and cracked away from the cast iron sewer pipe. I've never worked with concrete before and like so many other home repair projects, it's more of an art than a technical skill. Anyone can throw concrete patch into a hole, making it look good is where the tough part is. I've used three different types of patch so far, and have found that the type of patch material use makes a big difference in the difficulty of making it look right. 

After

Even after careful application and smoothing with the trowel, I found that I needed to use a rub brick to help smooth and taper the work. That is difficult  and tiring, but helps make the finished product look better. As I have improved my technique, I have gone on the fill other cracks and holes around the basement floor. I've been using a premixed compound so whenever I have some extra time, I can work on it.

Another project I have taken on is rewiring the attic lights. This is a good job to do now before it becomes unbearably hot up there. When we bought the house, the attic lights consisted of old time cloth extension cords with bare bulbs swinging from nails pounded into the rafters. My only improvement so far has been to replace the hot incandescent bulbs with LED's. Now I am completely rewiring from the switch adding outlets and properly mounting 4 LED fixtures. It will be much safer and ridiculously bright. Three of the fixtures will have pull chains on them so we wont need to light the place up like an operating room if we don't want to.

The spooky house on Halloween.

In neighborhood news, the owner of the spooky house next door is making another run at remodeling. He's got a dumpster in the driveway, and a trio of "carpenters" from New Jersey gutting the place and apparently putting in new drywall. He asked me to keep an eye on the place since it is filed with new materials. We do and will continue to do so. I really hope he completes the place, but I've seen this all before and am definitely in wait and see mode. A project this summer may be to build a fence between our houses. This will keep people from cutting the corner from Grand Boulevard, but more importantly, clearly demarking the irregular property line and driveway ownership to anyone that rents the place, assuming it ever becomes livable. 

 

A busy time of the year.

 Despite the pandemic, we've been so busy, that I haven't taken time to write in my blog. It's always busy, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but this year seems even more so as I work on the kitchen in between decorating, baking, and family.

Post installation.

One project was the installation of my weather station. Cindy gave me my Christmas present early so I could get it installed before the ground froze and the snow fell. That turned out to be a good plan (more on that later). First I had to install a post to mount the station. I got my self a pressure treated 4x4 and went about digging a 36" deep hole. It was actually not a tough as I thought it would be. I located the station well away from the trees to keep them from interfering with the operation of the weather station, so roots were not a problem. The soil was loose, with just some small, round rocks so the digging was easy. To secure the post, I used liquid fence post mix that turns to a foam, then hardens.  Within 24 hours, I was able to mount the station and after a simple set up with the WiFi, the station is working well. Despite a very low sun angle, and endless clouds, it stays charged enough top operate 24/7. Very nice.

Obligatory evidence of actual work being done.

Since we couldn't decide how to move forward with the kitchen, Cindy and I decided to put lipstick on a pig and go ahead and just fix it up as is. Since I had already done the ceiling, this fix up was mainly to scrape and repair the walls, paint, new fixtures, switch plates, and curtains. Once the walls were ready for paint I was actually shocked how badly yellowed they were. Despite using a high quality "one coat coverage" paint, it took three coats to make the walls look right. I also scraped and repainted all the trim. As always, time began to fly by so I had to really rush to get the room done before Christmas. 

It was a struggle to get to the garage.
That's a yardstick.

Then, it snowed. About 3 feet here in the valley, almost 4 feet in the nearby hills. Luckily, there was very little wind so no drifting but it still took me almost 6 hours to clear the driveway. There was still no place to go since the road had not yet been plowed. By amount, this was the biggest snowstorm I've ever seen. By impact, it's in the top 5 for sure. The blizzard of '93 had then biggest impact storm with 2 to 3 feet of snow and winds over 50 mph, followed by below zero temperatures. It was a paralyzing storm, mitigated only by the fact that it was in March, and the longer day and sun helped modify the effect.