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.