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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
