Fixing Things #2

          For me, the main goal in having my nephew come up to work was to get the front porch fixed.  The steps are cement and fine, but the cap or decking is wooden  and was rotting in places - Not Safe!  So , after the dining room wallpaper was removed and the plaster worked on, the boys started working on ripping out the porch top.  Wow!  What a mess!  Not only was the tongue in groove top rotten in a couple places, but the  supports were rotten under the pillars.  Some was water damaged and some was eaten away by carpenter ants.

    

Pillar is braced and the boards are being pried out.

Mildew AND rot - what fun!

My nephew's thumb gives you an idea of the scale of the tunnels that were
bored through the wood. 

Mostly water rot.

    After removing all the wood, they discovered that one of the blocks in the foundation was crumbling away - there was a huge hole in it - more than half of the black was gone.  I think we may have discovered where mice have been accessing the house!  After some quick research, my husband filled the hole with Great Stuff.  It will insulate for certain.  Maybe the basement will not be as cold this winter!

Helping Daddy is fun - once we've vacuumed out the spider webs!

Our little handyman as seen through a double layer of dirty glass.  We kicked up an AMAZING amount of dirt and dust  this week!

     New boards are in place on top of new bracing, and we are waiting for the second coat of sand paint to dry before painting the columns and the bases.  Our next goal is the living room carpet - but one thing at a time!

  

    

Fixing things #1

    We have very little time in the academic year to get things done around the house.  This summer we decided it was finally time to get the nasty, dirty, "old lady" wall paper off the dining room walls. There are several other tasks necessary as well.
    We asked my nephew to come up and stay with us for a week or son to help out.  He is a great guy and  toiled along side us, uncomplaining, even on the nasty days of high humidity and HEAT.  (It has since cooled off.) He helped move the VERY large corner cupboard that came from my husband's grandmother's home.  BIG AND HEAVY!!  We had china and crystal on every dresser top and table for a week - looked like we were having a wedding!
    First thing was to remove the paper:

excuse my back, please

The plaster was not in great shape, but we have had worse.

Next we had some plaster cracking to fix.  The previous owners seemed to have taken great pride in hiding all the bad plaster in every room by covering it in paper. 

taking a breather and assessing

 We had to prime the walls, which our youngest took to with some vigor. 

Why is he wearing his CARS bike helmet?  We really never found out.

Next came colour - Ralph Lauren "Kauai" in eggshell.  I don't know about you, but when I was in Kauai it was never this shade of green. 

     After two coats of paint, then two coats of trim colour (I will never beg for crown moulding again - my shoulders are sore!) we have an almost completed dining room.  We still have to  refinish the floors, but we are planning on doing it all at the same time - dining room, foyer and living room.  The hardwood floors have remnants of a felt padding from under the carpet that have fused to the shellac/varnish (?) on the floor, and NOTHING is taking it up short of stripping it.  It looks like we have moss growing on the wooden floors. 

We Can Do It!

   Over all this was a pretty smooth job.  We had a few conversations regarding the trim colour - I wanted cream, hubby wanted white - but, as I said to my nephew, this is not worth fighting about, so white it is. Curtains, wall art and mirrors still to come, but I am REALLY pleased to be rid of the little pink flowers!

squeeky wheel?

  After nearly five years of asking, and two different  highway managers holding the job, we finally may have a solution in the wind for our water problem.  Our road and the one on the hill in front of our house are graded in such a way that the water and effluvium from storms runs down our driveway and into our garage - making for a very messy, muddy garage at times.  The previous owners put in a drain system to carry driveway runoff under the patio and have is run out into the grass in the backyard.  Which works - until all the road  water brings  gravel from the road along with the maple seeds and leaves, and everything else that comes down in storms.

The lower step was covered with water, where the basketball is floating is the  lower patio - the water is anywhere from
6 - 12 inches deep there

Garage door handle is 4 inches above the pavement

the water is racing over the patio, as well as pouring through the pipe under the patio.
the result is washed out gardens,  and a magnolia with roots being exposed more and more.

   After calling and leaving another message for the highway manager about how I voted for him because he stood on my front step and promised he would help me with this mess if he got the job; saying I wanted a day and time when he would be here not just -"oh we'll be working out there sometime in July," yesterday at 8 a.m., we walked the area and showed him the mess - as well as all the road gravel in our magnolia roots, and we have a promise of road work including a swale and rock work  starting July 5th.  

    Of course, if all the works, and the culverts actually take care of the majority of the water in the way they should, I am not certain how I shall handle it.  In our house, if a storm comes - day or night either my husband, or I, are out in the driveway getting soaked to the skin as we clear detritus from the drain.  How odd it will be to be able to just sit and look out the window at the rain...

Eighth grade Graduation

   Yup, it is official.  We now have two high schoolers in the house.  The eighth grade graduation was Thursday evening, followed by a semi formal dance.  All the young ladies got gussied up in beautiful dresses.  Some of the gents wore  suits or at least ties - some, well, they had collars on their polo shirts, so I think they felt more dressed up than usual!

   Our daughter chose to buy a dress for this event, rather than have me make one - for which I am quite grateful considering how busy things have been. it was a bright green with a front ruffle and showed her figure off nicely.  The silver high heeled sandals finished the ensemble.
   Since there is a dress code, she wore a shrug during the ceremony, but it came off for the dance.
   We are very proud of her academic achievements, as she was on Honor Roll during both years of middle school.  She received the  President's Excellence in Education Award for her academic achievements, "signed" by President Obama.  (I am certain the first copy was, and then his secretary copied the several thousand being sent to all the students earning it across the country.)
  After the ceremony was a mad house. Everyone poured out into the lobby and there was a sea of parents looking for their grad.  We had tried to persuade our eldest to join us, but since crowds make him extremely anxious, he declined.  After the insanity of the after ceremony lobby, we were just as happy he was not there. Here are a few after shots - before the girls headed off to the dance - at which they had a great time.  this class is actually very close, which is wonderful, since they will be together for the next 4 years.  The class of 2015 - gulp!

with her grandmother

with her baby brother

with some of the girls

with mom and dad

Kindergarten Graduation

   This Wednesday we celebrated the graduation of our youngest child from kindergarten.  He was very excited. They were going to wear caps and gowns and even had a graduation practice on Tuesday. Tuesday night he told me the most important thing to remember was "Shake and Take." His grandmother drove up to be at the ceremony, and we all went out to lunch afterwards.
    The principal spoke first and was warm and loving as she always is.  Next, the teacher spoke of the joys and trials of kindergarteners and their first year in school.  We also saw a slide show.

   As the students each processed in - walking down the center aisle of the auditorium and then standing for a photo, the teacher read each child's quote on what they wanted to be when they grew up.   We heard of many who had ambitions to be fire fighters or policemen (there were A LOT of future police men!), one princess, one doctor, and then my son.  His quote (paraphrased) was that "when he grows up he wants to be a geologist because they study shiny rocks, and a paleontologist because dinosaurs are his second favorite animal, and he also thought he would like to be the kind of scientist who studies crocodiles, because they are his favorite animal, but he didn't know the name for that type of scientist, so he had to find that out. "
    During the ceremony they children sang a song, and a handful of them, including my son,  played drums (djembe,  I think they are called).

djembe in the background

     Their Kindergarten teacher is an amazing teacher incorporating the study of world cultures into the classroom.  He calls the children to settle down by using a Tibetan Singing Bowl, they play the various drums, and work to raise money for a sister school in India. They learned about the natural world through field trips and walks, as well as observations in the schoolyard.  This teacher is moving up to teach third grade, and I hope my son will be lucky enough to have him again.

One down several more to go!

The ceremony ended with "diplomas" and the Shake and take training really paid off as the  distribution went without a hitch

the grad with mom and dad

With his grandmother

  .

Father's Day

   This was the first Father's Day in five years that my husband was not working.  One of the inconveniences of working in theatre is that actors do not get weekends and holidays off as this tends to be when the general population comes to see shows.  This is the fifth season we have been working with an Equity Theatre near our area.  My husband has been in the first show since the inception of the theatre, but this year, no, he starts with show two!
   So, we were all able to hang out yesterday - for most of the day.  Our youngest son made  breakfast for Daddy - boiled eggs, melon and crescent rolls.  My daughter and I put together the hammock we gave Daddy for Father's Day which everyone relaxed or played on at some point in the day.  it was sunny and warm, but not hot.  
   I took a couple of hours to dash out for an audition at the local community theatre.  They are producing Cabaret.  I really want to play Fraulein Schneider - she has the most wonderfully complex and poignant music. However, I am at a weird age - I am too old for the characters like Sally or the dancers, and  too young for Fraulein Schneider.  We will wait and see - but at least I finally got my butt out there and auditioned.
    I hope you all had a really nice day with your dads, or husbands and kids.

A Gift from Bees Past

   We lost both of our hives full of bees this past winter.  We have since replaced them with new packages. When we went to clean out the hives of dead bees before the new ones arrived, we found many frames of capped honey.  We had no idea what we should do with this treasure - leave it for the new girls to give them a head start?  Well we left a few frames in the hives for the new girls, but ten remaining ones we put in a large plastic bin and asked our local bee guru what we should do.  He sweetly smiled and said, "Why don't you  just harvest it?"  Funny how simple answers are often the most easily overlooked!
   So yesterday and today we have been harvesting with the crush method.  Because we have plastic-cell foundation, we are not merely cutting it all out, we are more scraping it off the foundation and straining the honey from the wax.

My daughter scraping the cappings off into a pot

getting the last bits into the pot

beautiful, dark fall flower honey - golden rod to be more  precise

 This method means the bees will have to rebuild the wax in order to store more honey, but it also gives us more wax for candles than just the cappings available when we spin out the honey.  

Wax and honey in the strainer

Rinsing the wax after the honey has drained out

   

    We now have some beautiful dark honey from the golden rod of last fall.  It is a richer, heavier tasting honey than the spring flower honey.   Such an unexpected gift.  Thanks, Bees!