timber!

Just a brief update between chopping up the tree that came down last week.  While I'm more than a bit disgruntled to be wasting the time when there are so many other things to be working on, I should be grateful.  What came down was directly in between the schoolhouse and the fire pit, and nearly on top of our stored roof slate.  Other than an impaled plastic chair and a cracked cinder block, nothing was harmed, not even the antique iron lantern that was still standing after the tree fell AROUND it.  Mind boggling....

                 

Another plus?  The new chainsaw we had bought and given up on as hopelessly broken three years ago (and forgotten to return) was able to be coaxed back to life now that we know considerably more about repairing tools.  It's nice to know the chainsaw is back in our arsenal.

As far as work on the house itself, we decided the now fully walled and insulated third floor can wait till cooler weather for floor finishing and painting.  Instead, we've turned our attention to the future master bath which adjoins our bedroom.  As I've mentioned before, it was the largest and most beautiful bedroom in the house when it was built.  When we bought the house it was saturated with cat urine (badly enough that we thought it was a mystery leak and almost walked away from the deal), chopped up with walls going across the fireplace tile and had a dropped ceiling -all this on top of the issues every room in the house had with water damage and abuse.

 For now it's just storage, and aside from partitioning the room with the laundry and walk-in closet, and a quick pass on the floors, nothing's been done.  We're many years from affording the bathroom, so for now the room needs some additional plaster repair, a temporary box built over the exposed laundry room plumping, trim and paint stripping.  All of these are in progress - finished is boxing in and blue boarding the plumbing (plastering will happen in the next couple of weeks.  Not exciting unless it's your house I suppose, but I guess that's the case with most things I do and write.  Boxing in the plumbing actually turned into a monumental task after a tiny leak was discovered coming from the washer plumbing.  We thought we were going to have to rerun the pipes, only to discover the leak was coming from the hook-up box in the wall.  Trying to repair that leak lead to the Watts Intelliflow emergency shut off malfunctioning, i.e. no laundry right before having house guests, and a few weeks of back and forth with them to figure out exactly which part was broken.  Thankfully, all fixed now.

As part of the work, we stuffed all the exposed cavities with Roxul Safe and Sound to mitigate the noise from the laundry and bathroom - the difference is amazing, even with the door to the bathroom open and the broken stained glass window on the laundry wall.  Well worth the $50 we spent on the bag, and I'm glad local stores have starting carrying it.

With all this rain we've been having, the yard isn't the only thing growing like a weed, Maugrim is 9 months old and around 90 pounds.  He finally met a dog bigger than him the other day, and wasn't quite sure what to make of him.