October 10,2006 Day 393
I have found it almost impossible to get anyone to even come out and price the painting job on the
dormers mostly due to the time of year and the height of the dormers. The one person who would do it
and gave me a price can not do it this season. So I have pretty much resigned to the fact that the
dormers will go another winter without being painted. Shame on me for waiting so long but I do not like
to get ahead of myself on projects and originally I had planned on painting them myself.
Once again I have found another area of damage caused by squirrels and I spent much of Monday
rebuilding the pigeon stoop on the left corner of the house. Now that this area is fixed I can again turn
my attention to finishing the trim work on the porch and the front of the house. The weather has turned
cold enough that all boards from this point on will be pre painted inside the barn and then installed on the
house. This slows the process a bit but it does allow me to continue the process. Besides once I finally
install all the painted wood it will look like I did a lot of work all in one day.
October 26, 2006 Day 409
It is amazing how quickly two weeks can go by. During this time I have been working on the trim for
the porch and putting in the front doors. Mother Nature dealt us a bit of a blow (no puns intended) when
her winds blew up to 60 mph on the night of October 20th. That night she busted open the front doors
smashing the temporary glass windows I installed, along with denting part of the door and busting the
original doorbell. The winds also ripped all the tyvec off the house that was not covered by siding. Since
that time I had John Pratt over to help me correct the fit of the front doors, replaced the temporary glass
with plexi glass and Pattie has been working e bay for another door bell. We were sad to lose the original
1879 door bell but glad we had not installed the original glass for the doors. I suppose it could have been
worse.
I have also been trying to trap the squirrel which has made his home in my barn. Every night he slides
down the roof and into the soffit area but not before making a lot of noises as to laugh at me for my
failure to catch him. I have a live trap set which I put peanut butter on and the next day the peanut butter
is gone and the trap is still set. I told Pattie that some day I expect to see the peanut butter jar empty
with the cap screwed back on it and a note asking for more. I had wanted to trap him and just move him
to a nicer neighborhood but now I feel I must resort to poison.Sorry if any of you readers are tree
huggers but unless you want to come up here and trap him yourself you will just have to deal.
Our outside lights arrived and they look great. At first we thought they would be too big but turned out
to be perfect (in our minds anyways) when put up in place. Unfortunately only three of the four
survived the shipping without damage. We had to send the fourth one back and are still waiting on its
replacement
My original goal of finishing the siding by the end of October is all but a dream at this point perhaps by
the end of 2006?.
November 11, 2006 Day 425
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Work has progressed slowly in the last 15 days. The rainy weather, fall in temperature and change of
clocks has forced me to cut my work week down basically to late Saturday afternoons, Sundays and
Mondays. This week I was plagued by an extreme head cold and took most of the week off. But
enough of the excuses! Last Monday I was able to caulk all the trim work on the front porch as well as
get a second coat of varnish on the threshold and finish the siding on the lower left side of the front
However starting tonight I will be back at the siding full force and plan on having the lower half of the
front of the house sided by Monday evening, even if I have to work on it into Tuesday morning to
accomplish this.The following weekend begins the Thanksgiving week and family commitments will
once again retard my progress with all this said I have given myself the deadline of December 11th to
have the front of the house sided and finished.
Keep posted to see how I do on this goal.
Happy Thanksgiving to all and may we be blessed with the ability to realize how truely blessed we are.
As you can see if you look at the recent photos I finished the bottom half of the front of the house with
time to spare on Monday. This enabled me to start working on the second floor. Rain is once again
expected most of the week and I will be gone most of the weekend so it was nice to get a head start.
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Ok, first and foremost let us cover the important stuff, I caught the squirrel !!! Thanksgiving day I
covered up the holes on the barn with lead flashing which he chewed through by Friday, however as I
went around out back of the barn there he was alive in the trap. So I put him in my truck and drove
about 4 miles away to Mill Road and let him free down there. Hopefully this will be the last of him .I am
sure we will find others but one is a start.
I have also finished the front siding 16 days ahead of schedule! So now I will be back on the north side
of the house trying to finish this up as soon as possible. We will be directing most of our energy and
time on our Boothbay Harbor house as we will have it off the market for the Holidays and the month of
December. We plan on doing a little sprucing and freshing up on our home at this time so my time up at
the farm may be limited.