This morning is rainy and wet, so there won’t be any painting today. All week the forecast predicted showers off and on, threatening to make our rented lift an expensive lawn ornament, but thankfully the major rain pushed back until late yesterday. I started Friday out at the peak of the west side, going over sections that needed another coat of blue. This time the lift felt a little squirrelier than last time, so I was happy to be done with that area and down on the ground.
I drove the lift out into the yard and backed it up to the house but couldn’t get the leveling beeper to stop no matter how I oriented it. I finally scooched it as close to the garage as I could and swung the boom around to reach the sections I wanted to hit, careful to avoid both the main electrical and phone wires ever so thoughtlessly placed in the center of the back wall.
By 1PM I was able to power wash the upper center section of the back wall, blow off a bunch of white paint I couldn’t reach from the bucket, and then start spraying blue paint in patchwork fashion as I moved the bucket around. Around then it started to drizzle so I came back down, put the tools away, and napped with Hazel for a glorious two hours.
Jen let me know there was a window from 4 to about 7 where it wouldn’t rain, so I hooked the sprayer back up and shot as much as I could reach with the lift in place, and I was able to do about 80% of the back wall before it started sprinkling again.
The plan for Monday, when the weather-guessers claim it will be clear again, will be to paint as much of the eaves as I can with the lift. That will mostly be the center section and possibly some of the area over the kitchen door if I can get the lift over there comfortably. The right side is the question mark. The lift leans toward the garage, so if I swing the lift toward the driveway and extend the boom, it tilts too far for me to feel comfortable, especially at that height. I’ll scrape and paint the windows as quick as I can, but everything at stepladder height can wait for later.
The whole southeast corner of the house is the problem due to the wires I mentioned earlier, the position of the garage, and the complicated geometry which makes it difficult to put a ladder anywhere stable. If I’ve got time on Monday I’ll see if I can orient the lift to a place where I can reach that area, but I don’t have much hope. So I think I might be doing a lot of pole work from either the roof of the new bathroom or hiring someone to hang their ass out on a ladder to finish it.
The morning started pretty well. Jen convinced me to keep the lift in the driveway and take time to re-spray the large sections where we could see uneven coverage on that side, and because she is smarter than I am, I listened to her. That took less time that I figured it might, so by 11AM I was driving the front wheels of the lift up over the curb and onto the front lawn. Once I convinced it that it wasn’t going to tip over, it was happy, and I drove it over the front walk, through the holly tree, and into the side yard.
Starting with the front of the house, I sprayed out a bunch of the siding next to Finley’s window until I was used to the height, and then extended the boom higher so that I was level with the eaves. Some scraping and cleaning got years of flaking paint off the wood, and two coats of exterior paint later it looks a lot better. I scraped Finn’s window and 1/2 of the dining room window, and sprayed out as much as I could on that side.
The sun was much brighter and hotter today. It got up to 90˚ with full humidity, so by 2PM I was melting. I rigged up our table umbrella to the side of the basket and that made a huge difference in the afternoon, but I’m still sunburned and drinking lots of water to recover. The system I’ve got set up—a $30 latex sprayer from Home Depot, a full-size compressor, and the boom lift—makes short work of this.
Tomorrow is my least favorite part of this whole project: the peak of the west side. It’s where the boom will get the squirreliest, as it’s nearing its full extension, and it’ll be the highest I go in this contraption. As it is I’ve got some serious sea legs when I come down off the boom, as my inner ear expects every one of my movements to send the couch or my bed swaying underneath me.
Hopefully I can finish most of the west side tomorrow, and then we move around to the back, just in time for three days of rain.
Here’s the east wall of the house after one day on the boom lift. The paint is on, all the windows are scraped and painted, the eaves are scraped and painted, and the gutter is rehung and cleaned. Can I say that I love the boom lift and would like to own a boom lift?
A very nice man dropped off a 45′ self-propelled boom lift this afternoon as the rain continued to fall and I was fucking around with the Scout. It’s a diesel-powered, gargantuan beast that takes up a good chunk of the driveway. There are more controls up in the basket than a cruise ship. From the lift, one can control the height and length of the booms, the angle and tilt of the basket, as well as drive the whole unit like a car. I’m going to have to study it carefully before I start operating anything; we’re going to start on the driveway side so I can get used to it before I try to get it around to the backyard.
I put together a list of stuff to throw in the bucket with me before I extend it all the way to the eaves: a toolbox full of scraping, sanding, and painting supplies, another toolbox full of general purpose tools (hammer, screws, screw gun, boxcutter, brushes, rollers, etc.), a cooler with water, and a bag of stuff like batteries for my phone/AirPods, Clif bars, a hat, etc. The idea is to stay up for as long as possible without having to come down and go back up repeatedly, as well as attempt to scrape and paint the eaves as much as I can while I’m up there. Hopefully the driveway side will go quickly so I can focus my problem-solving skills on getting it up over the driveway curb and around to the back lawn.
Problem 1: It’s raining.
Problem 2: the boom lift I reserved, while sounding like it was the perfect solution on the phone, turned out to be larger than the Scout and I could tell it would be impossible to jockey around our yard. So I returned it and they’re going to deliver a 4WD self-propelled arm lift later today.
The wind was howling through the ‘Ville late last week and the temperature had dropped, so we hunkered down for a couple of days. On our coffee walk Saturday morning, as the wind blew around us, Jen reminded me that Finley had asked to fly a kite a few weeks ago—late in the day, after I’d put a full 8 hours in and without the energy to take her up on it. When we got home, we ate breakfast and then walked across the street to the church parking lot and put up her butterfly kite, one Aunt Renie got her for a birthday a few years back. It flew really well until a couple of gusts brought it down, and the fiberglas rods punched through the ends of the pockets in the wings. I figured we needed the Big Boy so I ran back to the house and brought out my beach kite, the heavy-duty beast I bought 20+ years ago that has been on every beach vacation we’ve taken. I’ve dunked it in the Atlantic, lost it in dunes, and tangled it in trees. It’s been field-patched multiple times, the bridle has been replaced twice (three)? times and it’s been through two different tails. But it always leaps into the air and stays there. Saturday was no different: it stayed aloft with no problem, and for a short while that morning the world went quiet and we watched it ripple and dance in the blue sky above.
Faced with the latest news reports which all claim vaccination rates are dropping, we’re being pragmatic about the summer of 2021. I’ve been eyeing the situation in India and thinking that we’re headed for the same blowback here: lots of people wrongly assuming the worst is over, skipping their vaccination (or simply not getting one, because…tracking chips?) and use going maskless figuring it’s all over. The alarmist in me is trying to keep from getting too alarmist but I feel like shit is going to go down before it all gets better, and I’d like to get the three of us immunized before America goes full Day of the Dead.
So, we’re making more improvements at the Lockardugan Estate, figuring we’re stuck in here for another year. Jen will be doing big reveals later and I’ll share photos then, but she’s got some exciting plans that I’ve already begun work on. This weekend was focused mainly on getting the truck running so that I could go on a run for oversized supplies, and then getting started. It’s been amazing what I can fit in, on, and behind the CR-V with nothing but a roof rack, trailer hitch, and ratchet straps, but 4×8′ sheets of plywood don’t fit inside and I can’t drive with the hatch open. So the Scout gets pressed into service for the big stuff.
Back in the fall we had an electrician come out and put a switch and a wire in on the front porch for a ceiling fan, which was good! We need a fan out there. But he had to cut through the odd 1950’s era drywall that we inherited to run the wiring, which meant the walls had some gnarly holes that needed patching. 376 applications of drywall mud later, I was able to feather out the patches, paint them, and call the walls done. The fan we ordered is “in transit” somewhere between there and here, which means it’s probably sitting in a container at the bottom of the Ever Given. We bought a simple three-blade white fan with no light, which is apparently very rare and expensive; the more lights and faux Victorian bullshit you decorate a fan with, the cheaper it gets. But it’ll look great once it goes in, and porch season is almost upon us.
Hazel has slowly been working on a routine as she’s gotten older, and some of her more annoying habits have been smoothing out over time. She used to launch out of bed like an ICBM with the first beams of light over the horizon and pace by the bedroom door whining and crying and nervously scratching herself. I’d shuffle downstairs with one eye open, let her out, and then collapse on the couch praying that I’d be able to go back to sleep for a few minutes before she banged on the door to come inside—or woke up the neighborhood barking her head off.
She’s sleeping in later these days, which is a blessing, and even if I’m up before she is and slowly pick up my phone to do the morning’s calendar/weather/news check (what time do I need to be put together for my first Zoom call/how cold will the morning walk be/what’s happening in the outside world) she’ll clock that I’m moving but won’t stir until she sees I’m actually getting up. She knows what reading the iPhone means, and she knows what the pre-rise bed stretch means. She can read the signs.
So on Saturday morning, we slept in for as long as my bladder would allow, and then crawled out of bed to walk downtown for coffee and muffins. Along the way we passed several signs for yard sales, which is your author’s crack cocaine. The pickings weren’t quite as good as the signs promised, but a nice lady gave Jen a 1996 Maryland Master Gardener Handbook for free along with a thick binder full of her notes; she had to carry it back home before we continued our walk.
After eating, I got out to the greenhouse and cleaned up the plants, pinching off all of the suckers, pruning spare branches, and keeping things moving upward. They all got watered, and I fixed the wooden foundation of the building so that it’s a bit more stable. Meanwhile Jen pruned a bunch of the day lilies around the entrance back and cleaned up the gardens around the house. it’s all looking really good out there—I’m optimistic for a good haul this summer.
We ran out to drop Finn off at a friend’s house and ran some errands at the local Home Depot, and while I was there I left my Moleskine in the basket of the shopping cart and drove off without it. On a good day this might have been only a small setback, but I left my vaccination card and some other stuff in the back pocket, which made it a bad day. Two calls to Customer Service and a trip to the store netted us nothing, so I’ve pretty much given up hope. At least I have a picture of my card.
Sunday we puttered around the house and got a late start on the day. After dropping Finn off at a friend’s house across town Jen and I took Hazel to Second Chance to look for some spare doors. To recap: Our fridge is stuffed in what was originally the hallway coat closet, and during the summer, our un air-conditioned house tends to get stuffy. Having the fridge in the closet with the door closed is a terrible idea, so we’ve had to crack the door open and let the cats wander in and out and generally deal with how shitty that looks for sixteen years. Jen’s idea was to find another door in the same style, punch out the center panels, and replace them with radiator screen so that the fridge gets enough airflow and the door stays shut.
Second Chance is one of the advantages of living near Baltimore. We found a very close twin to our doors on the shelf—only 1.5″ taller and 1/2″ wider, in the same large-over-small panel design. We also found a replacement door to the master bath, something to replace the thin wooden screen door we found on the side of the road back in 2004. We stumbled on a beautiful, sturdy 12-light door with good hardware and wound up getting both for $60. I found a way to stuff them both in the back of the CR-V with the rear window up, scooped the dog into my lap, and Jen drove us home with our prizes.
The weather, which has been pogoing up and down for the last month, is supposed to get up into the 80’s this week, which means Brood X is going to rise from their slumber. I don’t know that we’ll get the same number of cicadas without the tree cover we had in 2004, but I’m sure it’s going to be loud out there.
I got thinking about closets while I was stuck in a long Zoom call Friday afternoon and started searching for an online closet builder. Within about 20 minutes I had this basic structure designed, and after I re-measured everything and showed it to Jen, this is what we came up with: his and hers built-ins with hanger bars above and storage below, and a center section for long dresses. This is the best usage of the space in there possible; I could add a second set of bars below or a set of shoe racks, but we both like the idea of shelves instead. Now to find someone who we can order the parts from…
But one thing I’m going to have to do before any cabinetry goes in is have my electrician come back in and move an outlet from its current location behind where the right-side cabinet would go to the center of the wall. I’ve been having problems with that outlet anyway—it’s a legacy circuit from the Doctor and it has no anchor so it’s been hanging out of the drywall since we enclosed everything. This will be a good excuse to get it moved properly and professionally.
Saturday morning I measured out some spare lumber from the workbench and the area in the basement and started constructing a new sorting table by the laundry area. The original table was a 5′ section of countertop resting on two of the old cabinets from the kitchen. This was functional but wobbly, and the counter overhang prevented the top drawers of the counters from opening. I put together an 8′ cantilevered table with a storage shelf, screwed both of the cabinets together, and tucked them under the near edge. The top is smooth MDF, and I beveled the edge with the router so there’s nothing to snag delicate fabric on. Now there’s room for six sorting baskets on the top and the whole thing is level and sturdy on the floor. The top will get painted when I can open the back door (MDF expands with water-based paint, so I’ll use some auto primer) and when the electrician comes we’ll have him upgrade the lighting down there as well.
Here’s an updated version of the energy graphs I plotted last week; this is a two-part visualization that shows the difference between summer and winter.
A couple of weeks ago I found an old fluorescent light fixture up in the attic of the garage while I was organizing stuff, and hauled it into the basement to take a closer look. I don’t remember where it came from. It needed a new cord, but other than that looked clean, so I picked one up from Home Depot and wired it up. Then I took the light stand down and rigged it up from the ceiling over by the brewing stand. Now, instead of taking up the entire workbench, there’s a dedicated growing setup for starting vegetable seeds. Now I just need a 3-prong programmable timer. The goal for this year is to build on last year’s success. I’m going to prepare the bins better this time, with better fertilizer at the beginning, better positioning, and a selection of new seed for some variety. I’m also going to pick up some inexpensive plastic shelving to clean up the greenhouse and open up space for growing.