I should post some pictures. This is why I haven’t done anything.
This has been a rough last month. We had a tragedy in our tiny family. On Saturday July 24th our much loved macaw died. It was a horrible experience. She is buried in our garden where she will be safe from predators. I still cry a lot whenever I think about her. Now there are only four of us.
She was only 34 years old, a totally sweet personality full of joy and mischief. Wings was her only trick and she loved to show them off whenever we asked. Here she is on the island in our house up on White Mountain. She loved that island; it was a great place to play and keep an eye on whatever I was doing.
Things with the house renovation have continued albeit extremely slowly. The two mini-split heat pumps have been installed and are both now functional. That was an adventure in and of itself. Now that they are functional we love the convenience and how quietly they maintain a nice cool (or warm if we choose that option) temperature in the house. We can ignore over 100 degrees outside though I think we may be past that nonsense. No temperatures that hot are predicted for the rest of August and it would be beyond bizarre to see those temperatures in September. So… yay!
The windows arrived finally (the doors arrived last month and were waiting for the windows to arrive), and the contractors stripped the siding off the house and installed both the doors and windows.
View of the mountain to the east of us. This window in particular was badly in need of replacement as the seal was gone on the double-pane and it was always fogged up.
Window next to the couch where we can see the hummingbird feeder and look out towards the garden.
Vast improvement to not have to look through bars in the windows anymore. We have ordered blinds and will need to paint the walls prior to installing them. They won’t be here until the middle of September so we have time to accomplish that task. The windows have an issue; the manufacturer sent them to us without screens and at the moment we have no estimate as to when the screens might arrive. So we are having two custom screens made in Colville for our bedroom windows, and will see if they fit. If they do we will get screens made for the other five windows and tell Home Depot to cancel the screens and give us a refund sufficient to cover the cost of the screens. They already said they would do that.
The two exterior doors looked like this, no deadbolt and they didn’t fit all that well so they were not energy efficient and insects had free access.
This is the new front door which now opens into the kitchen side of the main living area. It will make it easy to set grocery bags directly onto the kitchen counter. It has a mini-blind inside the glass and opens and closes so nicely! Plus, no gaps for air or bugs.
Our contractor wants the old doors and windows so that’s excellent – they will be reused and not merely disposed of in a landfill.
So next they are putting tongue and grove pine on the ceiling of the porch. There are two large porches, front and back, so this is going to take a couple of days to be completed. The hardest part is next to the log support for the roof as they aren’t straight and are curved in addition to being wavy to some degree.
We will stain this a cedar color.
It will also make it harder for wasps to make nests. This would be a good thing!
Once the porch ceilings are complete they can stain the pine boards and start replacing the siding.
There is quite a bit of preparation they need to do first, like frame the windows, build and install attic vents on both gable ends, and trim boards on the corners, before they can actually install siding. After the siding is complete they can paint the exterior of the house. We did our part, buying the paint and stain.
Hopefully by the end of next week all the exterior painting will be done which means all the exterior work is finished. I’m totally dreaming but it could happen. All this exterior work will make the house way more energy efficient for heating and cooling and eliminate pests as they won’t be able to gain access to the crawl space or attic, or walls, we should be maintenance free for the next at least 20 years.
We see a light at the end of the tunnel. Might be a train….