{"id":4809,"date":"2019-10-24T20:46:55","date_gmt":"2019-10-24T20:46:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/redmeadow.com\/?p=4809"},"modified":"2019-10-24T20:46:55","modified_gmt":"2019-10-24T20:46:55","slug":"what-a-difference-a-summer-makes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redmeadow.com\/?p=4809","title":{"rendered":"What a difference a summer makes."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It was a long spring, summer, and now well into fall since the last time I wrote anything.\u00a0 Remodeling just took all my mental energies away.<\/p>\n<p>But at last we&#8217;re finished with the exterior repairs and replacements.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_4812\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/redmeadow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/exterior1.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-4812\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4812\" class=\"size-full wp-image-4812\" src=\"https:\/\/redmeadow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/exterior1.jpg\" alt=\"West view of the house from the driveway.\" width=\"600\" height=\"340\" srcset=\"https:\/\/redmeadow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/exterior1.jpg 600w, https:\/\/redmeadow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/exterior1-300x170.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-4812\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">West view of the house from the driveway prior to work beginning.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Everything looked just blah, and it was worse than that.\u00a0 The deck, roofing, railing, and siding all needed to be fixed.\u00a0 The railing was pretty unsafe.\u00a0 Leaning on it was a bad idea as it could have simply fallen over, as the guys discovered when they removed it.\u00a0 It was scary easy to do!<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_4813\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/redmeadow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/exterior2.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-4813\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4813\" class=\"size-full wp-image-4813\" src=\"https:\/\/redmeadow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/exterior2.jpg\" alt=\"View of the southern windows, which I think of as the front of the house even though you don't see this when you drive into the property.\" width=\"600\" height=\"381\" srcset=\"https:\/\/redmeadow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/exterior2.jpg 600w, https:\/\/redmeadow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/exterior2-300x191.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-4813\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">View of the southern windows, which I think of as the front of the house even though you don&#8217;t see this when you drive into the property.\u00a0 The house is level, but my camera holding skills are a bit suspect.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The spring day I took this picture, we were building the infrastructure for the Purple Martin houses.\u00a0 The blue tarp was protecting the concrete we had poured to hold the metal post that holds the martin houses so that the forecast rains didn&#8217;t mess anything up.<\/p>\n<p>This was late April, after the snows finally melted; none of the trees had leafed out quite yet.<\/p>\n<p>So fast forward six months.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_4814\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/redmeadow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/exterior3.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-4814\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4814\" class=\"size-full wp-image-4814\" src=\"https:\/\/redmeadow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/exterior3.jpg\" alt=\"A more cheerful looking house!\" width=\"600\" height=\"402\" srcset=\"https:\/\/redmeadow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/exterior3.jpg 600w, https:\/\/redmeadow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/exterior3-300x201.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-4814\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A more cheerful looking house!\u00a0 And fall colors.\u00a0 And still the sky is cloudy just like it was in the spring.\u00a0 The Big Leaf Maple trees are all turning color and dropping huge leaves all over the yard.\u00a0 Some of those leaves are 12 inches across.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Yesterday the contractors finally finished installing the railings on the deck, which was the last thing on our to-do list.\u00a0 Well, except putting the gazebo together in the back garden, but that&#8217;s next weeks&#8217; project.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_4815\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/redmeadow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/exterior4.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-4815\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4815\" class=\"size-full wp-image-4815\" src=\"https:\/\/redmeadow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/exterior4.jpg\" alt=\"Dan is holding Mishkin, standing in the window watching me take a picture :)\" width=\"600\" height=\"335\" srcset=\"https:\/\/redmeadow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/exterior4.jpg 600w, https:\/\/redmeadow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/exterior4-300x168.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-4815\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dan is holding Mishkin, standing in the window watching me take a picture \ud83d\ude42<\/p><\/div>\n<p>If we ever decide we&#8217;ve lost our minds, this is the view from the pond.<\/p>\n<p>Next year is all about the garden.\u00a0 The fencing is just great, and almost not noticeable to the right of the house.\u00a0 And there is a gate right off this door on the south side of the house, down the rebuilt stairs which are actually comfortable to walk up and down unlike the old stairs which I avoided if at all possible.\u00a0 And you&#8217;ll end up in the midst of the orchard part of the garden.\u00a0\u00a0 I was dreaming about raspberry plants this morning.\u00a0 And we can plant flowers and bushes!<\/p>\n<p>So new roof, new deck and railing, new gutters which actually drain because they were installed properly, replaced siding, and everything was painted and stained.\u00a0 We had already replaced light fixtures and exterior doors when we remodeled the inside.\u00a0 The only thing that is left is the furnace and heat pump.\u00a0 Hopefully that will not need to be done for a couple more years.<\/p>\n<p>Happiness is being done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was a long spring, summer, and now well into fall since the last time I wrote anything.\u00a0 Remodeling just took all my mental energies away. But at last we&#8217;re finished with the exterior repairs and replacements. Everything looked just blah, and it was worse than that.\u00a0 The deck, roofing, railing, and siding all needed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmeadow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmeadow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmeadow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmeadow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmeadow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4809"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/redmeadow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4809\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4817,"href":"https:\/\/redmeadow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4809\/revisions\/4817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmeadow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmeadow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmeadow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}