A Weekend in August

  What's this blog going to be about?  Maybe I should make a list, since that seems to be the best way for me to function these days!

• Welcome to a new follower Me and My dog.  Looks like she is really going full steam ahead on reaching for her dream.  Good inspiration!

• My latest area of concentration on the house painting project is the front door area, including the overhang which is not shown and a small overhang area above the garage door corner.

The door is very rough.  For years I have pointed out the fact that we can see little slits of light between some of the vertical sections.

I've been sanding it and working wood filler in the cracks.  I think it will look OK when done.

Of course there is dry rot to deal with.  The dark area on this detail is where I have drilled some holes and soaked the area with a wood hardener before working with good old Bondo to create new bottoms for these decorative beams.  The edge of the yellowish siding is also ragged.  I didn't have to deal with this on the deck painting because those areas are protected from the rain and fog. Again Bondo to the rescue.

• Meanwhile Craig has been working on painting primer on the fascia boards that were replaced by the roofers with all new pressure treated wood.   He is standing at the top of  20 foot ladder that is standing on an additional 4 foot wood box!  This is NOT the highest part of the house, but it is the highest he will do.

     My stomach is in a knot all the while he is doing this!

     WE WILL HIRE SOMEONE for the really hard part!

• On Saturday the weekend plan to keep painting was interrupted.  My to do list is written in pencil after all.  A tree came down at the top of our road on the Electric company's right of way.  It also took out a wire!  In late afternoon on Saturday I had to run to the store for something.  When I came back I saw the pile of cut up wood and a big trunk.  I asked the PGE flag man who owned the wood and he shrugged,  "who ever picks it up."  When I got home I told Craig about the wood, but he wanted to eat dinner.

After we ate, we did go up to try and get it, but all of the cut up stuff was already taken.  We went back home, got the chain saw and went back to cut what we could.  The PGE men watched out for us and helped us avoid traffic on the road.  Or, rather  he helped the traffic avoid hitting us!

We worked until it was dark and the PGE guys even helped us load up the wood into my van!

• Sunday, Craig had to re-sharpen the saw and go for more gas. The remaining trunk of the tree was balanced on the top of a hill at the edge of the road so nobody else had tried to take it.  A small tree was keeping it from rolling down.  It was a bit scary for Craig to be cutting away at it as I watched for traffic coming from three different directions.  Two were easy, but one was around a curve from the cutting site.

 He did get it all cut up and down to the road safely.   Loading it was no fun.  It was green, wet, oak. Some of the rounds were over 22 inches in diameter and very very heavy, but we managed.

This is a picture of the wood unloaded at the house.

We will rent a splitter in the next week or two so it can be spread out in the sun to dry for winter use.

We use several cords of wood each winter.  We usually  collect it down on our own wooded hillside, but this year we had decided to buy some because we have been so busy with the painting.  But we can't pass up FREE firewood, even if we had to cut it ourselves.

So that was our weekend!

Daily countdown:

436 days, or 1 year, 2 months, 10 days.