Let the Major work begin!

Finally, it was ready for the paint removal guys to come. I had been counting down the days that we would see the green come off this house.

I don't have a problem with the paint, mind you, except that you can peel it off the shingles with your bare hands.

Not exactly child safe, as this is surely lead based paint.

We hired Ed Bell and Sons to remove the paint. They treat the employees with much respect, and not only are they well equipped to safely remove the paint, but they are regularly tested for elevated levels of lead (via a blood test).

I came by on day 2 of the job. None of us knew what to expect, because clearly there had been some windows removed and replaced. But I wasn't expecting this:

One of the guys asked me what I thought (oh please don't ask me what I think!). But I recently have been working on thinking before I speak, so I said, "I think your work is phenomenal, but I wasn't expecting to see big patches of different colored shingles."

I've used this company before. When I was pregnant with my first child, I interviewed a few companies to remove the failing paint from the trim of my old house. I ultimately choose Ed bell & sons.

We went from this:

to this:

we had to put in a little elbow grease too, though.

oh no no no, it was not that easy. You will see. Think 9 months pregnant, dry walling a ceiling. More pictures to come.

I want my old house back.

More fun on the finca

This is what my dog did all weekend:

Guess what she found? The lady who owned the farm before us referred to them as "diggers" which we finally realized, after one of them popped out of the hole and ended up in Molly's mouth, are ground squirrels. We have gophers, too.

I screamed, she dropped it, and that squirrel ran for her life.

Later, we headed to Draper Girls Country Farm to get our goat fix. It's just a bit up I-35. It's a nice place, with a cute country store, MAJOR U-Pick opportunities, and my favorite - goat feeding. There were some brand new baby goats in the pack. They were so cute.

Kids feeding kids...

Saw some pigs in a big pile of mud. Made me seriously question my allegiance to bacon.

Found a stray in the attic. Thought it might be the queen bee, so we trapped it and had planned to bring it to Frank, the bee guy.

It was most definitely NOT the queen bee. Check out the stinger action below. This guy was gearing for a fight.

Checking out the view of Mt. Adams...

Then Jesse and Sr. Yellow Jacket had a discussion, man to man. It's either you or me, dude. I know if I let you out, you are going to sting me good....

So you can imagine what we did. Husband had a tough time with it when all was said and done. It's one thing to swat a fly without thinking. It's another to do it in with intent.

What would you have done? Driven it to the nearest town and let it go? Stomped on it without another thought? Do you think the tiniest creatures have souls?

I told him he was protecting his wife and children. If you see him, please don't ask him about the experience. I was there. That yellow jacket got in our heads. It was a trip.


Later that day, we headed back to Portland. It was time for the grandparents to head back home. The kids enjoyed special time with them before they left.

Bye bye, Nanny and Poppy. See you soon.

Momma Sez

Nanny and Poppy came for a visit this week. Poppy asked us to save him some work, so you better believe we did.

Momma sez, take the laps off the barn door. Don't like it.

but honey....

MOMMA SEZ!

(I think it's an improvement.)

Momma sez, the yard don't look nice. Move them rocks.

but honey....

MOMMA SEZ!

Momma sez, take that thing off the balcony.

but honey....

MOMMA SEZ!

Thanks, honey!

A positive attitude gets results

With a renewed sense of determination, we were able to get moving on a couple of projects. Jesse tore out a 70's deck so that the paint removal guys and carpenter could access the lower shingles. I think the improvement is tremendous.

And I decided that the windows were something I could tackle:

Just unscrew the doodad:

Pull off the thingamajigs, tie the sash cord in a knot so the weight doesn't pull it into the cavity:

And voila, the window is out and ready for repair!!

This window is in pretty good shape. All I am going to do is sand it, replace the putty, stain the interior, and paint the exterior. 60 times. The glass could use a good scrub, too.

But I do need some new windows. So I did my research.

I visited many showrooms and inspected each brand of window. I also called a number of local window repair companies who might come out and repair the windows or replace the single panes with double panes. Wow, easily $500-600 per window. OK, so just about the same price as a replacement window.

Then, I read this article.

http://www.oldhouseguy.com/windows.php

I was sure that I would not be replacing any windows anymore. Our initial bid for the cheapest windows was already going to be $24,000 for 40 windows, not including labor. The idea that I was going to replace 100 year old growth wood windows with windows that have no proven track record was not sitting well.

New windows: $600-$1100 each, not including labor. Not only that, but forever more, we will be at the mercy of the company we choose to purchase from. Each window manufacturer has a proprietary system, susceptible to breakage. If you're out of the warranty period, you have to replace the entire system. The positive - double pane glass. The negative, metal clad is not seamless (think rot from inside out - maybe not, but my paranoid self thinks so), wood needs maintenance, vinyl sends dioxins into the environment in production and can split in extreme weather. I do like steel and metal windows, but they don't go with the period of the house.

Old windows: mechanical, long lasting, and easy enough for me to repair. With a storm window I am supposed to achieve even better insulation than with a double pane windows. Sold.
But to convince the husband would be another story. So we went around the house and I counted about 50% of the replacement windows were already broken.

Then I nagged him for a couple of weeks.

Then I visited the Versatile Sash showroom in Portland because I remembered from a previous project that they hand make windows as well.


The showroom was pretty impressive, and Alex, a rep with the company, was eager to show me around the voluminous warehouse full of projects before, during, and after production. Everything made locally.

Alex was pretty straightforward and honest with me. When I brought in the second floor windows, he confirmed that, aside from cosmetics, my large windows are in great shape. It was completely obvious, though, that the small attic window that I brought in was completely rotten.

So my order is in. Fourteen attic windows in complete failure in need of replacement sashes. All will be replaced with locally made douglas fir windows, for half the price of factory replacement windows. If something happens to one of these windows down the line, I'll know what to do.

Here is a link to their website.

http://versatilesash.homestead.com/

Honey Bee Palooza! The script for another horror film. A most productive weekend.

When we showed up at the farmhouse this past weekend, there was an estimate for work that was 25% higher than we originally anticipated. We were dejected, let down, and morale was pretty low. We felt hopeless and overwhelmed.

Then we met a man that defines kindness, selflessness and all that is good in the world.

His name is Frank, and he likes bees. He came to help us relocate bees that have made a home in our attic walls. These bees make anyone that comes to bid on jobs a bit nervous. In all fairness, we can't expect anyone to come work on a house alongside a swarm of bees.

Here he is!

Listening for bees in the walls. Let me tell you, the sound is a bit like a horror film. Super scary. Frank told us there could be 100, 10,000 or 40,000 bees in the wall. The sound was exciting and a bit disturbing at the same time. You could just tell there were a ton of them in there.

Looking...

Frank came over the next day at 6am. Before sunrise, while the bees are still home, before they fly out in search of food.

Time to smoke them out. Frank says this will cause the bees to start eating the honey. Ideally, they will eat honey in preparation for flight instead of sting us.

Clearly, he is not just an investigator, but a surgeon as well.

Throw in a little creep factor...

Voila, we have our nest!

Frank says that you can tell that the hive is very old by the color. It is also not a well producing hive, because we did not find any honey. This hive was barely hanging on for life.

Look at our poor wall. about 3 inches of the bottom was just a pile of dead, black bees. Since they didn't have a way to escape like they do in the wild, they just dropped down to the sill and stacked high.

Collecting and piecing together the hive for a bee box. Hopefully the queen is in here somewhere.

Poor Jesse, he wanted to see too, but there was only one extra bee suit. Don't worry jesse, I'm burning up in this suit and will trade places soon!

More surgery is performed:

And here's the hard part. The bees that strayed are vacuumed up. You can guess their fate.

I had a hard time with this. We are removing these bees from the only home they have ever known. We. are. killing. bees. You are not supposed to kill bees. 

Frank assured us that these bees were doomed. There was no honey in the walls. The life cycle of these bees is very short. It's the queen that matters (remember that, men). The walls of a house aren't conducive to a thriving bee colony.

My job, besides taking pictures of the process, was to vacuum the bees as he pulled out the combs. At any given time, there would be 50 bees flying around the room. The sun was coming up and there was no time to waste. 

I wasn't afraid, because we spent our summer surrounded by bees in our garden. Hundreds of bees, and we were never stung. Now I was in a bee suit. No problem. It was so much fun.

Every experience in our lives prepares us for the next one, doesn't it?

Frank (or Mr. Frank, say the kids), pointed out a yellow jacket flying around in the nest. He says that when there is a yellow jacket in a bee hive, it's another sign of a failing hive. Yellow jackets feed off weak honey bees.

There were still many bees in our attic, so he generously let us borrow his shop vac so we could vacuum up remaining bees. We spent a few more hours vacuuming the bees until they were gone. The alternative was to call an exterminator to spray the house.

Eek! Spray chemicals in a house with precious children around?

The next step is to scrape down the walls and plug the holes so that another bee population doesn't smell the sweet walls and create another home.

We asked Mr. Frank if he could put a bee box on our farm. We can't have this hive, because they will naturally gravitate to the walls of the house again. 

You know what else? Knowing how much I love honey, he brought me two quarts of the stuff from his home.

Then he invited us to his house to return the vac. There he showed us a hive he has encased in glass in his home. He showed us that the queen lays up to 2000 eggs per day, and how she always faces down when she lays an egg. 

It's all so incredibly fascinating. 

At the end of the day, we asked him how much we owe him. Do you know what he said?

I do it because I love it. Because I want to be kind and generous. The best thing you can do for me is to continue in the spirit of kindness and generosity.

I am not sure I believe that things happen for a reason, because terrible things happen to wonderful people. What I do believe is that our experiences prepare us for things in our life and that people come into our lives for a reason. To teach us. Meeting Mr. Frank was just what we needed. Thank you, Mr. Frank, for giving us hope.

Let the destruction begin - Part 1: the Attic

The roof is bowing and the front wall of the house appears to be leaning out. We knew that going into this project.

What we expected was superior craftsmanship because old houses are made that way, right?

Not so much, when it comes to the roof.

This week I will become an expert in trusses.

Maybe a look into window replacement or repair is in order, too.