Hi everyone. It’s taken some time and I’m still working out a few kinks on the website, but it was my goal to finally get a post out, so here we go! This will be a quick catch up of the things we’ve been doing the last few weeks so everyone can see where we are in the process.

We’ve done quite a bit of work around the house already, mostly the exterior; things like trimming the front hedges so you can now walk up the side walk to the house, pulling english ivy away from the house (which had grown completely over some structures of the house and foundation and were threatening to pull it down), weeded the concrete and pressure washed all the concrete of the house. You can see how we were immediately seeing results!

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During our gardening fun, we also became reacquainted with a plant we haven’t had to think about while living in CA; poison ivy. Huge sections of the yard completely overgrown with it and we found this out unfortunately after the fact and, although the yard cleaned up nicely, two trips to the doctor later and I think our poison ivy is finally beginning to fade (maybe, lol, as I still scratch a bit while typing this). We still have two big sections of the yard containing the fun stuff, but we’ve now learned how to pretty much hazmat ourselves up before we get near it, as well as how to clean the tools properly after wards (the oils can linger on tools for years). We’ve learned way too much about poison ivy.

Even with the poison ivy, it’s been a fun sequence of discoveries. For example, one fun day while pulling away english ivy from the front steps, my shovel hit concrete off to the side buried way under the english ivy. I began to pull and break away and found…more steps leading off to the side. These were completely hidden by decades of growth. Where did they go?

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After more digging, not only did I find a full patio but also a raised concrete flower bed connected to it. Of course in need of serious repair but you could begin to get a glimpse of what was before and how grand the house was.

Our next step is to get the house ready to paint, hopefully before winter sets in. The bricks in the front foundation needed to be paint but were missing morter in several places and the bricks were loose. We weren’t worried because in the cellar we could see that the home was built on a much older home’s foundation, which was comprised of stone and fully 1 and 1/2 feet thick so it was solid. The bricks in the front are merely a facia but we do want to save them and paint them. So last week, I learned how to reapply morter. Great fun actually! I love to bake and this feels a bit like frosting a layered cake. My baking skills came out and it went pretty well, if I must say so myself.

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Paul’s spent a lot of time working on scaffolding to repair the bay windows. My heart skips a beat every time he’s up there so I usually don’t look. But he’s becoming comfortable with it and done a fantastic job! He’s cuts the board, takes it to the attic, then climbs up the scaffolding, pulls it through (as it was completely open due to the rot) and has rebuilt those beams. I’m glad someone has the ability to work in heights. I’ll keep low to the ground and keep on the foundation, lol.

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I could go on and on but for now, I simply want to catch everyone up. Our primary job now is to get ready for painting, so we’re trying everything from scraping, granding, power sanding, hand scraping and simply peeling to remove the paint. We’ve found a combination of all four seems to be working the best. We’ll keep working away and I’ll keep everyone posted!