Happy 7th birthday to Hyla!

We’ve done no work at all on the house since last weekend, and the camera I usually use is still not working, but I had another reason to try out Michael’s fancy-pants camera today, so I decided to use it to show you the painting that Robyn and I did last weekend and Monday.

I might never go back to my old, sick camera.

First, Robyn extended our reach on the side of the ell (regular readers might remember this post ).

Here’s what the end of the ell looks like now:

Even more impressive is the front of the ell, where she managed to reach all the way to the top trim (except for that scary little triangle on the left side, over the main house roof):

I forgot to take a picture of the front of the house, but that’s all one color now, too, as is the side of the house where the basement doors are:

We could probably get a bit higher on the end of the ell with a better ladder, but not all the way to the top. And there’s no way we can do the part over the porch roof or the trim on the top-floor windows ourselves. Well, maybe there’s a way. I just don’t think there’s a way that will make me comfortable.

A week ago, I had a painter come out to give me an estimate on the portions that were as-yet undone. His quote was almost $4000. Hmmmm. Robyn and I painted more and got it to where you see it today. Tonight another painter is due to give an estimate. I have every reason to hope his estimate will be MUCH lower. If it is, he’s hired to do the parts that terrify me. And then I’m confident that I can do the second coat on all the places where we’ve done a first coat.

Oh yes, and the grass on the new front lawn is growing (yay!):

This weekend, my friend, neighbor, and brave ladder climber, Robyn, took a break from painting her own home to give us a hand with some of our painting. An old hand at painting three-story farmhouses, Robyn has no qualms about going up the ol’ wooden ladder and extending our reach that much further.

With her help, this is how things looked out front by the end of Saturday:

(Also note the straw mulch. We seeded the new “lawn” late last week.)

By noon today, the entire front of the house had a first coat, Robyn had made a lot of progress painting higher on the short end of the ell, and I had put a first coat on the entire unpainted basement side of the house (the first floor is the only part that needed paint). I’d planned to post pictures of those changes, too, but the camera is ill for some reason (likely sick of taking the same pictures over and over again).

Anyway, our BIG thanks to Robyn, and to all of our friends and family who have helped us through this project by lending an ear, a hand, a meal, or a ladder. I really wonder if we could have done so much in the past year without your help and encouragement.

Thank you.

I forgot to post last week that we finally finished painting the living room.

Well….

There are a few spots to touch up on the walls here and there, and the doors still need to be painted one color or the other, but there’s nothing left that will take much time or paint.

Here’s the glossy trim:

And here’s the wood stove-end of the room, put back together and usable:

We’re still not sure about the furniture arrangement, but it works for the moment and we can rearrange furniture to our hearts’ content when we’re finished painting everything else.

We’re now the proud owners of a front entry we can use!

To back track a little….

Yesterday, Norris and Rod completed the retaining wall. They put a piece of filter cloth along the inside of the wall (shown below draped over the wall, but you can’t see it now). This cloth allows runoff water though the wall, but keeps the soil on the side of the wall where we want it:

After the filter cloth, they proceeded to build up the wall.

Once the wall was as high as they needed, they brought in a truckload of fill and brought the grade right up to where it ought to be. Here’s a view of the wall with the new grade:

By the end of the day yesterday, the house was (finally!) sitting properly on the land:

This morning, Norris returned to place the stone steps, to put some top soil down, and to smooth everything out for us.

Here’s Norris (and excavator) lifting and positioning the large, platform rock (regular readers may recognize this rock as the one that’s been sitting in the front yard almost ever since the house was moved):

After that, it was just a matter of placing the top step, which is the same rock that was the front step to the “old” house for as long as we’ve lived in it. Here’s a view from the side:

This morning, Michael had the brilliant idea of using another beautiful, big rock as our step off of the end of the porch. We had been using the top platform from the original (awful) front steps, and it worked, but looked kind of unfinished. This looks better, but we still need to level it:

Norris piled up the rest of the big rocks around the property near the head of the driveway so that we can use them later on for other projects.

I want to get a nice picture of the front of the house straight on, without the excavator (which left shortly after I took the last of these pictures), but I’m waiting for the sun to cooperate and get behind me.

Rod and Norris, part of the Northwoods Excavation team, are building a retaining wall to the north side of the front door so that we can bring up the grade and put in some reasonable, stone front steps:

This process should take about a week a day-and-a-half (according to Norris). More pictures to come….

This was delivered to our front yard this morning:

I don’t think we get to keep it, but we’re still happy to see it.