Normally I write posts as I try to catch up on the backlog of projects that go on here, but today was such a productive day I figured I’d share what’s been going on in the last few weeks. Namely, we had the teak flooring repaired and refinished. A proper post about that will eventually make it here, but I’m happy to say the work was completed last week and then we immediately had another crew in to re-insulate the crawl space under the house, and our painters in at the same time to start painting the exterior of the house to get it ready for winter. The insulation project will wrap up this week (they’re using the hatch in the guest room) and the painters will be busy for the next few weeks.
Thankfully, our house cleaners came this morning and helped me get things back into some semblance of order post-floor work, and while just about everything from the great room and north hallway is still packed away in either the guest room or the blue room, our coat closets are repopulated and most importantly, the boys are no longer stuck living in the studio building. They had to spend two weeks over there and the boredom was starting to show. So today, when I decided I would pressure wash some of our braided rugs before putting them back in place, I also set up to wash the boys’ cages. I rolled them out to the courtyard and got the pressure washer and hoses set up, but then I got distracted for a bit, as I’d forgotten I had wanted to make a batch of banana bread as a neighbor up the hill just lost her husband this weekend and tomorrow I’ll take a mini-loaf or two up and visit to see if she needs anything.
Then, as I was washing up from making the bread while talking to my mum on the phone I heard Thy screaming. I dashed through the house and there was a hawk at his cage and Thy was not amused. The hawk couldn’t reach him, but Thy was not very impressed by its behavior. So I shooed the hawk away, brought the boys inside, washed everything that need washing and then settled the boys back in their clean cages, which are now back in their room. Tenar in particular was pretty morose today, but when I offered him banana bread he perked up considerably. Apparently that proved I do still love him, and now he’s asleep and very happy to be in his own room again.
Their space is an alcove area of the north hallway that, when the house was built, was marked as a combination guest room and communal area for the Doc’s kids. The boys really like it, as they can walk into my office or down the hallway to our bedroom or kitchen when the mood strikes them. Thy in particular is obsessed with sitting in our bedroom closet area. Their space isn’t completely back together, as I have to find a piece of vinyl flooring to put down to protect the teak as well as new flashing, as when we emptied out the space for the floor work we decided we’d just start fresh. The old vinyl had a hole in one end for an old furnace register, but since we ripped out our diesel furnaces in May (yes, I’m very, very behind on project news, but there is a post about that coming soon), we have since been slowly deleting all the holes in our floors. Happily, we’re now down to just eight, and most of those are in tile which means yet another specialty project happening soon.
That all pretty much sums up my day which, like just about every day here of late, has been non-stop work for the last few months. I added to my misery this past spring by spearheading the reformation of the road committee. Our road is not maintained by county or city and thus the 40-odd residents living off it or one of the two roads off it must shoulder the responsibility. The hard bit is that nothing had been done for well over fifteen years. Things are moving along on that front though, and driving all around the hillsides introducing myself to those 40 or so residents was a great way to meet almost all of my neighbors. Now if only the the cranky ones would just chill…but more on that later.