Normally I write posts to catch up on the backlog of projects here, but today was such a productive day I figured I’d share what’s been going on in the last few weeks–namely, the teak flooring was repaired and refinished. A proper post about that will eventually make it here, but I’m happy to say that work was completed last week, and then another crew came in immediately to re-insulate the crawl space under the house. Our painters also came in at that time to paint the exterior of the house for the 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 housecleaners came this morning and helped get things back into some semblance of order post-floor work, and while everything from the great room and north hallway is still packed away in the guest room and 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 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 the cages out to the courtyard, got the pressure washer and hoses set up, then got distracted for a bit as I’d forgotten to make a batch of banana bread for a neighbor who’d just lost her husband this weekend; tomorrow I’ll take a mini-loaf or two up to her and see if she needs anything.
Then, as I was washing up from making the bread and 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 and settled the boys back in their room in their clean cages. 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 in the north hallway that, when the house was built, was marked as a combination guest room/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 and new flashing to protect the teak; when we emptied out the space for the floor work, we decided to just start fresh. The old vinyl had a hole in one end for a 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 too), we have been deleting all the holes in our floors. Happily, we’re now down to just eight, and most of these are in tile which means yet another specialty project happening soon.
That pretty much sums up my day which, like just about every day here for the last few months, has been non-stop work. I added to my misery last spring by spearheading the reformation of the road committee. Our road is not maintained by the county or city, so the 40-odd residents living off it or its secondary roads must shoulder the responsibility. The hard bit is that nothing has been done for well over fifteen years, but things are moving along on that front, and driving around the hillsides introducing myself to those 40-odd residents was a great way to meet almost all of my neighbors. Now if only the the cranky ones would just chill–more on that later.