The Fire is Full of Irons

There's been a lot going on in the last week at the House of 42 Doors. Monday was a public holiday and I took Tuesday off. I wanted to take the week off, but one of my coworkers popped out a baby and I needed to go back to cover for their absence. My parents were here for the weekend helping out with projects, so much was accomplished in that area too. On top of all of this, Tuesday was Pumpkin's first day of school. Busy, busy, busy!

Thankfully, the House of 42 Doors is brick. That means that exterior maintenance on the house isn't too bad. Every time I drive by a Victorian mansion, I appreciate the intricate, complicated and beautiful color schemes. I also thank my stars that I don't have to deal with painting something like that every five to ten years.

This isn't to say that our house doesn't need paint. A lot of the paint on the house is failing and needs to be redone, but on Saturday we scraped and painted all the window sills. Once the storm windows are done being scraped, puttyed, painted and weatherstripped, I can put them back in place and we'll be ready for winter. Thus far, about half the storm windows around the house have been painted and put back in place.

My mother finished painting the kitchen ceiling and walls that were repaired when the soil pipe blew up, and she got a good bit further on the vestibule walls. We started stripping those walls when they were here back in May, and almost have them down to the bare plaster. Once they have been stripped of all the calcimine paint, we'll be able to paint them to match the living room.

My dad cut down a few trees in the back (the last of them) and fixed our garage entry door, which needed a threshold. He also helped me clean out the garage. I think that at last we can squeeze one car into the garage (although we haven't tried yet). He and I also replaced the brick patio that had to be taken up to fix the sewer last fall. Both of my parents raked our back yard, resulting in a pile of twigs, leaves and acorns about four feet high and eight feet in diameter. Our landscaping is still a big mess but we're making progress.

Tuesday of next week, I'm meeting with the roofer, the metalworker (for the gutters), and the carpenter to try and get a schedule together for the roof project. Hopefully, the three of them can talk, as professionals, and I can step out of the picture while they hash out the details.

Our mason has been out several times over the last few weeks trying to color match our mortar for the tuck pointing. To date, he's had little success getting the color right. It's a difficult job and I don't envy him.

I've gone to war with the huge wasp nest in our eaves. I don't know how big it is, but I'm pretty sure the carpenter and the metal worker have no desire to be ripping out the fascia and the gutter around a swarm of yellow jackets. I've been spraying them daily and I think we've finally got them under control. There are well over 100 wasps that on the ground beneath their entrance. I think it's a pretty big nest.

Thanks to my father-in-law and his devoted efforts, we finally have a second car. We got a great price on it, and on Tuesday we switched over the title, got new license plates and updated our driver's licenses to show our current address. They wouldn't put "House of 42 Doors" on our licenses though.