Drainage

There was a whole lot of hole digging going on this mid-September. Remember last year when we had some torrential rain and our basement sprung a leak? Well, we hope we have solved this problem by re-routing the downspout. Justin did most of the trenching but I covered about 5 feet while he rested up.

Just getting started, only 40 more feet to go!

The good news is that it's been raining quite a bit in the last 48 hours and our basement is dry as a bone. It's still to early to declare victory but this is definitely a good start.

Hoists

We're really into the outdoor projects, Justin and I. The inside is by no means finished but we're running low on summer evenings and autumn is nipping at our heels. So before the rain becomes a daily annoyance, we're getting our house prepped for new gutters. Mostly this means painting the rafter tails to seal up the wood but in the back of the house, it means a small structural repair. You see, when we pulled off the old gutter back there, there was a 4 inch sag in the center of our eve. We should have noticed it because our gutter had a way of collecting all of the rain water in the middle of the gutter and then spilling it over the side. But, we have had a long, dry summer and I suppose we put it out of our minds, until it became inconvenient. Our gutter removal crew (Justin) made the discovery of the sag last weekend when he pulled off all of the silt-filled gutters and our gutter contractor didn't have a plan to address the problem, except running the downspouts to the low spot which seemed pretty half-assed. So we decided to undertake a little structural repair ourselves and Justin dreamed up a pretty clever solution. The short version is that we levered up the low spot in the roof and attached a structural fascia board to the rafter tails to hold everything in place. The pictures fill in some of the detail.

Checkin' off the list

Our to-do list is getting shorter. It still seems endless but we have been checking off the boxes and a pretty good clip these days. Here's a run-down of what we checked off this weekend:

• buy and plant foundation plants in front yard
• caulk south facing windows
• touch-up paint on south facing windows
• touch-up paint in living room
• remove hardware and prep interior doors for paint stripping
• clean out garage
• remove gutters

As you can see, we were busy! We'll be painting rafter tails this week to ready the house for new gutters. We want to get those on before the rainy season starts.

Demo Day II

With a full dumpster, we couldn't get too carried away with ripping out more plaster but we did our best. Jill and Scott were back for round 2. They came to help after a full day on Saturday and their morning run of 6-10 miles. They're tough! This is a photo from the future master bedroom looking into the future closet & bathroom.


Justin capped off most of the plumbing so we can start ripping out fixtures and pipes and we cleaned out a problem gutter. The gutter was backed up and leaky and after disassembling it, we found a good 10 inches of muck and some plastic pieces plugging the passage. I also got rid of a bird's nest on the porch. It didn't appear to be occupied so I don't think any bird is going to miss it. Plus, I'm doing those birds a favor because my cats are fond of eating birds.