Halloween and Freezing

Yesterday was Halloween and it was snowing. As the trick-or-treaters would come to the door, we could see their breath and hear snow/rain pelting down. They must really wants some candy! This morning (Nov 1) marked the first day I needed to scrape ice off the car. Winter is coming and may be coming fast.

And here is a picture of me and my work study student from Friday:

Pink is the new black!

Lots of progress has been going on on the house over the past few weeks. As we travel into the dull colors of winter, the upstairs of the house is becoming PINK! First is the spare bedroom/craft room. Last week this was beige but now it is Rose Geranium (a.k.a. bright pink). It is awesome, especially with Carrie's stenciling on one wall.



Second is the other spare bedroom. Lots of pink insulation has been added. I'm sure this is the warmest room in the house now! With insulation ready and enclosed in a plastic vapor barrier...the next step is drywall. The light at the end of the tunnel is growing rapidly.



In the end we plan to expose the currently hidden hardwood floors. Here is a sneak peak.

Yeah!!

With the help from Dad squeeze-o-ing and Mom quartering the tomatoes, we made 5 quarts worth of plain tomato sauce. I canned it myself today. My first ever water bathing on my own! And it was successful in that I heard all five lids seal shut (one of the coolest, most gratifying kitchen sounds!). Now we just have a bit of sauce left over for me to make a nice chicken in tomato sauce dinner for Kevin. I'm off...

Heat Loss

The man who inspected our furnace suggested we wrap a pipe that carries the nice warm air roughly 40' from the furnace through almost the entire length of the basement to our electronics room. (The coldest downstairs room.) So, we started the process, but ran out of roll insulation. As a rule of thumb, insulation is not fun to work with, but...this stuff had a cool aluminum/heat shield backing and was much smaller than most rolls of insulation. Manageable one might say!

Distractions

The other day while I was hanging up the laundry, I looked down and noticed an interesting eggplant-colored mushroom. My next chore was to pick up sticks from our dirty popular and decided that perhaps I should keep my eyes out for more mushrooms. About an hour later, I had discovered that our lawn had many different mushrooms growing in it. Short little capped ones, flat like pancake ones, lace-like ones, and ones with flat tops.


(I really like how we appear to be spying on the mushroom.)

P.S. I did, eventually, finish picking up sticks...

CARROTS!!!

(and a kitty)

All the Hidden, Unacknowledged Work...

...that goes on behind the walls. It is pivotal that it is (close enough to) perfect because it is something that 1) makes fitting drywall pieces easier and 2) is extremely noticeable as a flaw to the trained eye. It also takes a lot of time.

For the past month or so, Kevin has been diligently working on leveling each beam and rafter. It was a tedious task with multiple puncture wounds to his head. The room is to the point where we can add the baffles and channel that the air will flow through from being drawn from the soffits up to the ridge vent. Due to the nails poking through from the roof and the depth restriction we have, we had to be careful of how much space we used for the air flow. We wanted as much as possible to be available for insulation. Kevin engineered baffles from tongue and groove insulation board that we cut into one inch wide strips. He stuck these up with the existing nails and then reused the luan that we originally tore down from the room. Here is a picture of the process.