The Week in Review

I've been juggling several projects at once so here is a quick rundown:

Painting in back- I started under the eaves. I've been scraping loose stuff, sanding and painting. Here's how it looked at the end of Monday, you can see that the last two rafters are painted a darker color:


And here's where I was by Thursday:


To give a better idea of how it looks:


It rained buckets on Thursday. From Thursday 8:00 AM to Friday 8:00 AM we got 5.1 inches of rain. Most of it fell Thursday night. Therefore I decided to work inside on Friday and put up the border paper in the living room. This border matches the dining room.

Here is the first piece next to the chimney:


And roughly the same area when I was finished:


We rearranged the living room into a "Summer setting." We put the small couch up in front of the fireplace and moved the chair away from the fireplace. It makes a nice change of pace.

Another thing going on last week was a new water main. The city dug a big hole at the top of the street and a bigger one at the bottom. In between they dug 8 "observation holes." All of this is happened on the other side of the street. The new main will run under the sidewalk (we don't have a sidewalk on our side of the street) Here is a view down the street from in front of our place:


You can see four of the holes as outlined in orange fencing. They dug the line with a horizontal bore, just like we did our geothermal system. The drill rig was at the top of the street and they went all the way to the bottom (3 blocks) in a little over one day. When the bore was finished they threaded the pipe in from the bottom by pulling it through as the bore was pulled back to the top. Very slick. Here is a shot of them working across the street while threading the main:


Eventually when the main is ready they will then bore under the street at each house to hook up our side.

The last thing I've been working on hasn't been as successful, yet. I need to level a space for the girls' swimming pool. This is a big inflatable thing that is 12 feet in diameter. Last year we put it up on uneven ground (there is no where in our yard that is that big AND flat. So last week I worked to level a space. It has turned into digging down, laying paving brick and limestone that it looks like I'll salvage from our old house. The current owners changed the back patio and asked if I wanted the stone left over that they removed. Being the scrounge I am, of course I said yes. So what I have now is a 13.5 x 15 foot oval that is nearly level on the outside but needs to be filled in with stones and dirt. With any luck I'll have this thing finished the week before school starts again...