What I do when I'm not house blogging…

Since a wee bit of time has past since my last update, here's a quick run down of what's been happening lately:

STORMS/SCREENS
I picked up four storm and screen sets for the back of the house from Adams Architectural. They came already primed and I painted the screens and mounted them. I need to get moving on doing the storms.


BACK PORCH
I finished painting around the back door and the inside of the roof of the back porch.




Since I had to take the screen door off to complete the trim, I finished varnishing the wooden screen door at the same time.


I took down the back porch light, stripped off the paint and polished it a bit with 0000 steel wool. I then gave it a light coating of Neat's Foot Oil and put it back up.


I also did another Bondo Job on the porch barge board. I've now got it painted but won't get any further this fall probably.


SALVAGE
I rescued a ton of straight vertical grain fir flooring from a job another house renovator was doing. This floor was salvaged by Friends of Historic Preservation (more on them later) last summer. These boards were all sold for an interior restoration, and some were rejected by the floor installers. I will use them to repair my damaged back porch floor and perhaps a future extension of the porch.



I also picked up three A& C tapered columns at a salvage place in Davenport. My long term goal is to use these (and build a fourth to match it) in a pergola in the back yard that will be adjacent to the fish pond that we will begin restoring next summer.


The floor and columns are currently residing in a secret location, known as the fortress of solitude…

HISTORIC PRESERVATION

As the current president of Friends of Historic Preservation I made a whirlwind trip up to St. Paul last week (along with the chair of the Iowa City Historic Preservation Comission, Tim Weitzel and Iowa City mayor pro tem, Regenia Bailey). We went to receive an Honor Award given by the National Trust for Historic Preservation at their National Preservation Awards Ceremony in the Fitzgerald Theater (home of Prairie Home Companion). We were recognized for the public/private partnership that responded to the April 13, 2006 tornado that damaged three historic districts and two conservation districts in Iowa City. Sadly due to schedule conflicts we literally drove up, got the award, and drove home. I would have loved to have an opportunity to visit Twin City bloggers, who I regularly read especially Stucco House and Bungalow 23. Damn.

Other Things

We got another school year off to a good start, we have over 100 new teachers to the district, including 50 new to the profession teachers. This along with planning for a new student information system next year has kept me hopping.

The Fiddler’s Picnic was glorious this year. Once again, older daughter and I played together, this was the first time that we’d had a duet with her on the fiddle:


Since younger daughter was 5 years old, she made her debut on the ukulele:


As you can see things have been busy, but I promise not to wait so long for another update.