Skip to main content

Oh not much

Image
By Natalie
 I went back to work on the 17th so have blissfully quiet surroundings.
We started with three carpenters fixing the rot. Basically, they started on the porch and have worked their way around our house fixing any rotten wood they find. Along the way, they've found -literally - 400 lbs of squirrel nests. Squirrels ate through the crown molding and made nests in the eaves. At one point, these were fixed with metal soffits. We've replaced those with wood and are encouraging the squirrels to stay very far away from our roof and attic.
We then added to the fun a set of roofers who are working on the total restoration of our slate roof. It was not leaking, it had been patched and tweaked over the years, but it had maybe 10 yrs left on it - and those 10 yrs would be full of $1,800 repairs when slates blew off (yes), the metal flashings finally gave way (yes), and the rot from water running in at weird angles. We decided to go ahead and do it now while we still have access to the state tax credit program. Total bill for the roof should be around $95,000 of which we will get back ~$28,000 in state tax credits.
When the roof if finished the tern metal will be replaced with zinc, the lower porch roof will be zinc, and the slates will be reinstalled on all the other portions of the roof.
 
 

Oh yes, we also had some masons out to repoint the chimneys. Bricks had started falling onto the slate, birds were swooping and nesting, and there was a tree starting to grow. Imagine our surprise when they showed up Saturday to pick the mortar loose. Those were fun sounds to wake up to. 
 
Last week on most days we had 10+ people at the house working, sawing, picking their nose, etc.
 
 
And gratuitous pictures of a fat, happy, smiling baby. Margot is a darling and a half. This is from my maternity leave when the three of us (Madeline was in school) drove to Greensboro to check out their arch salvage shop. Fincastle's burgers afterwards FTW.
 
 
As it's now raining and a holiday we have some beautiful tarps over the roof. This should hopefully keep the water out until the slates are reinstalled. Hopefully. Waking up at 5am to place vessels under leaks in an attic is no fun - just ask Harris.
Labels:

Comments

  1. Mike SpringDecember 3, 2014 at 1:07 AM

    Margot is precious!!

    You seem to have 2 very similar pictures of the house, roof and ladders but one is little bit farther away (across the street maybe?)

    Again Margot is precious! Your Mom commented the other day she looks a lot like you did at that age.

    ReplyDelete
  2. NatalieDecember 3, 2014 at 9:04 AM

    It's the cheek jowls :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

reflecting, thinking about what's next

By Natalie
Reading through the blog, mainly to look at the ruin that was our house and the wee little babes that were our babies, now walking, running, yelling girls and found this from January 2016 What's left - the girls bathroom, master suite, sunroom, tile patching in 2 bathrooms, butler pantry. Summer kitchen. Landscaping. We've completed the girls bathroom, butler pantry, and landscaping. The sunroom is ALMOST finished. After living in the house with three girls we've changed plans a little bit for the remaining work. We're opting to turn what would have been mine and Harris's bedroom, closet, and bathroom into a bonus room of sorts. We'll also leave the wall there and add the washer/dryer upstairs and some desk space so the girls have a place to work. We also will build a general storage closet up there so clothing doesnt have to go up and down to the attic each season. We've also decided we need a shower upstairs, so the clawfoot that is in bad shape up
Post a Comment
Read more

Catching up

By Natalie
It's been a harder than expected winter.  Hillary losing the election has hit our family hard. Many of our friends will be hurt by the policies being put forward, our communities will be damaged, and there are kids and adults all around us sad, scared, and afraid for what this means for our county. Harris works at the Jewish Community Center - his clients, friends, and families have seen Jews be vilified, images of their children in ovens, references to the Holocaust. Jews make up less than 3% of our country. Why are you picking on them? Why are you silent when you allies seek to hurt them?  I get it, everyone disagrees about political ideas and concepts , but fundamentally, I'm not saying the religious right has no place in our society. I'm not saying that Republicans should all die and yet, the rhetoric I see from others is that immigrants don't belong here, that some people 'deserve' more than they are getting, that gay people are gross and shouldn&#
1 comment
Read more

Budget

By Natalie
Dad was asking about the budget and how we're doing so far. Initially we had a total budget of about $350k for the house. As we negotiated the purchase price up and found more information about what the house needed that budget went to a maximum of about $415k. As of today, we anticipate spending around $400k or ~$111/sqft. As a comparison, Oakwood cost us $90/sqft and we sold for $106/sqft and the new owners are doing all kinds of neat stuff we dreamed about doing. So far we're under budget in a couple of areas, within budget but ahead of schedule in some (which can also be read as over budget...) and just going to be way over in a couple of key areas. Our original plan including making a temporary kitchen that we could live with, but would be massively overhauled within a year or two. Instead we decided to do it right the first time and enjoy it the entire time. To this end, our temp budget for cabs, appliances, and counters, was initally $5,600. However, that's g
4 comments
Read more