The Upstairs Room is Done!

At long last, the upstairs room is complete! It's time to select furniture.

If you don't remember how this all started, here's the video that Briar shot of the entire house on the day that we closed. Here are a couple of shots that I clipped from the video:

There is one more thing to do upstairs but it's going to have to wait. You may (or may not) have noticed that the sashes in the double-hung windows are still unpainted. They are very easy to remove so Kristen wants to paint them in the basement. It's a bit cold just yet to be removing windows. Once things warm up a bit, we'll get going on that last step.

-JC-

Stella Update

The winds kept up until about 8pm and light snow was still falling at midnight. We've never let that much snow accumulate before but it would have been crazy to go out in the blizzard to blow snow. The distribution of the snow was very different. All of the wind created some pretty deep drifts. A few feet away, the snow would be so thin that the grass blades were sticking through.

We got out early to start clearing the snow. It was very dense and heavy and was the kind of snow that could very easily be cut into igloo building blocks. We were just getting started when our neighbor Jim yelled up from the end of the driveway "Hey Jeff! Want me to get my tractor?".

Jim has a new toy. He had a tiny, 50 year old tractor that he used to clear his driveway. It recently died. He was lamenting that down at the local coffee shop when someone offered to give him a relatively new Kubota that he wasn't using. Jim swapped him a cup of coffee for the Kubota.

Jim has a canvas barn that he wanted to use to store his new tractor. He was unhappy to discover that the door wasn't high enough. Jim built some 2 foot knee walls and then we had a literal "barn raising" while several of us lifted the barn, one side at a time, while the knee wall was moved into place and secured.

To return to the story... who were we to deprive Jim of a chance to play with his new tractor. We told him to go ahead and bring it down.

Looking out our front window at Rose Cottage across the street (the plows were going all night so that the school didn't need to have another snow day).

Driveway snow where it was piled against the door.

Looking out the garage door at the driveway.

The farmers porch. The porch is covered so this was all blown in.

We had to dig out our dryer vent. It's near the ground behind that AC compressor with all the snow on it.

Neighbor Jim to the rescue!

The wind was apparently too much for our windmill. I've brought it in but it's caked in ice. Once it thaws out, I'll have to see if it can be repaired.

The pile of snow that Jim left at the end of the driveway.

The birds have still been going nuts at the feeders. Every time I try to get a shot of them, they scatter. You can see one brilliant red cardinal in the lilac bush  in the center of the picture. We often have 4 or 5 cardinals at the feeders at the same time.

We finished the upstairs floor this afternoon. I'll post some more pictures of it once we get the baseboards installed.

-JC-

Winter Storm Stella

Stella is our first blizzard. We've had some pretty heavy snows but apparently, when the snow is accompanied by high winds, it gets classified as a blizzard (the National Weather Service defines a blizzard as a storm which contains large amounts of snow OR blowing snow, with winds in excess of 35 mph and visibilities of less than 1/4 mile for at least 3 hours).

As we've been following the forecasts this past week, the forecast has grown more severe daily. It started out as 2-4 inches and has now grown to 18-24 inches. An Arctic storm has been moving East across the Great Lakes while another storm front has been moving up the East Coast. The uncertainty had to do with where the two storms would meet. Looks like we live there.

We went for our usual morning walk this morning and were just fine with the heavy snow until we turned into the wind. That was painful.

On our morning walk. Things were just getting started.

Normally with this much snow, we'd go out a couple of times to stay ahead on the snow blowing. This storm is so intense that we're just going to let it blow itself out and then we'll deal with it. It honestly seems like the winds might be keeping the accumulation on the driveway to a minimum (blowing the driveway would probably just create a void that the wind would seek to fill).

Right now, it's snowing 2-4 inches per hour. Combine that with the snow that's being picked up and redistributed by the wind and the visibility is pretty much zero. As we look out the window, we can  see nothing at ground level. As we look up, the violently swaying trees finally come into view.

We've been working upstairs on the floor (The closet is halfway done and that will finish the job). As we look out the upstairs windows, we can see the bird feeders. It's interesting that, in this awful weather, bird feeder business is brisk. The cardinals are hanging on for dear life as the feeders swing like crazy.

Some of the local towns have declared states of emergency to keep drivers off the roads. We haven't heard that that's happened in Oakham but then the only driver that we've seen was driving the snow plow (and we've only seem him once).

Kristen has taken a few pictures that I'll add here:

Through our front storm door. There's a road out there.

Through our farmers porch storm door. Snow's really piling up.

Another through the farmers porch storm door. I think that the idea here was to get a picture of the bird feeder. I can see it but I know where to look (I definitely don't see any clinging birds.

I'll add some more pictures tomorrow when it's reasonable to go outside.

-JC-

Floor Progress

The floor is finished all the way to the North wall. Getting it in under the baseboard radiator was brutal. Next step is to move everything over onto the finished side and start working towards the South (closet) wall)

Amazingly, everything worked out in even boards all the way to the wall. The one exception was at the far corner where you can see shims holding in a tiny piece that will fill a small gap that would show beneath the baseboards.

The pieces under the baseboard radiator had to be secured with construction adhesive. One end of one board didn't want to lay flat so that pry bar (just visible at the end of the radiator) is holding it down until the adhesive dries.

-JC-

Stairs, Flooring and Pinewood Derby

We've been hard at work putting mouldings on the stairs. We wanted to get that done before doing the upstairs floors because we wanted to do most of the assembly and painting on the subfloor.

Looking at the lower flight from the kitchen.

Looking at the upper flight from the landing.

Had to get fancy where the two flights meet.

Looking down the lower flight.

Looking down the upper flight. The floor mouldings will tie into the stair mouldings.

 With that done, we were able to get going on the floor.

Getting started was a bit of a challenge. Ordinarily, you'd want to start at one wall and work across, leading with the tongue side of the tongue and groove flooring. In this case, the place that needed to be perfect was right at the top of the stairs. The two rows on the left are splined together so that we can have tongues facing in both directions. That splined, two row strip was perfectly oriented, glued down and nailed before we even started on the stair mouldings (the edge at the top of the stairs needed to be in place.

This flooring is 3/4" solid oak. One of the boxes in the pile is different because one of the boxes that Lowes delivered was damaged. We returned it and found that we had received the last of their stock before the company changed hands. We're mixing the boxes together as we install so any difference won't be an issue.

This shot is from one of the upstairs bedrooms. I was concerned about getting things to line up with this edge (nothing is quite square in a 180 year old house and this is where old construction meets new) but it seems to be fitting beautifully.

On an entirely different front, I was asked to "help" Niko and Maya build their Pinewood Derby cars this year. Grant won when he was a Cub Scout and it seems that I have a reputation.

I talked with Grant to see if he remembered what we'd done and he sent a link to a YouTube video that very scientifically examined all of the factors that can contribute to building a fast car. We used all of the tricks that were legal and Niko's car won!

Maya's car was just as fast but, since she isn't a Cub, she had to compete in the "Outlaw Division" where, so long as it fits on the track, it's legal. Next year, we may have to build her a true "Outlaw" car.

The goofy looking champion!

-JC-

More Progress Upstairs

But first, after all of the recent snow, we've had a couple of "warm" days! It actually got up to 55° F today. Last night was the first night in memory that didn't drop below freezing. The constant drip, drip, drip of the snow melt was a little bit annoying.

That's why we were surprised to see a sudden surge in activity out on frozen Long Pond today. From what we've heard, the fact that people can ice fish means that there's water down below that's warmer than 32°. A large buildup of snow on the surface of the ice insulates and allows that warmer water to melt the ice. Today should have been a dangerous day to go out on the ice. This is what we saw:

Now, back to the progress upstairs. We're working on flooring.

We bought all of the materials for our stair treads and risers. After everything was cut to size, I stained and finished the treads while Kristen painted the risers. I was ready to install but we decided to get all of the flooring material delivered and moved upstairs (we didn't want to risk damaging the stairs in the process).

The flooring is all upstairs so, today, I was able to get the treads and risers installed. I still need to trim out the sides of the stairs but it's looking pretty good.

That piece at the top (bottom of the picture) is a special piece of the 3/4" flooring that will cover the entire room.

-JC-

Winter Storm Niko

We're in the midst of the most intense snowstorm that we've experienced and just learned that the storm's name is Niko. Strangely, the ice storm that we had on Tuesday night through early yesterday was called Winter Storm Maya.

This storm started before dawn this morning and is steadily putting down 2-4 inches per hour. It's supposed to stop at about 7pm this evening. The initial forecasts called for as much as 12-14 inches but it looks like it's going to be more.

We went out at noon to clear the first foot away. The intake on the snow blower is about a foot high so letting the snow get any deeper than that could make things difficult. All the time that we were blowing snow, it continued to snow so hard that the end result looked like a driveway in need of clearing. Oh well! The idea wasn't to get a clear driveway; it was to decrease the volume of snow for the eventual clearing.

Here are some pictures:

An interesting observation: Throughout all of this snow, our bird feeders have been extremely popular. The birds must think that starvation is at hand.

The next morning (Friday):

It snowed until after dark so we decided to wait until morning to blow again. The snow was very dry and powdery and we had high winds at the end of the storm and overnight. With all of the drifting, it's hard to say how much we had overall. In some places, it was a couple of feet deep but we only had another 6" or so to clear off the driveway (after clearing a foot yesterday).

It was 3° F this morning with a windchill that made it feel like -17°. Clearing the driveway was painful and we decided to forgo our morning walk. I'm going to have to invest in some new gloves with pockets for hand warmers.

Here are some post storm pictures:

I thought that it was interesting to see how little snow was on the front slope of the roof. The light powder and high winds kind of took care of it.

It's been clear all day but we're supposed to get 3-4 more inches of snow tonight and another 8" on Sunday.

-JC-