books?

I'm a little behind things these days, having been preoccupied with our ongoing renovation. But I've learned that Joyce Godsey has been busy creating a blog linked to the Bibliophile newsgroup, as well as one of her own. She was nice enough to link to Casa Malaprop, which will surely result in at leat one person clicking through, only to ask, "what the heck does this have to do with books?". To be honest, lately, not much. But until our recent complete emersion into the world of Home Depot and This Old House, Casa Malaprop was a place for my general thoughts on things mostly book related, with a occasional left turns to food and drink topics. Here's a promise to get back on track with more books news, reports on reading and the general fads and foibles of the books dealing world. Thanks for looking in the meantime.

The living room / dining room nexus. 

Finally! something in the house that smells good - melting chocolate. 

Samantha takes the appliances out for a test drive. Brownies on the way! 

Samantha's been busy painting the floors. She grew tired of the white walls, so we've gone far in the other direction with the floors.  

Raleigh in the living room. 

Finally got the stove hooked up and operational, with the new hood and squirrel proof vent on the outside. 

it's amazing what some paint can do - dining room china cabinet. thanks to Bud and Dennis. 

Dave routs the hole for the sink. 

the first set of cabinets, with drawers and doors. 

Raleigh in the snow. 

Still needs work. 

Lights on the garage barn. 

an open barn door. 

A bit of snow. 

Samantha's wood pile. The stacks are about six feet high. 

Two diagonal suppoprts - one in the foreground and one in the background. 

The rotten and cracked supprt beam. 

The new suppoprt beam. 

some words for a change

It’s been a long time since I blogged here with anything but pictures. But time has been lacking and my mind hasn’t been able to handle much but the picture uploads. We’ve had the house now for more than three months, and we’re pushing hard to be in before the first of the New Year, which is less than 30 days away. Yikes.

As I write this sheet rock is finally going up in the kitchen, after waiting for what seemed like years to get the electrician back in and a sheetrock contractor lined up. As soon as the room is rocked and taped, Dave can bring in the cabinets and counters. Immediately following will be the appliances, so we’ll need to get the plumber and electrician back in to do hook ups. It’ll come together really quickly now.

This week Dave came over with two 14 foot hemlock beams, each 6x8 inches and heavy with sap, as they were just cut the week before. One of these beams is now holding up a corner of the first (and oldest) barn, replacing a rotten quick fix done by a previous owner. The other beam has been turned into numerous posts (pudgins) holding that beam and others in place. The barn is held together by compression, so it has no nails or screws attaching the beams and supports to each other. It’s a beautiful piece of engineering when you get to know it better. To put in the new beam, it was necessary to jack up a large piece of the barn as much as four or five inches. A number of six-ton jacks did the job, and let the building down gently onto its new members. Some new diagonal pieces shoved the building a bit toward the house, where it needs to go. There are great plans for this barn in the future, do providing this firmer structure was a good start.

Bud came by again yesterday, and we worked a bit on preparing the kitchen walls for the sheetrock. We went so far a to put up a piece of the ceiling – mostly just to say we had done some of it. While Bud and I were inside fussing over details like insulation and the even surface of the framing, Samantha was outside throwing our woodpile into the barn. She was worried the snow would soon bury the wood that remained outside, and the barn’s previous structural issue kept us from tossing the wood inside. But now with a strong barn floor she tossed two cords of wood through the side door, and before I knew it had stacked it beautifully inside. Wow!