Phutu...or is it?

2/27/2003 It rained last night...pretty hard right as I was trying to get to sleep. On top of that I seem to either have a really bad bit of allergies or I have a cold. I think I'm leaning toward cold since allergies only give me a sore throat from sneezing excessively, which I haven't been doing. The rain patters...or maybe whacks down on the skylight in our bedroom sounding like a snare drum at times. I had a noise control consultant come and look at the house a few days ago. He was a weird guy, but he gave me some good information. Unfortunately it's gonna cost a lot to replace the skylights...installed he said they would be around $1700 each, which I find to be absolutely ridiculous. Dory thinks that I should have it done professionally, but I am inclined to buy the skylights for $300 each and put them in myself. The only, actually one, of the hitches is that the roof is so steep and the dropoff on that side so high, that I have a bit of trepidation about being up there. I would have to build myself a rig to stand on and make or buy a safety harness....which I assume I would attach to the chimney on the other side of the roof with a rope. Any advice from people with rock climbing experience out there?

2/25/2003 I spent most of the weekend working on the house and a little on the garden. My neighbor Shane gave me a little demo on drywall mudding and I went to town on it. Kudos to him also for lending me a few tools and for telling me about Fix-It-All, a miraculous little compound that seems to do very well at filling the gaps between the old plaster and the new drywall. It sets up nicely and quickly so that all I have to do is sand it and then I can put drywall joint compound and tape over the top with no problems. Nevertheless, I am beginning to think that no matter what I do to the walls and ceiling they won't look perfect. There are a lot of little imperfections that predate my involvement, and I would have to remove all of the ceiling to solve the problem for good. Of course I guess that that is part of the "charm" of an older house. Or maybe the real estate agents would call it character. You can make anything sound good these days. I'm trying to think of a witty example, but I'm too tired at the moment. My neck really hurts, and my shoulders are sore. I'm pretty sure it's because I was doing a lot of work on the ceiling.

I included in the photos the "after" photo of the rear interim deck. It's not too impressive, but it'll work until I can rip off the rear porch and put up the new permanent deck.

I find that I can't work on the house exclusively for the entire weekend. So I did some gardening to break up the plastering monotony. I trimmed a couple of my bonsai and did a little landscaping in the front yard. A little trip to the local lumber/hardscaping yard brought me to the conclusion that rocks are entirely too expensive. I mean really, when you go to by a rock, it should be a couple dollars...not more. I have bought rocks twice now for the garden, and I am starting to wish that Santa would leave me rocks in my stocking at Christmas because they can be damn expensive.

2/18/2003
2/15/2003
1/31/2003
1/21/2003
12/18/2002

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