Beebe -- our 1935 Bungalow on Baker Street.

[awomanwithahammer]

Doesn't she have a blog? I've looked for a link to it but haven't found one.

[1918ColonialRevival]

According to her profile, she was last online this past Thursday. Hopefully she's just busy and "life got in the way", as the saying goes. It's happened that way to me for the better part of 10 years.

[Lily left the valley]

I do not envy you! We are dealing with single digits and teens and no snow, and it's awful. I hate winter. Our bedroom was an addition, and although there are two vents in there, it's still the coldest room in the house. We've sealed up the foundation vents, insulated the floor and put a vapor barrier in the crawl space, and you can still feel a draft coming up under the covers at night.

The good news is that the rope caulk in the windows made a WORLD of difference in drafts. I used it not only to seal the seams, but also where glazing had clean fallen off. It was nice to not hear the windows rattle. It got to the point where I could "feel" if I'd missed a window due to the now noticebale draft. I did find out a month or so ago when I posted about using rope caulk that apparently it's not much more earth friendly than silicon caulk due to titanium something or other most rope caulk brands use. I need to go back and read that reply at some point to learn more one way or the other.

There was still a noticeable difference between the first and second floors, although overall the second floor was at least closer in "feel" temperature wise. The thermometer I have in the room with no radiator typically registered about 50°F, though we had a few 40° nights when it was - whatever outside. The other rooms were no where near that cold, but it was something I was keeping tabs on even though there's no plumbing in that room. The one closet interior does sort of back up against the half bath very slightly, but didn't seem to affect the rad or sink plumbing much.

Oh...I did realize I don't remember when that apparently I had shut off one of the rads (I think when I was planning on cleaning the release valves), and boy did I feel like an idiot when I realized why it wasn't heating up.

[Lily left the valley]

4) There is currently no way to get 2x8 anything up the tiny access hatch. We'd have to wait until we repair the roof to get anything that big up there--from above. I could rip them down even further...but...no funds for the ply anyhoo, and next year we'd just be covering it with the second layer to reach the R50 whatever the magic # is, I'm a bit too tired to recall.

Have you considered enlarging the access hole? You can only go so far between rafters, but you could probably lengthen it.

The access hole is currently in the hall linen closet. So, yes, we have considered it, but there's only so much we can do before we'd breach another room one way or the other. We're still on the fence about moving the access entirely.

[Lily left the valley]

I've been wondering the same thing--been worried about you, Lily!

Lily....Where are you? Hope everything is ok and that you're just busy working on the house! (And not accidentally locked up in the attic!!)

Yes same. I keep thinking where is Lily? I'm hoping she's just busy but It's not like her not to post in such a long time.
Phil

According to her profile, she was last online this past Thursday. Hopefully she's just busy and "life got in the way", as the saying goes. It's happened that way to me for the better part of 10 years.

This winter presented some challenges, and Rev hit the nail on the head---life got in the way of being more productive. We weathered it, but we're still struggling a bit because funds are still low, and I'm still playing alot of catch up as part of what got in the way was my masochistic tango with a particularly clingy flu for weeks on end, and not being much use for anything.

Slowly limping back on track to at least catching up on replies to my posts, then hopefully I'll gain some steam in a few weeks to catch up on reading in general here and being more of my usual posting self.

I really appreciate how much this community minds its folks. In addition to your wonderings, I also had some fretful PMs awaiting me when I finally said "THAT'S IT! I'm at least going to do X much on the District today."

Yer all awesome!


And in the latest news, as in the past two days, I am now learning more and refreshing my memory about sump pits and sump pumps than I ever wanted to, as ours just decided to quit right as the snow started power melting and we've been having actual rain again. No flooding yet--thank goodness! Still, one more thing to juggle.

I do want to point out that what everyone said, about trying to be patient and listen to the house the first year really helped me not feel guilty about not getting more done, as well as lifted some mental stress for both of us when spare funds dried up much sooner than planned.

[Lily left the valley]

Doesn't she have a blog? I've looked for a link to it but haven't found one.

Oh...right! Before I forget, I do sort of want to be blogging, but, that darn not enough spare time thing.

I did start back up with one of my hobbies (gaming related) last month, which I had to get a blog for image hosting (it was the cheapest most reliable option). It's...well, it's hard to define, but it's a mostly role play character POV written weekly newspaper about living in Middle-earth by those who play LOTRO on a specific server. Some articles are out of character because they address news about the game company and such. I'm not the only writer, but sadly I am the only person who can lay it out. So that was actually on hiatus for an even longer while because of stupid Photobucket's change-with-no-warning last year (and house stuff, but Photobucket was my biggest headache because I had to research new hosts, debate with spouse about sparing the funds for a hobby, and so many links to replace in the forum where I posted the paper. I'm still behind on that too even after I got it rolling again, but getting caught up slowly, as I am here.

I did also finally make my first post today on a garden focused blog that's one of the handful of blogs I've been wanting to do. If I post once a month on that, I'll be thrilled to death.

I thought about another once a week or every two weeks blog about Beebe, but...only so many hours in the day, even if such things help relieve stress.

[Deb]

There she is!!!! Been worried about you! So sorry that you've been sick. Hopefully you're on the mend now. I only got bits and pieces done this winter, not nearly what I had planned, but Spring has FINALLY sprung here and I am ready to start checking things off my list. Hang in there Lily! We knew going into this that an old house isn't an overnight project. Sometimes we need the little breaks to renew our energy.

[Lily left the valley]

There she is!!!! Been worried about you! So sorry that you've been sick. Hopefully you're on the mend now. I only got bits and pieces done this winter, not nearly what I had planned, but Spring has FINALLY sprung here and I am ready to start checking things off my list. Hang in there Lily! We knew going into this that an old house isn't an overnight project. Sometimes we need the little breaks to renew our energy.

I always have to be careful because when a bug moves into my lungs, bronchitis isn't far off for me, and then I really have to be careful not to let it digress into pneumonia.

Despite knowing there wasn't really much more I could do, I still feel like a lazy bum about what didn't get done/finished. It's frustrating, but I don't have a time machine, so I have to let it go and move forward.

Yes, the knowledge that it's a marathon, not a sprint is one thing that helped me not lose my mind some days. (BEIGE! SO MUCH BEIGE! When can I paint over this awful BEIGE?!?! )

Speaking of beige, I did get one fevered idea that since they did such a craptastic job prepping the walls for the "For Sale" paint, maybe I can just get a bucket and warm water and wash off the beige. I know there's a nifty green in the dining room at least, and possibly one bathroom. I'm planning to do a test patch tomorrow behind a piece of furniture to see how that goes.

I did do a lot of research and reading of old house and food forest/permiculture relevant books though! So there's that. I still need to finish reorganizing my browser bookmarks, because what a hot mess. I had finally imported my old bookmarks from when I was still using IE, and I was too cold med numb to bother with building categories, so now I have this huge list I'm slowly parsing out into relevant folders to make things easier to find later. Also, found out that nothing make you feel dumber than realizing you've bookmarked something twice when you find the original buried in an imported folder.

Now that most of the snow is gone, even though a dusting may be coming, I am itching to get outdoors. So many oak leaves, crying out to be crinkled up and put into their own compost pile.

Oh, and the weirdest thing happened tonight...the sump pump kicked in out of the blue. I had barely started anything on that, just tossed in some vinegared water and pulled up the pump a few times to get an idea of how deep the muck might be. Maybe the float got unstuck or something when I was trying to see what was what. I'm still wanting it to dry up a bit more before I put the shop vac to work and give the pit a true cleaning.

Also organization related, I am starting my "To Do" wall anew, and if we get a lot more snow than they predicted, fixing at least another burner on our stove is a huge priority. If I can fix the connectors to get the oven part working as well, I'll be dancing in my kitchen.

[Lily left the valley]

Oh, and I just realized as I'm heading to bed that I totally forgot to mention a few things we got (free!) during my absence. I'll get into that more later, but my prize from those was an older--not the plastic laden "older"--Craftsman table saw, gained from a couple that are downsizing (and one of the houses Sean delivers to--we had some good laughs about that.)

It's still in the garage because we picked it up soon after one of the last bigger snow dumps so there was no way we were going to slog through knee+ high snow to take in through the cellar entrance.

But wooo! Oh, and did I mention the sump pump is behaving? I did? Well...it still is.

I'll post a pic later of the table saw when I remember...

[Willa]

Hey Lily - I'm glad that you're back. Folks were starting to worry !