Category Archives: home improvements

Bible study, home improvements

Not A Normal Week

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The damaged area in the living room, after the built-ins were removed.

Last weekend, the closer it got to Monday, I knew it wasn’t going to be a normal week.

First of all, it was a week with no appointments outside the house. Lately it seems that every week has something: one of my writing groups meetings, a doctor appointment, something. No, wait, I did have one appointment. Monday night was supposed to be a dinner meeting for Life Group teachers at church. But the weekend forecasts for Monday said the day would start out icy. Sunday evening I was pretty sure it would be cancelled. Sure enough, it was. So a week with no appointments.

But I knew it would be a busy week, because, after much delay, contractors were scheduled to be at our house. One contractor was to replace our gutters. The other was to do remediation work on places on the house that have water damage. The house is about 38 years old. We’ve lived here for 22 of those years. We have done nothing much to it.

Great precautions taken to contain any mold or other contamination.

Last October we had a contractor replace the flooring and railings of our upper deck. That revealed some damage to the doors to the deck, more on the doorframes. We got to looking around and saw damage at another place, inside the house wall adjacent the deck. I also knew that some damage had occurred on the other side of the house, in a void space off the master bathroom.

I called out a mold detection specialist. He found a little mold, and a little moisture where there shouldn’t be any, but not any big problems. Still, it was enough things found that he recommended we get a remediation contractor to address three areas.

First, I checked with my homeowner’s insurance company. They sent a man out and he assessed it. A couple of days later I got the answer: long-term damage, not an insurable loss. Whatever this cost, I was going to have to pay for it myself. Off to find a contractor.

I had a little trouble finding a contractor who could do the work. One came by and assessed it, but I didn’t hear from him for another week. I finally reached out to him. He said he didn’t think he would be able to fit me in with his workload. I resisted saying, “It would have been nice if you’d called me a few days ago.”

Meanwhile, the guttering contractor was having trouble with his equipment. After many calls and texts to him, he pushed the schedule for his work out into January.

I found another remediation contractor, who came out to assess. I actually liked him better than the first. He saw things the first hadn’t, and was able to explain things to me in a way I understood. I told him he had the job. But it was now just a week or two before Christmas. He told me he should be able to start mid-January.

Let me fast forward through Christmas, our week-long trip to Lake Jackson, Texas, and two modest snow storms in the midst of a week of single digit temperatures. The guttering man gave me a date, had to move it a little due to weather. Now he is scheduled to be here Tuesday the 24th (I’m writing this on the 23rd).

Meanwhile, the remediation arrived here Monday the 22nd, a little late in the day due to morning icing. The three-man crew got to work on the damage area in the living room. The removed the build-in bookcase, removed obviously damaged sheetrock, and built a containment area. The next day they did the same in the master bathroom. In both cases, it appears they found the source of the water, and have a plan to stop it plus repair the areas. One will be fairly easy, the other difficult.

I’m not happy about the money I’m spending. But when a house approaches four decades old, I suppose you have to expect to spend some money to keep it in good repair. Yes, I hate to spend the money, but am happy to finally have answers and a good start on corrective measures. A good part of this is the plumber (who needs to repair one area), and a roofing inspector (to check out two areas) have been coordinated by the remediation contractor.

But the week has also been not normal was because of the writing I got done. On Monday the 22nd, I began work on Part 8 of my Bible study, A Walk Through Holy Week. My co-teacher and me will begin teaching this on Feb 4, and I wanted to get ahead of this. Each chapter is divided into seven sections. On a normal day for previous volumes, I have been completing an average of 1 1/2 sections per day.

But Monday, I wrote three sections in just my normal amount of writing time. Tuesday I completed another three sections. This is an amazing production. They need editing, of course, but that is a great start—even as I got the contractor started, occasionally interacted with him, and listened to his sawing and other activities. At the end of Tuesday, I was amazed at the progress. That will allow me to finish the chapter on Wednesday as well as get back to publishing the first volume in the series.

It’s now Tuesday evening, and I’m writing this for Friday posting. Hopefully I’ll find time to edit this before then to fill in what happened on Wednesday and Thursday. But even without that, I can confidently say it has not been a normal week.

And I guess that’s a good thing.

Update, Thursday evening: Work inside on the damaged areas has taken place every day. Our master bathroom is closed off from us, the counter removed, some of the cabinetry removed, and more holes cut in the diagonal wall. The good news is that the water damage appears mostly confined to the dead air space behind the diagonal wall. The floorboards there are rotted and will need to be replaced. They don’t yet know about the framing—some of the bottom framing may need to be replaced. But the lateral extent of the water damage is contained, and that’s a good thing.

So things are progressing, a little slowly perhaps, but progressing. I hope the plumber comes tomorrow to check out the leak source. The repair man is supposed to be here Monday to review everything and give an estimate for all the putting-it-back-together costs.

Is it money well-spent? Darned if I know. No, I suppose I do know it’s well spent. When we sell our house in our future downsizing, we will have an easier time of it.

American Colonial History, Bible study, family, Health, home improvements, non-fiction, self-publishing, Writing

2023 Recap

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It may not be selling, but at least my grandkids are reading it and seem to like it.

2023 was a strange year for writing. In some ways my output doesn’t seem very significant. But, then, the year brought many other things that pried me away from writing. We made six trips for family matters, Lynda had her heart irregularities leading to a pacemaker implant, home improvements led to the discovery of water damage that is taking much time to arrange for contractors to begin repairs.

Yet, I think I made some progress. Let’s see how it stacks up against the goals I published on January 6, 2023.

  • Edit and publish The Key To Time Travel. Yes, I got this done. Publication was in June.
  • Determine the structure of the overall A Walk Through Holy Week Bible study series, and whether it will be six parts or seven. It’s being taught in six parts over six Lent/Easter seasons, but I’m thinking it’s better as seven parts in books. I completed this, sometime in late spring. I settled on eight volumes rather than six or seven. All volumes are planned out and all chapters named.
  • Finish/edit Part 4 (what may become Part 5) of AWTHW. Finished this, and it’s now on hold, waiting for earlier volumes to be finished and published.
  • Finish/edit Part 3 (what may become Part 4) of AWTHW. Finished this (didn’t actually have much left to do on it), and it’s now on hold, waiting for earlier volumes to be finished and published.
  • Write Part 5 (what may become Part 6) of AWTHW, simultaneously with teaching it. I’m pleased to say I finished this. It actually became Part 7 in the restructured series. It was done a couple of weeks before the last class.
  • Start Part 1 of AWTHW, after determining the overall structure, of course. Not only did I start it, but I finished it and made one editing pass through it. Two more passes and it will be ready to publish.
  • Depending on how work on this goes, publish some or all of the completed parts of the study. I decided to hold off publishing volumes out of sequence, so all the complete volumes are waiting for Volumes 1, 2, and 3 to be published.
  • So far this has not found an audience on Kindle Vella. All 32 episodes have been published.

    Start writing the next book in the Documenting America series. It will cover the years 1761 to 1775 and is tentatively titled Run-up To Revolution. Yes, I finished this. I decided to publish it to Kindle Vella, chapter by chapter. In hindsight that was not a good decision, as it has not attracted a readership.

  • One other item, which is non-commercial but which will be a book, is to start transcribing the letters from our years in Saudi Arabia (1981-1983). I don’t think this is something that I can finish in one year, given that it will be fill-in work when I have nothing else to do, but I’d like to at least start it. I’ll wait to start it, however, until I get a few more disaccumulation items done. No, I didn’t do this. The work of disaccumulation proved to be more time-consuming than expected. I made major progress on it, but I’m still a long way from done.

So all in all, I published only two items: one book, one book in serial format. Given the distractions, maybe that’s not too bad. And I did get a lot of writing done, even though it’s not yet published.

Time now to set some goals for 2024. That will be in my next post.

Bible study, Christmas, home improvements, miscellaneous

A Quiet Christmas

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A blessed Christmas to everyone.

After having had a busy, family-full Thanksgiving week, it’s going to be a quiet Christmas at Blackberry Oaks. Lynda and I will be here alone.

That’s fine with both of us. If yesterday is any indication, we aren’t as able to do a lot as we used to be. I started my day at 6:00 a.m. after a great night’s sleep. I was in The Dungeon by 6:15. I edited the last two chapters of A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 1: To Jerusalem. That was the only writing task I had for the day, so I moved on to other things, mainly looking for a lost box of letters. I looked for that yesterday so I could file one stray letter, but I couldn’t find it.

This morning I widened my search in the storeroom, and found it in a place I hadn’t looked yesterday. In that process, I saw four boxes labeled “travel items.” They were boxes of travel brochures we had picked up over the years and, rather than go through them and decide what to keep, what to discard, I just shoved everything into boxes to go through them in the future.

The future came yesterday. I went through the boxes, pulled out everything that wasn’t worth saving, and consolidated the rest into two boxes. That allowed me to do some rearranging of the shelves, including temporary repairs to one shelf. Then it was time for me to make the weekly grocery run. Then back to The Dungeon after lunch, for miscellaneous computer tasks, along with finishing the clean up from the morning’s work in the storeroom.

When I came upstairs around 3:00 p.m., I went straight to the sunroom with my last coffee of the day, hoping to read five to ten pages in The Confessions of Stain Augustine. Instead, I promptly fell asleep. I could read only two pages, as my mind and body conspired against reading retention.

We had planned to make lace cookies in the afternoon, but neither of us had the energy. Hopefully tomorrow.

But the day was productive. One editing pass done through a book finished last week. The clutter reduced a little more. The pantry and fridge adequately stocked. A good afternoon nap for both of us. We’ll get those cookies done tomorrow.

My next blogging day is Monday, Christmas day. I don’t expect many people to be tuning in then, so will say Merry Christmas now. May God bless you on the day we celebrate Jesus’s birth.

Carlyle, family, holidays, home improvements, The Forest Throne

This Piece of the Universe, This Section of Eternity

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Games were on the schedule over Thanksgiving week.

Oops! I didn’t make a post on Friday, the first time in a long time to totally miss a day. I’ve been late a few times, but I didn’t even think of the blog.

What captured my attention? Family. Our daughter, son-in-law, and their four children came in Monday evening and left on Saturday. Our son and his husband came in on Wednesday, delayed a day due to airplane troubles. We had the normal Thanksgiving meal on Thursday, followed by a 1.6 mile hike on a trail loop near us (part of the route is on city streets).

I call this puzzling behavior.

Some of us put together a 1,000 piece puzzle. Some played games. We had other meals and conversation. Once I got up early to get grandson #1, Ephraim, out on his run on our semi-rural streets. Two other times I drove him to a track in Bentonville, where he ran timed miles. The first time he equaled his personal best. The second time he beat that by about 7 seconds, setting a new personal best.

The 2009 photo.

With #2 grandson, Ezra, I drove to the airport on Wednesday to pick up our son and his husband. That gave us some time to talk. He also helped me work in the yard on Tuesday. He and a friend of mine about his age, Liam, helped me move some large logs, both cut and deadfall, and cut out some wild thorn bushes that encroach on the blackberries. He earned his money. I also had him doing some leaf blowing, which he seemed to enjoy.

The 2019 photo.

With granddaughter, Elise, I had a lot of conversation. We worked together on the plot of the next book in The Forest Throne series. This will feature the one daughter in the Wagner family, Elizabeth. Elise and I worked out a prologue and discussed various plot lines. Tomorrow I will put some of those into a word document, filed away for writing a couple of books from now.

The 2023 photo, perhaps never to be done again.

With my youngest grandson, Elijah, I had a good time with a little roughhousing. We read together, and I gave him his first word exercise, now that he’s in 1st grade. He’s still a lot of fun, and wanted to work in the yard like others did. Almost all the baby toys we had for the kids are too young for him (and obviously the others), so I’ll be getting rid of them.

In the late evenings, after the games, puzzles, or whatever, we watched back episodes of Shark Tank. The three youngest kids seemed to enjoy it a lot, as did some of the adults. Mornings started with 30 minutes of reading. Ezra chose The Fellowship of the Ring, which is certainly a challenge for anyone, let alone a 12-year-old.

Saturday morning, as our daughter’s family were soon to leave, I remembered we had not yet recreated the photo from 2019 of me and all four kids. We shot that photo because at that time, a popular Facebook activity was to post photo comparisons from 2009 and 2019, ten years later. In 2009, I was on the floor reading to Ephraim, who was our only grandchild at the time. So we did a posed shot of me and the four grandkids on the floor. We wanted to do that again, and we just did fit it in before the trip was over. This is likely the last time we will ever get to do that shot.

Saturday, once our daughter’s family was gone, we had a quiet day with our son (his husband having left on Friday for business). We watched a couple of movies, ate leftovers for lunch, read, and went out for a simple dinner. An early morning airport run on roads we expected to have some frozen stuff on them turned out to be easy. Came home, rested, went to church to an excellent worship service.

Yesterday. I got back into reading Thomas Carlyle’s letters. He was visiting places in his native Scotland. In a letter he named the place he was at and said that this place was a piece of the universe and the time of his visit was a section of eternity. The place and time, “is very beautiful; doubly beautiful to me whose head has long simmered half-mad with brick wildernesses, dust, smoke, and loud-roaring confusion that meant little.”

That’s kind of how I feel. The last week, Thanksgiving, was doubly beautiful for taking me out of my routines. Today I’ll be back at it: writing in the Bible study in progress, trading stocks, doing housework. But last week will always be doubly beautiful, and I will think about it for a long time.

Bible study, books, critique group, family, home improvements, Magazines

Getting Rid of Some Books

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This was an okay book, not great. Not sure of its truth. Will never read it again, so it’s gone, today added to the sale/donation pile.

Our efforts at dis-accumulating continue. Perhaps not as fast as needed to do a downsizing in this decade, but we make a little progress. The last month has seen the old postcard collection acquired in the mid-1980s, having been left behind in the house we bought, for $115. But the buyer wanted me to ship it to Houston and so didn’t want the small, steel cabinet. I was able to sell that for an extra $10.

Then Lynda decided she was willing to part with the Gulf War memorabilia she brought back from Kuwait in 1991. They were supposedly Iraqi items. I listed them on Facebook Marketplace, not being sure they would sell. After one price reduction, a mom contacted me. She wanted them for her son (maybe a teenager), who loves military stuff. We were able to arrange a transfer that was convenient to both of us.

But really, the big thing we need to part with is books. For a bookiphile, that’s like cutting your wrist. But we have to do it. Despite the number of books we’ve gotten rid of, we still have at least 2,000 books in the house. I gave one away at writer’s critique group last week.

One book obviously isn’t much; we need to do more. In our living room is a built-in bookcase.  We are going to have to dismantle this to repair some water damage that appears to be from improperly installed flashing around the chimney. We have already removed some books from the lower shelves and piled them, to prevent them from being damaged and allow the bookcase to dry from a little moisture found.

As Lynda and I discussed it, she suggested that we get rid of a series of Bible study books that are shelved on that built-in. We went through one of those books together, and started a second. They aren’t bad books. I learned something from them. But when you have 2,000 books, and need to unload at least a thousand, I agreed with her to put those in the sale/donation pile.

I then suggested we also get rid of two books from the built-ins, the two books in The Bible Code series. We read these aloud together. They are an easy read because the books are not long, are well-written, and have lots of illustrations of where the Bible may have a code in the books of Moses. I say “may have” because, while the writer makes a good case, I’m not fully convinced it’s true.

At first Lynda balked. She was more accepting of the Bible code than I was and thought more of the books than I did. But then she agreed with me that we read the books, got something from them, and with all the other books in the house we were unlikely to read them ever again. So she agreed to get rid of them. I’ll move them out tomorrow.

I also have a fairly large set of magazines about World War 2 that I got from my dad. I had intended to read them, but it looks as if I never will. I have them listed on Marketplace and lowered the price twice. I think I’ll do so again and see if they will sell. Also on the getting-rid-of-block is my collection of WW2 history books. They are all good. If I had a shortage of books I would probably read all of them again. But, with a book surplus and a shortage of years ahead, I think they will also go up for sale.

Six Bible studies, two Bible codes are a long way from 1,000 books. A good sized box of magazines, and perhaps ten war books are not much. But it’s a start. I’m hoping over Thanksgiving, when our children are here, we will be able to take some time to go through a few things and, with their encouragement, get rid of some things we haven’t done anything with since the 1970s through 1990s.

And that will be a good start.

Bible study, construction, critique group, family, home improvements

Grinding, Part 2

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In my last post, I wrote about how I was grinding through a bunch of tasks, and, to keep them all straight, I needed a to-do list.  I’m in The Dungeon right now, writing this, and I don’t my current to-do list with me, so I’m starting a new one.

I do these on a long, narrow note pad that we’ve had for years. I found this pad in the desk in The Dungeon, something that isn’t used too much. I was given to us when we bought our house in Bentonville in 1991. Time to use it up I would say. It’s perfect for to-do lists.

As far as what got done from the last to-do list:

  • Flu shots.
  • Heard back from two contractors. One gave me a little more information on his schedule, moving the work out some. The other apologized for not getting me an estimate yet and established a date when he would. I would have to say, I feel a little better about contractors today.
  • Got my hair cut.
  • Continued to write in my current work-in-progress, A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 1. I should finish a chapter today, putting me at 70 percent finished with the first draft. That puts me a little behind where I hoped to be by this time, but I’m not unhappy with my progress.
  • Got some filing done, though I have much more of that to do.
  • Attended my writers’ critique group last night. A good meeting; I might blog about it next.
  • Have started getting things together for Thanksgiving.

And Thanksgiving will dominate my next to-do list, which I started by interrupting writing this. Lots to do in terms of cleaning and organizing. Also buying in some groceries. I’m trying to plan our meals so that we get to Monday night’s supper, the last we will have alone, finishing the last prepared item.

It will be a good Thanksgiving, with both of our children, their spouses, and all our grandchildren here. It may also be the last family gathering at our house for a while, as henceforth we might shift these to our daughter’s house.

So carry on, everyone. My wishes to out to you, a bit early, for a happy Thanksgiving.

family, Genealogy, home improvements, miscellaneous

Grinding

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Dateline: Sunday, 12 Nov 2023

From time to time, life gets so busy that I fall back to a habit that served me well in my engineering career: making a to-do list. Not that my days are really so busy that I miss deadlines, doctor appointments, club meetings, etc. Those are relatively few in number, and easily remembered—at least those happening in the next month are.

But as I look around the house, I see lots of things that need doing. Some are small things, but they pile up. It is a needed task to clean up as much as I can before company comes Thanksgiving week. Here in The Dungeon, if I look over to the left, the worktable with our printer has piles of papers. The biggest pile is scrap paper, being kept for printing drafts of my writing for proofreading or critiques. It’s ugly, but it’s going to stay. Next to it is a notebook of genealogy files that I’m slowly scanning and saving to the cloud so that I can get rid of the paper. Also on that table are a few miscellaneous papers that I need to file. One is a charitable donation receipt I need to put with the 2021 tax returns. So far I haven’t felt like dedicating the two minutes needed to do that.

That work table also has two bank statements to file. That’s another two minute task I just haven’t felt like doing.

A little farther away are bookshelves lining the basement family room walls. At one time these were nice and neat, separated into fiction and nonfiction, and alphabetized. They may still be mostly that way, but years of reading and re-shelving, selling or donating, pulling other books from boxes, have resulted in some loose of organization. Fortunately, correcting that, while a big task, isn’t urgent.

What is urgent? Filing receipts! I suppose that’s number one. Many things I used to file have gone digital. Yet there’s still a big pile of them to file. Most of them are medical, the papers you get with each prescription. Some are medical info, others are receipts. Others are grocery store receipts, travel receipts, a few insurance statements, and a few brokerage papers that we haven’t yet switched over to digital. Once I set my mind to it, I can have these all sorted, ordered by date, and filed in about two hours. Maybe that will be a Monday task.

Then there are all the things involved with home repairs. We are inching forward with gutter and downspout replacement. My water damage restoration contractor bailed on me, so I’m having to go through it all again with a new one. I hope to hear something this week from him. And I still need to get the floor guy out here to figure out if I’ll be able to change out the ancient wall-to-wall carpet with modern flooring after all the other work is done. I guess I need to carve out a little time today to figure out which number I called was him and call to set up an inspection time.

Then there’s flu shots. We normally get them in early October, but couldn’t this year and I haven’t made appointments since then. That might be a today task as I can do that online. Oh, and the Silver Dragon need some routine servicing. I think Wednesday is free, if I can make an appointment on Monday. Oh, year, just remembered: I have some over the counter things to order as part of our Medicare Advantage Plan benefits. Better do that today as well.

Somewhere in there I need to work in some stock trading. The latter is mostly Monday through Friday, only 15 min to a half hour a day, plus an hour wrap-up on Saturday.

See why I need a to-do list? I have to grind through these things, trying to get everything done without letting something fall through the cracks.

I’m going to end this blog post here, and do those on-line things while I can. I hope on Friday I can post that I got lots done, and feel less stressed about everything.

home improvements, miscellaneous

Turn Into The Storm

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Beneath the master bathroom floor. Significant damage, though it’s old.

Back when I was working at a job outside the house, I used to say life was a whirlwind. It seemed like that most of the time. Now, in my fifth year of retirement, life is still a whirlwind.

Oh, at times all is serene. I have time to do all that I must do, much that I want to do, and even things I hope to do. From that point, life is good. Take this year and yardwork. I was quite diligent with keeping up with yardwork almost daily, a half hour to an hour after breakfast or, during the hottest part of the summer, a half hour to hour first thing in the morning. That got me to the end of September with all routine work done and one huge special project complete. It really felt good.

The non-functioning gutters poured water on the deck, causing the rot on this door frame. Repairs are a few weeks away. Into the storm.

But sometimes it’s a whirlwind. I hit October with only one of the home improvement projects planned for the year done. That was replacing the ancient burner in our propane-fueled fireplace. That was done in early August. Item 2 was to have our old deck flooring/handrail removed and replaced with new, synthetic material. I was finally able to get this underway Oct. 5, and it was completed Oct 14. Good, huh?

The third project was to replace our ancient wall-to-wall carpet in our common areas and bathrooms with some kind of tile or synthetic flooring. I had planned on getting that done close behind the deck.

Well, not so fast. The deck demolition showed some water damage, stuff that needs to be remediated before we go with anything else. Scratch that. Before those repairs we need to replace some defective/worn out guttering, which had caused some of the damage. While we were looking at that, we found other places with water damage. So the priority of projects has become gutter replacement, followed by water damage repair, then finally new flooring.

All of this has been disconcerting, due to 1) I hate spending money, and 2) I hate dealing with contractors. I’d rather do almost anything but those two things. The budget has sure been blown for this year. But, on a 37-year-old house, you can expect to have capital maintenance projects every three or four decades.

But all of this is a whirlwind, having to find and deal with contractors. I just want to put it off and sit and write and do my other favorite things. I needed to overcome inertia.

[Photo by Elijah Pilchard]
An amazing creature, the bison.
Last week, on PBS, we watched a four hour show about the American bison, two hours on two consecutive nights. It was a great program, as all Ken Burns films are. They showed how the slaughter of the bison was as much to control the Indian population as for the sport of killing. The second night was mostly about preserving the bison after they were about wiped out.

As part of that, they showed how bison did in a snowstorm. They turn into the wind and pretty much stand pat. That’s as opposed to our domestic cattle, which turn away from the storm and allow themselves to be driven with the wind, often to disastrous results. The bison can survive even major blizzards by turning into the storm.

The day after that show aired, I was in The Dungeon, at the computer, thinking of what a whirlwind—a storm—I was in with these unexpected repairs. Not wanting to spend money, not wanting to find contractors and deal with their lowball estimates followed by price hikes. Not wanting to think about what repairs would be needed in a couple of water damaged areas. A whirlwind indeed.

Then I thought of the bison and how they dealt with a storm, and decided I needed to do the same. I had to turn into the storm and face it, rather than turn away from it and be driven to disaster by circumstances. I started calling contractors.

Our deck guys also do gutters, and they are tentatively scheduled. I found a recommended remediation contractor and they will come out today to assess the damaged places and prepare an estimate. And I called the flooring contractor I’m hoping to use, one I’ve dealt with in my engineering career. He can’t get out to us for estimating for two weeks due to some time off. I said that was perfect, as his work was likely more than a month out.

So all the major projects, both the planned ones and the unplanned ones, as in the works. I must admit that feels good. My bank balance won’t thank me, but perhaps the house will when it realizes it is back to a sound structural and cosmetic condition.

Turning into the storm, in this case by making the calls and doing the things that needed to be done, has at least had some early benefits. The storm continues. But just like the bison, at least I’m headed in the right direction.

Bible study, home improvements

Once Again Unsettled

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This was left behind in the house we bought in 1984. We kept it and stored it for all these years. I was unable to make contact with any relatives of the man whose it was, so now it is sold.

So here it is, another Friday indicating another “work” week is coming to an end. Actually, I’m writing this Thursday evening. I figure I will be busy tomorrow morning with my two “jobs”, writing and stock trading. Friday is my busiest day with the latter.

It has been a good week, yet I once again have an unsettled feeling. I wrote about this before., though I can’t find that post right now. What was good? For one thing, at the close of business on Thursday, I’m beating the stock market both on the week and the year. I put in an order to take profits on a certain trade today, since I was to be tied up and couldn’t watch it. That trade filled at exactly the best possible profit today. One penny different and it wouldn’t have filled. Since the trade went way down toward the end of the day, that was an unexpected success.

37 years old, not well maintained even before we bought the place, it was time for the old deck to go.

The deck work finished last Saturday. We had them pull off the old flooring and handrails and put in synthetic wood for both.  It looks good and feels good. The spacing on the support joists were irregular in one spot, and the contractor installed an extra joist. I’m quite pleased with how it came out.

I was also able to write some today. I reached my minimal daily goal but not my hoped-for goal. The Bible study I’m writing marches on, hopefully to be finished in November. Today I had a meeting with my new pastor to discuss a couple of things that have been bugging me (not things about her, for I have felt good about her leadership and preaching in her four months here). That meeting went well. It was the first time I got to speak with her other than salutations.

Yardwork is up to date. In fact, I’ve had almost nothing to do in the yard the last two weeks. That’s a good feeling, because until this year, I have always felt perpetually behind on yardwork. We had plenty of leftovers for supper so I didn’t have to fix anything tonight. And we have plenty for the next few days.

It’s a little hard to see in this photo, but the sagging under the sunroom floor is sagging, indicating some kind of water damage.

So what’s unsettling? It’s the problem of water damage at my home. The deck work revealed some water damage due to a gutter that was incorrectly attached, possibly due to the new roof put on back in 2020. They did temporary repairs, but the damage is done. Two door frames are rotted and will have to be replaced. This also seems to extend a few feet on the flooring in the sunroom. We looked around and saw two other places that need repair from water damage. One might require the removal of built-in book cases, the other removal of our master bathroom vanity and even a wall that creates a dead air space between the bathroom and the exterior walls.

Last week I had a mold inspector out, and it turns out we do not have much mold in the house—one bit of good news. I had the insurance adjustor out today, and it’s possible, no probable, that this is not insurable as it appears to be long-term in three of the four places. I hope to hear from insurance tomorrow, but I figure the worst will result and I’ll have to pay for all the repairs.

And I need to make the repairs. Some day we will downsize and sell this house. It won’t sell with that damage showing. But as of yet, I’m waiting for the names of the certified remediation companies so that I can get proposals and estimates. I’m also waiting for the gutter guys to get me on the schedule. I spent so many years working with contractors in my employment that I hate working with them.

Ah, but the new deck is lovely. Hopefully the synthetic materials will take less maintenance than the old wood did.

Until I have the water damage repairs under contract, I will feel unsettled. There’s no getting around that. We were planning on replacing the 37-year-old carpet in our bathrooms (why did the former owners do that?), the living room, entry, and dining room this month or next, but now that will be delayed until the other work is done.

I hate feeling unsettled, but it will have to be. I feel sort of good that I’ve been able to get to this point in getting things done. Two more months of this to go.

Meanwhile, in other news, today I sold the postcard collection we picked up years ago in North Carolina. One small dis-accumulation task accomplished.

home improvements

Household Work Takes Over

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Dateline: Thursday, October 12, 2023

Hopefully the synthetic materials will take less maintenance than the old wood did.

It is a time of home improvements at the Todd household. After years of delaying, I finally pulled the trigger on replacing the flooring on our upper deck. It was 36 or more years old, and had lots of deterioration. The men have been working on it since last Thursday, and will finish tonight—except for some final clean-up tomorrow. It will be nice to have a truly usable deck.

Just before the last railing sections were complete and final cleanup.

But, as they tore old boards away, at the edges of the house, the found water damage. A gutter wasn’t installed properly and was dropping most of its water on the deck. Two doorways are damaged. I called a mold inspector, who came out today. He tested those areas, did some air samples, and tested a dark spot on an outside wall that Lynda noticed just a few days ago. He’s pretty sure that has active mold, but we won’t get the report until tomorrow. If we do have to make repairs, it will mean removing built-in bookcases. I’m not looking forward to that.

Then, in the master bathroom, one interior wall is finished at an angle, creating a dead air space between it and the two exterior walls that come to a right angle. We’ve had water come in there, apparently, and in the basement beneath the dead air space we can see the floor boards up above, and they are rotten. The mold guy tested that area as well. Whether there’s mold there or not, for sure we’ll have to do some remediation work. I’m not looking forward to that either.

Also, I’ve decided to replace the old gutters and downspouts. They either weren’t attached properly years ago, or the roofers did something back in 2020 to slightly detach them from the house. I am looking forward to that, though not to the money it will cost me.

Consequently, I’m not sure how much writing I’ll get to do while I’m overseeing these projects, as well as getting ready for Thanksgiving at home. But who knows? Maybe I’ll find a way to adjust my writing schedule and still get things written.