Exterior Update
We attain a civilized appearance, while eating things we found on the ground.
After a busy spring, we’ve got 3/4 of a painted house (or stained, to be accurate), new copper gutters, and lots of green! The rust/copper accent idea also came from Japan, where you sometimes see it paired with yakisugi.
Move-in state versus current status. Not quite as much tree as pre-tornado, but our elms are making a comeback.
Over the past week, we put in more long hours on ladders, painting the 25-foot-tall Side #3. From the street, we now look fully civilized, and only the deer know otherwise.
We’d hoped to have all of the exterior painted before now but had many delays from—fortunately, unfortunately—one of the rainiest, stormiest springs in years. Everything is so green and lush, and our town’s tornado- and drought-damaged trees have finally had a chance for regrowth.
Making best use of the rain for foraging: morels from our backyard, and chicken of the woods.
Trail Cam
For a few months now, we’ve been capturing wildlife photos with a low-tech trail cam setup on the game trail in our back woods. It’s been lively out there!
Most were what we expected to see (deer, raccoons, possums, rabbits, etc.), but we’ve had some surprises. My aspirational checklist of, by order of likelihood:
- ☑️ Coyotes: We knew these were around but didn’t realize just how frequently they pass through our woods and often while we're around.
- ☑️ Foxes: Not actually very common here, though we’ve seen a few.
- Bobcat: Likely too shy, but possible. Impersonated once by a feral cat with a bobbed tail.
- Black Bear: Not common, but they’re around. One was just captured wandering around the next town over.
- Mountain Lion: Unlikely, but they have been spotted all around our area, despite official denial.
One of our many coyote visitors and a solo fox.
What’s Next
Once the heat puts a stop to outdoor painting, we’ll go back to indoor projects for a bit. While it has been exciting to see the outside of the house finally take shape, we’ve gotten impatient living with the inside stalled in such a WIP state.
A few of the projects we’ve started to budget for:
- Kitchen: The only improvements we’ve made here so far are new countertops and lighting. Before our time got swallowed up by painting, we were set to start renovating cabinets and tiling the backsplash.
- Laundry Room: We just had this room re-plumbed, and after the less exciting next step of having a damaged joist support repaired, we’ll finally finish off the room with drywall and paint.
- Fireplace: Our chimney had been covered by a metal box and assumed damaged since we bought the house, so we were excited to discover recently that it’s fully intact! The damper does need repair, but if all goes well, we should have a working wood-burning fireplace come winter.
We’ve also got plenty of smaller finishing touches to get back to, like baseboard and trim, doors, etc. Maybe first the boring step of organizing our garage mess to make way for saws again.
For today, though, we’re just resting our ladder-weary legs.
