Projects Update #4

We really took a beating this summer! Things are finally starting to improve, but we went from flooding and a tornado, straight into a prolonged heat wave and drought that only now seems to be easing. The remaining trees were shedding leaves from the stress of it all, and we've been toting buckets of water around for weeks.

At the same time, we had a three-month battle with insurance over tornado damages, but they finally agreed to cover everything. With the total being four times the cost of our car, you can imagine what a relief that is. In addition to not going bankrupt, it means we can finally move forward with the long list of repairs: roofing, concrete, fence, siding, etc. By the end of the year, the exterior should look like a brand-new house!

Meanwhile, we had plenty of other work to keep us busy, and it seems like a milestone that we've stopped apologizing when we invite people inside.

Floors & Doors

The original floors are a unique mix of ash and maple, which we had matched to extend into the entryway and kitchen.

In our last pre-tornado update, we were prepping the floors to be refinished with the rest of the new flooring. They came out great, and we had just moved our furniture back in place when the tornado hit.

Fortunately, we had no water damage: only puddles where rain was driven through the doors—though we feared worse that night when the crawlspace was flooding. (It’s usually wind damage that you think about with tornadoes, but add to that torrential rain and 115+ mph wind-blown hail and debris, and it’s really amazing anything is left intact.)

That same week, we’d also brought in carpenters to work on our exterior doors, rebuilding the frames and trim for the new wood doors we’d bought on sale a year ago. Once things settled, they came back to finish that up, and it’s been such a huge improvement to the space.

Even the carpenters had a tough time with installation, so we were glad to take the easier job of making them look nice.

The old house number was hand-painted on the trim, which was a fun detail but not a great fit stylistically.

The Grounds

Our woods now, versus the week after the tornado.

Our biggest project since the tornado has been a hot one: slowly cleaning up the felled trees out back. We would’ve waited for cooler weather, but we wanted to uncover buried saplings before they died, and the city is ending free debris pickup this week.

The hemlocks were so dense and shady that they kept the undergrowth in check, so without their canopy, we expected a takeover by all the invasive species we’ve been fighting. Instead, something else took over: pokeberry!

Poke is edible, but like most Ozark/Appalachian edibles, it’s toxic unless properly cooked. My great granny loved it, but I haven’t yet been brave enough to try it myself.

We had hoped to mill the huge hemlock and cedar logs for lumber, but it turns out the slope is too steep for the equipment. Fortunately, though, several of the trees fell in line with the edge of the slope, so unless we can source an Alaskan mill, our fallback is to leave those in place to help with erosion and hide the exposed street from view.

As for the trunks that remain standing, we're reluctant to remove them. One has a slim chance at surviving, with a few branches left, but mostly it just feels right to leave them as a testament to what happened and what was.

We’ve already started purchasing the trees and shrubs we’ll be planting this fall to restore the woods, with the aid of a second grant from our local watershed alliance. It’ll take a lot of time and effort, but fortunately nature has the same goals.

Not all was lost! We recovered a young hemlock with only a broken top, along with tiny walnuts and other trees.

Our annual battle with invasive Japanese stiltgrass, which we wait to mow until just before it goes to seed.

Before mowing, we mark all the saplings we can find, which are most often fast-growing box elders.

Back at the house itself, what was a huge fallen tree and then a huge hollow stump has been vanquished. We had planned to landscape the mound left behind, but…well, they were very thorough.

After stump removal, versus the morning of the tornado. We later rebuilt the mound a bit for landscaping.

Part of our plan was to turn that whole space into a rain garden to redirect some of the street runoff away from our driveway, but digging there would damage another root system, and we’ve had quite enough of falling trees.

What’s Next

Current pre-repair status, versus the morning of the tornado.

We’d already done most of the prep to paint the house, including sourcing rough-cut oak from a local sawmill to patch some of the rotten or previously damaged siding. We have a few extra spots to patch now, but somewhere at the end of the repairs, we’ll finally be back where we left off the night the tornado hit.

Choosing a color for the outside was tough! We're not really paint people and would've preferred natural wood, but the previous owners didn’t leave us that option. After an uncertain detour into mid-century reds and yellows, our trip to Japan reminded us of an earthy color we hadn't considered.

Black! That was a surprise. It gave us another shot at making the house feel like a part of its wooded setting, without resorting to browns or greens. We had seen and disliked the recent black house trend, but walking through the yakisugi-clad villages of rural Japan showed us what the right black could be in a setting like ours.

We even researched using the yakisugi process on oak siding, but it unfortunately doesn't weatherproof like cedar. Instead, we settled for using a black stain to mimic the look, aided by the rough grain of the wood. (Coincidentally, we later found out the owners renovating the house next door chose black as well, which was fitting, since both were designed by the same architect!)

To offset the black, we wanted natural wood trim, but under the old white paint we found too much variation in wood quality and type. We settled on a solid gray stain, which I still have reservations about, but I think it will work with the mahogany of the new doors and copper gutters.

Other than painting, we’ve got a lot of planting and landscaping ahead, plus miscellaneous interior details like trim, backsplash tiling, building kitchen shelving, and—unless things go very wrong, installing a window.

It’ll be a busy fall!