We had not planned to still be here. (Insert appropriate music ...) but we are. We meet with the Realtors about a week before Thanksgiving. We will spend Thanksgiving with our Son and Family, and then bug out ASAP.

Recently, on Gary's World:



I re-fixed the wagon wheel window. When I laid in a good bead of sealant, and pushed it into place ... it jammed. I fiddled and worked with it, and thought I got it seated well. I did not, and so there was a path for water to run between the outer stop and the window frame. And saturate under the frame, and weep in, and make a horrid mess. So; I had to dig it all out of there, and correct it (hopefully). I show only the reworked nearly finished pic (which just requires paint yet). If I showed earlier pics, you would cry .



We finished tidying up the attic room. This is TeePee shaped. Shingle nails protrude between the rafters. Until it would be finished out, there's a danger of folks impalling their head on the nails. I just made it so they can see into the room, without wandering around in there (hopefully)



I finished all required cement repair in the basement. Now we just finish spraying a bit of white paint. And move in the shelving for this pantry room under the kitchen. In the late 1800's, this fireplace would have actually been to heat water to do laundry. There was a cistern under the back porch where rainwater was trapped to use. A spigot into this room provided water for laundry.



A few doors required Shellacing. This was a kitchen door that I had had stripped 33 years ago! When I bought the house, the kitchen's woodwork was all painted in yellow sand paint. . This was stripped, and has hung there naked since. . While I worked on more critical things - (I hope)



The front door to the house (which we never use) had an issue with its original interlocking brass weatherstrip. It was bent and would bind together. Made it sound like you were opening a crypt when entering. So, the door had to come off. With thick beveled glass insert, and a thicker solid door, it weighs a ton. I repaired the weatherstrip. I scraped and shellacked the sill. I polished the solid brass lock set and oiled it. Then varnished the door. Repaired the side jam where the hinges of the previous storm door had been ripped out by wind ... And am ready to paint the jam



Have gotten ready for the carpet people to lay carpet in three second floor rooms.



And we visited our Son and Family yesterday. There are walking trails near them. Nice day.

Haven't been as active. Have had two nasty bouts of Migraines the last couple of days. Much improved tonight.

Thanks for reading.
Gary



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/11/2013 03:27AM by barnespneumatic.

Good work! Hope you're feeling better after those migraines. I can imagine the speed with which you will be bugging out to BPS when the time comes
I have a week off. Several days of chopping noxious gorse and broom are threatening, but maybe some shooting too!
Regards
Neil

Good to hear Gary ! I am happy for you and miss Kelly ! She's a trooper for sticking it out with you . I think my better half would have bailed out by now and said see ya in Florida ! Keep that forward momentum going .

Getting close! I sure hope the weather is good for the trip south; wouldn't want anything to diminish the joy!

Have you thought about posting little signs about the history of the house? I think the cistern and fireplace for laundry water is pretty cool.

Great idea Jerry. Thanks.

Kelly has pulled out dozens of pics of the house and grounds at its best. She's prepared a couple of cork bulletin boards and a few framed 8 by 10s. Looks great!

Almost done!! There's a popular country song now - The Band Perry. Phrase in it at the end of lines "ALL I WANT TO BE IS - DONE!! UUGH!!!

Gary

Looking good Gary!

Sorry to hear about the migraines. Do you think it is the fall change? I always get more headaches during spring and fall for some reason. Luckily my migraines have almost become a thing of the past. Suffering from auras now, but no real headaches.

Wish you continued blessings as you wrap up things in the North.

God bless!

Pedro G.

Better hurry Gary, it is down to 60 degree's down here. Amusing to see all the jacket's on already and people with their heat on.

Amazing what can turn up in old houses if you care to take a look "under the hood", so to speak. The place we're in now also has a cistern, but it hardly dates to the 1800's. It was used from the late 1940's until the mid 1980's, when the city water lines finally made it out to this part of town. In this photo, it's the giant concrete box to the left of the house, just beneath the edge of the sun porch. This one would hold about 4000 gallons, if it was filled most of the way to the top.



The Juneau area, along with the rest of Southeast Alaska is "blessed" with (extremely) generous amounts of rainfall so many homeowners who weren't on city water set up a rainwater catchment system instead of drilling a costly well. Along with a substantial sized cistern, it provided adequate water for most purposes, though you do need to filter it since pine needles and bugs and such always get collected along with the rain. The trick, of course, is balancing how big your cistern is with your expected needs and the rainfall available. I think this one is a bit larger than you would need, given the amount of rainfall here. I'm hoping to turn it into dry storage next summer by pouring a concrete lid on top; right now it has a wooden deck on it that's hardly waterproof. It used to be pretty well bermed into the dirt, but I had to excavate the section between it and the house in order to correct long-standing drainage issues. It's not quite a garage, but it stores the snowblower out of the weather for now.

That looks like a lot of work going on there ! With that big hill there you must really have to control that runoff ! My friend had a basement that the sump pump ran constant so basement floor was always wet . He ended up puting metal corrigated deck down ( like the kind you would pour cement on ) 10 gage and covered with wood ! The water had channels to follow when it rained really hard . Your cistern garage is a great idea but if you just cut a circle in wood deck you could make into a HOT tub and soak those achy back muscles . I really like that brick and sand look that you did that was a great idea ! Good luck with winter in your new house hope it all works as planned !

I'm always surprised when I see pics of homes in your area - they look like homes here. Nice craftsman style. Painted clapboard with double hung single pane glass. I'd expect them to have Quad-glazed windows (only about a foot square total glass area). I'd expect walls with a foot of blown on hard foam insulation. Entrances 5-6 feet above the ground, at least. -50f is some serious cold for a single sheet of glass. Burrrrrrrrrr.

You showed us pics before of homes in your area with sliding patio doors. And you get 5' of snow at a time. I don't see how ya all survive. And - curious minds - how wouldn't that cistron freeze solid if it was just a balmy -15/20f for a few weeks, much less -50? How do you get a snowblower out of an open shed when it snows feet per hour!!! . Oh - the stress!!!! I just have to keep the vines from overtaking the shop like one of those monkey temples in the jungle ... Haha.

I like your place. I marvel that an entirely different style of building didn't evolve in that region. I'm frozen solid at +40f anymore. Haha.

Thanks for posting Sean!

Gary

Thanks for the well wishes, Kurt. We're really hoping it works out too, since all those bricks are WAY too heavy to pull back out if we change our minds. : )

And you're right Gary, it is pretty surprising to see such a typical looking house up here, but this isn't interior Alaska either. Southeast Alaska is considered the "banana belt" of Alaska and gets more rain than snow for much of the winter. We don't really need extreme cold-weather building techniques like they would in Fairbanks. We usually don't get all that much snow in Juneau either, unlike up in Haines where we used to live. It's just ninety miles away, but for some reason it gets a LOT more snow than Juneau.

Another thing to consider is that this house was originally built with salvaged lumber from an old cannery, and it's been changed and modified over the years by several owners. The painted clapboard is actually cementatious backer-board type siding, not wood. The windows in the main part of the house are modern double pane models with "fake" mullions sandwiched between the panes, they look old-fashioned but they're way more efficient and airtight, unlike the original single-pane windows like you see in the sun porch. That porch is unheated, mostly because it's so drafty and poorly insulated that it's not practical to even try to keep it warm. I'm hoping to change that next summer, which means the old windows will have to go. I'll find someone that wants the old "wavy" glass, most of it is original, surprisingly.

I've got high hopes for the under-porch area and the cistern, hopefully I can get a decently dry shop space out of it. A hottub would be nice, but I need a workspace more. Here's a photo of what it looked like before I dug it out.

It had some huge pieces of concrete buried in there, probably remnants from where they changed or updated the cistern years earlier.