…that’s always under construction.
So is our house.
Way back when we were getting the Castle prepped for occupation, we were surprised to find our own personal lake in the corner of the master bedroom’s sitting room. The immediate cause, a badly designed roof, was repaired way back then.
Ripping off the walls (inside and outside) and replacing whatever had been damaged in the attic, walls, flooring, and crawl space were scheduled to happen shortly after the roof repair.
Mononucleosis changed that plan, and the job waited six months ’til this weekend.
shadowkatt, official paparazzo of the Castle, has documented some of the project. I’ll let her share the visual record whenever she’s ready.
redcrowstudio‘s son J and shadowkatt‘s friend C have been here all weekend helping curiousmay9 and ridinrabbit. I was unsurpised to learn that it didn’t get finished as planned yesterday, so they were all back at work today.
Yesterday, J removed a raccoon skeleton from the crawl space, disturbing a nasty colony of bugs. The pest control guy was just here a week or so back! He never claimed that he was going into the crawl space, though. The work crew applied more bug poison liberally into the crawl space, the new walls, and the attic.
This morning, J was putting new shingles on the outer wall while C learned to mud sheetrock. I think shadowkatt was up on the roof. They’ve progressed to painting something (I’m not sure what) outside. I know this because shadowkatt‘s nose is covered in paint.
After everything is all done, sambear and I will finally be able to truly finish the interior painting. After that, we’ll rip up the old carpet and replace it (with carpet now, hardwoods at some point in the future). While I’m sure the carpet won’t be done, I do hope we get the painting done before the party next weekend.
The original plan also included replacing some ductwork upstairs and downstairs. That was nixed, due to the discovery that some utter idiot commingled the upstairs and downstairs HVAC systems. It isn’t supposed to work that way, and it doesn’t work very well. Sorting out what should go where and what must be replaced/rewired/reducted/whatever is going to be a much bigger job. Messing with it might have resulted in it not working at all, rather than not working so well.
Installing a new attic hatch (with the nifty pull-down ladder) will happen another day. The gutter at that corner of the house has been repaired, so water should continue to go away from, rather than into, the house.
Building the loft bed for shadowkatt has also been bumped, as getting the walls closed up was a higher priority.
Karli is roaming happily in and out of the house at will. She thoroughly approves of more, more, more people! She just gets upset when they leave.
The cats are not so happy. They’ve spent most of the weekend in curiousmay9‘s bedroom. They have all the necessities in there (except staff), but they don’t like it.
Yesterday’s cool weather was marvelous. It’s warmer today, but I’m hoping to get fall temperatures again soon. I like having the house open, as it’s been all weekend, when it’s cool. Our bodies will be happier when it’s closed up again, to reduce the allergen load.
