Rain At Last!

It’s finally raining again. We’ve been dry for a long time, but apparently whatever was keeping the rain from arriving has moved on and now we are feeling much cooler temperatures and rain is in the forecast for the next ten days.

I am happy, but that isn’t important right now.

What’s actually important at this very moment is this week old photograph that I was supposed to include in last week’s post:

That is the inside of a local Rona (a Canadian home centre chain) photographed on October 12th.

October 12th, and the Christmas stuff was out en masse!

Revolting.

I don’t mind Christmas in a general sense, but can we please limit it to only one month a year? Three is way too many.

Moving on so I don’t get grumpy…

The house project started gradually winding down this past week. Last time around I had photos of the new “skirting” they were installing around the back half of the house to get rid of rotten siding. They completed that, and even did the bit along the lower roof where the roofers had installed some truly awful flashing two years ago. (Live and learn. I should not have let them do that. Oh well.)

We have some minor interior finishing left, and a couple of other things including replacing two bathroom fans that need to vent through the roof. That will drag on for some time, but it is less than critical. The only large item that remains includes a surprise.

There is a thing we call a “flying buttress” on the east side of the house. Here it is:

It’s not structural, just decorative. There’s a lot of rot in the siding at the bottom where there had been a lot of earth/wood contact over the years. In addition, the area is heavily shaded by bamboo, various trees, and both our home and the neighbour’s, so things over there don’t tend to dry out.

They were just going to fix the siding, but…

There’s so much rot that we’d have to strip at least the bottom three feet down to what’s left of the studs and rebuild the entire interior, re-sheath and re-side it. In the photo you can see daylight at the bottom of the cut opening on the left side. That’s because they opened both sides to find the sheathing completely rotted away, as well as the sill plate, and at least the 2x4 on the left side. It’s a wonder it has not fallen down!

We’ve decided to remove it completely. It will be replaced with a new fence and gate. (The old fence and gate are in bad shape too.) We’ll do that on both sides of the house as well as replacing the railings on the deck over the front door, which (it turns out) were not properly sized for that location, nor are they up to code. We’re having aluminum fencing custom made, so things won’t rot out again in the future, and everything will match in terms of design.

We have a verbal quote for all that and it’s acceptable. We hope to get it installed in two to three weeks.

This is a clear case of scope creep, but when you find that much rot and damage you just have to deal with it.

So the house project is not yet done, but overall it is in a good state and it will get finished eventually.

The rest of my time was spent on a community association project. We support local families in need over the holidays. That effort got going and a whole lot of website work was needed, as well as a special edition of the email bulletin. Those things sucked up all my free time.

I got away only once for a short walk and took this photo:

It doesn’t show well in the picture, but there are two different colours of red leaves, and it’s quite striking. I think all the local Japanese maples are doing that right now, and they are gorgeous. It’s probably not technically called fall colour, but it’s still quite pretty.

That’s it for this week. If I can work up the courage to face a crowd, I might go to an art opening tomorrow afternoon. My sculpture instructor has a solo show at a local gallery. She does stained (and possibly slumped) glass work. It’s beautiful, and I should put in an appearance if I can stand to.

Cheers!