No Scaffolding

Look Ma, no scaffolding!

 

 

 

the photos

here are the siding photos promised the other day.

Perfect example of nelson scaffolding. If you ignore the bowing and wobbling it seems just fine.

Northwest corner

North/entry fascade.

Coming Soon

Recently, I've been extra motivated to get the siding on the house done. The prospect of another frigid winter working outdoors will do that to you. Happily, I can announce that as of this weekend, the shingling is about 70% complete and this whole fascade is done, soffits and all.

Of course, this is an older picture so you'll have to use your imagination. Since the staging/scaffolding is still up we haven't gotten any good pictures yet. This weekend for sure. The best news is that with the north side of the house done, I'll now be going to the south side where it is generally 10-15 degrees warmer. No more frozen bleecher butt from sitting on a frigid aluminum platform all day in the shade. Now I'll be sitting on a frigid aluminum platform while in the sun. Yay!

our little dancer

we have a roof AND shingles

Ok, so the roof still needs the ridge cap and the shingles are just started and will take at least a few weeks BUT we're getting really close. In fact, I suspect that at the rate we're currently making progress that we should easily be 100% complete by spring...2011.

Brynna's eye

Since I seem to be finding precious little to blog about these days, I've decided to start a new theme based series of posts called "Brynna's Eye". Brynna, like most four year old's have a very unique vision of the world which comes out in her art (both in photo and drawn form) as well as humorous conversations.

To break you in slowly (and so that I have to provide as little actual thought as possible) I'm giving you a selection of some of B's recent personal photo collection.

enjoy

letsee, I call this play clothes in repose.

baby girl and scarf

fancy slipper

hamper

mischievous sock

auto insurance

baby and big fat toes

experimentation

we have a roof

Well, almost. We began putting the metal roof on this weekend. We didn't quite get it finished but it was a huge step psychologically.

This is about as close as my mother got to working all day.

Dad and Marcy were the production crew. Darren and I stood on the roof and made snide remarks. Teamwork makes the process fun.

someone's into books

books, books, books. These days, B is all about books. We've always read a couple of books to her before bed every night so it's no surprise that she enjoys stories but the way that she's recently taken to doing work books is pretty astounding. In fact, last Friday on a B and Me day, we sprinted down to Freeport to Plan and Learn to pick up a few new books from their freakin awesome collection. Literally 1000's of books in that joint. We'll go back sometime when I have a sleeping bag and a couple days worth of necessities. Anyway, we got a few books and B was so excited that I turned the interior light on for her and she worked in the book the whole way home. Thankfully, she balances out Marcy's nerdiness with some of my artyness (you should see the killer three legged cat she drew for me) and spends most night before dinner sketching in a picaso-esque style.

Touch my prime rib. I DARE YOU!

brussel sprout club

heyaa!!!

Rest In Peace Buddy

Friday afternoon, after fighting cancer for over a year, Chance finally lost his battle. The day was inevitable, and in reality he held on for a lot longer than anyone expected. I had hoped to write more but I'm having a hard time finding the words (it's 4am two nights later and I still can't sleep) so insteat I've pulled a bunch of my favorite photos of Chance together to share again.

We'll miss you buddy. Love you.

I've got wood

Our new heating system is unique in the fact that it uses wood and gives me wood. Revision Energy is putting the final touches on the system today (hopefully!) so we can have a toasty warm house by tonight. There was much to do in prep for the system going in. The biggest chore was preparing the firewood. We're a bit behind on that front since we've been working on the house so much but after a big push on Saturday with Papa Don and myself we now have somewhere between 3 & 4 cord of wood ready for winter. Another weekend of work and we should have plenty for this and next winter. I'm guessing that we've got enough wood from clearing for the house alone to last us a good three years. Good times.

The system itself relies on a super high efficiency wood boiler. It's so efficient that you need a place to store all of the heat (or else turn the house into a 24/7 sauna where fat guys with hairy bellies can sit around and fart and sweat all day) so Don and I built a 650 gallon water storage tank that the boiler will stuff all of the heat into which will then be taken from by both the heating and domestic system. Pretty cool stuff, once it's all up and running that is.

Here is a pic of the tank nearing completion. It included 4" of rigid insulation inside of a steel and plywood box. The whole thing gets lined with an epdm (rubber) membrane and then the hot water coils are added, it's filled with water and an insulated top is put on.

My own foil lined coffin.

The brains of the system. So many pretty yellow handles that I have NO IDEA WHATSOEVER what to do with.

Some of our wood prior to stacking.

B and I stacking the wood. Marcy was too busy taking pictures to be bothered with helping.

B actually helped pile for a solid 30-40 minutes. Trooper.

tardy

Not many blog posts lately. Sorry about that but sometimes life gets in the way and you don't have good pictures to post. And really, what good is a damnelsons blog post without pictures??? You certainly don't come here to see my bastardization of the english language with multiple misplaced commas...

With the impending winter, we've been going gangbusters on the house's siding and heating system which has meant that I've had precious little time with the spud recently so whe I found out Marcy had a hair appointment after work of Friday I did what any american dad would do, B and I got take out sushi and went to a playground. I've got culture coming out of my ass.

B and I had a great time and it was nice to see B start to come out of her shell. She's always been an outgoing kid if she's around people she knows but clams right up if others are around. Well, four teenagers raising hell on the playground on Friday didn't stop her (for a change) and some of her timidness with heights seemed to vanish as well. Good times.

B-lated

Ok, so I'm a bit late posting this stuff (about 11 days to be exact) but better late than never (Tania would argue that never is probably better).

the cake, artfully crafted by Marcy. Who says she has no talent???

B in her Fancy Nancy attire.

Waiting not so patiently for people to finish eating so she can open presents.

mob scene

cake 1 (brynna requested a blueberry cake)

cake 2 (yellow cake for those traditionalists -my dad-)

6 girls in the very pink room. I had to leave.

taking after daddy

As I think I've mentioned before, B had lost interest in her two wheeled bike for a while this past year, always opting to ride her trike when the opportunity arose. Well, that all changed when we were at one of my bike races in Orono and then solidified when we made the trek up to Presque Isle for a weekend bike festival. For some reason, the bike thing suddenly clicked (maybe because she was literally surrounted by biking crazy folks)and B couldn't be kept away from her bike, tallying close to 10 hours of ride time in the 2 1/2 days we were in Presque Isle. And ever since then she talks about her bike and riding almost as much as I do and if you've spent any time with me you know that that is a LOT!

Anyway, this past weekend I had another mountain bike race so we asked B if she wanted to be in the kids race. She enthusiastically said YES! but both Marcy and I figured that when the time came she'd change her mind. That definitely wasn't the case and B was eager to throw down when race time came. There were only three kids in the race but B showed her killer instinct by taking the hole shot and leading from beginning to end (Marcy kept her hand on her back but did little in the way of pushing) and even sped up when the second place girl made a late race charge.