Our House is a Very Very Very Old House

Ah the joys of rebuilding something way, way, way older than you. We've discussed the plaster and lath wall construction in previous posts...unfortunately that did not magically make it disappear. Some of you may remember when Jessie started painting every room in the house and got between 1/3 and 2/3rds of the way through each room. Well, we hadn't finished a few months later, but that's ok, because we would have to repaint anyways. Turns out the changes of season (and temperature/humidity) cause the plaster to expand and contract at varying rates, which cause either massive fissures or small mountain ridges to appear in walls and ceilings....everywhere. To better illustrate this, we sanded down a few of these magical ridges, seen to your right.

Of course, no matter what we do (short of replacing everything with modern drywall) we'll end up with more cracks popping up later, but we'll worry about that after we get everything painted once. It's amazing the difference color makes for the feel of a room. Now I feel like I'm inside a pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving every day in our living room. Yes, I like that.


Meanwhile, it snowed here! Yeah, it's a dusting for anyone North of us, but here it's the blizzard of the century. Schools closed early, work was canceled, and by 6pm Wal-Mart was completely sold out of 4 items: milk, bread, ground beef, and pizza rolls. Hot Pockets also took a good hit. Naturally, this was a day BEFORE any sort of frozen precipitation began. Gotta love North Carolina winters...

Regardless of how infrequently we get weather like this, the bees are not fans. They'll stay in their boxes most of the day, but the wind cuts through the openings and isn't good for bee morale (or continued bee living). Jessie's mom is totally BA, so she goes out there with a drill and starts putting on a small blocker to keep the wind out of the hive. She doesn't need a suit, the bees respect her too much to screw with her. While she was doing our work for us, I was foolishly riding my bike in the snow because it's fun. It worked about as well as you would expect.

I love the snow, so overall it was a pretty nice, relaxing time. Of course, due to the cold we found even more squirrels had been sneaking into our basement and making sweet pads for themselves in our walls...everywhere. But more on that later...



Tom

Currently listening to "Maybe For Now" by Few and Far Between