For most of last week, Liz and I were both mostly just recuperating from Covid. Not much of anything, other than a lot of coughing and a lot of sitting in bed, resting.
This week, we started to get a bit more energy. We’re still coughing more than makes sense, but have been going about doing a little house work over the holidays.
It’s incredible to see the change, and to look back on photos of what things were like when Liz was experimenting incessantly.
While we were in Michigan, Bob was able to install both windows in our bedroom. It’s a bit mind-boggling to me, when I imagine how much he must have had to go up/down the scaffold for this – but we arrived home to see our bedroom in an entirely new light – quite literally so.
It’s like we left a time capsule for ourselves. What a lovely converage of the past and present.
Today, we started to prep the exterior – and also removed the AC unit which was embedded into the foam insulation. If all goes well, we’ll be looking to install two newer windows into this space.
Liz is a great researcher, and has a methodical process when she’s trying to figure something out. And as much as I tried to follow her summaries and descriptions, I was not able to do so today.
Suffice it to say, there’s an awful lot of testing going on. I kept up with most of it for a while, but I think at this point… I’m mostly just nodding and smiling politely.
I am not a good chronicler of all the stain-related experiments that Liz has undertaken. I’ve tried to keep up with all her variations, but there are times it gets pretty confusing to me.
Liz has so many different tests, with so many different products… I’m having a hard time keeping it all straight. When she gives me a recap of what she’s done, I tend to have to ask a lot of basic questions, to try to catch up.
It’s a lot of testing, it’s a lot of variations. It’s all kinds of impressive.
Liz had another day in the basement (or should I call it her laboratory). Today’s session involved her trying out powdered dyes – another approach to staining Douglas Fir.
Liz has been in the basement a lot lately, doing her mad scientist routine. She’s been methodically trying to figure out how to best stain the new trim we’re looking to purchase: vertical grain Douglas Fir.
SYP is still available, but it’s primarily newer growth. And it’s planted/harvested faster, and a result of that speed is that the grain lines are more spaced apart. To match the tight grain lines of old growth SYP, you’d need to either find reclaimed lumber or go fishing in rivers for sinker pine.
Liz, trying to carve out a path circa 2014. We eventually hired out the work to clear this area with a mini bulldozer.
It’s funny – I moved a lot of these bricks from underneath the porch to the driveway… and today, Liz wa moving most of them back. Circle of life, I guess. We’re used to having various shuffles, so why not one for the outside as well?
Bob helped talk me through the piece, and how I should build it. I needed some 9.5″ boards, and the standard 10″ boards from Home Depot wouldn’t quite cut it. So I bought 12″ boards instead, and had to trim them down to size.
It took me a little while to figure out the right sequence, but I eventually got the pieces together.
Bob was over today, getting the furnace prepped. He had come over while we were out to set the furnace in its final position… and man is it tight in there. Not much wiggle room at all. But it’s in, and it’s pretty much set in place.