Updates

Good News

Celia with one of the twin tiger kittens

We have kittens at the EH!!!  Maude's taking good care of her three little ones who are now ten days old.  Ethel's litter was born yesterday - there appear to be 6, possibly 7 (including at least one calico!).  And because my husband we are softies, we've also adopted twin tiger striped brothers that were dumped in a ditch.  Anybody need a good kitty or 4?

Not So Good News
Preservation Ohio recently announced their list of 2011 Ohio's Most Endangered Historic Sites and the Seneca County Courthouse and Seneca County Museum both made the list.  (The courthouse for the fourth time.)  At a recent meeting of the Seneca County Commissioners, Commissioner Jeff Wagner "made a motion to seek bids for courthouse demolition, but there was not a second. [Wagner] said he would have been remiss had he not made the motion."


Related and Better News
Following up on my earlier post, today's local newspaper reports that at their most recent meeting, the county commissioners "voted 2-to-1 to not sell the museum or any contents, including three paintings possibly created by the Hudson River School art movement."  As for Mr. Wagner, the most civil thing I can write here is to quote a Facebook user who said, "there is a certain political movement that wants to bulldoze the past; at the same time they claim to revere the past."

Not So Good News
It poured rain here again last weekend.  Somewhere around 4 1/2 inches overnight Friday into Saturday.  Although there's a footer tile around the house for the gutters to drain into, it is obviously not large enough to handle the volume of water these summer storms pour into it.  We're slowly accepting that we're going to need to dig it up and replace it with a larger tile.  We also have a new 6 inch deep gulley at the end of our driveway.  It's obvious that a permanent solution to this problem is going to involve more tile.

Since some might be wondering - The basement had water coming through the walls, but with the bypassed tile still in place the sump pump was able to keep up for the most part.  I've not ventured down to check the stone bridge, and I'm not planning to either.  There's nothing we can do for now so I'm trying to just not think about it.

Bragging News
Cecilia was completely thrilled with the cake I made for her 6th birthday.

(Charles thinks I'll have a hard time topping this next year.  I suspect he's right.)

Bat News
This year's crop of baby bats took wing earlier this month. I spent a couple of nights watching them fly out of the bat houses.  The babies are easy to identify, not only because they are smaller, but also because they flap their little wings so much more quickly than the full grown bats.  They're really rather cute.


In other bat news we have bats back in our attic.  Although the majority remain in the bat boxes, a fair number have noticed a small gap in the very corner of the eaves.  We had a local tree-trimming company lined up to come out with a bucket truck to install another one-way bat door, but they had to cancel because the truck was needed to clean up storm damage (see a few items above).  I still need to call and reschedule this.

Bad News
When we contacted the neighbor who told us last February that we could take siding from a barn on his property to let him know we were about ready to use the salvaged siding he apologetically told us he has sold his farm (and aforesaid barn).  This will obviously delay work on our shed.

More Not So Good News
Taking a good friend up on her offer (see the comments to this post) I went to Lowe's prepared to order roofing for the shed.  Only to find out that they can not match the 24" seams on the current shed (16" is the widest available). 

This next bit is a little difficult to explain.  There is a 14" strip on the original shed, immediately above where the new awning joins the old roof, where a previous owner removed the old standing seam roof.  Because I rebuilt the new awning using the old one as a pattern, this 14" strip still remains.  The transition strip available to change from 24" seams to 16" seams and to make the change in pitch only covers 7".  After considerable discussion with the salesman we had four options:

1 - partially dismantle the awning I just built, extending the joists and increasing the pitch so that the new joists would join the original roof at the top of the fourteen inches instead of the bottom;
2 - remove the rest of the standing seam from that side of the building and replace all of it with new 16" standing seam;
3 - use flashing to cover the remaining 7" so the resulting roof would have 24" seams on the top, 16" seams on the bottom, and a seven inch strip in the middle with no seams;or
4 - leave the remaining standing seam and shingle the new roof and the 14" strip above it.

I've tried to talk myself into #1 but I just can't.  #2 would double the cost and labor required for the job and that's something that we're not comfortable doing at this time.  If we went with #3 that flat seven inch section in the middle of the roof would drive me absolutely crazy.  So shingles it will be.



Expect it to be a couple weeks though before I resume work on this project.  As this post shows, I've got a few other issues demanding my attention at the moment.  And I've got kittens to spend time playing with and cuddling as well.  : )