Of Home and School

That last post was quite fun to write, but I don't want to let it sit in "first place" for too long - especially when I have something like this that I can share:

With November officially here the kids' classes are moving on to turkeys and pilgrims; Monday's bookbags were packed with October's pumpkin and bat projects.  Neil's project pictured above really made me smile.  The whole page would not fit on our scanner, but the last word of the instructions is "survive".  And Neil's answers, from left to right, are "House", "Bat House", and "Bug".    (Technically, we're trying to convince our bats that they can survive on only 2 of those 3, but I can't blame Neil for answering the way he did.)

Bat Exclusion, et al.

Thursday night I took the last formal count for our bat exclusion.  The results:

Bats leaving the attics - 0
Bats leaving the south chimney - 0
Bats leaving the bat boxes - 62

I think we've accomplished our goal and can remove the one-way door and close that last access hole to the attic.  But (as the comments to my last post so clearly show!) there's one last step we must take before we can consider our bat issue completely resolved.  Namely, we have to clean up the mess in the attic.  There's bad news and good (or at least less bad) news here.

The bad news is obvious.  Our attic has to be full of guano.  And because handling guano can cause serious illness in humans, cleaning our attic is not a job we want to or should attmept to do ourselves.  I've called a few places who handle this type of cleanup to get quotes and it appears this will be a very expensive job.

Kathy left a comment after my last post asking, "Do you have access to the attic from inside the house?".  The answer to this question is no.  In fact, we don't have access to the attic period.  There are no windows to the attic, no vents, and no opening through a bedroom ceiling beneath.  This is both bad news and good news when it comes to cleaning up our bat mess. Bad news because it means accessing the mess to clean it up will require some type of structural change to the house.  However, it is also good news because this complete lack of access means that the bat mess is currently entirely contained within the attic.  I'll freely admit to looking at our bedroom ceilings and wondering what lies above, but from inside the house there is absolutely no evidence of our former attic residents.  The ceilings are not discolored or sagging.  The only time we found bat droppings inside the house was while working on the exposed stone wall at the top of the stairs (this was also the only time a bat entered the house from the attic).  The top edge of the exposed wall has since been finished, and just to be sure, before we began our exlcusion I ran a bead of clear caulk along the seam where the exposed wall meets the ceiling.

For now, we plan to simply plug the last exterior access to the attic and let whatever is up there stay up there.  Quotes for having the guano removed are quite high, so this is a project we will need to plan ahead for.  We will keep a close eye on our bedroom ceilings for any sign of strain or staining.  And we will keep our eyes open for "bat bugs", who often enter homes after a bat exclusion in search of a new food source.  The thought of these bugs getting into our house is quite disturbing, but I'm hoping that the lack of access to the bedrooms from the attic will keep these tiny blood suckers up in their current home.  The isolation of our attic from the rest of the house is complete - no ductwork enters the attic, nor are there any electric lines or ceiling light fixtures in any of the bedroom bedrooms to provide access.  But we will definately be watching for any signs of infestation.

Ugh.  After typing all that out I'm feeling rather squicky.  So let's move on to some cleaner topics.  So - I mentioned a few posts ago finishing up the back bedroom.  Here's the semi-finished room:

Cecilia is quite happy with it, and the dresser from the Leaning House is a perfect fit:

With Celia moved into her new room I've been able to focus on the hallway, getting the wood floor painted and the handrail and other woodwork finished:

The color and tight grain of the old walnut wood in this house really is amazing.  : )

Bat Exclusion - Night Four

Actually, I don't have a report for last night.  (Unless you want to hear about Neil and Cecilia's bed-time routine.)  But I went outside this morning and quickly found evidence that everything is continuing as hoped:

I never thought a pile of bat guano could make me smile, but it did this morning. 

Here's a picture of the bat box hanging directly above the droppings pictured above:

I have no idea how many bats are now using the east facing box, but the numbers are clearly going up each night.  Despite this, the bats in our bat boxes are still only a small portion of the colony evicted from our attic.  Wherever the rest are I hope they too have found sufficient shelter. 

Bat Exclusion - Night Three

Last night's tally:

Number of bats to exit the attic through the one-way door: 10
Number of bats seen flying out of new bat houses: 26
Number of bats seen flying away from the south chimney: 1
Number of bats unaccounted for: over 200

Here's hoping those 26 tell their friends and family about the wonderful new accomodations they found. : )

Bat Exclusion - Night Two

Yesterday just before dusk I stood directly under our new bat boxes and shined a flashlight above me. I thought I could make out one bat in each box (although it was hard to tell if I was seeing bats or wasps nests). As darkness fell we settled in on the patio outside the kitchen to wait for the second night's show. One of the things I've learned from this adventure is that not every bat in a colony will be active on any given night. We will need to leave the one-way door up for at least a week before we can be confident that all of our bats have had sufficient time to exit the Einsel House attic.

By 9pm last night we had counted 47 bats leaving the attic. We didn't take a count on Sunday night, but considering that last fall my sister-in-law stopped counting at 200 one night even though bats were still coming out we're pleased with an under-50 count for the second night with the one-way door up.

Unlike the first night, the bats that came out last night did not attempt to immediately reenter the attic. (I admit it's possible they were intimidated by the larger spot light we had last night.) :) Regardless, once out, last night's bats headed for the creek.

Of course the big question for the night was - where did the bats that exited the first night go? We saw only one bat fly out of the bat boxes we put up earlier this summer. We also saw at least 3 bats coming from the capped south chimney of the house. It appears that the bats did not enter the actual chimney proper, but instead found shelter behind a gap in one piece of flashing used to cap the chimney. We'll be watching this chimney closely to determine if it continues to be used by the bats.

Early this morning I sat down at the computer to check email. Within a few minutes I noticed there were bats flying outside the office window. I slipped on some shoes and went outside to watch. As before, the bats would fly straight to the top of the one-way door then abruptly turn around, loop back and try again. Each bat made around five or six tries at the door before giving up.

I walked around the house and saw bats swooping toward the eaves all around the roof. As I watched two bats went back into the south chimney. They actually landed on the roof first and crawled over to the chimney before climbing behind the gap in the flashing.

By 6:45 there were only two bats still looping through the air outside the one-way door. When they finally gave up I followed them around to the south end of the house. Again they began circling above me, each flying repeatedly up to the south gable peak of the house. Finding it too blocked, they proceeded around to the back of the house. Yet again they flew repeatedly at the roofline. By this time I honestly felt sorry for the two things so quiet in their frantic flight above me. They did finally admit defeat, and I watched as they flew together towards some woods just north of the house. Their repeated failure to get back into the Einsel House has been our goal from the start, and yet watching those two poor bats was poignant somehow. Most of the creatures forced out of this house in the past two days have called this place home longer than I have.

I'm curious to see what tonight brings.

Bat Exclusion - Night One

Last night was wild. Just before dusk Charles predicted that we would have "a boatload of angry bats by morning." He was wrong. We had a boatload of angry bats within about an hour.

Any other night, our bats came out two or three at a time and flew basically straight down to the creek. Last night the bats the bats came out right on time, and most had no problem finding their way out the one-way door, but they seemed to know almost immediately that something was different. Almost as soon as the bats came out they circled back and began trying repeatedly to reenter the attic. By nine o'clock last night we had at least 30-40 bats circling in the air just above us. "It's like a swarm of giant gnats," Charles commented at one point.

We took a lot of pictures and video, but our camera is nothing special so the quality of what is below is pretty pathetic. Some still pictures are first:






And some video next. I really wish these were better quality, but they at least give some idea. This first video was taken as the first bats began to find their way out. You'll see (and hear) the first bat to try to reenter the attic:





This second video is short (the flashlight was needed to locate Neil's lost quarter), but I still thought the video worth including:




And finally, the poorest quality video yet, but it's longer at least. And it gives some idea of the number of bats swarming the house last night:



I took the kids to The Farm shortly after the last video was taken. Charles stayed at The Einsel House. He stayed up until 2am and said the bats were still circling the house and attempting to reenter the attic when he finally went to bed. So far we haven't had any bats find their way into the house.

The bats were gone by this morning. We have no idea if they eventually found a way back into the attic, or if they gave up and spent today in some other roost. We're going back outside tonight to see if any bats return, and if so to try to determine where they come from.

Here We Go...

That's a one-way bat door. At least we hope that's what it is.

Many thanks to my Uncle J for being willing to spend half an hour on an extension ladder to install the thing.

We'll be spending tonight at The Farm, but I plan to hang around here long enough to make sure that our bats are indeed able to find their way out.

Baby Bats!

The guy we hired to move our monstrous "you're-sure-it-isn't-going-to-fall-through-the-floor?" upright piano into the Einsel House noticed the first one. We had just gone back out the front door when he paused and said, "Um, do you have a bat problem around here?". Charles and I kind of grinned at each other and responded with "Why do you ask?". "Because there's one hanging under that window," Piano Guy replied, finger and gaze both directed to the bottom of the office's west facing window.

Yep, that's a bat. Pretty small compared to most that we see swooping out of our attic. Piano Guy was actually quite interested and we wound up chatting about bats for another 15 minutes or so before he left.


We took a few pictures of the little bat but after that left him alone. It was the first time we had noticed a random bat hanging on the house's exterior during the day, but given the size of the colony in the attic we were not too surprised. But as dusk approached that evening, we began to notice more unusual activity among the bats. They began chirping earlier than usual, well before dusk, and the chirping was undeniably louder than usual.


I sat down on the kitchen sidewalk, eyes on the one gap remaining behind the frieze board on the north side of the house. About 10 minutes later I went in the house to grab the camera.



A web search the next day confirmed that baby Big Brown Bats usually take their fledgling flight around the first week of July. It was one of the neatest things I have ever seen. The little bats hung there, chirping and clinging to the wall and each other. Behind them you could hear more bats chirping loudly in the attic, and every so often an adult bat would push out between the young ones and swoop off into the dusk. But the babies seemed almost afraid to let go. And understandably so. Although we saw several that finally let go and flew off with their elders, we saw several more who let go and spread their wings only to fall (albeit slowly and gracefully) down to the concrete patio below.

"That wasn't flying! That was....falling with style."

Once they hit the ground, the little bats were done. Some tried to hide behind the gutter downspout. Some crawled a foot or two up the stone wall and settled in, hanging by their back legs. Remarkably, the cats paid only a passing interest in the little hissing creatures. I however, took pity on the poor things. By afternoon the fallen little bats were baking in full sun, and although I knew I probably shouldn't touch them I had to do something. I put on a pair of thick gloves and one by one transferred the fledglings to the branches of a shady tree.

Over three days I transferred nine baby bats to our walnut tree. We later found the bodies of two of the nine under the walnut tree. Six more died on the patio before I found them. One spent most of one day clinging to the screen outside our son's bedroom window:

The fledgling flights lasted about 3 nights, and our bat activity seems to be back to normal now. I found only one wee grounded bat yesterday, and for two nights there have been no twilight traffic jams of frightened baby bats blocking the one remaining exit from the attic.

Meanwhile, my brother stopped by one afternoon on a visit home from out west.

So, Einsel House bats, enjoy your last few weeks in the Einsel House attic. We really do like you, we just don't like trying to sleep knowing there are so many of you right above us. We'll wait until August so that your young have time to be more comfortable using their wings.

But still, consider this your 30-day notice.

When You Got It, Flaunt It

As alluded to a few post ago, I've left a certain project unmentioned here on the blog. Until today. Let's start with a picture showing what the stairway looked like last November:

And

(drumroll please............)

What the stairway looks like now:

Isn't that simply delicious!?

As this blog chronicled, last fall we (temporarily) uncovered several interior stone walls here at the Einsel House. As time passed, we became increasingly determined to find an interior stone wall somewhere in the house that we could leave permanently exposed. I mean, the stone construction is one of this home's most unique features, so why not embrace it? The difficulty was in choosing which wall to expose. It was my mom who first suggested the wall at the top of the stairs. And from the moment we decided that the top of the stairs would be it, mom was champing at the bit to bust into the cracked plaster. When she finally began attacking the old plaster (in early February of this year) she practically giddy with excitement.

Frankly, I'm not sure which made her more happy - the stones she was uncovering in front of her, or the fact that she found something other than sanding woodwork to do that day. (This was early February, remember.)

Here's the wall at the end of that first day:

And later, looking up the stairs, sans plaster:

And from mid-February to mid-May, that's basically what our stone wall looked like. It looked great even in that rough state, but there were a few issues that the slightly fuzzy picture above doesn't show. First, at the very top of the stone wall are some pieces of fuzzy yellow insulation.

They are there because where the stone stopped at the top of the wall, it revealed about an inch of unfinished lumber with small gap of varying width between it and the plastered ceiling over the upstairs hall. Bat droppings came out of this gap as the plaster came down. So we stuffed in pieces of left over insulation (both to keep the house's heat from escaping into the attic, and to keep the attic's bats from escaping into the house.) That worked until earlier this month, when my uncle went upstairs and found one of our attic friends hanging from a stone near the top of our exposed wall. With that, finishing the stone wall moved up rapidly on our "to-do" list.

We called in our mason who has done such wonderful work on the exterior of the home and springhouse. (Who I realized just last week is "Jason the Mason". At which point my mom interjected to say, "That's probably why he goes by Jay.") But when we asked him if he could finish and point our interior wall, for the first time ever our mason hesitated. Of course he could do it, but he felt the wall was beautiful in its unfinished state and his heart clearly almost broke at the thought of altering it in any way. I could see his point. But I could also see bats squeezing into my house from the attic, and giant spiders making homes out of the many dark cracks and crevices left in the unpointed wall. Thankfully, our mason's enthusiasm rebounded somewhat once he actually began the project. And we are thrilled with the result. Particularly impressive is the work along the edges of the stone wall, where it meets the doors to the north and south bedrooms. When the plaster came down there were gaps between these door frames and the stone wall. These gaps were filled by our mason with small pieces of stone and pointed just like the rest of the exposed wall. You can see the finished result below:

Standing at the bottom of the stairs now is almost surreal. To my right is the new door with transom and sidelights, straight ahead is the living room with windows trimmed out in floor-to-ceiling walnut, and to my left the refinished stairs topped with the exposed stone wall.

There are times when it's hard for me to believe that this is actually my house. : )

15,197 Words

Remember – A picture equals a thousand words.

And so, in no particular order, here we go.

First up – matching windows!

Kitchen with new subfloor:

That subfloor is now covered by this tile (they're just self-stick, but they fit the budget):


Refinished bedroom door:

Next up, one of our new curtains for the office, graciously sewn by my Aunt J. (On the bottom half of the window so that we can close them as necessary to avoid sun glare on the computer screen.) Thanks J!

And here's J sewing a curtain. I love the look on her face that says, "You know you really don't need my picture on the blog." (Although I obviously disagree!)

Moving upstairs, here is my mom at work on a little closet tucked into the corner of the back bedroom:

And a blurry picture of the closet taking shape:

Another action pic of mom, this time putting up missing pieces of baseboard in the office:

Still more of mom's work (bathroom closets this time) and more new subfloor:

Two pictures from the south bedroom (carpet goes down in this room tomorrow):

And, finally, two bat boxes on the end of one really long pole:

More Wildlife

It finally happened.
It was soft and brown and kind of fuzzy.

It had elf-like pointed ears.

And two legs.

And two wings.

And it was in the house.

I wish I had been there to take pictures. I've seen a bat before when it is dopey from the light of day, and they are almost cute. My uncle was able to pick it up without any argument and carry it out to the shed where he gently laid it in a dark corner. Hopefully it found its way back to our attic in the wee small hours of last night, to share its harrowing tale of the day before with its own uncles, aunts and cousins galore.

Content

We've been keeping busy at The Einsel House. Ceiling priming/painting is done for the moment, and the work we are doing cntinues to be (mostly) of the visually rewarding variety. And of course the arrival of spring has been so nice. Late Thursday Charles noticed 12 deer in the field behind our house. We watched as they meandered across the field in a single file line over to the creek. Barely ten minutes later we were all sitting on the sidewalk outside the kitchen counting the bats that swooped out from under the eaves. Neil counted nineteen. As he counted we were serenaded by frogs along the creek.

Last night as Charles and I were closing up the house we could again hear our bats waking up for the night. (They make a 'chirp' noise, kind of like a cricket but much less harsh.) Charles told me that he was surprised because seeing the bats and knowing they are in the attic doesn't really bother him. If not for the fact that we need to insulate the attic, he said he would be fine with letting them stay in the current home. I wonder if bat guano has an R value? ; )

Like the local wildlife, our two children have been celebrating the arrival of spring. Here's a picture of Neil riding his new bike down the lane:

In the house we've been working mostly on the dining room. I began applying Sealcoat to the dining room woodwork yesterday. Here's a picture of the corner I started in:

In the opposite corner of the room my mom put back up a few trim pieces at the top of the windows that had been removed when the ceiling was gutted. And my Uncle J installed the new candle chandelier (bulbs for it are on my next Lowes-run list). We have a family Easter party today, but I hope to finish the Sealcoat in this corner of the room tonight:

A Pick Me Up

Although it was the weekend, I set my alarm this morning early enough that I could make the 7:30am Mass for Palm Sunday. Waiting for the next service would have cost me two hours of progess at The Einsel House. After Mass I went to McDonald's for an Egg McMuffin and a large vanilla iced coffee. As I pulled up to the first window to pay the teenage employee was counting some money in her hand with a somewhat bewildered expression on her face. She turned to me and said, "I assume you know the lady who was ahead of you?" I looked at the white minivan now stopped at the second window. It didn't look familiar. The cashier continued, "She left this money to pay your bill." I looked back to the van now pulling away from the window ahead of me. It still didn't look familiar. Feeling rather bewildered myself, I paid the 17 cents still owed for my breakfast and pulled forward to pick up my food. I had planned to splurge on the iced coffee as a pick me up, but it paled in comparison to a stanger's random act of kindness. God bless that lady, she made my whole day better by starting it with a smile.

The little dorm-sized refrigerator in the EH kitchen now has this sheet of paper on the front of it. Being able to put an "X" in another box is a good feeling at the end of the day.

Two of the most recently filled in boxes include painting the living room ceiling:

and the primer and first coat of paint in the dining room:

The basement also shows signs of recent work. Our new bat boxes have been primed and have part of their first coat of black paint:

And hanging from the ceiling are four of the house's original floor registers. We had these sandblasted and they are now primed and waiting for spraypaint:

Next up is a picture of my Aunt D, who stopped by for a few hours on Saturday and helped us prep the dining room before primer went on the walls:

Thanks, D!

And finally here is Cecilia looking quite at home in

her playhouse/jungle gym

(a.k.a. the scaffolding our contractor has in the north end of the kitchen):

(A corresponding picture of her brother would have shown him upstairs in his bright yellow bedroom in front of a small TV, Wii remote firmly in hand.)