I'm Going to Choose to Take That as a Compliment....

A couple of weeks ago I was out working on the shed when I noticed a vehicle pull into the end of our driveway.  It stopped at the end of the drive, but looked like my parent's vehicle, so I figured they were picking up the mail and would then come up to the house.  But no one got out of the car and it never progressed up the drive.  Just about the time it dawned on me that it was not my parents, the car backed out and drove (very s...l....o....w....l....y) down the road. 

I'm going to assume they were just admiring the house and not scoping the place out for less savory reasons.

But whoever that visited a couple weeks ago was just completely outdone.  10 minutes ago Cecilia looked out the window and said, "We have company!".  Sure enough, a silver minivan was coming up the drive.  I slipped on my shoes and went out to greet our visitors, but as I opened the door they were already turning around.  I began to walk down the sidewalk anyway and sure enough, just between the barn and shed the van's brake lights came on.  I got about half-way to the van (they had to see me) when the driver let off the break and took the rest of the lane at a pretty good clip.  They headed north out the drive.

I'm not sure what to think.  I'm guessing they just came up the drive to get a better view of the house, but I admit I'm puzzled (and a bit concerned) nonetheless.  I've got a few tools I've been keeping out in the shed, but they'll be locked in the house before nightfall tonight.

Updates, Updated

As the lack of posts here shows, I've not accomplished anything around the house lately.  But this time I have a good excuse - I spent the better part of 10 days one thousand miles from the Einsel House, and the lesser part of 10 days driving there and back.

I do have a few bits of news I can share though.  First, weeds can do an astonishing amount of growing in 10 days.

Second, thanks to my dad (and the wonderful brothers who now farm my parents' land) it looks like I again have barn siding to salvage for my shed project. 

Third, we have an estimate to deal with the flooding problems at the end of the drive.  However, we asked the county engineer's office for a second opinion and after looking at the problem they said any tile would be mostly a waste of money for two reasons - (1) it would need to be extremely large to deal with the heavy downpours that cause the problem and (2) because of where it would need to be located, any tile would quickly plug with chaff and other debris from the field.  The county engineer suggested with either (A) relocate the end of our driveway 20 feet or so south, or (B) wait until the current soybean crop is harvested so we have a better view of the problem area and then reassess the situation.  We're going with B.

Fourth, we still have kittens.  A dozen kittens to be exact.  Ethel amazed all of us, not only by having 7 kittens in her first litter, but also by managing to keep all seven growing and healthy.  If you're local and want a cuddly little buddy, let us know!

Fifth, although it was never mentioned here, I spent most of July trying to convince Honda to pay for a $2,000 repair needed on our van.  I had to fight way too hard for it, but just before crossing the Mackinac Bridge last Friday we got a call saying Honda has finally agreed to cover the necessary repairs!   This means we should still be able to have the back of the house repointed this year!

Toes in Lake Superior

And finally, a few highlights from our recent trip.  For Charles and I's tenth anniversary, my in-laws rented a cabin on a lake in northern Minnesota.  My father-in-law has made the trip annually for 30-odd years to visit both a friend made in Vietnam days and Minnesota's deer.  (Denny is always much happier to see Jim than the deer are.)

Fishing with her Grandpa

Neil enjoying table ball at the resort's play area

Every six year old girl's dream

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.  : )

The First Blisters of Spring

I was busy today.  I spent about five hours repairing tile at the end of our driveway.  And it was lovely.  : )

There is an old clay tile that passes under the end of our driveway along the ditch.  Originally, each end of this tile was secured by a small stone wall (what else would you expect at the Einsel House?).  However, the stone wall on the south side of the driveway had collapsed sometime before we bought the property.  Fixing it was on the to-do list, but it didn't make it to the top of that list until after the flooding we had a few weeks ago.  Here's what the south side of the driveway looked like after the deluge:

The rains had collapsed a portion of the tile and deposited a large portion of our driveway thirty or so yards down the ditch:



Charles and I scooped up some of the escaped driveway stone last week and used it to fill potholes in the driveway.  And I went to work on the collapsed tile today.

The old tile was very nearly plugged by washed out stone and debris:

Tile extended by just over four feet, with a new wall started:

Finished:

If you insist on zooming in on this (and Blogger lets you) please ignore the fact that I'm squinting against the sun:

The green box marks buried telephone lines.  It did made me a bit nervous, but I was careful not to dig out anything other than the ditch that had been there previously.  And just down the road there is an above ground pole on the same side of the ditch as the green box, leading me to believe that the phone lines run parallel to the ditch and not underneath it.

This job was hard work; the new clay tile, the stones and the buckets of dirt and escaped driveway stone were all heavy.  And digging out the clogged ditch was made difficult because the washed out dirt and driveway stone was littered with broken pieces of the old tile and stones from the original retaining wall.  Still, this was a job that I thoroughly enjoyed.  Mother Nature provided a lovely day, and it was great to be out in it.  The work was physically hard, but it was straightforward and there were no unexpected surprises.  And it helps that all the supplies were free - the clay tile I added spent the last 30-some years sitting in a back corner of my parents' barn, the stones for the retaining wall all came from our property, the fill dirt came from the pile left over from putting in the springhouse steps last fall, and the stone on top was scooped up from the pile the flood had washed downditch. 

The ditch could use a bit more cleaning out, and there are a few potholes still to be filled in the drive, but if the weather holds we should be able to finish those bits up tomorrow and then we can make the call to have the drive topped with a fresh coat of gravel.

And tomorrow is the first day of Spring!