The Wandering Monk and I began the front porch project yesterday. It was a day of breaking old concrete (him), wheeling concrete slabs and bricks uphill (me), wheeling cartloads of dirt downhill (us), and generally sweating in the sun. Our progress was satisfying, though nothing for the world to admire (so far). As usual with projects on Ye Olde Wreck, though, we’ve “come a long way, baby” from that day, just over five years ago, when fools rushed in and I bought this place. Here’s what the front entrance looked like in May 2013. The overview: The lovely details: Within…
Author: Claire
This question arose after discussion with a long-time reader. I think he and I will end up agreeing to disagree. What do you think? I hope you’ll also elaborate on your reasons in the comment section. UPDATE: I have simplified the language of the first two questions. One person said the original wording* was biased and editorializing. I suspect another might say the same, but in the opposite direction. So I stripped the wording down to bare essentials. If anyone wants to change their original answer because they believe my original wording nudged them in one direction or another, I’ll…
Yesterday afternoon The Wandering Monk and I scoped out the next step of the summer projects, a small porch. The front door is on the weather side of the house. So part of the plan is for a simple, transparent cover to keep rain off the Mormon missionaries and out of the house. I wanted 1/4-inch plexiglas, but reality disabused me of that fancy notion. We decided on corrugated fiberglass/acrylic. This morning I was on my way to the lumberyard to see what they had when … yard sale! Yup. Garage sale-fu strikes again. Never before in my life have…
Yesterday I was cleaning up rubble from the deck-building project and I uncovered a pair of slugs. Not unusual around here, where they’re such legends that they’ve inspired all manner of slug lore including an old parody called “Sluggie, Come Home.” But these weren’t PNW goliaths; just a couple squirmy little gray guys. I flipped the old porch over and there they were on what used to be — and what suddenly was again — the porch top, and they rose up out of the dark, moist dirt. They began to ooze sluggishly away, of course. Then they stopped. I…