Category: Arts and Aesthetics
All things creative. All things beautiful, profound, and moving.
… because we’re a month or more away from our first frost. But after a rainy September we’re in the midst of mild, sunny days. Sunny days have meant only one thing to me all summer: Accomplish work on the house. We (and I) did enough of that to turn Ye Olde Wreck officially into the Mo Saoirse Hermitage, but there’s still a bit of this, bit of that. I’ve begun each dry morning with a to-do list. Yesterday I was good and did everything I planned. Today … well, I got started, though I ended up doing a different…
… the Walrus said, “To talk of many things: Of shoes–and ships–and sealing-wax– Of cabbages–and kings– And why the sea is boiling hot– And whether pigs have wings.” Erm. No, actually that’s not the time that has come. My brain just flipped Lewis Carroll-ward when I wrote the subject line. An entirely different time has come. After 5 years and 4.25 months, the exterior of Ye Olde Wreck no longer reveals any wreckage. The interior, though not cosmetically complete, is entirely livable. Plumbing and electrical are upgraded and working. The roof and foundation are in good shape. The insulation is…
The race against the clock fall rains is over. We had pleasant showers last night and the region’s most esteemed meteorologist says that’s it: Summer is officially done and we’ll be seeing a lot more such “pleasantness.” After darned near doing myself in on Wednesday, I slowed my pace of work. As a result there’s still miscellaneous trim, touch-up, and clean-up remaining. But I did finish the gutters at 2:00 yesterday afternoon, a few hours before light rain moved in. That was the last big, important thing — the last thing that couldn’t somehow be made to fit between showers.…
One of the challenges of renovating a place like Ye Olde Wreck is deciding what to perfect, what to merely improve as best you can, and what you just have to live with. Sometimes it’s a matter of affordability. Sometimes a matter of priorities. Sometimes it’s simply about deciding to keep something because you fear that opening up that particular wall or floor or ceiling space might also mean opening a can of worms. Such was the case with my kitchen window. It’s another big, modern, vinyl window (the windows being one of three reasons the place seemed worth buying…