“Full Joe” repair<\/a>. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I was relieved (and may I say again SO grateful) to have money in case the “Full Joe” was necessary, but I decided to try one day of the “Contractor Mike” approach (jacking up the roof and trying to pull the walls back into square, foregoing a total roof rebuild). If that went well, great. Mike all the way. If it didn’t, then Mike and I would be giving Joe a call.<\/p>\n
The first day went brilliantly. The construction gods smiled upon every step. Within five hours, the roof was back at its proper height and shape. The worst wall, that had bent three inches outward at the top (pushed out by the collapsing roof), had eased about halfway back in.<\/p>\n
The second day (pulling the front wall toward the rest of the house with a come-along and securing the rafters to the main house wall) … not so well. Hours of frustration. Little result. In the end, we had to settle for some make-do measures to get the rafters re-attached to the house. But by day three, everything was impeccably solid and secure, supported, flashed, caulked, and not leaking<\/i>. The most out-of-kilter wall was absolutely plumb again and all was airtight, water-tight, and ready to resist tonight’s winds. <\/p>\n
One wall still leans slightly toward the street. About an inch. But it’s barely noticeable — and that’s why they make trim boards in so many useful shapes and sizes. A few judiciously placed bits of decorative wood and nobody but me will ever know.<\/p>\n
The “Mike way,” with most of the work done from inside the house, meant cutting giant holes in the beautiful old beadboard ceilings, which I’ll now need to replace or cover with drywall. But that also gives the opportunity to put insulation where there was none, so it’s all good.<\/p>\n
No queen in her castle was ever more warm and dry than I am, thanks to you.<\/p>\n
—–<\/p>\n
Saturday, November 1, will be the day full hermitting begins.<\/p>\n
What I’m going to do is draw within from that day to December 31 — blogging as I go and meeting my work deadlines, but making no other commitments and taking lots of time for reflection.<\/p>\n
Toward the end of December, I’ll re-evaluate and (hopefully) have some idea where to go from there. My long-term plan is for a year of hermitting, with this first two months of retreat being mainly to get an idea of what I really want and how best to approach that.<\/p>\n
I’m going to be really, really, really terrible about email for the next two months. I’m awfully slow at it in the best of times, but now … well, if you don’t hear from me for two months, I hope you’ll understand and forgive.<\/p>\n
I’m also going to ask that my friendly providers of newslinks stop sending them for a while. Unless something earth-shattering occurs (and I think I’ll notice, though possibly notice only briefly, if a giant meteor strikes or the Yellowstone supervolcano blows; in which case it’s been very nice being part of your lives and I hope your preps get you through), I don’t want to know.<\/p>\n
Two months. Solid immersion in the Real World — and that part of the world, real or unreal, that exists within.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I am so grateful today. I’m grateful to have a solid roof over my head (and Ava, Robbie, and Kitsu the cat would say the same if they could speak) as the rain pours down all week and the season’s first high-wind warnings go up. This sense of security I owe to you. —– I owe C-B, S.H., M.K., L.P., and especially Anonymous and the Mysterious Rockefeller for the latest round of help, which repaired the section of roof that collapsed while the rest of the roof was being refurbished. I also owe many of you, especially Paul Bonneau, for<\/p>\n
Continue readingGratitude and solitude (and also construction)<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,18,20,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home-improvement","category-mind-and-spirit","category-money","category-the-retreat","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19086\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}