… via BHM’s office, it’s lost. Gone. And quite mysteriously so. I received an empty envelope in the snail with a BHM return address. It was stamped all over with bright red apologies about being received without contents. Lisa, BHM’s author liaison, said it had contained a letter from a reader.<\/p>\n
Odd thing: The envelope had clearly not been accidentally damaged. It had been opened tidily, as if with a letter opener.<\/p>\n
—–<\/p>\n
Here’s my Very Complicated Ceiling …<\/strong><\/p>\n … on day two of the actual putting-up part of the work. Yes, before you say it, it looks like complete garbage at this point.<\/p>\n But once my Master Plan is complete, it’ll be grand. A little funky maybe. More than a little funky, actually. But a work of art and good salvaging\/scrounging.<\/p>\n This is the ceiling under the portion of roof that collapsed last year. It used to be flat, seven-feet low, and covered with vintage beadboard. Then it had to be cut into and removed. <\/p>\n Now it’s sloped, hipped, and runs from a low of seven to a high of nine feet, which is much more attractive. But there wasn’t enough of the original beadboard to cover it. So materials are: as much of the old beadboard as could be salvaged, new tongue-&-grove pine 1×6, small segments of leftover drywall placed strategically here and there, and other (not-quite-compatible) beadboard I scrounged from the woods.<\/p>\n Trust me, with paint and trim it’ll look good.<\/p>\n At the moment I’m hating it, though. Not because it’s ugly in progress but because it’s gradually dawning on me that, between cleaning up the salvaged materials and measuring, cutting, and installing everything, it’s going to require about 100 hours of labor. To cover 200 square feet of ceiling. <\/p>\n Why<\/i>, I ask myself, didn’t I just drywall it?<\/i> Because I didn’t want that beadboard to go to waste. But Claire, you could have used the beadboard for a nice wainscotting someplace else in the house. Easy to measure. Close to the ground. Every board alike.<\/i> Oh well. Hindsight.<\/p>\n —–<\/p>\n Ankles and dragons<\/strong><\/p>\n The four hours I put into the ceiling on Saturday was the first serious house-work I’ve done since breaking the &^%$#@! ankle last spring. After half an hour, the foot was yelling at me and for a while I thought I’d have to stop and go back to knitting dragons.<\/p>\n Speaking of which, here’s the latest (second) dragon I finished up while sitting around idly with my foot in a bucket of hot water.<\/p>\n![\"ComplicatedCeilingDay2_072615\"](\"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/ClaireWolfe\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/ComplicatedCeilingDay2_072615-450x338.jpg\")
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![\"DragonHeadScarf-SecondOne-01_SMALL_061615\"](\"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/ClaireWolfe\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/DragonHeadScarf-SecondOne-01_SMALL_061615-450x649.jpg\")
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