4 December 2016

Took down the tree stand in the large hemlock that is downhill (west, towards the lake) of the house, from which the house construction photo series was shot.  After 7 years and 8 months of use, the stand was is pretty good shape, which is to say that it didn’t totally collapse when I climbed up one last time and I salvaged some of the wood for use when the dock is rebuilt (next summer????).  Once again, the 5-fold block and tackle (that Gene Zukosky gave me way back when) was instrumental in moving the stand to the ground safely.  Tried to take the Tacoma down to the hemlock, where I had disassembled the stand, to haul out the wood.  Turns out the path between the stone wall and the wood walkway was (1) too narrow for the truck to fit through and (2) very muddy, which meant that (3) the truck got well and truly stuck.  No worries (he says, with fingers crossed)!  With Chree driving the truck, used the backhoe to pull the Tacoma back up onto level ground.  Even Chree now says that having a tractor on the property is a wonderful idea.

15 November 2016

Tyler Maynard from Lincoln Applied Geology (the technician who redesigned our septic and potable water systems in April 2015) came by for several hours.  Together we did a complete survey of the “as built” property, which will show future generations where all the property lines, buildings, other structures, and underground utilities are located.

14 November 2016

Jim and James returned, bringing a third and final load of gravel to finish the driveway verge.  Used the Kubota to move that load around (the Yanmar having been taken to another job).  After that area was leveled, smoothed, and compacted, moved Delores back to her usual parking spot and then wrapped her snuggly in her favorite blue tarp for the winter.

12 November 2016

Jim and James Ploof arrived first thing this Saturday morning to place  a verge of ¾ crusher run gravel all along the driveway, this reinforcing the asphalt edges to prevent them from deteriorating. They used their Yanmar mini-excavator to scoop gravel out of the truck and place it where needed.  Then James compacted the gravel with their big vibrating roller.  I had told Jim that one 14 cubic yard dump-truck load should be enough for the job.  He (wisely) got two loads from the Carrara stockpile.  Unfortunately, three loads were needed… and Carrara’s is not open on the weekends this time of year (deer season).

8 November 2016

Dennis Senesac came by to investigate why, when we turn on the thermostat that supposedly controls radiant floor heating in the study, laundry, and master bathroom, the floor heat for the master bedroom, shop, shop lavatory, and storage room also comes on.  The problem seems to have been that, because we’ve never turned on the radiant floor heat anywhere other than the study, the valves controlling flow in those other lines had never seated closed, allowing “ghost flow” to happen.

31 October 2016

Gary Dupois (Craig’s brother) and his band of asphalting associates arrived just after 7 to begin paving the driveway.  First they laid down a base course with asphalt containing ¾″ stone and nominally 1½ thick.  Then they laid down a top coat with asphalt containing ⅜″ stone and nominally 1 thick.  They used a 5 ton vibrating roller to compact the bejesus out of each course.  Actual thickness of the finished driveway is more like 4″ thick… and the thicker the better!  By early afternoon the crew was gone and we had a mud-free drive out to the road… that easily passes the 30 mph-with-no-loose-fillings test.




29 October 2016

Craig Dupois from D&F Paving and Excavating arrived first thing this Saturday morning to do final preparations for paving the driveway… a job that we were led to believe (when we signed the contract at the end of May) would happen in late July or early August.  First item of business was for Craig and me to blow forty million leaves off the drive, which mysteriously accumulated while Chree and I were away these past two weeks.  (FYI: in Vermont lexicon, “away” denotes any location south of Rutland.)  Then Craig re-graded the driveway so that (in theory) water will flow where we want it to once the pavement is laid down.  After all the slopes were set, Craig rolled the driveway to compact the gravel.  Rained off and on all day, which was both good and bad news.  The good news is that the re-graded driveway squished packed down very tight when Craig rolled it, making a firm foundation which the asphalt will surely like.  The bad news is that we (that would be Shlomo… admittedly with some help) tracked several pecks of mud into the house.

Side note: Even with outdoor temperatures falling into the 30’s at night, we’re finding that if we fire up the woodstove with one load of wood every other day, the house stays comfortably warm without using the radiant floor heating.  Now that’s a tight house!


 

20 August 2016

Spent most of the morning backfilling behind the outdoor fireplace.  If any archeologists ever excavate that site, they surely will be puzzled by the half dozen broken gravestones neatly stacked therein.  Also buried there are all the leftover bricks from the house chimney, a few stray concrete blocks (not tied to any bodies), and the stones that heretofore lined the campfire pit that served us so very well these past seven years.  After lunch, added a few rocks to the retaining wall that connects the patio to the driveway.  Also moved the residual firewood from the old campfire site to our new, covered, outdoor woodbin, verifying that the tractor fits onto the patio just fine, thank you very much!  Shlomo was outside with me most of the day and was being really good about staying close by but well clear of the tractor.  Was just thinking that, as a reward, I should take him swimming when he reappeared from a short sojourn… soaking wet.  Then he went absolutely crazy rolling in all the fresh dirt I’d stirred up behind the fireplace, turning himself into a chocolate lab.  Nothing for it but to take him back down to the lake for another immersion.  Got an email from Alex saying that he and Chree were busy eating crawfish, drinking schnapps, and singing Swedish drinking songs about raw horse meat.  When Katy’s away, Grandma will play!  Not to be outdone, I enjoyed another wonderful salmon feast down at Marty and Merry’s.

 


 


19 August 2016

Kevin spent most of the day building the walkway from the front entry steps over to the driveway, using the 1 thick irregularly-shaped slate we procured for that purpose some time ago from Vermont Specialty Slate.  Kevin used less than half of our stockpile for the walkway, so…  With this walkway complete, the house is OFFICIALLY done, i.e., all of the items in our original contractor specifications have been completed.  Mind you, there are still quite a few projects on the Honey Do list that will keep Chree and me busy for the foreseeable future…  While Kevin was working outside, I carved two holes in the kitchen desk / bookshelves area so that I could rip out the phone jack box on the west wall (that turned out to be quite awkwardly placed) and run the wires over to the phone jack box on the north wall.  Easy job!  Now I just have to hide the evidence before Chree gets back…  I also carved a hole in the north pantry wall, thinking to install a light switch to control the pantry light in lieu of the motion-sensing switch that we don’t like.  Remembered, at the last second, to offset the hole so that the switch box I was installing would miss the switch box on the other side of the wall (that controls the light over the kitchen desk / bookselves).  Don’t ya know, some (epithet deleted) plumber put a vent pipe right where I cut the hole.  With a wall stud just north of the vent pipe and another wall stud just south of the desk / bookshelves switch box, there was nowhere to put the switch I wanted to install, without getting totally bizarre with the switch height above the floor.  So some more evidence to hide from wifely eyes.



18 August 2016

 Kevin put the capstones on the circular raised flower bed.  We tucked filter fabric (aka: sediment screen) under those stones and around the inside of the enclosure, which should keep dirt from getting between the wall stones, absorbing water, freezing, and forcing the walls apart… which would not be a good thing.  That done, we spent the rest of the day building the sun room steps, using up all but three of the intact gravestones.  At the end of the day, we used those three remaining gravestones to build a ramp from the backyard up to the shop door.  Kevin kept telling me the ramp was too steep.  After it was done, I tested it out and found… that I’ll be remaking it into the form of steps sometime soon.  Chree left shortly before noon for her monthly Devin fix.  (The actual excuse, this time, was that Katy was going for the weekend over to Portland, ME to a bachelorette party for her brother’s fiancĂ©e.)

 




17 August 2016

Matt Sargent was here early afternoon to do the final Efficiency Vermont inspection.  The 50 Pascal blower door test showed we were leaking air at 580 cfm, which equates to 1.34 air exchanges per hour (ACH).  Efficiency Vermont’s Silver standard, to which we were building, is less than 3.0 ACH.  This result is just a tad worse than the ACH measured during the preliminary test done in February, which Matt says is not unusual.  Sean was here to witness the goings-on and to sign the Vermont Residential Building Energy Standards (RBES) Certificate that records as-built data about the house.  Kevin arrived as the weather was clearing shortly before noon and spent the afternoon building the firebox in the outdoor fireplace, complete with two horizontal grooves which will allow us to position the grill at either 6½ or 11½ above the firebox floor, depending on how hot the fire is burning.  Chree and I went down to Marty and Merry’s for another fantastic dinner.



16 August 2016

Returning from morning errands in Middlebury and Brandon, Chree and I found the Hardscapes truck here, unloading a pallet of stones that will cap the patio’s circular raised flower bed.  The truck also took away a full pallet of not-needed stones whose brothers and sisters were used to make the flower bed and the wall behind the outdoor fireplace and wood storage bin.  No Kevin today… apparently the rain forecast scared him away.  The lake temperature is 78° and the water level is 19½ below the top of the dock.

15 August 2016

Kevin filled all of the patio paver joints with polymeric sand.  That sand, when exposed to water, hardens, locking the pavers together, yet remains semi-permeable.  After that was done, Kevin, with some modest help from me, built the front entry steps using 20 gravestones.  All of the gravestones, except for the two ends, were glued together with Locktite PL 500® polyurethane construction adhesive.

 

14 August 2016

Went up to Wildflower Iron Works in Addison to retrieve, at long last, the 32½ x 21 x outdoor fireplace grill that John Baker custom-built for us.  Went from there to Moncton to procure a used (but hopefully still good) refrigerator to put in the garage to hold cold drinks.  Stops in South Burlington / Shelburne at Lowe’s and to visit Alverta were, of course, de rigueur.  Steve and I saunaed in the evening.

12 August 2016

Arose at crack of dawn to put a second coat of paint on the steel lintels for the outdoor fireplace woodbin.  Kevin was here early once again.  He finished building the fireplace / woodbin rear wall, put the caps over the woodbin (once the paint was mostly dry), and then started figuring out how the gravestones will go together to make the sun room steps.  Sean stopped by mid-morning to see how things are going.  Tasi and Rachel headed back south mid-afternoon after visiting the Foley Brothers Brewery (colocated with the Nesobe Winery).  Their verdict: not worth a second visit.  Chree and I felt the same way about the winery…


11 August 2016

Kevin built most of the 8 diameter raised flower bed that will be a centerpiece of the patio.  He glued the stone together with Lumberlock® construction adhesive so that they look dry-layed but are solidly attached to one another.  He also started work on the outdoor fireplace and wood storage bin, getting the three piers built.  After some discussion, we decided to use two ½ x 4″ x 55″ flat stock steel lintels to hold up the two caps that will cover the woodbin, vice overlapping the caps on the adjoining piers and installing a vertical concrete block divider.  Called Nops Metalworks at 10 o’clock to see if they could provide the steel pieces we wanted.  By 10:45 Chree (on her way back from her workout at Middlebury Fitness) had the steel in the back of her car.  Now that’s what you call service!  Put a coat of primer on the steel soon after Chree arrived back home.  Dennis Senesac and Bill Gabbiet arrived mid-morning to attend to various plumbing punch list issues.  They installed a water meter so that we can measure domestic consumption and determine when to change the water filter.  Dennis and I set up the hot water re-circulating pump timer, which hopefully will save us some electricity.  For the same reason, Dennis also disconnected the HRV from the air handler.  Bill put insulation on several more water lines to stanch, hopefully, the condensation problems we’ve been experiencing in the mechanical room.  Bill also installed the mechanical room floor drain.  Unfortunately, that installation required grinding away some concrete, which created a LOT of dust, which set off the fire alarms when the mechanical room door was opened.  Was excitingly noisy for awhile there…  Perry and Lynne came over for a dinner of burnt offerings (steak cooked over a much-too-hot fire).

10 August 2016

Kevin was here briefly first thing in the morning to go over the construction details for the outdoor fireplace.  We did some designing on the fly to arrive at a compromise between what I had envisoned and what is actually buildable.  Used the Kubota to move one retaining wall rock and some more dirt out of the way.

9 August 2016

Kevin cut and fit pavers along the retaining wall on the east side of the patio.  He also built the ramp from the patio up to the garage people door.  Then he started laying out the outdoor fireplace structure.  Chree and I spent the entire day at the Addison County Agricultural Fair and Field Days up t’ New Haven.  We hadn’t been to a county fair since the kids were very little (sometime last century).  Was bloody hot, but fun nonetheless.

8 August 2016

Kevin worked all day cutting and fitting the patio pavers that abut the house foundation and the west and south retaining walls.  Tasi and Rachel arrived late afternoon for a multi-day stay and laundry marathon.  Marty and Merry joined us for the evening repast, featuring Julia Child’s Daube de Boeuf á la Provençale, followed by Mississippi Mud topped with French (of course!) vanilla ice cream.  A fun evening during which everyone ate far, far too much!

7 August 2016

Used the Kubota to move further away from the house several of the rocks forming the east side of the patio.  Before, there was just enough room to sneak the 57 wide Kubota through the opening onto the patio… with ¾ to spare on either side.  Doable, but kind of a tight fit!  Now, there is room for the 63 wide snowblower to get through the gap, with several inches left over to accommodate driver error.

5 August 2016

Kevin here again putting in more patio pavers, joined for part of the day by his son, Cory, who we had previously met because he also happens to work at The Lighting House.  With Cory lugging and Kevin laying, all of the central part of the patio was in place by day’s end.  I mowed the lawn for the first time, moving considerably slower than normal for some reason...  Took an hour, with an interruption from Perry, bringing us eight red raspberry plants from his horticultural collection.  I also started building a shelving unit for underneath the stairs (made entirely from scrap material cluttering the shop), on which to neatly organize all the left over paint.

 


4 August 2016

Kevin was here continuing the patio installation.  He got all of the pavers cut for alongside the north side and also installed the drain that (we hope) will catch the majority of the water coming off the roof valley, sending said deluge down the perimeter drain and out into the woods.  While all that was ongoing, Steve Osmer and I tackled Mount Mansfield (the highest peak in Vermont), trekking the Sunset Ridge trail to the summit from Underhill State Park.  Six and a half miles round trip, 5,000 feet total elevation change, 5 hours of hiking.  No exercise to speak of since about forever, so you can color me pretty much dead…

3 August 2016

No Kevin today.  Trailer in tow, I went down to RMG in Castleton (Rutland Marble and Granite, where we got the soapstone for the wood stove nook) and procured another pallet (2,800 pounds) of rejected military gravestones.  Those 1 x 2 x 4″ (100 pounds / each) chunks of granite will be used to create the sun room and front entry steps.



2 August 2016

Having figured out how the jigsaw puzzle goes together, Kevin began laying the patio pavers in earnest.  He got the first row alongside the garage wall put down, all of which had to be cut since the pavers are irregularly shaped and (we are pretty sure) the garage wall is straight.  I fixed the electrical outlet problem in the storage room, which turned out to not be as difficult as feared initially.


 

1 August 2016

Rain – yes; Kevin – no.  Larry Stevens from Marshall’s Alarm Service came out this morning and found nothing wrong except that somehow the date / time settings in the alarm system control panel had become un-set.  Installed the missing patio outlet and then two additional electrical outlets in the storage room.  Found, after turning the storage room circuit breaker back on, that one of the new outlets isn’t getting any electrons.  That misbehaving outlet is fed from one that Perry and I partially obscured behind a storage shelf last week, confident that I would never again have to get into that outlet’s junction box.  It’s a good thing we stopped at the NH State Liquor Store yesterday…

31 July 2016

Just before noon, while we were down south for the weekend visiting Alex, Katy, & Devin (and Frank & Fran), our house alarm system went haywire.  Result was both a fire and police response.  Devin was thrilled to see, via our video doorbell system, a real fireman on our front porch.  Unfortunately, cell service at Alex’s being on a par with cell service here, we couldn’t actually talk to the fireman ringing our doorbell, so it was a couple of hours before we learned that the house was still standing… and had not been broken into.  Sauna with Perry soon after our return home.  Was in a rush to get the sauna heated, so didn’t close the ash drawer air intake at the normal time.  Consequently, the sauna was a blistering 232°F when we first entered, several degrees beyond hellacious!

 

28 July 2016

Kevin arrived at 8:30 to begin laying the patio.  He spent much of the day figuring out how the pieces fit together.  He also sawed two gravestones in half to make curbs for the ramps that will be outside the garage people door and the shop door.  Kevin tried to plug his masonry saw into the exterior patio outlet, only to discover that there not only was no outlet under the waterproof cover, there also was no wire in that junction box.  Nobody to blame but myself, as I wired the garage outlets.  Proving that miracles still can happen, I opened up the garage wall (taking the drywall out in several pieces during my search and destroy mission) and ran the missing wire (though a quadruple stud combination without benefit of a right-angle drill) in less than an hour.  Many sheetrock screws later, and the wall was sort of back together.  No worries, joint compound will cover a thousand sins… or a monumental hack job!


27 July 2016

No Kevin; no phone call; no surprise.  Still quite a bit of condensate accumulating on the floor in the mechanical room.  On a positive note: the grass has sprouted already.

25 July 2016

Kevin arrived mid-morning, followed closely by a truck from Hardscapes in Williston, bearing many tons of patio pavers and associated materials.  Kevin left after the truck was unloaded, promising to return no later than Wednesday morning.  I power-washed all of the gravestones that will be used for the sun room and front entry steps.  As soon as I finished watering the new lawn areas it started to sprinkle… of course!  In spite of over 5″ of rain this month, the lake level is 17½″ below the top of the dock; the lake temperature now is a balmy 80°.

24 July 2016

Power, land-line telephone, and internet service finally were restored at 11 o’clock this morning.  Let the branch picking-up begin!  Chree finished moving all of the “stuff” out of the second guest bedroom into the storage room.  In the evening, Steve and I enjoyed another delightful sauna while Kathy and Chree canoed around the lake.  Then they were supposed to make sure the quality of our wine supply hadn’t suffered from six months outside the cellar…

23 July 2016

Jim, James, and Burt finished seeding and rolling the new lawn areas.  James and Burt used a special machine (Jim owns a lot of man-toys!) to chop up and spread bales of hay over top of the seeded areas, which will help to retain soil moisture and keep birds from eating the seed.  Before noon, the guys set to work back-hauling all (and by “all” I mean “a LOT”) of the equipment that accumulated here over the past few days.  Chree spent much of the morning finishing the interior RV cleaning while I tackled the under-coach storage compartments.  After everyone left, Chree and I loaded our residual viniferous supply  into the wine cellar (we’re down to only 60 bottles; the cellar can hold up to 300).  James returned mid-afternoon to see the RV.  While he was here we ran through the RV activation checklist, which I thought would be an excellent way for him to start learning what’s what and where’s where.  While we were about that task, a tremendous storm blew through… literally.  Rain rate was well over 5″ per hour… though we only got ¼″ of actual moisture.  The wind was scary-strong!  Branches came down everywhere!  The supply of electrons from Green Mountain Power was, no surprise, an early casualty.  Chree says the whole-house generator we installed was one of our smarter moves.


22 July 2016

Jim, James, Burt, and Perry here again today.  James told me first thing that he wants to buy Delores to use as a temporary abode while building his own house on the property he bought last year… the one with all the good maple syrup-producing trees on it.  So as soon as could, I moved Delores back over to her normal parking spot and then, when everyone left for the day, spent a couple of hours doing a preliminary cleaning of her interior.  Trust me, you don’t want to know…  Burt hauled in crusher-run stone for the driveway, getting his loads from the Carrara stockpile in East Middlebury because I rejected the first load (procured locally) as being too full of dirt.  Burt also hauled in many loads of Ploof’s #1 topsoil (good, rich, stuff; definitely not sand!).  Jim smoothed out the driveway stone using a special tilling machine.  James spread the topsoil around with a skid-steer and rake, then applied many pounds of sun & shade grass mix.  The guys used the Ploof’s big roller to compact both the driveway and the lawn areas.  The roller has a vibrator built in, which literally shook the entire house foundation whenever the roller was close by.  If the house didn’t settle after that treatment, it’s not going to!  Perry and I finished the storage room shelves, made a new bed board and slats for the storage room bunk beds, then replaced the main entry door bottom seal (which had failed after only thirteen months in service).  That’s the bad news.  The good news is that the new seal only cost $5 and took mere minutes to install.





21 July 2016

Jim, James, Burt, and Perry were here all day.  To clear room for Jim’s work, I moved Delores over to Kate’s driveway.  She started right up… but does she ever need a good cleaning!!!!  Obviously the sheets of fabric softener scattered about were less than effective in keeping critters away last winter / spring.  Jim removed about 6″ of dirt from off the top of the driveway while James continued smoothing out areas around the house that will become lawn.  Burt hauled in sand Ploof’s #2 topsoil for James and took away (over to the low-lying area at Kate’s that is being filled in) the material that Jim was excavating from the driveway.  Soon after he started, Jim found a rock that he thought was right on top of the conduit where resides the main power line that goes from the exterior electric panel to the house.  Using the Kubota, I dug that rock out with no problems.  A few yards further up the driveway, Jim found another rock, which he didn’t think was anywhere near the power line conduit. Unfortunately, that rock turned out to be right on top of the PVC pipe.  Luckily, damage was limited to the PVC; the power line itself was unharmed.  A couple of wraps of Vycor® and the conduit was, once again, waterproof.  A few yards even further up the driveway, Jim very carefully excavated until the conduit carrying power to the RV was uncovered… undamaged.  Excavating the rest of the driveway was, needless to say, a piece of cake.  Over the course of the day, Jim, James, and Burt moved out to the road all of the extraneous rocks that were sitting in piles around the property.  Those rocks will become (one of these years) a nice stone wall along our Route 53 property line.  Perry and I continued our storage room multi-hued shelf building marathon.






20 July 2016

James Ploof, Burt Wedge, and Tyler Truman arrived first thing and spent the morning repairing the patio base erosion problems.  They also dug out the 3′ x 12′ area in which Kevin will be building the outdoor fireplace and wood storage structure.  In the afternoon, the Ploof Excavating team started grading off the backyard, which we want to be absolutely smooth and level.  Using their fancy laser-leveling system, we determined that another course of rocks would have to be added to the monster lake-side retaining wall so that the yard could be made flat at the same elevation as the tops of the septic tanks’ manhole covers.  Fortunately, rocks of the right size just happened to be lying around…  At its peak, that wall now is 16 feet high!

 

19 July 2016

Jim Ploof and Willy Reopell (the D&F Excavating & Paving estimator) were here just after 7 am to confer about the excavating and preparation work that Jim will be doing to get the driveway ready for the D&F paving crew.  Perry and I worked all day on building shelves for the storage room.  Chree decided that she wanted those shelves painted, so we used the numerous paint samples she had collected from Home Depot when we were deciding on colors for the house interior walls.

15 July 2016

Another large pool of water on the mechanical room floor this morning.  Called Dennis, who sent Steve out mid-morning to investigate.  Steve determined that the air vent that he’d put in the air handler condensate drain line was preventing the condensate from draining out of the air handler condensate catch pan, which was, consequently, overflowing onto the floor.  A piece of duct tape (no kidding!) over the air vent opening fixed the problem.  Kevin Haight stopped by to see if we were ready for him to start putting in the patio.  Unfortunately, all the recent heavy rains had eroded the stone fines base to the point that it will have to be redone before the patio pavers can be installed.  So we put off the patio installation for another week…

14 July 2016

Dennis was here most of the morning insulating pipes in the mechanical room.  At the time, we thought condensation dripping from said pipes was so bad that it was producing the large pool of water that was collecting on the floor, which then was running under the wall into the second guest bedroom… soaking the brand new carpet.  As a result of that soaking I had a very unhappy wife… and, if mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy!   Dennis also closed the damper between the HRV and the air handler, as the air handler blower was overpowering the HRV, effectively stealing all of the HRV’s output.  Dennis then adjusted the six HRV supply vents so that we’re getting 15 – 20 cfm from all of them.

6 July 2016

Roger and Joe Desabrais came by early afternoon and installed the glass walls and door for the guest bathroom neoangle shower.  Fran and Frank, here visiting for a few days, were first users.  No more stinky guests!!!!  Or, alternatively, no more people transiting the master bedroom while the home owners still are abed.  In the great news department: after 12 months of listing on Craigslist, many, many inquiries, a few rejected offers, and much angst, I finally sold the under-sized “5068” Anderson patio door (original cost north of $3,300) for the $2,000 price I was hoping to get.  A bath, but at least the water was moderately warm.


 

3 July 2016

Tasi, Rachel, Alex, Katy, and Devin here for the weekend following the annual Tarrio family reunion at Anne’s place in New Hampshire.  Tasi and I (with help from Chree) finished putting in the copper heat shield behind the sauna stove.  That evening, the boys and I made sure the shield was working properly.  The kids enjoyed a day of canoeing and dumping Dad into the lake.  The boys and I also had a marathon game of make-up-the-rules-as-you-go-along bocce ball.  One of the standing house rules is that, if you hit the house with a ball, that ball is disqualified.  Unfortunately, the ball that landed, rather loudly, on the standing seam metal roof, landed right over Chree’s head.  She was not pleased.  We players, on the other hand, were hysterical.  Whatever you do, don’t tell Dad… who happened to be the person whose throw didn’t go exactly where planned.  


 








30 June 2016

Perry and I built and installed the shelves for the linen closet, making Chree a much happier person.  She quickly finished unpacking the boxes stacked up in a corner of the master bathroom that were awaiting completion of that project.  Charlie, Danielle, and Alyssa arrived mid-afternoon for an overnight stay.  Unfortunately, the guest bathroom shower is, as yet, unenclosed…