The Cross House

Today…was a thrill. Guess who stopped by? And guess what they brought to the carriage house?     Three decades ago Doug salvaged the siding from a building being demolished and it has been stored ever since. He has more. A lot more. And I can buy as much as I need!!!!!!!! I told Doug…

  They booked a 2-hour tour but I let this continue to 4 hours as the two came bearing gifts! Y’all know Clay as he has been reading this blog since the beginning and comments often. Clay previously gifted the house. Before arriving Clay tantalized with this: “Just a reminder Cindy and I will be…

And so, my fellow flying monkeys, I have the results of Red Letter Day. Today was the day I met again with the city regarding the 30-day VIOLATION NOTICE. The notice meant that I had 30 days to fix a whole host of issues. With no advance warning. My hope was that by showing good…

  I am not sure about this. It will be years before I build the porch roof. And I think this temporary solution will look…odd. I can see people driving by, slowing down, and thinking: why did he put on that terrible siding? I will likely be one of those people.   Tomorrow is a…

Jenine suggested infilling the wall above the diamond window with wider boards to make it all go faster. Cody suggested same but added “Rather than infill all of that space with siding that you have to scramble to find, and will have to later rip down…” I read that in my car just after pulling…

    I do not think I will have enough old siding to finish the above, much less repair all the Violation Notice work. So, some pondering is now required.    

As y’all know getting hit in the head with a VIOLATION NOTICE was…unexpected. In an instant all my plans were meaningless. In an instant I had to create a new future. Quickly, I recognized that the NOTICE, rather than being a terrible thing, was perhaps a gift. And I have felt this ever more strongly…

    PAINT! Squee!!!!!!!! I am quite please how the siding turned out. All the visible siding is from 1894 and from the carriage house or the big house. After much ado making it all nice, it now looks nice. Ross happy! I could not finish painting the window because sun was hitting it. So,…

    I had planned to prime all that I could reach via the scaffolding but note how the right side is in shade and the left in sun. The latter is bad. Painting in the sun, and in the heat, is bad. Very bad. As I learned to my immense frustration in 2014 while…

The past few afternoons have not been, well, fun. Too hot, too much sun, and too little wind. Argh! Yesterday I had to haul out the big fan to get through the work. Today, around 3PM, I went inside the big house to cool off, splash by head with cold water, have an iced soda,…

In 2019 I did a very long post on the carriage house. To appreciate what I am posting here it would be ideal if you…with wine in hand, dahlink…read the 2019 post.                                              …