Man on the roof

In this nice summer-like weather, we can't stop working outside. We have a list of things we want to do to this house, and one of the things was to clean the north side of the house.

Our house is 7 years old and we don't think the cream colour vinyl siding has ever been cleaned before. The North side, where it never gets sun was really bad. So, my husband got up on the roof again to clean it up! Great job!

The grape vines are now in the ground1 We hope they grow up on the lattice and cover it up to provide some privacy. And of course to provide us with some vino :)

Garage Drywall

Mrs. A, here is the answer to your other question... the garage insulation and drywall.

We started to put up the drywall last weekend, and we are almost done. All the drywall is in, we just need to tape/seal it together to finish it. It has been a lot of work and the materials were heavy. But it looks much nicer inside the garage, so we are happy we have almost completed the project.  Here is a pic of the progress from the start till now.

 

Mrs. A also sent us a message yesterday about the Super Moon tonight. At 8:35pm pacific it is the best time to view the moon according to the news. It will be the brightest and biggest moon of the year.

...I hoped to put up a picture of the Super Moon, but it was too cloudy here... Did you see the moon in your area?

Attic DIY

It was another stormy night... Really stormy!  It kept us awake plus it took more shingles from our roof... The roofers showed up in the afternoon again to do more patch jobs ... sure hope this will be good enough for a while... They warned us that there might be another storm coming next week, so we asked them to seal the shingles well to prevent them from lifting again.

While the roofers were here, I asked them to change the vent on the roof for the bathroom as it was making a rattling noise. They replaced it but told me we need to go in the attic to tape the vent and the pipe as the pipe is not long enough.

...The Attic... dark, tight space where no one wants to go... I know it is a tight space so I need to do the job.

I opened the entrance to the attic and climbed up with a head light. Should have had a mask too, but it was too late... It was not comfortable, but see, I can do it too? 

This pic was brightened, so it seems light, but it was pitch dark!

DIY - Garage

A Sunny beautiful day! A bit cold, but it was warm enough to be outside once your are in the sun. Snoop enjoyed laying in the sun while we worked on the garage.

This is another DIY project we wanted to do when we moved into this house - insulate the garage. Our garage was not finished, so we found it was really cold during the winter. One reason to insulate the garage is to save on the energy costs of heating up the house.... Also it's just more comfortable to have a nice warm garage.  As we are first time house owners, we looked up some youtube videos about how to insulate the walls. We both prepared to use fiberglass insulation by covering our bodies with a hat, glasses, mask, gloves and etc. It took us a while to get used to working with the foamy awkward material, but we were able to finish the walls.

Now the next step is to borrow a truck and get the dry wall boards to seal them up. We already can feel the garage is a bit warmer and quieter than before. So many projects to do as the weather getting better. After the garage, we need to start building vegetable garden boxes in the back yard. That will be another DIY story to come...

 

Also something to share with you  today... See this below? It's one of the grape vines we planted about a month ago. I tried to put some in a pot with soil and others in water. This guy was in the water and two buds are coming out! I was hoping to see roots growing, but I only see buds so far. It's still too cold out to transfer this plant, so this will stay inside for a while yet :)

 

Up on the Roof

Today's subject is not so fun but it had to be done, so we did it.

The huge wind storm last Sunday blew off one of our roof shingles... Yes, the wind was that strong. We found out that night when we saw a half piece of the shingle on the front porch. Next day another storm hit us and another half fell off.  We wanted go up on the roof and check it. But it has been raining a lot, the roof was wet and slippery so there was nothing we could do. We called some roofing companies in town, but we learned they were too busy fixing other roofs due to the same storms.

Today was a sunny day. We had all the gear we needed to repair the roof by ourselves. We were not sure if we could go up on the roof as it was heavily frosted this morning and still wet. In the late afternoon, my husband decided to go up and spent about 30 min fixing the roof. It was our first experience, but now we know how to do it!  Hope he doesn't have to go up often as our roof is quite steep... Yikes! He enjoyed the nice view from the top though...

   

Stormy Day & DIY

We were up since 4am this morning as a big storm hit the Island. Snoop has been up and scared of the sound of the wind and rain, we invited him to our bed. The storm continued through the whole day, we decided not to go out, just stay indoors and work on some projects.

We purchased a house before last Christmas and we have been painting, fixing stuff and finding more things to do every weekend. It's good have projects to work on. We are both new to owning a house, so we are learning as we go.

Today, we finished the bathroom en-suite. The light fixture was not working properly, so we bought a new 3 light fixture, replaced it and finished painting. We are not good at painting... no patients for that! It's our bathroom, so we decided "it's good enough!"

I think we did decent job for 1st time home owners?