Fireflies

I saw the very first firefly of the season last night. I know it was the very first and nobody else saw it. It was magical; in the woods at the confluence of two very busy roads, but for a moment there were no cars. Just the sounds of the woods. Well, and the dogs panting. And Mosby licking the gravel for a scrap of somebody's picnic leftovers. Some of the eager beaver first fireflies were blinking very fast, and others seemed to be just waking up. I love this time of the summer.

Progress

I mailed off the contract and a deposit to Geofreeze today. Yay! The paperwork says I'll be on their schedule within a week of them getting my check. And cashing it, I'm sure, but still. I'm dusting off the sledgehammer and claw tool. I'm just itching to get into that wall to see what's what. Then I want it fixed and I want to paint. And drag the livingroom furniture to the curb, strip and paint in there, then move to the dining room. My friend Wendy keeps asking (and has been for months, maybe years) what COLOR do I want. Have we picked a COLOR yet. Honestly. The color comes so far down the list of why we haven't moved forward, it doesn't matter. Well, it does to Russ. I guess it does to me too, but I'm the one picking the chips and he's the one saying, "No that won't do." What he wants is no color. With white trim. I don't want it to look like the Caribbean (all hot pink and turquoise), but I want something. He doesn't seem to mind the color of dirt, fingerprints, and dog noseprints that have been there for as long as we've lived in the house.

Succulents

I got a lot of planting and other yard work done this weekend. One chore I was happy to do was to get these succulents planted. They were a gift from my friend Wendy, along with the pretty blue pot. I had the strawberry pot, and I like how the hens and chicks look in it.

Being succulents, I'm hoping this means they are more like cactus and won't suffer when I'm a slug about watering. Now to move on to the rest of the yard. It's turned into quite a jungle!

Sodbusting

My friend and neighbor, John K., just had sod installed in his backyard. He was thrilled, and so were the raccoons. Every morning John comes down to see whole sections of sod lifted very carefully by the raccoons so they can get to the grubs underneath. He ordered coyote urine (I don't know if this is where he ordered it, but this is what I'm talking about) and that worked for one night. He just put down some anti-grub stuff. We'll see if THAT works, since it is apparently the grubs they're after. Anybody have any ideas?

A Visual Aid

I thought a visual aid might be helpful. This is the first floor of my house. You can click on the picture for a bigger view. I'm not sure why there needed to be an entryway in the kitchen once upon a time, but maybe it was to add an airlock. I think the room that I use as a pantry was always there, though when I moved in, it was more of a mudroom.

In any case, when the entryway was removed, the load-bearing wall (the "bad" wall) was apparently not properly reinforced. The bad wall does continue all the way to the front wall next to the front door, with an archway through to the dining room. Same on the livingroom side. So the break in the load-bearing wall is only there in the kitchen, and it is directly above that that the walls are so cracked upstairs. If the house is sagging there, it stands to reason the load-bearing wall is going to sag too.

The blue square is the masonry column in the basement the structural engineer believes is settling. This is also a reasonable theory, but John K.'s 4ft. level shows everything on the straight and narrow until you get upstairs

Indecision

I like the quote we got from the 2nd engineer, but I'm just not 100% sure that his solution will fix the problem we want him to address. On one hand, I think I trust that he knows a whole more about structural engineering than I do, his description of the settling sounds valid, and his confidence is comforting. On the other hand, John K. points out that everything from the basement to the first floor is level, that it's above the rebuilt part of the kitchen that appears to be the problem. I did point this out to the engineer, and he still went back to the support column settling scenario. I'm going to ask him to come back again to be double sure.

Mailboxes

My friend at House Things I Like is thinking about mailboxes. So am I. I like this one. I can mount it on my front door to cover the current mail slot. I'm told it's quaint that we still get our mail delivered through the front door, but Mosby thinks the aliens are invading and throws his 75lb self at the door and bites what comes through. I've repaired the claw marks on the inside of the door and don't want to have to do that again.