June-August 2013

There wasn’t much left of June by the time I put Elena on the plane back to Newfoundland, and it took a few days before I got back into my rhythm of doing “stuff”. Among first things to get at was finish of the window trim and stain and varnish of the same in the workshop area and the window framing in the garage.

Looking to the west and north windows trim and frames stained and varnished.

South facing trim and window frames stained and varnished in workshop

I also set about installing aluminum fascia in the exterior door frames, on the beams and posts of the breezeway and to instal the final set of exterior trim on door frames and the windows in the screen porch. When I got the original Hardie Board cement board trim I could get factory painted battens only if I bought a whole pallet of the same. Unfortunately I needed more than a whole pallet, and so the remainder to finish the trim was just primed and I had to paint it. These jobs were at the top my agenda beginning in late June.

Aluminum fascia installed in garage door frame.

Cement board trim installed around garage door frame.

Cement board trim and aluminum fascia installed on house main entry door.

Aluminimum fascia and trim installed on French doors to kitchen dinining area.

Fascia and trim installed on great room door to patio.

Fascia installed on beams and posts of breezeway and completed door work on entry to workshop.

Details of the fascia in the breezeway beam and posts.

Details of fascia on beams in screen porch. Posts not enclosed yet, deciding how screen installation will be designed.

Another project being done in parallel was the final finishing of a table I had acquired at an auction sale in Iowa in 2007. I had stripped the old finish when staying to take care of my mother while my sis and her husband flew off for their daughter’s wedding in Hawaii. Now I finally got round to doing the oil rubbed finish to replace the old varnish which I had removed. It is a lovely simple drop-leaf table made of cherry with three additional leaves that can be inserted to give a length to seat a substantial gathering.

My new cherry drop-leaf dining room table after refinishing is complete.

With all of the leaves in place. Room for a crowd at dinner.

The compact version, dinner for two.

The finish of the table, of which I am proud, oiled cherry.

While I was chugging away at these things I had communications from my sis in Iowa that my Mom was having some health issues and was in hospital for a few days to deal with a bout of aspiration pneumonia. After a bit of back and forth and deciding it was time for a visit I scheduled my trip to see Gladys and Paul and my Mom, but also to catch the annual Hoekman family reunuion another day’s drive west from there in Monroe SD. By the time I got to Iowa my Mom was back in the Cresco Senior’s home and again pretty chipper. As usual we played Scrabble. It is pretty sad, my siblings and I brag when we manage to beat our 95 year-old mother at Scrabble; usually she whips us 🙂

Contemplating the choices

Scrabble is serious business!

Checking if a word is real and allowed.

More hard thinking!

Complaining about the rotten tiles she was drawing.

So I had a little more than a week away from duties to visit family and trek across the midwest in the States. I must comment that the family reunion, while still a significant gathering is a shadow of its former size. The older generation is disappearing, and the younger generations are much more widely scattered and less connected to the old center of family history.

January through April 2013

January 9 I flew back from Newfoundland and was back into at least some house finishing activities. Elena and I decided we were to make trip to Peru in the Fall to see Macchu Picchu and other bucket list sites in that interesting country. So lots of internet arranging for the trip. Elena’s friend from Peru told us it was easy and much cheaper to arrange your own tour which we/I set out to do. Got off to a shaky start with a malfunction of an internet reservation site that resulted in two extra plane reservations that told me the reservation had failed before making one on a different site, that told me I had been successful. That took a lot of “sturm and drang” and phone calls plus a few weeks before the charges were removed from credit card 😦

I was also rehearsing for a concert with LPM scheduled near end of February, and my ENT had scheduled me for surgery February 21 to “ream and clean” my sinuses of nasal polyps. These to those who don’t suffer are a consequence of allergies and this was my second surgery, the first happening nearly 30 years earlier. My family doc had me get a head cat scan to see the status of my sinuses before my referral to the ENT. When it came back and he was showing it to me, his comment was: How do you breathe?

Anyway I was also slogging away at getting trim installed, stained and varnished in the workshop. Just to keep life interesting Elena’s cousins in Brooklyn NY were to celebrate the wife’s 90th birthday in Mid March, and had recently celebrated the husband’s 97th. Elena was going to fly out, so to join the celebration I planned to drive to NYC on February 14, and made reservations on Airbnb at a place near the celebration site.

Things went well with the trim work, and the choir rehearsals were also good, the unfortunate thing being that my surgery was on Feb 21 and the concert on the 23rd. I was hoping my post-op condition would let me sing, but discretion being the better part of valor, the continued oozing of my surgery made me sit that one out.

However by the time I had to depart for NYC my sinuses were much happier, and I set out for Brooklyn at the crack of dawn with a few snow flurries happening. By the time I got to London, it had turned into much more threatening conditions, very slick roads and an 18 wheeler had jackknifed across the oncoming side of the 401 about 30 km up the road and pretty much stopped traffic from both directions. I continued on at a safer snails pace and finally drove out of the nasty roads as I crossed the border into the US at Hamilton. Then made very good travel time getting to my accommodations only a couple hours later than I had anticipated. A good time was had by all, a few days visiting with family and the big birthday party. Then me back to Newbury and Elena to St. John’s and her classes.

Not long after getting back to Newbury it was time to seed the grass in the newly landscaped terrain around the house. I had made a trip to the US in Michigan to get moulding trim and a vanity and toilet for the bathroom in workshop as well as grass seed.

South facing trim and window frames stained and varnished in workshop

Looking to the west and north windows trim and frames stained and varnished.

One of the first outside jobs with Spring weather was to prepare the soil and spread grass seed. I borrowed a harrow from my friend Ron up the street and and dragged it around with my lawn tractor to loosen up the surface a bit before applying the seed I brought back from Michigan.

Looking west at grass to be.

Looking south at newly seeded grass.

After missing the February LPM Concert because of my sinus surgery, I did succeed in singing the Gilbert and Sullivan fundraiser concert in April, as well as the Voiceprints Spring Concert. Elena was completing her final term of teaching before retiring, and then flew out to Ontario. After a few days of recovery we loaded up into the VW camper and headed across the border to spend May and early June in Sarasota. When we crossed the border at Sombra-Marine City for some reason the US customs decided we were suspicious, and did a complete dis-assembly of everything in the van. After more than an hour of inquisition we were finally on our way. We had a brief stop in Louisville to visit my sister Trish and her husband Del, and then onward to Sarasota. A bit more than a month enjoying sun and warm, Elena running every day and me riding my bike for at least 20 km pretty much every day. Then in early June back north up the Atlantic coast via Jacksonville and then up through Savannah and a stop in Greenville, SC with Elena’s cousin. From there back meandering across the south back to Ohio and back up to cross the border at Detroit-Windsor and home to Newbury. Then shortly Elena was back to Newfoundland and I was back to work on house stuff.