Sunny Sunday Shingling and Shingle Moulding

Today was very productive inspite of the cold temps.  It's amazing how cold temps are more bearable when it is sunny.

R continued to shingle the southside of the house.  He is finally at a height where we will have to haul out the tall ladder.  It is great that we are making progress but a bummer that we have to use the tall ladder because it is so cumbersome and requires two people to move or extend it.

I waited until the sun was fully on the west side and then finished painting the grey above the new windows.  Once the paint was dry we re installed the solid vinyl shingle moulding.  

Tomorrow I will start priming the new window boxes.  I really dislike priming.  I think it is because it doesn't look nice and it's runny.  But it is a necessary evil.  I used two cots of primer on the old window boxes and they are still looking good so I am going to stick to what has worked in the past. No need to reinvent the wheel....as they say.

As always they are predicting bad weather for Wednesday and Thursday BUT they (as in weather forecasters) haven't been correct much of the time lately.  But in spite of of their lack of accurracy we are still going to try and get the remaining shingles installed by Wednesday.  It will be a stretch but it is our goal.

Last night we went to the final hockey game of the season.  Flint has really embraced this new team and they set a new season high attendance record.  They even sold standing room only tickets. Unfortunately they lost, but they fought hard.

The Firebirds did win the I-75 Divide Cup against the Saginaw Spirits this year. YEA!!!!!!!

A Small Opportunity to Paint

Despite the weatherman's absolute insistance that we would have a stretch of 60 degree weather it just never materialized.  R has continued to install more shingles on the south side of the house inbetween rain drops and mist while I have spent my time picking up twigs and branches that fell from the trees during the winter.  I burned almost all of them in the burner barrel but after today's high wind warnings I am sure I will have a new batch to pick up on Thursday.

I did have a 3 hour window where the weather was warm enough to paint so I hauled out the primer and grey paint.  I ran out of day light and ambition at the same time but it did give me a chance to see what it will look like when it is completed.

The primer coat takes twice as long to complete because the shingles are so rough but the top coat goes on smooth and faster.

I needed a smaller brush to finish the area above the window but the sun was fading fast so it will have to wait. The grey needs a second coat and the window trim needs a top coat of bright white semi gloss.

The window boxes have also arrived.  They need to be primed and painted before we can start to hang them but they will be up and ready for spring planting.  I will do a post just on the window boxes with info on where I order mine, why I order from Dave, and how my window boxes have held up after 7 years of Michigan weather.

Sunny, Shingles, and Sandhill Crane

What a beautiful day.  It was 73 degrees and sunny.  Perfect weather to work outside and if we didn't still have huge mounds of snow here and there, I would have sworn it was spring.

We started our day by stopping by Home Depot to buy two more bundles of shingles.  So far these bundles had better quality control and only about every third one needed to be slightly trimmed.

R it's time for a haircut...LOL

I tried to multi task by giving R a shingle and then running to the front of the house and remove some of the evergreens in the window box and then back to hand R another shingle.  The evergreens usually stay in the window box until after St. Patrick's Day but they were ready to be thrown on the burn pile. I think it had to do with all the warm weather we had this winter.  My wreaths came down three days ago because they were looking more brown than green.

About mid afternoon I heard a familiar loud noise coming from the pond.  Sure enough after a minute or so I found what I was looking for....a sandhill crane.  He or she really blends into the tall grass.  If you can't find the sandhill crane just look in the center of the photo.

 Here is a blurry upclose photo.  Love that large red spot.

If it's not snowing....we're shingling

The weather has had an abrupt turn around.  Three days ago it was snowing and today it was 60 degrees and a muddy mess.  I loved the 60 degree weather but it makes for a nasty mess when you have 10 inches of snow on the ground that is melting up a storm.

I was out and about on Sunday afternoon and there was traffic jams everywhere.  I'm assuming it was because of the debate in Flint on Sunday night.  Don't forget to vote on Tuesday if you are a Michigan resident.

But back to shingling....

We put down a piece of plywood on the ground so that the ladder wouldn't sink into the mud.  This gave us the added benefit of having something to walk on so our boots wouldn't get loaded up with mud.

Tomorrow I need to buy two more bundles of shingles and I really really hope that these shingles had better quality control than the last bundle.  Some of the shingles were as much as a 1/2 inch wider at the top or bottom.  Trimming and fine tuning each shingle makes for slow going especially once you are on a ladder.  We still have shingles left over from the last bundle but they are basically all the same size and we need some variety to get a random pattern.

One of the benefits of working on a peak is that as you go up, the rows get shorter but the downer is the climb up the ladder does get longer.

I finally ordered the window boxes and I was so happy that the guy I purchased from so many years ago is still making window boxes.  I see he has now branched out to planting bed boxes.  I'll fill everyone in on his website and what to expect once our window boxes arrive.

All of this window box ordering has me contemplating what to plant in them.  Once these boxes are hung we will have 3 that are over 100 inches and then 5 that are around 40 inches so that is a lot of plants and plants=money.  One window box already has onion chives planted in it and my plan is to just add some garlic chives for August flowering. So that is one window box done and 7 more to go.

The cats were so happy to be outside in the sun today and so was I.