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Week 54

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Made more good progress on my to-do list on the last two days of spring break. I stained the interior of the windows & doors downstairs the same honey color as the rest of the wood in the house. Turned out pretty well. I skipped photos because the difference is a little too subtle to see in a photo. I also made progress on touching up the paint in the downstairs rooms. Should be able to finish that next weekend. In other news, the vegetable garden has been planted & is ready to go: The total area is 19 square feet -- the long side is 7 feet long, and the little angle is 2 1/2 feet long. I trimmed that angle down by a couple feet this year to open up the area in front of the panda a little more. I decided against a garden border of broken terra cotta tiles because I realized that I don't know whether those tiles have lead in them. I am using these broken pieces of concrete instead and/or until I get around to testing the tiles for lead. The bed has been planted with beets, a...
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Live, from the last day of summer!

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Hello Mars fans! I am here, guest blogger #1, to serve you, loyal readers. I am here at the behest of our mutual friend Bob the Builder, a.k.a Doozer, a.k.a. Oscar the Grouch, who has asked me to keep you well informed of all the goings on here on Mars while she is back east. The story of this week was waiting. Waiting and waiting around. Tuesday I waited around for 3 folks we hired for a couple hours to carry heavy things. We actually couldn't figure any better way to get the heaviest stove ever created up into the house. 2 of 3 men showed up so I ended up gloving up and helping lug that gigantic beast up our stairs and into the house. It was touch & go for a bit, but we got it in. Here it is - stripped of anything we could get out or off of it to make it lighter. We'll soon move it back and into that left corner, but we needed access for the repairs and to move the wall mounted heat shield up a wee bit. On Wednesday I waited around for a man that does rebuilding and repai...
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Roof and Sun Tunnels - Complete!

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This week, the roof and sun tunnel project was started and completed, entirely on time, within budget, and without any horrible surprises. A miracle! Seriously, it feels like a miracle. The roof was reaching end of life and had a small problem that we knew about, but wasn't leaking anywhere, so we were cautiously optimistic that it might go smoothly. The thing we knew about was the fact that Mr. Bunkport's roofer hadn't done the most thorough job joining the new roof to the existing roof during the 2014 project. Looking at the pictures our roofer took before starting, it's uglier than we thought, but still not leaking four years later -- he gets credit for that: Also, this little vertical wall wasn't really done well in the first place -- it was just sort of a mass of shingles layered on top of each other: There turned out to be three things we didn't know about. First, we didn't know that there was loose tar paper left flapping in the wind under the flashin...
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