Exterior Rear

6/22/2008-

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6/22/2008      We've discovered a small 10X10' patio area off the rear Green Room doorway.  Interesting little place, really.  Over the years, the hill washed down over it, finally burying it in leaves and mud.  Beth found it while poking around in the muddy surface with a scraping shovel.  She mentioned that she had no idea why she was even looking, so I suggested that Annie Garrott (the original owner) or Betsy (the old lady) might have whispered in her ear.
6/25/2008      I started digging out a pathway off the new patio to give water a place to run away from the house.  Hard work, let me tell you.  So far, I've gone about 12' and moved about 40' of earth by hand.  I have another 10' to go.  After that, we'll probably widen the path a bit more, expand the patio, and then build some sort of retaining wall so that Mother Nature doesn't try to reclaim it all again.
6/27/2008     Another hot day of back-breaking work for me.  Between stacking the new stone walls, expanding the patio, and digging out all the dirt that's pied up against the house from that %$#  %$^  fire, I'm sweating off a couple of pounds almost every day, not that this is a bad thing, mind you.
     I've always wondered if I have a hidden heart condition.  At this point in the game, I'd have to say no.  Otherwise, I'd probably have dropped dead by now.
7/15/2008      We had to rip off the back of the Green Room.  The wood was rotted, and, worse, the heat has been flowing out of the house through those walls and the roof for years.  It had to be done as it cost us many hundreds in extra heating last winter.
     We were given a beautiful window with an arched glass top over a year ago by a nice couple in nearby Jefferson, so we yanked out the old row of single-pane windows, and framed in the new one.  It looks much better from both inside and outside.
9/3/2008     It doesn't even seem possible, but we've lost an entire season.  I'd started a side job as a favor for a friend in Manassas, Virginia, but also started working at Home Depot shortly after.  This left me no time of my own as the side job consumed almost all of my free time.
    The side work consisted of overhauling three bathrooms, and converting a garage into a guest room.  The money?  Horrible.  It covered a night on the town here and there at best.  Like I said, it was a favor.
    I decided to finish off the side work for the time being, leaving it with two completed bathrooms (much to the disappointment of the friends), but my own home and family needs take priority over doing favors, and, speaking frankly, I'm sick and tired of working every day with no opportunity for resting.  I'm 49 years old, and it's burning me out.  There's no time for my music or writing, so I'm putting my friends on hold for a few months.
    As for the area of our home that this section is all about, its still as it was in the last entry.  We're having some siding milled to match the rest of the house ASAP, because winter is looming in the distance.  Time to get moving again.
 9/16/2009      A year later, and so much has changed.  I wound up working for 14 months at The Home Depot, and then left when a much better opportunity came up.  I'll be selling health related insurance, and other products as soon as I take my exam for licensing this Monday, but that's not the big news.  And, no, it isn't the puppies, either.  Thye exhaustion mentioned above turned out to be a medical condition.  Shortly after I wrote the last installment, I went to a doctor because my eyesight was failing.  Over a brief period of time I became legally blind.  I was now 49 years old, almost 245 ponds, and blind.
     Great.
     As it turned out, it was a good thing I went because I was on the verge of liver and kidney failure, so they put me on Lipitor and Metformin.  I cut out (or down) on most of my bad habits, and now I weight 178, my eyes are much improved, and I feel pretty good at 50.  This explains my lack of progress on the house, but I'm not giving up on it.  There's still so much to be done.