Welcome, Newcomer

A new little tree arrived this week and we finally got around to planting it - a 7-foot or so tall Japanese Snowbell, Styrax japonica. A friend of our botanist neighbor wanted to find it a home and even brought it to us for free - with all the trees that have come down around here lately, we never say no to a new tree.

So finally the hole was dug and the tree planted:

Here it is, with the as-yet-untouched mulch pile where our old tree once stood.

 If we are lucky and good caretakers, it can grow up to about 30 feet tall with a 10 to 25 foot spread.

Better yet, it will get white flowers like this on it:

It certainly won't take the place of our fallen oak or the 8 trees removed from the vacant lot, but a fragrant flowering (and free!) tree can't be a bad thing.

The actual story about ants

In what is apparently becoming an annual occurrence, we got ants this summer. They invaded our kitchen via the wall near the stove, and even though we kept spraying bug spray both inside and out and attempting to fill holes, they kept finding ways in. We suspect there is a small ant-sized gap behind the wall-mounted cabinets, so we can't get to that without some serious construction. We did our best to take away any temptations, but with two small children, the kitchen disaster each morning was a feast for them most days. But we did our best, trying to use Soft Scrub each evening to get rid of any possible food residue and meticulously put away food. Fortunately their infestation was mostly limited to surface access, and they didn't get into our cabinets where, let's say, we aren't the most diligent about sealing items (for example we used to put all our cereal into tall air-tight containers, which works if you have one or two open boxes of cereal, but not when you have five, as seems to happen lately with our toddler's ever-changing requests). There was that day we left a just-opened box of Honey Nut Cheerios out while we were at work. That was fun for them. Oops.

We were almost ready to give up and call in professionals, especially when we saw them starting to build a home at the edge of our kitchen sink. Then D did a little reading and decided to try one more do-it-yourself solution, a cotton ball soaked in a solution of water, borax, and sugar (stored in a well-labeled container, in keeping with poison-control guidelines).

The idea is to use enough sugar to get the ants to want to eat it, and enough borax to kill them afterwards, but not so much borax that they can taste it. We left a small cotton ball on the counter just at the point where they crawled from the wall to the counter (the red line is the ants' approximate path and the blue ball represents the cotton ball).

For a few days, it seemed like we may have had more ants, but they all just stopped at the ball and then turned back around, so they didn't venture into the rest of the kitchen. They found their food (the sugar) and that was sufficient.

Eventually, their numbers shrank. After about a week of no ants, we removed the cotton ball.

That was about a month ago...

I think they're gone!

Ants are not the story

So we had ants. It was bad. We got rid of them. But that's a separate post entirely. For the purposes of this post, the only important fact to know about the ants is that we discovered they were trying to make a home in what was apparently accessible space between the sink and the counter. We sprayed some water in there and this is what our sink looked like.

 Ewwwww....(though not as bad as last year's ant infestation).

It turned out that the caulking around the sink was moldy and barely there - something we probably should have noticed years ago and re-caulked frequently. Caulk, and trying to create a nice "bead" always sounded very intimidating. It wasn't our first try at it. But it was pretty close.

 D did all the work while I entertained the kids. First out came the old stuff, totally black (it's supposed to be clear):

Then to the caulk gun! We considered buying a brand that came in a regular squeeze tube, but it needed at least 24 hours to cure. This one needed only an hour or two (though we left it overnight). Given it's our kitchen sink and we have a kitchen disaster after each and every meal, we really couldn't go that long without the sink.

 There's the caulk line:

 And the final touch to get it just right:

Before the clear caulk dried out and while he was on a roll, D did the same thing with our bathroom sink upstairs. We didn't take before pictures, but it was already a little black and dingy. Here it is, refreshed:

And finally, it was time for the bathtub. Funny enough, this bathtub project had been on our to-do list already and we'd purchased caulk and acquired the necessary tools just in time for that tree to fall on our house and distract us from smaller projects. Now with two additional re-caulks already complete, it was time for the tub. The caulk was 5-years old and pretty dingy - no amount of scrubbing or bleach seemed to clean it, and it was starting to peel in places.

So scape the old stuff:

 No more  caulk:

And...voila! A bright white bathtub line again! It really looks so much better now. I think D managed to caulk everything that could be caulked. Hopefully we're good for another 5 years or so!

See? This post wasn't about ants.

The next one will be.

Fair warning (but actually, there are no scary pictures, so don't worry).

We're still here...Now with Purple!

Yet another long stretch of no progress combined with a struggle to take pictures left a lot of readers (all three of you) in suspense about the room. Well wait no longer. It is finally (mostly) back to some semblance of normal.

After the mid-August drywall installation another 10 days or so passed with no progress, partly because we went on vacation and partly due to bad planning on the part of the contractors. Then in late August they painted, finally. Our big "upgrade" from this chaos is that we let our pre-schooler select a color for the alcove, since there was a discrete set of walls and an obvious place to end the color change (and it wasn't like we had enough green in the can anyway so they'd have to buy a new gallon). No surprise that she picked PURPLE! She picked Sherwin Williams Dahlia and we compromised by going one shade lighter (which was plenty dark, as we learned from the neon green in the rest of the room) to Awesome Violet (SW 6815). To my surprise, we still had our light blue ceiling paint and they were able to blend the line so the ceiling is still all sky blue. That section now has no clouds of course (and probably never will) but at least it all goes together.

They installed new baseboards and other small things as well. The window wasn't ready from the manufacturer so the hole stayed boarded up and the corner stayed dark (I swear I took a picture from that day but I can't find it anymore).

There was a redo on the baseboards (they were about a half inch taller than the existing ones) that delayed us yet another few days while they waited for some rain to stop (all their cutting equipment had to get set up outside) and then because they failed to plan for store closures on Labor Day. Then finally, finally, they fixed the baseboards and framed the window (though it was still boarded up...).

And then Lo and Behold, just last week (7 weeks after the tree fell on our house, if you're keeping score), the window was ready and the room was done!

Of course by now we had completely lost the curtain hardware (more is on the way!). And another funny problem is that the outlet (seen above in the lower left of the picture) is now covered by the corner bookshelf. They must have mounted it in a slightly different place than it was originally and it's now no longer accessible when the furniture is back in its original place. Darn. The contractors also weren't nearly as picky as I am on their paint work, so I did a little touching up on the edges myself.

But at least this place is starting to look normal again! We have a new rug (the other one had so much glass and wood on it that I would always have been a little worried no matter how much we vacuumed it and shook it out). Toys and books are all finding their way back to their original homes. And the curtains can probably go back up this weekend.

 7 weeks. 7 long weeks.

(This is not quite the end of the story - there's a bit more outside work to discuss another time...)

Progress at last

After three days of fans and heaters, the water people judged we were dry and took their equipment away. And then we waited. And waited. Furniture was still scatter at inconvenient spots around the rooms, making toys, crafts, and books inaccessible. Insulation fluff still fell on our heads. We moved the kids back into their room, where at least there beds were under real ceiling and away from falling insulation. We vacuumed piles of fluff daily - it seemed to make its way everywhere.

Our adjuster finally came over the following Monday to look over everything and agreed to our repair plan. But by then our roofer was on vacation. Fast forward yet another week - and a surprise visit by a roofing specialist brought in by the insurance. He actually pulled up a board covering the hole in the roof, leaving just the tarp. That made for a very loud rainstorm that evening when rain pounded against the plastic sheet (at least no water seemed to come in). Also made for a strange, almost pleasant blue glow as the light from outside came in through the blue:

Finally FINALLY last week, after two weeks of no change, things started happening. On Monday, these appeared:

New slates for a soon-to-be repaired roof. Tuesday rained (AGAIN) so the roofer couldn't do the repairs. Fortunately Wednesday was dry, and I came home to:

A huge improvement over the tarp that had been hanging over our house since the tree fell in late July. Note that we have a new top gutter and a bunch of new slate. The roofer rearranged slates so that the new ones are where we can't see. He used older slates to repair the holes visible from the ground so that they would match. From the inside, we have new wood over the hole the tarp had been covering:

 We were still not sealed though - I guess not the roofer's job to do that part?

 Hi outdoors!

D sprayed some expanding foam through there to block a little more airflow. On Thursday, the water people came back to certify that our house was still dry before we began drywall repair. It was, yay!

Friday the dramatic change occurred and we came home to new drywall and plaster. Also drywall dust everywhere (especially unfortunate since we had the house cleaner here on Friday too - bad planning but originally the builders weren't supposed to start that soon).

Next up, more layers of skimming and sanding and then the painting process can begin. There's a two week wait for our window but at least the rest might start to look normal relatively soon.

Water Damage

On Sunday even after everything had been temporarily patched up, the dripping continued during what seems lately to be our daily evening rain storm. We noticed water damage on the ceiling below the kids' room in a few places in the office. And water continued to drip through the window frame.

That can't be good...

On Wednesday the water mitigation people arrived. They agreed.

I'm trying to remind myself that it will get worse before it gets better.

The kids' room has a tarp up to separate the entryway from the rest of the room so the dehumidifier can be more efficient. The kids, by extension, are both sleeping in our room. So cozy...(that's sarcasm).

The ceiling and walls are ripped back to the studs. The hole in the roof causing the extra leaking is much easier to see now (the patch of sunlight above the trashcan). Someone came back to improve on the patching done Saturday and now the leaking seems to have stopped.

Cloud mural ruined, dust from blown insulation everywhere. Lots of tears and lots of wine...

It will get better.

Another Tree Bites the Dust (or, More Accurately, Bites the House)

Just when you think homeownership is getting kinda boring and you start wondering what project to tackle next (deck? kitchen backsplash?) and are just planning to do some dumb maintenance (re-caulk the tub, how exciting), a tree falls on your house.

Let's see that again:

 Hi tree.

Last night a half hour before we put the littlest one down for bedtime, the ground around this tree's roots got too wet to hold it down, so the tree - always slightly angled over our house - plunged into the kids' bedroom. I saw it happen from the dining room window while getting the table set. I heard a whoosh and felt the house shake and looked up in time to see the tree moving (probably on its bounce back from impact).

First we took everyone outside to see if it even looked safe to go upstairs and investigate. When it seemed like the house wasn't going to crumble, I went up to see this:

Fast forward to panicked phone calls to tree companies (this being Friday at 6:30pm...), calls to our home insurance, texts to very helpful neighbors, etc, and by 9pm, we had an emergency tree company here to take it out of our house, in the dark and in the rain.

This cost way more than any of our previous tree removals have cost. But then they came within a few hours, at night, to pull a tree off a house, and pretty much knew we were desperate (the idea of shopping for quotes was not exactly one I was willing to entertain). Hopefully our insurance comes through for us.

Sometime late in the night, we heard shattering. Out went the branch and down came the glass. Here's the view from this morning, with a tarp blocking the window.

So much glass. Clean up was not fun and multi-stage (pick up big pieces, vacuums medium pieces in crummy vacuum, vacuum again with good vacuum, wet mop, etc.)

 Yikes...

Fun side note, for some reason the water that was getting in a floor above was making its way down in drips to the window frame in the office below. Sigh...

This is the other view from this morning - looks like the empty lot next door was good for something. If the trees hadn't been totally cleared away, I'm not actually sure how the crane would have gotten to our back yard to remove our tree. Though I'm still not totally convinced it would have happened if the trees there would have contributed to rain water absorption. (D joked that the tree fell onto that side of the house because it was trying to give us the shade in that room we lost when the 8 trees were removed.)

 The tarp the tree people put up was good, but not good enough. There was no actual seal and we didn't know how long we would have to wait for repairs. A new window pane alone can take a few weeks.

 So today we had a contractor come out to give us an estimate on the repairs and we also paid him to do more dramatic sealing and clearing right away. A team of two spent about 3 hours putting temporary patches on the 3 holes in the roof, removing debris from the window area, and putting up plywood to weatherproof the hole.

 It's not pretty, but at least the kids' room is livable for now. It's Saturday night and no one else is coming until at least Monday. So now we wait...