First things first: Remember, dear reader, where we left off yesterday?
This was the scene:
Where rotted holes had gaped just hours before, nearly complete replacement siding was rising from the foundation to envelop the front of the house.
This is the scene tonight:
Reid and I knocked out the remaining rot from the second-floor level, patched the siding boards there, filled in the narrow row of boards across the middle that was left open yesterday, wrapped it all in house-wrap, and put in all the windows. Along the way it looked like this:
And inside it looks like this now… our kitchen-to-be is technically ready for insulation. Frack “technically,” it’s READY!
But the really, truly great occurrence today, far far overshadowing any of this, is that when the electrician came on his service call to repair the shorted-out camper circuit, we sweet-talked him into also hooking up the water heater. Which meant about 90 minutes later, after Reid was gone, a tub was being drawn for a real, honest-to-god BATH:
We each took a bath, and both feel clean and human for the first time in weeks. The simple things one can appreciate after being without for a time!
Random eye-candy
This afternoon’s hailstorm, hailstones bouncing off the top of the camper. This lasted about 4-5 minutes. The sound on the house’s metal roof was prodigious!
I must say, I felt profoundly satisfied, as the rain and hail deluged us, to know that we’re 95% done with this weatherproofing project, and soon what was a hulk, a candidate for a wrecking ball (if we’d only known), is becoming a home. And today we made one room OURS, performing the activity in it (bathing) for which it is designed.
I know we’ll feel this way all over again the first meal we cook in the kitchen, the first night we spend in the bedroom, etc. But this was special.
As Marsh wrote on facebook:
It was a home thing, in the house. For a little while today, I lived in the house.