Greetings! Well we finished moving in, and we still have little things to do in the apartment, but we’ve been mostly working on other stuff! We had a few carpets to replace in the apartment we just vacated, but we did that, and we already have our tenant all moved in! Hooray! So that means we have two spaces down, and…a lot to go still. BUT…

The weather is so nice, we’ve been turning our eye back to the outside world! Kevin has proclaimed frost is over (we shall see! I sure hope he’s right!), and went and bought a bunch of cool annuals & perennials for our little garden bed. Before the mammoth 4” rain storm (which remarkably little of wound up INSIDE the house, thank you very much!!), we planted the crap out of that little bed! Come June and July, that thing will really start to look amazing! 

Speaking of amazing, the roofers got the front slate done now too! Soooo pretty!

But now, we’ve reached the crucial point where they can’t go any further until the masonry repairs take place. But guess what started yesterday!? 

Kelly came all the way up from Georgia to help tear down and then put this puppy back together again! Wooo! Thanks Kelly! Fortunately, the damage does not seem to be as extensive as we originally anticipated. Today, we’ll have the Sherlock Homes of historic mortar mixes, Nate, on the scene to help us craft the proper recipe for the type, age, and density of our particular bricks. This is CRUCIAL for preventing the destruction of the bricks. I *think* I understand why, so I’ll try to explain: When you live in a climate like ours, moisture gets inside the bricks and mortar. In the winter, it freezes. When it freezes, it expands. That expansion causes the weakest link to get destroyed over time. You want that least resistance to be the mortar, and historically, it was. That way, you can just repoint (remove and replace) the mortar when it begins to fail, instead of the bricks. 

This is why Portland cement is absolutely the WORST thing you could ever do to your old brick walls. The portland cement is harder than the bricks, which means when that water expands, it’s your bricks that take the toll instead of the mortar. And I’m pretty sure no one wants crumbled bricks with perfect mortar! 

Ok, lesson over!

Yesterday, we got the back area of the house all pressure washed and ready for the great return of the porches! Yay! Troy is rumored to be on the scene tomorrow to get this going, and the lumber is already here, waiting. 

I’m sure there are a million other things going on, but man is it hard to keep track of every single one of them in my brain and remember them all by the time I’m ready to post in here, heh heh. Until next time! 

PS: I found another cool linoleum floor under the hallway carpet! Pretty, right? I want to polish it, but that didn’t happen yet, since it’s literally the main hallway we all walk on every single day. Here it is still wet from its initial mopping. It’s a little warped from the wood underneath it, but it’s so cool! We’re definitely keeping it for a while.