Happy Halloween!

We’ve been celebrating Halloween for nearly a week already.  The kids have had parties at church and school.  We have decorated the porch and front yard a bit for our first Halloween celebrated in Mapleton.  It seems every one that we knew offered us pumpkins this year, so we have a dozen or so.  I’m not a skilled carver, but the end result is tasty roasted pumpkin seeds.  We are saving the grand daddy pumpkin for Jay to carve.  I saw a man use his power tools to carve spectacular Jack-o-lanterns on “The Today Show”, and I intend to make Jay try it.  The shell looks like it’s 2 or 3 inches thick, so power tools are the only way to go.

Work retated news…Jay has had a few weeks away from shingling.  He and Damian  have been having fun doing a demolition for the Hemmahs.  They purchased a 70’s era office building, and intend to turn it into their next home.  Jay and Damian ripped out 3.6 miles of phone line, walls, bathrooms, windows, and 60 or so flourecent light fixtures.  5 or 6 dumpsters later, the place is ready for new framing and the sub-contractors to come in.  There is a photo on the gallery of a 2 story building with out a front wall on the second floor… That was how it looked last Friday.  Jay has since framed in the front wall for it’s new windows.  When the windows come in, and Jay has installed them, I’ll take a new photo to post. 

The other new photos are from our neighbors here in Mapleton, Jeff & Kristy.  They were tired of taking out a 2nd mortgage every winter to pay their heating bills, so they looked for the problem… No insulation in the walls of their 100+ year old home…Seriously, NONE.    So, they ripped off all the siding on the N and W sides of their home, widened the 2×4 walls, installed insulation and new sheeting.  At the same time, they decided to replace  some old, drafty windows.  Jay suggested that since they have everything torn open, that they should make their living room window a bump out. It really gives the front of their house a nice look.   Jay helped them with that part, and installed a nice vinyl, casement window.  (We just happened to have an “extra” one lying around”) They had just a solid pane before, so the option of cranking it open was a definite plus.  Besides being able to maintain 68+ degrees in their home now, they noticed that the insulation also helps with reduction of outside noise.  (Mapleton has trains going by every 8 minutes or so.)  Next comes the E and S sides of the home, and new fiber cement siding all around.  I can’t wait to see what color they paint it.

So, make sure you treat all the little ghosts and golins tomorrow, and have some fun yourself.  Life it too short, so enjoy every minute of it.

 Carlita

This entry was posted on October 30, 2008 at 9:48 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

| Print