Better than shingles on your head are shingles on your roof

Back in the bad old days, folks put disguised shingles on their head:

Nowadays we are more brazen with our shingles. Call us crass, but we enjoy having them on our roof. They require much less styling and are more flattering to our face shape, we think.

A close up of the front porch:

Next up is siding! Lots of framing has been happening in the house but it is impossible to photograph in such a way that it doesn't look like lots of vertical lumber. Which, come to think of it, is what it is...

First step in our outdoor paradise

On Thursday morning Kenneth and Woody chatted about an overhang for our back porch (to which a pergola will be attached). When Woody and I got home it had materialized! It makes the back porch much cozier. (I realize how not cozy it looks in this picture, but imagine the plastic chair on the ground and the grill uncovered and cooking and the blue tarp on the ground beyond your siteline and it is cozy. If you can't imagine this, the hell with you, go be literal somewhere else.):

A closer look:

In what according to Woody is faulty reasoning, I am sure that this overhang affords us infinitely more privacy and gives me full license to wear disintegrating pajamas on the porch. If I have to explain one more time that a horizontal surface ten feet in the air covers mildly inappropriate holes and threadbareness in my night clothing, I swear...

Never been happier to see a giant pile of junk

On Wednesday night Woody and I returned home to find this outside our back door:


Now, you may be thinking "Were you really all that surprised? Your entire yard is giant deposits of junk." Well yes, there are some piles of debris. But we know them well! They are like the coral reefs of B'ton, full of fascinating wildlife and damp squishy things. But this pile of junk was new. Naturally, Woody figured out what it meant first. "Oh," he said, "you are going to like this." When he opened the back door we found....

THIS!!!

Holy boiled peanuts Batman! Kenneth and his crew had ripped out the entire back bedroom put in brand news walls and framed in windows!


They had replaced parts of the rotten floor and reframed our back door. The back area of the house looks hu-u-uge! And for the first time in ever the room in which we keep our refrigerator does not smell like some witch's brew of moldering lumber, beer making supplies and motorcycle parts.

Steel magnolia

Brian and Ginger have become the toast of B'ton as they gamely cater to the greater neighborhood's arbor needs. Here is Brian next door bringing down Steve's magnolia. I suggested he powder his hair and do his best Olympia Dukakis but, like Woody with my coverall as 70s disco suit photo suggestion, he was strangely not into this idea.

Still lives of disturbing junk...Manapaloozas I & II edition

Cleaning up the outside of the house yields the usual assortment a large disturbing junk (your garden variety oil drum teeming with mosquito larvae or decades old tetanus spear/TV antennae, for instance). But it also yields tiny disturbing things! The tiny disturbing things are even more disturbing because it is clear they were once used by the most disturbing of tiny things: children.

This one I call The Loneliest Bicep in B'ton:

And this one The Last My First Supper:

Also found were an old blue hairbrush and a few Tonka trucks, but we've showcased enough depressing garbage for today.

Manapalooza II !!!!

Brian and Ginger returned to 517 O'Neal with even MORE manly equipment! What could possibly be more testosterone-saturated than a chainsaw? THIS!!!!:


Did you just instantly sprout (more) hair on your chest and bellow like a participant in the World's Strongest Man competition?? There is nothing more manly than a skid steer! Since Woody was uncomfortable piloting a skid steer made of out modeling clay and lacking safety netting, Brian set him up with this one:


With this Woody could move spectacular loads of wood, shingles, oil drums, grass, dirt, small children, some of the more gaseous planets, etc. etc.


But, for all his efforts, he could not budge this formidable obstacle:


The Pillar of Fortitude (aka the clothesline) stood tall despite repeated assaults by the mighty skid steer. Woody pushed, Brian pulled, to no avail. I am quite sure it is anchored to the earth's core itself.

As Woody deftly maneuvered around our house, a number of annoying features of our property disappeared. Among them our electricity. Our electric meter had the nerve to get in the way of Woody's skid steer trick riding and met a loud shattery demise. After some debate as to whether Duke Power would cut us off entirely when they saw just how many power strips and extension cords we have snaking around the house, we called and hoped for the best. We got better than the best! We got a fancy new meter that will provide hours of entertainment with its high tech digital display:


How much will our boo boo cost us? As Brian said:
"The cost of having Duke Power come out on a Sunday? Who knows.
The cost of driving a skid steer all day? Priceless."
With thanks to Visa for the tagline that keeps on giving.

We also now have what I am calling the Moore Moat to protect the house. We are planning to fill this ditch with water and attack fish to protect all our dubloons inside.

At the end of the day, the dumpster looked like this:

And Woody's legs looked like this:

Many thanks to Brian and Ginger AGAIN for all their help!

We have a roof!

No barn tin, no replacement shingles, it’s plywood, it’s felt, it’s (almost) shingles! Kenneth and his crew did an amazing job getting the nasty stuff down and the good stuff up.


All three layers of shingles came off...and landed on the ground around the house. So Woody and I have a big clean up job to do:


My initial concerns about St. Nick having a chimney to squeeze his big red velvet booty down come Christmastime were made moot when we found that the entire yuletide escape hatch was packed with disturbing black stuff (ash? maybe? This looked nastier than ash.)