Fall projects

I've been pretty busy this fall on a bunch of projects, not the least of which is taking another woodchuck to Peacock Beach. Most of our garden is harvested, but the woodchucks are doing quite a bit of damage to small plants and low leaves, getting ready for the winter I expect. In any case they are falling for the have a heart trap again. This fella was caught last night so he slept in the trap. It looks like he cut up his nose trying to get out. He is with his family at the beach now.


The energy audit was just one of several home fixing' tasks we have on the biol. We have been chipping away at a dozen or so chores moving forward on most of them but completing few. I finished up the floor in the upper attic and moved a bunch of my junk up there ( I think I'll have to move it all back down when the energy audit says we need more insulation up there, yeesh). We are trying to improve Alden's room, build a third bedroom on the east side of the house, finish the upstairs bathroom, clean the garage, sort the tools and hardware in the basement, tend the garden, landscape upkeep, installing gutters, stacking firewood, and building a second bathroom downstairs. I managed to knock a hole in my foundation a couple weeks ago which prompted me to start constructing the new bathroom in earnest. This will be where the plumbing runs through. It took about two weeks to drill the thing (granite) so I'm kind of proud of it.

I started running the electric to the bathroom but decided to stop and wait for the energy audit report. Chances are high that the report will recommend we tear out the wood paneling and re-insulate whatever is behind there... Removing the paneling will make running electric easier too, so I need to take a step or two back before I can move forward.
Part of the renovations included organizing my tools on pegboard. This has been a tremendous help with the projects. This was from the bracing job I started in May.
Another project was properly venting the dryer. I had planned to vent it through the hole in the granite I drilled, but my pal Darrell recommended I take the vent up and out through the side of the house to have a shorter run of vent. so the pipe goes up to be under the kitchen sink (in the cabinet) and then out. Ta-da... Now I need to clean up the gnarly lint that has gathered all over the basement from a year of poorly vented dryer.
We are getting a second batch of raspberries. If the hard cold holds off for another couple weeks we may get a pretty good second crop.
That's the short of it. I also fixed up the upstairs bathroom a bit more and have been caulking and expando-foaming like a wild man in preparation for winter.