Wednesday, December 9, 2009

What Do I Care How Much it May Storm

(And no, the next line of this song is not applicable here...)

Being able to work from home is wonderful!  When the storm forecasts got worse and worse, I knew I was going to be working from home today.  It's a great opportunity to see how well the house holds up under it's first real test of the season.  The results of the test?  Mixed.

In the front room near the stove it's great!  Toasty warm, no real breezes to speak of.  The outside temperature has been rising from 22 when I got up to 29 now, but inside it's a toasty 67 where the temp gage is, on the DR table.  I'm happy every minute I feel the warmth on my face.


But outside, projects are popping up left and right.  Some I can fix and some I can't.  The first set of projects are the doors.  Three of them.

I love my dog Desmond, but he won't use the dog door that's right next to the front door.  So, just for him, I've been propping the woodshed door open. (The door immediately to the left of the front door.) There's another entrance to the woodshed from the porch so Desmond can walk throught the woodshed when I want to keep the front door closed.  Except now, the wind is blowing the woodshed door back and forth and it's only a matter of time before it blows apart.  I need to put a dog door in the woodshed door. 

The door to the left of the woodshed door is the door to the shed.  That won't stay closed either.  Which is amusing because last winter, it wouldn't open.  I'll need to put a better latch on this door.

The last door project is the inside front door, where Maggie has destroyed all the gasketing between the door and the jamb.  Wind is blowing through the front door now, and since I only have a curtain separating the cold part of the house from the warm side of the house, the wind is blowing the curtain inside the hallway, making a pretty big gap for cold air to get into the warm part of the house.  I'll need to replace that gasketing, and do something about that curtain, I don't know what yet.

That's all the stuff I can do something about relatively quickly - after the storm.

What I can't really fix, is this.


This white thing is a piece of plastic I had put on the woodshed roof at the end of June along with 2 other pieces.  I knew it was temporary, but was hoping it would last longer than not even through the first storm.


Here's the view from the top so you can see that it's the middle piece that's missing.  You can also see that the 2x4 I had holding the plastic down is no longer serving its purpose.  I don't know how much longer the other 2 pieces are going to last up there, but it won't be long.  Like I don't think they'll last the day.

What you don't see up here is the two 2x8s that I had resting across the gap (so I could shimmy across).  They blew off.  I know where they landed and am thankful they didn't destroy anything on the way down! I guess the wind has got some serious power!  Of course I have no idea how fast the wind is actually blowing - my anemometer is saying 11-13 mph.  I'm certain the wind is moving faster than that.  This anemometer has been really useful - not.

4 comments:

  1. Just curious -- how did you attach the plastic to the roof?

    Learning about my roof is somewhere on my list. I have asphalt shingles, and a few have cracked. When the building inspector looked at the house, he told me how to replace them. Gets me a few more years with the old roof before replacing the whole thing.

    Wind in the country is different than wind in the city, where there is some shelter. I put up a tv antenna in the country (hired someone), and a month later it was tilting....

    There is always something!

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  2. I used roofing nails where I was attaching it to fiberglass, and nothing (wedged a 2x4 on top) where I should have connected it to the metal roof. That's where I went wrong. I hired someone to repair my metal roof on the house for the same reason. Just didn't feel safe climbing on the roof myself.Thankfully my digital antenna is inside the house, otherwise I would have had the same problem as you!

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  3. Jordan,
    And you were wondering what to do for fun this week! Is the woodshed roof only keeping the wood dry?? Sometimes a heavy tarp inside over the wood would work for a temp fix..even until next spring, when you have a better chance to get up there and attack it. Perhaps the plastic over the doorway could have an addition of a heavy blanket (salvie find?) or a blanket with some weight sewed into the bottom to hold it down better...find one that has a pocket like a curtain rod would go through and stick some rolls of pennies in there for weight. We stick a sheet up in our hallway in the summer for the air conditioner to do the bedrooms for the short time that it is too hot here and the breeze will move it and let the cool out if we don't weight it.

    Woodshed door. I used to have a hook and latch..a LOOONG hook, on my basement door not to keep it shut, but to make sure it didn't shut and the cat and litterbox be apart. Don't know if that would work. Something at the Farm store might be long enough to be open and not flap in the breeze. But the wind with this storm..quite the doozy!

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  4. Getting the entire woodshed rebuilt is in the plans. In fact, the loggers were supposed to do it, the wood is already here. And I bought weights a while ago to sew onto that curtain, but I must have put them in a special place that even I can't remember where it is!

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