Some Photos from late autumn

Here are some pictures of projects I worked on and our Thanksgiving.

The porch ceiling was delaminating plywood so I replaced it with a "beadboard" ceiling that I stained a sort of pumpkin pine. It took about fifty boards. I added the green trim to match the shutters.

The deck on the porch was painted battleship gray and had peeled badly. About 1/4 of the boards showed some rot, so I replaced the bad boards. I stripped and sanded the remainder 

 and stained them a redwood color. The boards are nice, tightly grained, and very hard, douglas fir.

I repaired the bases of the columns with treated wood, that I'll stain white or green next spring.

This is what the mudroom interior looked like at the end of June, after I replaced the studs, sheathing, and siding. I left it alone until November while the treated lumber dried and ( I hope) stabilized. Then I installed rigid foam insulation and reinstalled the old " rustic panelling." I spent a lot of time shimming and measuring but the panelling went in with little trouble. The doors were another matter, requiring lots of adjustment.  I have two four foot levels and they don't agree, which made matters a little trickier than they should have been.

I started getting back into woodworking with a gift for my wife and some some long overdue picture frames. Jean loved this picture, so I purchased it and made a walnut frame for it. It now hangs in our dining room.

Sarah Valente gave me this picture about 18 months ago and I knew I wanted to make a frame for it rather than purchase one. I finally got to it in November. I made the frame narrow so the picture would dominate. It is a real gem ( the picture not the frame) and it hangs over my desk, where I see it every day.

My last AP classes gave me this great montage and I feel much better now that I have framed and hung it. I can't quite make out a few of the signatures, so I have to rely on my old rosters to try to decipher them.

We bought this print from a real old fashioned printing shop in Assisi. The printer was nearly as old as the equipment and was extremely gracious.

We had fifteen people, including ourselves,  for Thanksgiving. It took two tables end to end and stretching from the dining room slightly into the back parlor to seat everyone at once.

My sisters and their families are harder to get all together these days and even our son Daniel couldn't make it back from Colorado. Still one sister and one of her daughters and her family combined with our son Chris and his family and some friends from a nearby town made for a very good time. There would be more smiles, but by the time  I remembered to take the picture two of the boys and a couple of adults were pretty tired.  The big hit of the night, aside from the great food, were a set of small magnetic balls that kept the kids and some of the adults busy for hours.