Wonder what 65mph winds can do?

Well, in Kansas we say if you don't like the weather, wait 24 hours and see what happens. And Friday was no exception. Thursday was a nice day, high 60s I think, but come Friday we had a high of 45 degrees and winds out of the NW at 35-45mph with gusts up to 65mph and trust me, they were definitely that! Friend of mine clocked the wind outside of Alden (which is 5 miles NW of Sterling) at 62mph and I truly think they got stronger as the evening went on. At the college track the old high jump mats blew halfway across the football field and up into the opponents' stadium and nearly into the parking lot. The baseball diamond's tarp got picked up and blown up and halfway over the foul ball safety net - several guys tried to bring it down, but I don't know if they had any luck. Needless to say, the wind advisory warning was pushed forward from Friday evening until Saturday morning...I don't think my storm windows stopped rattling all day.

And as for me, I woke up Saturday morning to find a shingle on my front yard. Then another. Found two in my backyard. And sure enough, I looked up on the northwest side of the house to find about 15 shingles either missing entirely or ripped in half. Fortunately for us we still have a few bundles of shingles from when we roofed the house years ago, so I spend a beautiful Saturday afternoon (of about 70 degrees) repairing the NW corner of the roof. Easy peasy though (just as long as you don't fall off the roof).

A Busy Busy Worker Bee

So lately things have been busy all over the house, from working on the new dining room wall to preparing to tile the second upstairs bathroom to hanging sheetrock on the ceilings to killing off some of the grass (which has been overrun by crab grass and sticker patches), the main street mansion has been continuing to crawl towards that finish line and 'For Sale' sign.

Another weekend has come and gone, and with help from Dad we were able to finish up both upstairs bathroom ceilings from my last post. One project that neither Dad or I had ever done or attempted to do was texturizing ceilings with a spray gun. But as there's always a first time for everything, and fortunately for us, the whole texture process was pretty easy - minus a slightly sore neck and shoulders from holding a spray gun connected to an air hose with a gallon of water downed mudding compound. Thank goodness for Google - LOL - since it gave us an idea of how much to water down the mud and then knock it down, which we actually didn't do. Both of us liked how the mud came out of the gun with just a little bit of texture without being knocked down (which is basically just taking a large mud scraper or taping knife and smoothing the mud out; you can Google it too!) so we just decided to shoot it and leave it. I'm not sure if we'll even paint it, since the mud dries in a slight grayish/white color. The other nice thing about the spray gun is that it covers in one coat and goes up pretty quick.

Dad also likes to add things onto my 'to-do-list' (as though I don't have enough to do!), his biggest one being new sheetrock on all of the ceilings. The master bedroom ceiling has been sheetrocked and now awaits to be textured. We began hanging sheetrock on another bedroom, which was actually the room we tested our texture gun on. That way we didn't have to worry if we screwed up or it didn't work LOL.

Another item that went on Dad's check list was the destruction of the fireplace's chimney in the master bedroom. Situated between the two west windows, the chimney had been blocked off ever since we first moved into the house in 1990, and it stands out about a foot or more from the wall (and a foot and a half wide). In order not to have too much wasted space - and given the fireplace isn't usable in it's present state - Dad decided to have me tear down the chimney. Which honestly wasn't too bad, given that it's old bricks and they come apart pretty easy once you take a hammer to them once or twice. The bad part is the clean up! Hauling bricks isn't fun and there's no way of getting around it! But, on the bright side I've begun to board up the wall where the chimney was so pretty sure I'll have a master suite to move into (and then the work begins in the green room downstairs...)

And on a more successful note, I won't have to worry about anymore duct work being destroyed in the attic - with the help of a live animal trap, I got the squirrel that decided to call my attic home. And for those needed to catch some, peanut butter and peanuts will do it! So far, haven't had anymore unexpected visitors...