Virginia Real : Siding Into Fall...

With colder weather looming on the horizon, Charming has been feverishly working on getting as much work done on the outside of the house as possible. Because the house needed new vinyl siding and new windows, we figured it made sense to do them both at the same time. The old windows were the type that you find in a mobile home/trailer, which looked really awful and weren’t insulated. The new windows are insulated and tilt inward for easy cleaning. Although I’m not a fanatic about cleaning windows, it’s nice to know that I won’t have to climb a ladder to wash the outside of the windows. (This “Miss Grace” just ain’t what she used to be!)

So the process goes like this…Charming tears the siding off one side of the house at a time and replaces the windows and the siding, then moves on to the next side. So far he’s gotten the back side of the house completed as well as one end, except for the apex part which requires quite a bit of angle trimming. He’s now working on the front side of the house, where he’s removing the big bay window from the living room. We were not a fan of the bay window for several reasons. The window went from floor to ceiling, which is an awful lot of glass. (We have lots of small rocks that could get thrown by the mower, birds, and a fairly awkward farm gal, better known as…well….me.) The window was not insulated. I also wanted the extra “wall space” that a smaller window would provide. I like the idea of having a couple of feet of wall space (from the floor up) if a sofa and chairs are going to be next to the window. To accommodate our needs, Charming will install two smaller windows spaced 12” to 16” apart. By installing the two windows, we should still have plenty of light without all of the down sides of having one huge window.

The gardening season is winding down. We had a bumper crop of green beans this year so I was able to freeze about thirty-five quarts of these tasty veggies. That should be plenty to last us through the winter. In addition, we had a decent crop of potatoes, tomatoes, onions and squash. The potatoes, onions, and squash have all been harvested and stored away for use during the coming months. We’ve cleaned off the garden, all except the tomatoes and the pretty amaranth that I had growing just for the pop of red color. Charming will turn the ground again in late to mid-October. That should help to freeze out some of the bugs and bug eggs that might otherwise show up in next year’s garden. It will also undoubtedly unearth more of the gazillion small rocks that are sleeping below the surface, just waiting for me to scoop them up and put them into my farm wagon for transport to the “burn pit” that we are slowly filling back in. Come next spring, we’ll do it all again. I just love the natural cycle of gardening!

When cold weather sets in we’ll be spending most of the winter at our current house with plans to finish up the kitchen renovation in the spring. After that, we should be on schedule for moving in late spring or early summer…then the REAL work will begin!