S.N.A.F.U.'d but still smiling

In the grand scheme of things, house-rot is not really high up there. The fact is: I still have a house, with a roof, screened windows and hot and cold running water. I have awesomely wonderful friends. No one is kicking me out on the street saying: we don't want to live with you anymore. I have a wonderful Akita and two hilarious hens. Unlike most of the planet I have enough food and no one is trying to kill me. And believe you me, not a day goes by that I am not thankful for all I have.

Last night in a fit of aggravation, I took my trusty box knife to more of the vinyl flooring, and peeled up about a 3 by 4 foot chunk. The sad thing is that it peeled up quite easily, and felt quite damp on the underside. There are more patches of obviously rotted plywood, and in one place my hand went right through. The situation is worse than I originally thought, and the worst thing is that I can only blame myself. Last year March, when the plumbing leak occurred, I did my best to dry out the area, but no one suggested that I needed to take up the floor, and I didn't realise that I should have...

There is standing water under the floor. That is what I found. Lurking beneath the vinyl and the plywood subfloor is a layer of now soggy fiberglass insulation batting, and a layer of some kind of heavy plastic, which is holding a layer of water right against the wooden floor supports which hold up the sub floor. The water has been there since last March. The wooden supports are also rotting from the bottom up, I found out, as one beam was visible from the hole my hand made in the floor, so I tried poking it with my trusty screwdriver and the bottom was all white moldy squish (ugh). I do not know how far the water has spread under the floor, and I imagine that until actually removing the floor happens there won't be any way to know. Depending on how much demolition will be necessary to remove all the moldy rotten wood, I may need to lose some of the walls in the hallway between the kitchen and the workroom, which might not be so bad. (If I was designing that space, I would configure the walls there differently, or not put some there at all)

I should know more on Monday after consultation, but right now I am doing my best to stay calm and keep working. I'll be moving stuff out of the pantry and workroom, and wishing I had some more shelves somewhere in the house.

mixed, very mixed

A small bit of goodness... I discovered that the purple shiso that I grew last year, courtesy of the good folk up at the Menagery, has re-seeded itself in the planter box. Somehow I missed the little plantlets, hidden behind the big chard, but since the chard is mostly done, having been going strong since last summer, I discovered this plantly bonus. Purple shiso, also called perillia(sp?) is used to give the pink pickled sushi ginger that lovely pink color. I may have to try my hand at pickling some ginger slices.

Otherwise I've found a very disturbing problem here at Acorn Cottage. Some of you may remember the plumbing problem of last year, where badly installled pipes began leaking inside the wall behind the pantry cupboard, and the home warranty company took 3 DAYS to send out a plumber to repair the leaky pipe. Well... even though I managed to get the water turned off to the house quickly, (which left me with no water for those three days) got the wall torn open shortly after discovering the leak, pulled out all the insulation, left the wall open for days after the repair, washed everything down with bleach, kept a fan running until everything was dry before repairing the wall...

This last week I noticed that the floor near that area seemed like it was no longer quite structural in places. This does not bode well. Last night the words "dry rot" percolated up through my interior mind, and I bravely cut away a bit of the vinyl flooring inside the pantry. The plywood sub-floor appears more like crumbly mulch bits. THIS IS NOT GOOD. (insert Fjorlief tearing at what little hair she still has here) The piggy-bank is still quite flabby since April 15th. I've no experience with this level of "home repair", but I know that my original idea of just screwing a piece of plywood down over the soft area would only make the problem worse, while the fungal damage zone would continue to grow. I am tempted to use my trusty box knife and cut away the vinyl flooring in this area to see how far the damages range, and then remove the crumbled fungal wood.

The difficulty is that the damaged area is in the passageway between the work room / laundry room and the rest of the house. not a convenient place for a big hole in the floor. I can cope by walking around the outside of the house, but still...

Nonetheless, I can't let the problem get worse. Ah the joys of homeownership, that time-consuming and expensive hobby

hot town - Summer in the city

I know that many folk find warm sunny weather a delight, but I just want to hide in deep shade somewhere, since I find intense sunlight actually painful. The warm temperatures (high 80's) here in Portland have had me totally wiped out, and my productivity has been almost nil. I guess that I have the opposite of Seasonal Affective Disorder, as dark misty-rainy winter days make me happy and full of energy.

Acorn Cottage is now sporting more Reflectix window-fillers, as I've cut new ones for most of the big front window that faces the setting sun. The mylar-bubblepack really helped with the heat last summer, and doesn't look too wierd, as those windows also have lengths of shadecloth mesh pinned over the outside. I left a bit of the lower window uncovered so Smokey can still look outside, but the living room is staying a bit cooler without all that solar gain. Fortunately the south-facing windows actually have permanent awnings; I imagine that when awnings were installed long ago, no one thought about the big front west window, since the whole front yard was formerly shaded by the two big ornamental plum trees, which the former owners butcher-pruned with a chainsaw. Said trees are still alive, though probably a third their former size, and I've been told that they have about a thirty to fifty per cent chance of survival.

I actually had a meal with all major ingredients coming from right here…a tasty frittata with the first of the snap peas, garlic flower tops, a bit of the (overwintered) ruby chard, and of course homegrown eggs courtesy of my hens. Hard to get a lower carbon footprint than homegrown.

and here is a portrait of HennyPenny, an important contributor to the sustainable Acorn Cottage

Last weekend Svava and Hrafnir renewed their wedding vows, and since the "secret" is now a fact, I thought you might enjoy seeing their rings of renewal. I was honored that she asked me to make them, and happily was able to rise to the challenge, since while I am a metal (and enamel) artist, and do create most of the settings for my work, rings are not something I usually create. In fact the last time I made a ring was maybe forty years ago, when I was just beginning to learn jewelrycrafting at the DeCordova Museum School. Nonetheless, I'm pretty happy with how these rings came out…

I also made a Norse style "hat-cone" for Hrafnir's new hat. Not only is he our current Kingdom Arts Champion, but also an incredibly talented cook; I took the liberty of adding tiny forks and spoons to the granulated decoration.