Vents and vigas and changes in weather. Shares needed. $1K match on offer!

Photo copyright Aji, 2016; all rights reserved.

UPDATE:  Yes, I forgot, because bronchitis has turned my brain to mush. In belinda ridgewood's diary last night, she announced an anonymous donor's $1,000 match. If we raise $1K, it will magically turn into $2K! Okay, it's not really magic, but it feels like it to me. Thus far, we have raised $574, which means that if we raise another $426, we hit the $2K mark.  So please share the links, because that $2K? That will put a big dent on the balance due on the windows and doors.

Yes, the weather has changed; that much was obvious at dawn. Today was likely the lat day of this extended period of Indian Summer — highs again sixty or past, but clouds rolling in, skies rapidly going gray, air increasingly chill and damp. We have high wind warnings for all of tomorrow (the kind that do actual damage), and they are expected to escort the rain and snow to us several weeks late. They'll be scrambling next week, because more snow is forecast for Monday and Tuesday.

Photo copyright Aji, 2016; all rights reserved.

This first thing they did today was finish this. Yes, that's a vent. They spent yesterday and today closing in the roof at the back of the house, and as they went, they installed a ventilation system across the length of it that will provide for constant year-round circulation of fresh air. This was not in the blueprints, by the way; this was their own idea, and it's brilliant.

Photo copyright Aji, 2016; all rights reserved.

You can see the vent running the length of the house at the top in the photo above. Thereafter, they also began cutting the flashing for the vigas, although I have no photos of that yet. That's another cost-saving measure: The guys checked into buying the pre-made flashing, and the price was $50 a pop. Times 22 ends (11 on the front; 11 on the back), and you're looking at another $1,100, which is absurd. So they picked up the galvanized sheet metal and used Toney's power saw to cut them themselves, and it ran us only a few bucks for the metal itself. [The point of the flashing is to cover the tops of the vigas where they adjoin the facade of the house, and prevent leaks from worming their way in and turning into a problem.]

Photo copyright Aji, 2016; all rights reserved.

The other thing they did was to cut the vigas to size, so that each extends exactly sixteen inches outward from the facade. José used Wings's chainsaw to do it, and the man is an artist; the surfaces are perfectly flat and evenly balanced.

Photo copyright Aji, 2016; all rights reserved.

Then Toney went to work on treating the vigas, sealing them with a mixture of linseed oil and turpentine. Once the flashing is installed, then they'll fill in the remaining gaps with plaster, and plaster evenly over all surfaces. By the end of next week, if all goes as planned, things will once again begin to look very different.

Of course, all of this takes money. And while we're currently holding, there are some very large costs in the offing: the balance on the windows and doors and the septic system, to name the two largest (and most immediate). So we still nee consistent daily shares of our YouCaring page via the widgets provided, especially via the widget code from lower right that produces this image:

We also need continued, consistent shares of Wings's site, which is what pays the bills and also helps fund ::points upward at photos:: all of that. He has new work coming out, the first of which was released today; more will follow this weekend. And folks contemplating holiday commissions should contact me now to get your orders into the queue on his workbench.

Many thanks to everyone for getting us this far. We have a long way to go, and we're now under time pressures that are rapidly ratcheting tighter and tighter. We've rolled many separate stages into one so-called "final" stage, but we have to make an all-out push to get through it before real winter weather (and more, a dangerous change in governance) hit. And, yes, we're both still sick, but I think we're also both on the mend, even if it doesn't feel much like it yet. Still, I'll feel better when I know that we're safely in real housing at long last, particularly if we're going to try to squeeze Wings's knee surgeries in early in the year before all hope of getting them gets smothered in the cradle by the forces about to camp out in the nation's capital. Please help us push through this by sharing the links on a daily basis.

Thanks.