Updates

Here are a couple shots of the finished house roof. It looks great with the cedar shakes.

The inside of the store with paneling going up.


The door to the wood stove that will be installed in the store. The stove was pretty rusty so Ryno has been cleaning it with a wire brush.

Ryno wire brushing the steel top of a unique little table we found.

Our new pet, whom we have named Dude, in the little coop we built for her. The men think that a chick named Dude is pretty funny. At first we fed her bird seed out of NERO spell balls, but then we talked to a neighbor who raises chickens and she gave us some real chicken food for Dude.

Painted windows for the store drying in the banked barn.

Trim boards (and more trim boards) drying (and drying some more) in the banked barn. Technically it is a bit too cold to be be doing outdoor painting, and there is usually as much rain inside the barn as there is outside, so the painting has been a bit frustrating, but we'll get it done.

Crazy Hair Day at School

Here are Owen and William last week, ready to head out to the bus all done up for Crazy Hair Day. Don't tell Owen I said he looked like Little Orphan Annie.

Elvis the Pelvis

This is our dog Elvis. He loves it here. He runs around with us, sleeps in the sun, explores the woods, rolls in raccoon poop and dead things whenever he can find them, and stinks something fierce. He is part Basset Hound and part Welsh Corgi.

Elvis is eight years old but acts much older. With new people here who are unacquainted with him he will hobble around decrepitly as if he is minutes from death. He actually limps and sort of drops his head so people will feel sorry for him. The unsuspecting victims will stop and pet him, rub his belly, and give him love - whereupon Elvis will leap up off the ground and tear away running as fast as he can go, which is much faster than you ever would suspect.

Two weeks ago Elvis was hit by a car. My husband and I were away from the park for a night and Joe was watching our kids and the dog for us. The kids went out to the bus stop in the morning, and unbeknowst to Joe, Elvis snuck out the back door and went out to the bus stop too. A couple minutes later our older son ran back into the house screaming, "Elvis is dead! Elvis is dead!" Too bad the irony of that completely escaped him.

Joe was sitting upstairs with one boot on. They ran back downstairs only to find Elvis standing in the front yard looking perfectly fine. Joe got the boys on the bus and then noticed that Elvis had a bloody nose and blood on his paw. As the minutes went by Elvis's left eye became bloodshot and began to twitch and roll up in his head. Joe called us and we came home and took Elvis to the vet. The vet pronounced him a very lucky dog and prescribed some anti-inflammatory painkillers. Within a few hours of taking the medication the swelling and blood in his eye subsided. A few days later it was like nothing had ever happened to him.

We found out from the boys that Elvis had been hit by a black SUV with tinted windows. The driver did not stop. When the car hit him, Elvis rolled over 3 or 4 times and just laid there like he was dead. While our older son was running to get Joe, our younger son went up to poor stunned Elvis and whispered, "Elvie! Get up!" And Elvis did.

So even though Elvis often smells worse than anything, we are glad to have him. His run-in with a speeding SUV resulted in little injury and added some credibility to his pathetic but very convincing please-pet-me act.

Extreme Makeover - Camp Store Edition

Our latest endeavor has been to remodel the camp store. The camp store is on the National Historic Registry like many of the other buildings and is one of the oldest metal-roofed buildings in the area. It will continue to be used as a store and camp check-in but was badly in need of some work.

Here is how the store looked during the summer of 2008:

It had a certain charm, and some lovely flowers planted out front, but it also had some serious flaws. Part of the building was covered in aging yellow vinyl siding while the rest of it was old brown-painted barn board. The roof was discolored, had holes in it, and leaked like a sieve every time it rained. The interior was dark and dingy with age. The exterior deck and interior floor were also suffering from age and water damage.

We started by repairing the roof with silicone. Missing nails were replaced and popped nails were pounded in (by yours truly). I admit it was pretty fun to crawl around up there. Then we used the airless paint sprayer to put on two coats of silver aluminium paint. Incidentally, the overspray from the paint turned all the foliage around the store a lovely silvery color so it looks like we had a visit from the Christmas fairy, and I now own a nice pair of moon boots (aka hiking shoes with a coat of silver paint on them.) Unfortunately there are still some leaks so we will have to keep working on it, but at least the roof looks better than it did.

Next we stripped off the vinyl siding and removed three sets of unsightly sliding glass doors. We sided over the outside of the building with new barn board, which led to a discussion about what color to paint the new building. I voted for white. We have painted every other building in the park barn red and it seemed like it might be nice to have a bit of variety. I even painted a picture of what I thought it would look like in order to try and convince everyone:



I was outvoted. The men concurred that if we painted the store white with the silvery white roof it would look as if the moon had landed in the park. So we painted it red:

I think they were right. It does look nice and will look even better once we get the windows in and all the trim painted white.

Next we tackled the inside of the store. We took down all the old laminate paneling and replaced it with really nice V-groove car siding - the boards are so light and crisp that they remind me of sugar wafer cookies.

Once the interior paneling is finished we will put in the new windows and doors and give the concrete floor a fresh coat of paint. Updates coming soon!

Gorillas in the Mist (otherwise known as Another Wet and Wild Day at Stonehouse Park)

Great White Chicken

Today the men caught a chicken in the woods. Go figure.

We've Been Working on the Railroad

You probably all realize that we don't have a railroad here (maybe someday...?) but we do have a parking lot full of railroad ties.

We placed a railroad tie at the head of each parking space and then drilled holes at both ends of the tie. We used sledge hammers to pound pieces of rebar through the holes and down through the gravel and into the dirt below. The kids helped out by using a punch and hammer to knock the rebar down as far as possible into the ground.

I now have much greater empathy for railroad workers after swinging an 8 lb. sledge for a few hours. William surprised us all by very trustingly holding the punch even after Owen accidentally hit Will's hand with the hammer.

And the best news of all - the parking lot is now DONE and APPROVED by the county!