Falling Down (includes house photo)

First, for those who have been eagerly waiting for visual proof of our alleged house painting, here you go! I can’t tell you how nice it is to finally have the house painted, but already it’s beginning to seem natural to see it this color. Soon I’m sure we’ll forget entirely that it was ever the terrible, faded, peeling, pink wreck to which we were so accustomed.

Second, I’m also happy to report that I’ve finally finished installing the duct-work for the exhaust fan we installed when we tiled the upstairs bathroom back in the summer of 2007. Now when you come to visit, you’ll be able to turn on the fan and everything will be vented from the house properly. In all, it was a pretty easy job. Thanks to Don for recommending the installation kit. It had everything I needed except for a large hole saw and a ladder. I did, however, discover that there are between 6 and 8 layers of shingles on our roof, and that it takes a long time to drill a 4″ hole through that many sticky abrasive shingles with a hole saw and a cordless drill. I also learned that it isn’t really safe to climb a ladder from one roof to the next. Okay, actually I was pretty sure of this beforehand, but I really wanted to get the job done. At any rate, after several trips up and down the ladder it finally happened. The ladder kicked out from underneath me and I came crashing down to the lower roof. Physically I was uninjured stay a few little cuts and scrapes, but it was fairly quick and traumatic falling off the roof. The worst part was having to climb back up afterward to finish the job. Nevertheless, I persevered and the roof vent is now happily installed. If you look closely at the photo, you’ll see a small spot of damage in the shingles on the lower roof above our front room, so I’ll be heading back onto the roof at some point to replace a damaged shingle, and there is a small bit of touch-up to perform where the ladder scraped against the house when everything came crashing down. I’m quite happy that it missed the window altogether. I also learned, and this too isn’t much of a surprise, that gutters cannot support body weight. Hollywood is lying to you on a pretty regular basis. Sometime in the fall, I grabbed the gutter and that probably kept me from falling off the second roof, but now I also have a loose gutter I need to reattach. Had my feet not reached the roof, I’m sure the gutter would have come completely off the house.