Crash! Thud! Bang! Is That Santa On Our Roof?

By 7 this morning, the roof at That Old House
was crawling with men who are far, far braver
than I . . . that roof is high! . . . as the first stage of
Operation Roof Replacement gets underway.

Thank you, Superstorm Sandy,

for stepping up our timetable for this project.

While our roof was certainly old, it was still keeping us dry.

June 2011

After Sandy, not so much.

October 2012

Howard snapped a few pictures from the cul-de-sac as

he was leaving for work this morning.

That is one big dropcloth.

I could paint a lot of old furniture on that dropcloth.

If you look at the front of the house, on the right of this picture,

you can see the old wood roofing shingles, the brown cedar shingles

that are believed to be the house's original roof.

That makes them 180 years old.  Not bad.

I wish we could have somehow preserved

and repaired that old wooden roof.

Much of the roof will need new sheathing, and we therefore

will go down in history as the first homeowners to put

any plywood into That Old House.

(Not something I want in my obituary, if anyone's making notes.)

What looks like plywood on the rear of the house, above, on the left, is not plywood.

It is wide boards, or -- late 19th century sheathing; it was done in the 1880s.

Some of that may be still useable.  Fingers crossed.

Have you seen what plywood costs these days?  Sheesh!

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In our Dylan Dog's little world,

the advent of strangers on the roof is quite exhilarating,

and good reason for barking and making nose prints on the 

window panes, and being told to get OFF the windowsills . . . .

One of Dylan's issues is leash-biting, and we've made

really good progress in extinguishing this behavior (as the

trainers say), but it still surfaces now and then.

Like yesterday.

Anne got a picture of Bratticus Finch, AKA Dylan,

with his lead firmly in his teeth, trying to initiate a tug-of-war.

Of course, like a 3-year old child who defies a parent,

Dylan has no idea how cute he is when he does this,

or why we are not completely intimidated by his power.

Sorry, Dylan, we don't do tug-of-war with bratty boys.

We ignore bratty boys!

And then, they give up, cause then it's not fun anymore.

It really is so rewarding, and such fun, to watch Dylan blossom.

Even when he's still an occasional brat.

I hope your Tuesday is bright, as I'm sure our gray and damp

day will be, eventually; I'm seeing bright sky in the distance!  -- Cass

Boo-Boos And Bumps

It's 7:55 on Thursday morning at That Old House,
and Howard and I are waiting for an insurance
adjuster to come at 8:00 and look at the boo-boos
on our house, left by Storm Sandy.

It's a chilly morning.

Not only is there frost on the pumpkins,

there's frost on the red minivan.

Frost is not all that is on the red minivan.

There are lots of boo-boos there, too.

And some deer hairs.

That's a pile of grille and other car parts on the right side of the picture, on the grass.

Last night, on a very dark and wooded part of Route 10

in nearby Randolph, a deer and I crossed paths.

As bad as the minivan is, it's in better shape than the poor deer.

And I am fine.

Except I keep hearing the thud, and seeing the blur of tan fur.

Our insurance company was not surprised;

they are get a lot of these calls.

New Jersey's roads are littered with deer this time of year.

I am sure there's no connection, but there were a lot of deer
in our yard this morning, including an enormous buck with
a very impressive rack.  I got a little nervous, thinking
that they'd sent their best hit man (hit deer?) to get me . . . .
After all, these are Jersey deer!  -- Cass