Between stucco and a hard place

Between having a cement crew here all week putting stucco on the back of our house, the various leaks that facilitated, and the cats deciding to be daredevils....we had a week around here.

I'll start slow. Our house was (as I type this) all brick in the back and side. After moving in to the house 3 years ago it became very apparent that the brick was an issue. Sections were turning black and there was obvious moisture seeping through the wall and really causing problems with some plastered rooms. Anyway, so after years of saying "you know, we really need to take care of this" we had the guys come out and well...take care of it.

The timing was planned to be after windows for the third floor were in with the exterior trim in place. Done. And the other factor was making sure that we could pay the guys in U.S. currency. Done. Three days later, the back of the house looks something like first the picture on the right.

And for some weird close up of the stucco work, for those who are not that familiar, I guess you can enjoy the picture on the left. Do with it what you must.

Anyway as I eluded to at the top of this number, some of this work created some issues for us in the water department. The byproduct of the guys peeling some of the rubber roof off of the existing wall was that when the stucco doesn't meet the roof...water goes RIGHT INTO that seam and floods the floor below. Great stuff!! A+++++++

Whatever. Our cement contractor is really nice and felt bad the guys left the area like that. He's coming over tomorrow with a roofer to fix it all no charge. There are still some decent contractors out there as hard as it is to believe.

So the last fun thing happened yesterday morning. I never mentioned this previously (in spite of Christina's insistence I admit) but our cat Bing had an escape a few days ago. He decided to hop out of the front windows on the top floor onto the top of the bay windows. I found this out after closing the windows, and a few minutes later wondering what "that f#$%ing cat" noise was. Yeah...I felt kind of bad seeing the little dude out on the window still 30+ feet over the street. With a very large tail he made a B-Line for the inside of the house.....

But our other cat Marco took the prize Saturday morning. At around 8:30 AM Christina was milling about the house and heard a noise coming from outside. She looked out a window and saw my man Marco staring up at her. Outside. From the roof of the first floor closet. Marco, upon seeing her shining face, started to wail in that way cats do when they're about to be run over or something. Long (and winding) story short, I threw some clothes on and ran outside with a ladder to rescue the dude.

I have created a little something to illustrate HOW he managed to end up outside (click on the image for the full effect). Please, no requests to jazz up other pictures, this one was a SEVERE waste of time tonight. In the end we realized that he went out of the small bathroom window on the third floor and DOWN to the closet roof. 20+ feet. Cats really commit to something.

So anyway that was way too much excitement for first thing in the morning. Now we're double checking that all of the new windows are closed, at least until the screens are in.

Our friend Graham has asked a few times to finally see a picture of Christina working on the house. Now she's normally the shutterbug and not myself, but I did find one that I took that is proof the Bear has put in some time on this mess that we live in. It's old but it still counts.

That's it for now. Tile will be done this week, and my parents are dropping by for a couple of days on their way to a wedding in DE. Good stuff!

- Bryan