Yesterday I rented a 50' boom/crane to scrape, prime, and paint the high sections of the house.

I got quite a bit done. There is only a little bit left on the south side and about half of the north side remaining.

Rob made door jambs for the doorway to the hall,  and he trimmed out all the doorways with moulding:

New romex wire,  outlets,  switches, and lamps got finished up yesterday.
 I now have lighting in the storage space and in the bathroom.  Although I'l miss peeing by candle light.

I put a final coat of paint in the dining room today and I remembered to photograph it.  There are still no trim or baseboard mouldings, but that takes no time at all.

It looks so much better now that all that mustard yellow is gone!

It's been a bit since my last update.  This is mostly due to the fact that all the work lately has been boring stuff that you would not be able to see even if it were photographed. For instance, I ran new romex wire through the walls in the bathroom and attic storage space. I installed new outlet receptacles,  caulked around the windows, re-glazed some glass panes, and mowed the lawn three times!(rainy August made grass grow like crazy).

Anyway, this past weekend something worthy of a story took place.  A fifty foot tall maple tree which was leaning toward the house was removed. I hired this really cool guy named Mike to cut it down. Mike is an old school guy who has been cutting down trees since 1977. He climbs the trees with spikes on his feet and a leather belt around the trunk and cuts the trunk in ten foot sections while perched below the cut.

I took some photos and a video, so I'm going to share,
The tree:

This is Mike preparing to climb:

  About half way up:

At the crotch of the tree, with all the lower limbs cut off.

All limbs down. Now the trunk is next:

Here is a video of a section of trunk coming down. (its better if you wear 3-D glasses)

While scraping the south side of the house for primer/paint. I noticed some of the cedar siding was split & cracked, so Rob and I stripped it down to the studs.

That's when we discovered there was no insulation. $200 dollars and four itchy arms later, we had stuffed R-13 all the way down the hollows of the wall.

We then added some plywood, housewrap, and new siding to the wall.

I forgot to mention that I also built "birdboxes" this past weekend.

They just neatly tie in the horizontal soffit and fascia boards on the rear upper roof to the existing 1875  ornamental eaves on the house.