Calm before the spring storm....

Calm before the spring storm....

May 10th  -- A snow storm is predicted for tomorrow with between 3 and 8 inches of snow.  Really?  The warm spring so far sounded too good to be true.  Besides preparing for the pending storm, the house continues to inch toward completion.

I have been looking forward to the return of Eric, the floor refinisher guy.  He is a very pleasant and nice guy who did an amazing job on the new hardwood floors.  Today he is scheduled to refinish the floors on the upper-level sitting room and front bedroom/office.  Those rooms are shown in these photos:

BEFORE:

 The floors in the foyer and living room will also be refinished.

BEFORE:

Before Eric started, we had to semi-dismantle the computer desk and hutch in my office and we moved it into the closet outside the second bathroom.

The day before I had "sealed" as many doorways as I could that were adjacent to the rooms where the floors will be refinished.

Here are a few side-by-side comparison photos that really don't do justice to showing what a skilled craftsman Eric is:

Before:                                                                     During:

Before:                                                                           During:

 

Here are a few more "during" photos:

In the meantime, I tried to take advantage of the clam weather before the storm to erect the trellis, shown here.

I used three pieces of 10' 1/2" steel electrical conduit for the uprights; two rounded corners and a "T" to join the two 5' pieces.  I first pounded 1/2" rebar spikes that were 2 feet long into the ground and then set the uprights over the rebar.  I also secured the trellis to the chain link fence.  When I was done, the trellis was very solid and is not going anywhere.  

The trellis will provide a privacy screen between my neighbor's dining room windows and my patio and a view into the dining room and guest suite.

I will weave wire on the uprights so that foliage -- to be determined later -- will grow up the trellis to eventually become a living privacy screen.  In the meantime, I purchased some laminated burlap and a grommet kit and I will hang burlap panels from the trellis.  The laminated burlap will not block light into my neighbor's windows.

After I finished setting up the trellis, I decided to work on tidying up the greenhouse and doing some weather-proofing, especially since it will snow tomorrow and I have already moved some recently purchased plants into the greenhouse.

 I used some leftover flagstone to make a little walkway into the greenhouse.

 I purchased a piece of hard foam insulation that had a heat reflector surface on one side -- the piece was about 36" by 25".  My primary goal was to position the insulation so as to block the predicted cold and drafty air from entering the greenhouse around the window well that one of the greenhouse walls bisects.

You can see here that I cut various sized pieces and "jammed" them in to ward off cold drafts.

I also jammed some leftover bricks under the threshold of the greenhouse door.  When I have a chance I will buy a can of foam insulation and will spray that stuff in between the bricks and the foam insulation in the window well  to make a weather-tighter greenhouse.

By the end of the day the rain had started...hard to believe that this rain will turn into snow overnight.  I only hope that the typical wet spring snow doesn't damage the dogwood tree that is in full, glorious bloom,