The Squirrel Is Winning This First Round

Well, things are kind of on hold, my big ladder isn't tall enough to reach the north side of the house. Even climbing as high as the second to the top step. I still need about 5 or 7 more feet.

Yeah, I'm able to still work on a few other areas, but I can't reach the big hole that the squirrel is currently living in to deal with it, and that's killing me. I do plan to see if I can extend the ladder safely, I'll be checking on that next week. For now I'll just finish a few other areas, and start checking into who I can enlist to reach the areas that I can't. My knee was starting to hurt me, so I felt a bit nervous climbing up the ladder so worked on the decking today.

I truly thought I'd be able to knock out most of all that I had to do on the house, but it's been a slow process. I am very happy with the amount of work that I have accomplished though. It's looking very nice.

Something interesting, much of the higher areas on the siding smelled of old smoke, probably from the fires from years back when I was evacuated. This while no other fires or BBQ's were going on in my canyon either. I hope that all of the two coats of stain help that, and strengthen and protect the siding.

Tomorrow, it's off to buy more stain and more of that expandable foam stuff. I have gone through four 5 gallon cans of stain already of the high end Behr stain. In past years, I've sprayed the stain on, this time around I've been brushing it on pushing the stain into the wood and that seems better at conditioning the wood. Also, in previous years I've only done one coat, this time I'm putting on two coats, what a difference. Many areas were never caulked either, so it's been a good feeling getting that accomplished as well.