News, news, and more news.

Hello readers,

Sorry for the delays in chapters, but I am working with a few issues right now. Turns out the sun room of my house was leaking, only the water was running down inside the walls and out the foundation. I only discovered this issue when the wall suddenly shifted and leaned into the house. As I work in construction and I am not made of money, I have been spending my weekends repairing the damage myself. While this has been going on my car has been into the shop three times for three different issues, my cell phone failed and stopped turning on, and woman drove her truck into my barn.

So all and all a good month as far as they go. Now I love my stories, but lets be honest, they don’t make any real money and are not growing in popularity. So when times get tough and I need to focus elsewhere the stories have to suffer.

Still, I have nearly three full chapters written and I am going to try to get them all up this week. I may be putting my car back into the shop as every time I fill it, I smell gas in the cabin and I am suddenly getting terrible gas mileage. I suspect I have a leak someplace.

On the plus side, I have been given a lot of side jobs that pay really well, so none of these “extra” expenses have been crippling. Still, it would have been nice to actually have saved some of that money. I mean, why do expenses always seem to magically appear the second you make some extra cash?

Also, I am going to post chapters under the new title of Hannah and Jaina as the two stories are practically one now anyway. So, with that said, here are some pictures of my work on the house because that’s what everybody comes here for, right?

 The corner in my sunroom had the most damage. That insulated wall actually buckled inward, tearing free of the ceiling. I removed a lot of the boards and replaced what was originally 2x6 with 2x10 instead; the corner in the foreground was originally just a single board; I rebuilt it with three boards nailed together sitting on a treated base to protect it from moisture.

  I had to use these big pole jacks to hold up a beam that supported the ceiling while I removed the entire supporting wall and rebuilt it. The thick board in the background is a header over a 60x64 window. when I opened the wall I discovered the windows didn't originally have headers, so the window itself was carrying the load on the wall. I corrected this issue and now it's stronger than ever.

 My once beautiful patio garden is now my dumping ground. This pile is a fraction of what I actually tore out. I took pictures of the bigger pile with old phone which is what alerted me to the fact that it was dying. I couldn't get it to connect to anything. Anyway you get a good look at that lovely wall of windows that makes up my sunroom. Above it was a balcony, but this is where all the water was coming from and causing the problems.

 When I started removing all the rotted wood I discovered the balcony was built by an idiot and would never pass code. I decided to teat it all out and rebuilt it as an upper room added on to the house.

You can see that new exterior wall here, enclosing the upper balcony into a new inside space. Also, all my windows are fogging up because once the wood rotted and the weight of the balcony started to push on the windows themselves, the frames bent, bursting the seals and allowing moisture in. This whole wall was days away from a catastrophic collapse.

You may notice that odd black pipe that runs along the outside. That turned out to be a gas line. The house has parts that were built in the 1850s, and it has old gas lamps in places. The line itself it much newer, meant to get gas to a furnace in a room off to the right. The funny thing about it all is that my house doesn't have gas. I don't have a gas connection anywhere, yet while digging in a remote field, I found a gas line that seems to run toward my house. SO.... Maybe it was there years ago but it got removed? I also dug up the blades of an old windmill, so who knows what happened in the past.


Anyway, I wanted people to know I haven't just been lying around being lazy. I am over the worry that any part of this will collapse. All the main structural supports are replaced with new lumber, well above code, and firmly anchored. So, back to writing some stories, finally.