Off North

When Friday rolled around, I went north. It's cooler up north. Three days away was nice. My best friend up there had surgery to repair his shoulder. Of course he would catch a staph infection in the hospital, one of the really nasty drug-resistant ones. He's doing well but he will be hooked up to intravenous antibiotics for six weeks. He'll probably watch every video and DVD he has twice. Cabin Fever redux.

Usually I go I-440 to I-64 to I-95 to get out of North Carolina. I went I-85 instead. Prettier road and less traffic. Found an old time gas station with fried food.


Really neat interchange to a toll road south of Richmond. Picture doesn't do it justice but it stands pretty tall and proud, and at one point, has three layers.

If you drive north on I-95 toward Richmond, This city skyline complete with skyscrapers, rises out of the horizon. The road then swoops by an all brick Romanesque train station right at the roof level.
Finally I get to where I was going. Another hazy lazy August afternoon looking toward the old home place.

Free wallpaper. Never say I don't give anything away. Black Walnut, very hardy tree. I planted and moved quite a few onto the front lawn. The only drawback is the green hailstones they grow. Not really desirable near sidewalks and driveways during certain months of the year.

Just more free wallpaper. I must be feeling generous.

The kitchen is getting worked on at the house. Oak floors. My Bro-in-Law is going to order the cabinets soon. Until then, it's like this for livability's sake. Very old kitchen, been there long enough, it has one of these......
Kitchen fireplace and back stairs for when there were servants. Fireplace was redone several times, last in the 1960's, but it always has been meant for cooking.

This grate actually swings out. It also has a pot hook. It was welded together by the local blacksmith who made the grate as well. I sent many a cord of wood up the chimney here, and grilled a few steaks.

I spent yesterday at the Garage-House. We got the interior walls framed. Also was contacted by another recruiter, so I got their online thingie done too. Today we do the exterior wall and frame in the old garage door.

Hot enough for Us? Yep.

A hundred and six today. Boss was working on the Garage House in the morning but only because the solar people were showing up. Yesterday four of us were putting up walls. Boss and I and G are all eligible for AARP membership. Could call it the Geezer Construction Society. Ah well. We are all in good shape as opposed to office people. Average middle-aged cubical dweller would have been dead. We just drank, perspired, and kept going.

Interview went well but think it's gonna be awhile. Leaving tomorrow for Northern Virginia. My best friend is in the hospital. Had a short chat, will see him tomorrow or Saturday. May comeback on Monday if he and his better half need help.

Cheap bathrooms, what did I do? Nada. Nix. Nothing. Ah, I did spend money. New toilet fill valve and flapper, four half inch CPVC caps,two wax rings and last but not least, two shiny new straight valves that can be glued into the CPVC pipes. Forty dollars and forty cents. I hope I have stock in Lowes, they certainly get a good chunk of my income. When I get back from my travels, the plan is to put the new parts in the back bath toilet, replace the half bath toilet with the new 1.6 flusher that's been camping in my dining room, and then demo the front bath. Weather and money permitting.

Well, this lazy sod needs to start charging batteries.

I tried to read The World Without Us. Big disappointment. My apologies to Amazon for being late. They should have lost the book. Gave it to my nearest relative with the hope I never see it again.

An Old Place in Loudoun County, Virginia.

I'm a refugee from Loudoun County. I sold a one bedroom condo for an ungodly sum and came down to not-so-laid-back Cary, NC. Nice enough place but too Mr. Beaver like.

When I first came to Loudoun, it was rolling hills, cow farms, cornfields, old barns, country stores, and small sleepy towns where a dog could sleep in peace in the middle of the street.

Here's an old, old place, very typical of old Loudoun houses, painted brick, some parts before Civil War, some even before the Revolutionary War. Not restored, just lived in continuously for for over three hundred years by different families and owners. It's a big house. The church had it for awhile and they added on a wedding chapel and a preacher's study. It was even bigger then that but the kitchen addition from the 1890's had to be taken down. The materials from the demolition was used to build a small cooling house.

The barn was built in the early Twentieth Century, but typical of many structures of the time in Loudoun, quite of bit of it came from an earlier barn, and the older posts and beams have been remarkably free from rot.

The garage is unusual in that it is a post and beam oak frame filled in with oak studs and poplar siding. We used concrete nails if we wanted to hang anything up.

This grey building is just a storage shed, gray, T-111 siding and just shows how structures are added as needs dictate.

Unique to the area. is the use of tin roofs, or more properly, the standing seam metal roof. The roof on the house dates from the 1880s and and gets a fresh coat of paint every ten years.

This is pretty rare that so much has survived here, not untouched, but surely appreciated by it's occupants over the years.