My little Helper

Wyatt helped me remove the wallpaper from the dining room on Sunday. Here is a video of him in action. More photos when I have more light to take them. I have also started (with Jay's help) to remove the paint on the moulding in the hallway and on the entrance to the living room.

On My Way to Becoming a Professional Stripper

Not what you think. I have been working on stripping the paint off the moulding in the dining room since OCTOBER. It is extremely difficult to find time with a toddler to do this, as it is lead paint and I can't do it when he is around. It's also incredibly messy.

I have successfully finished stripping all the original woodwork with the heat gun. I still have a few spots left to do with the super toxic stripeez gel stuff, but it's coming along nicely. I have posted some before and after shots.

Screen Porch

Looks like we need to replace some joists!

Rotten, rotten, rotten.

There have been so many house projects that I will take this opportunity to catch people up. Tonight, we will focus on the Screen Porch. When we moved into the house, a Dutch Colonial, it was evident that the screen porch off the living room was going to need to be rebuilt. After 4 years, we decided that we couldn't rebuild everything, so we had to settle for refurbishing. This past late summer/early fall, we did just that. We decided to wait until next spring to build the door and put up new screens because we stack firewood on the porch in the winter. The entire process took us about 2 months worth of weekends.

The finished porch, complete with the master constructor.

Posts and porch floor painted, prior to installing the rails.

Finished!

Wyatt, the inspector.

The Busy Bees to Be

Welcome to my new blog, the Busy Cees. We are quite industrious and most people think we are nuts, so I might as well blog about what we do. So to get us off right, we shall start with our latest project, and the inspiration for the name of our new blog.

 Jay and I have been building a Top Bar Beehive for my new hobby. The bees have been ordered, a Carniolan bee queen to the the genetic stock off to a mild and hearty start, hopefully the stand has been built, and paint has been applied. Here are photos, but not of the final paint job. I will post that when it is all together.

Front view of our Top Bar Hive

Side view of top bar beehive. Still need to drill holes for entrances.

The finished stand for the bee hive.

Another view of the pressure treated stand. It even folds up for easy storage.

I put the last coat of paint on the beehive today and now just have to get a latch for the viewing window, remove the plastic film on the plexiglass, and apply beeswax to the starter bars on the top bars.