Once the foundation was beginning to cure, it was time to think about reframing the walls.  We do not kid.  Probably about half the timber in the south wall had to be replaced. 

Our contractors (Marc & Jacob Salmon) came up with a clever idea to use the taller timbers from the back corner of the house and cut them down to use in the front corner where the downstairs wall is shorter because the foundation comes up higher.  That still left us in need of longer timbers for the back half of the wall. 

So it begins.  The big To-Do.  We knew when we bought this house that it was going to be a lot of work.  My attempts to repair the bathroom wall when we moved in showed me how much rot there was behind the beautifully painted sheetrock.

The roof has leaked for years, the foundation was below grade and crumbling in on area, we had a terrible time finding insurance because of the knob & tube and the fact that we only had 60 amps of service to the house.  Last summer our bedroom was full of flying termites. 

An article in inhabitat.com describes the world's first molten salt solar plant, which just went online in Italy.  The plant uses molten salt to store heat from the sun; the heat is used to produce steam to drive a turbine that generates power much in the same way a hydro-electric plant does.  Because the molten salt has such high inertial heat, the plant can generate power around the clock.

The Back-to-School ritual that happens ever fall is one of those tides of consumption that periodically sweeps over us in our lives.  We can easily avoid the pit fall of clothing right now as our son is still young and having new trendy things is not important to him.  We are very proud of our little guy who gladly accepts cast-offs and thrift store clothes.  This may ch

Well, since my husband and I signed up to Riot 4 Austerity this year, we have been taking a close look at the 7 basic areas and their relationship to our life style.  We passed with flying colors in 4 areas.  The areas we found that we could really reduce our impact was driving, natural gas and food.

Recently an article on incinerators came into my lap.

www.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/science/earth/13trash.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

We are under 20 gallons per day per person and some months we are as low as 12 gallons per person per day.  Most months we come in around 16 gallons per person per day.  The Riot4Austerity goal is 10 gallons per person per day.  The 16 gallons we use includes some outdoor watering and some for my work as a costumer.  Textiles is a water intensive profession and we grow most of our own produce so we are proud to be as close as we are.  Before joining Riot4Austerity our water usage averaged 25 gallons per person per day.

 

Earlier we talked about how to make your own rain barrel.  The rain barrel project was easy to do, and it was very exciting to see how quickly the barrels filled up when it rained.  Unfortunately, it was also a bit disappointing to see how quickly those sixty-five gallons of water were used up watering the

Recently we set up a TerraCycle collection program for my son's school. We collect certain items and for each item TerraCycle donates 2 cents to the school. Its a little money and great big feeling of happiness that our world is going to be a cleaner place.