This weekend we got back on track with the exterior painting. Now the only part of the house that has not received a new coat of paint is the 19th century addition, but it all needs a lot of scraping and prep work.

I removed the nasty old storms from the front windows of the Dutch Colonial portion. What an amazing improvement. You can see the old wavy glass all the way from the end of the sidewalk.

Discovered more storm damage this weekend, mainly a big new crack in the graveyard wall caused by a large cedar being rocked against it.

I did a more thorough survey of trees this weekend and have found about seven large trees that need to be taken down: a dead sycamore (was dead before the hurricane), 3 leaning cedars, 1 cedar that's too close to the graveyard wall, 1 leaning pine, 1 hardwood that blew down and is too big for me to cut up. This is gonna cost a fortune, not to mention change the look of things. -- Bill

I finally finished putting the last lattice boards up on the end of the screened porch while Gay scraped and primed the old screen door.

I spent a little time looking at the ghosts of the old shutter hinges.

One window on the front of the house still has parts of the hinges in place, but I don't understand the shape, specifically the angle. Anybody know what I'm looking at here? (I've enhanced the contrast of the image below to make the hardware show up better.)

The same angle appears on two other pieces that remain in place on the window. The fourth hinge is missing altogether. Did the hinges all break at this angle? Or maybe this isn't part of a shutter hinge, but rather something to do with the old wood storms windows?

William built a fire pit and couldn't wait to try it out. -- Bill

We took a break from Enon Hall to go to Yorktown this weekend for their annual Victory Celebration.

They have a great little farm house reproduction that looks a lot like our kitchen quarters. I like how it's set up inside, except for the intensely white mortar in the fireplace. I didn't look closely, but the mortar may contain ground oyster shells.

William spotted some drummer boys practicing with an older drummer and hung out watching. When they took a break, the older boy asked William if he wanted to try. It was one of those magic moments that we all daydream about. William stepped up, took the sticks and perfectly tapped out some drum calls he had learned at camp this summer. You could see the other boys' eyes get wide and they asked with some surprise, "Are you a drummer?" The older boy then asked William to play along with him, following his patterns on the same drum and William stayed right with him. It was very cool and William walked away beaming. William's been taking guitar lessons for several years now, but I think drumming is his real talent.

William has been wanting to find a revolutionary war reenactment group to join. We had the opportunity to meet a number of them at Yorktown and check out the options. It would be a great hobby for him and nice complement to his activities at Enon Hall. We'll see what we find out. -- Bill