Skip to main content

Here He Comes to Save the Day, Mr. Mike is on His Way


To prepare for the work being done on our house we had to bring everything in the attic and our bedrooms into the living room and dining room. I think Theo liked having all his toys out in the living room.

Well, Brooke's dad, Mr. Mike was in town again to help fix our broken soffit.

 During his last visit he said he would come back in a couple weeks to help us fix it. We were very thankful to have his help. 

 Not too long after he arrived we headed to the Red Barn Pizza Farm.  We tried to go during his last visit but the weather wasn't good.



You may be wondering why Theo's on a cot in our bedroom. Since we don't have a guest room, yet, Mr Mike was using Theo's bed. 

 I don't think Theo minded.

I was having the worst time finding a roofer or siding contractor to fix the soffit that fell in the late winter. I'm relatively handy, but this job wouldn't have been possible without Mike.
 
Mr. Mike brought some scaffolding to add to the parts we already had. Putting that together was our first task.
 

Then all the boys went to Menards to get the wood and replacement aluminum soffit parts we'd need.
 

 

Two days later and lots of lumber cut, aluminum snipped and Mike's craftsmanship we had it good as new.
 
Yay no more birds and bees hanging out in there.

Finishing the last details.

We treated Mike to a Twins game as a thank you.

You know if there's an all you can eat option we're there. Our seats came with hot dogs, nachos, sodas, popcorn, pretzels and ice cream sandwiches. Later my dad asked why our section was the most full, I told him that's because this is the all you can eat section. 

Grandpa got Meadow this hat she was eyeing up. He's too nice.

All You Can Eat Seats and fireworks. Not bad!
 
And the Twins won! They had an exciting 5th inning with 6 runs. 

Back at home the next day we had more jobs to tackle. I worked on venting our new bathroom fan.

While they worked upstairs I could finally put back together our porch. We had planned to paint the floors too but since they are currently painted with lead paint we were told we will need to cover them.  

I had stripped all the painted hardware in here too. 

Scott had picked up some string lights at Menards. 

This porch was really looking nice now.

We'd had knob and tube removed from our attic earlier in the week. I had to create a few "boxes" to block off the last remnants of old wiring that couldn't be excised. And then patch up the walls for the insulation guys coming out.

Good as new.

Meanwhile Mr. Mike was putting the floor back together. The electricians had broken more than a few floorboards in the process of removing the old wiring and adding new fan boxes.
 
I'm sure lucky to have a dad that was in the flooring business.  

I always wanted to take down this old pipe sticking out of walls. Turns out I could just turn it off and seal it in the wall.
 
Still not sure what it was for.  

These were for some kind of secondary heating system abandoned ages ago.
 
Looking so good. Someday I'd like to add a table so we can eat out here.

 
The previous owners had left behind a wood chipper. Dad and I tested it out to see if it works. It does and it's very loud.

After a weekend of hard work we all got cleaned up and went out to eat at Brasa. 

I didn't think we could eat it all, but we smashed everything.
 
Since we were nearby we took a walk by Lake Harriet. Oh I miss being so close.
 
We're only a short bike ride away and have a lot more room.

We got some ice cream and played for a bit. 

I'm thinking about adding detail like this to our shingles down the line.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Backcountry Camping with Kids in Theodore Roosevelt National Park

Day 1  Back in May I stumbled upon Theodore Roosevelt National Park. I had no idea there was a National Park in North Dakota and that it was the northern end of the Badlands. Usually our summer vacations coincide with Scott's work trips. Since he didn't have any this summer I thought we should take advantage of actually taking a vacation. What, my workcations are always classics? I suppose a second real vacation this year wouldn't hurt. We definitely have more time than normal. As long as we took Covid-19  precautions and avoided people. We finally settled on a time to go. Blake joined us so we borrowed our dad's van so we could ride together. Scott had just driven from Michigan the day before. Blake had met my parents in Wisconsin to get the van and then drove from Duluth to pick us up. I offered to drive since I literally only drive twice a month.  I was still pretty tired from a long drive home. Since we were near Fergus Falls we had to stop by the abandoned state ho...

A Park Rapids-Walker Workcation

We were going to just go overnight on Saturday with Scott for a work trip. With a snowstorm in the forecast we left right after the kids were done with school. Meadow is still chugging away at her rug hooking.    We stopped at the China Star buffet near St Cloud. They really upgraded the interior since we were here last.  Don't worry about me. Just noshing on the green beans. Can a guy get more veggies in these buffets? We ended up changing hotels and staying in Walker at the... Walker Hotel . The room was a bit old fashioned and TV a wee one. But the pool had a slide, so that's a win. Right? The falling snow outside the pool window made it slightly magical.  Meadow got Theo's hair dry after we got ready to take a drive down to Park Rapids. It doesn't look that bad, but it was nerve wrecking driving. But I do have to say that the Escape PHEV did pretty well in the conditions. The slippery mode for snow and rain kind of rules even if we don't have 4WD. We tagged alon...

Brooke's Birthday Fish Fry and Many Minneapolis Walks

My actual birthday happened to be on the first Friday of Lent. You know what that means, church fish fry!  One of our favorites is at St Albert the Great in south Minneapolis. Usually we have to wait for a little while up in the sanctuary, but we got downstairs to the hall super quick. All the gray hairs were out for the night. Can't blame them. The kids usually opt for spaghetti.  The best part about this place is you get to pick two desserts.  They actually let you have as many you wanted this year. In past they had two tickets per person, but not this year! The same gregarious priest as always was keeping the crowd entertained. I swear he wasn't back last year, but it was good to see him back doing his best. Theo got chosen to pick the winning numbers for the 50/50 raffle. The priest gave us a hard time for not getting a raffle ticket. Don't worry about me. Just daydreaming about a back screen porch like this. I made Brookie a brookie brownie. Could've used more brow...