Porches, Closets, Clothes and shoes....oh my!

 We are finally working on the house again.  Or I should say, Dave is.  He is trying to get the porches enclosed and finished.

 If he can get them done, four in all, then they will not be open to the outside,

 and critters and birds will not be able to get into our house upstairs.  I tried explaining last winter why it is so cold in the rest of the house and why we can't really use it, but unless you see it, it's hard to understand.

 

This is part of the reason.  These pictures are about as good as it gets to show you.  It is open to the outside, not to mention no walls or insulation.  Anyway, here's what happened.  I pulled up by the garage one day and I heard a loud-kind of screaming-coming from the soffitts.  Then it got quiet and I heard running around.  It was a family of raccoons.  And they were tearing things up, and pooping.  So Dave got started closing the porches.  And we were messing with raccoons right up to our vacation.

I will say it now people, building a house is not for the weak!

We've had to lift each other up with positive comments more than once.

 This is what it looks like now, under the back porch.

 

He still has some trim work and details to finish.  Then we will wash everything down and paint the columns.

 This guy can't figure out what happened to his wood hole (home) he bored through!  It's wrapped with aluminum now.  I wish we were further along with this house, but it is always something and this trim work takes a long time to do.

And yesterday was one of those days I needed lifted up.  I was ready to move back to our old house.  

I went to put on a pair of shoes I haven't worn in awhile. Since last year actually.  I took them out of the closet and noticed they were really dusty.  I started cleaning them off, and they felt damp.  They had green, musty, mold on them.   I pulled out my boots, mold.  All of my shoes, mold.  I felt the floor in the closet, Wet!  So I immediately started dragging all of the shoes and boots out of the closet and put them on the patio in the sun.  

I called Dave at work and told him there was water on the floor in the closet.  We have a double rack in the closet and we both have all of our clothes in it.  So, I pulled out all of my clothes.  Thinking the problem was just on my end and the water was leaking in the wall somehow.  But when Dave got home he did some more investigating and found his side was wet too. 

 

 So he emptied the rest of the clothes and we think the problem is condensation.

Now, you may or may not remember THESE CLOSET DOORS. 

They do not have ventilation.  We are living in a basement.  It's damp.  Basements are damp.  And this did not happen until just recently when I started opening the windows for summer.   We should have put louvered doors in for the closet doors for ventilation and not stuffed the closet so full (embarrassing!)  Apparently when our room starts warming up, and the warm air hits the cold floor, condensation builds up.  And where there is no ventilation, condensation builds.

 So I spent yesterday cleaning shoes and boots.  And now I'm going to have to go through all of my clothes, wash a bunch of them, and put them somewhere else.  I'm thinking the second hand store is a good place for most of them!

Cindy Bee