Old house Things

We are getting quotes for moving our furnace and venting this week. In the process I was looking for antique grates to replace some of the broken or missing ones in our house and came across the ebay listing for this item from Wisconsin for $90:

We have at least two of these exact cast iron grates in our house, and they'll be unnecessary once we move our ducting.

My mom came down this weekend to help outside. I shovelled about 6 yards of pit run gravel around our driveway to shore up low spots in the ruts between the grass lane. It took about seven hours of physical work to get it all done (our driveway is probably ohhh....100+ metres long) and I was very sore the next day. I also seeded one of the two garden beds with zucchini, squash, green beans, lettuce/spring mix/cilantro and some golden beets. I received the tomato plants to finish out that bed from my father-in-law last night. The other bed I seeded with vetch/pea/clover mix (ie green manure) to increase nutrient soil of that fallow bed. Then third bed was too hard to manipulate still (tilled from sod only twice so far I believe), so I'll add some peat moss and till it once more before adding my kale and onions and potatoes. And cucumbers. Also "seeded" the beaver dam on the other side of our 135 acres with 100 tiny speckled trout. Hopefully they'll be big and tasty next year.

Since we left the back part of the house exposed with Typar house wrap and lattice over the winter, now is our opportunity to replace the exterior finish. There is some contention on this, as we try to balance ease of installation, cost of initial installation and maintenance over time. We live in a folk Victorian, so the most historical choices would be wooden horizontal plank or shingle. We could cheat and install either cement Hardie board instead of wooden plank, or vinyl siding meant to look like cedar shingles. Both would have much lower maintenance costs (in time and money) but ew, I hate vinyl. And I LOVE shingles. Love them soooo much. But how much? Like, hire-a-painter-every-few-years-to-refinish love? Scrap-shingles-in-the-heat love? Hmmm...I can say yes, but right now we are financially stable, child-free homeowners. In a few years those things might change. SO decisisons decisions.