branch homestead

loving spring here

 

~sunshine and happiness

{this moment}

{this moment}

a photo~an extraordinary moment~no words~pause~savor~remember...

another thoughtful idea from soulemama

{this moment}

{this moment}



a photo~an extraordinary moment~no words~pause~savor~remember...

another thoughtful idea from soulemama

exterior house painting prep

we closed on our house three years ago in march. we spent several months stripping wallpaper, pulling up carpet and flooring, cleaning, painting and stripping out some of the kitchen. then last summer we finally decided that we were ready to begin the structural work that needed to be done. we hired our amazingly talented friend tom johnson to design our new kitchen and he hired his fabulous builders to do the construction.

we finished construction last october. i began some of the painting/priming on the new exterior last fall and I have begun again now that the weather is more consistent here.

our entire house and garage have been waiting to be painted since before we moved in. last week i began power washing the garage. my husband and i have had great concerns about lead paint. when we were living in our last house which was 100 years old we had a lead expert come and do an evaluation for us. he was a wealth of knowledge and he was very generous with his time and expertise. we are still a little over the top when it comes to the lead paint removal and containment.   

when i first began the power wash we were concerned with all the paint coming off the garage. my husband suggested that I put down a canvas to catch the paint chips. i thought that might be a disaster given that we are still working on growing a lawn since we did the re-grading in our back yard. i thought maybe if i bought some screen material that might work to catch the paint and let the water through. it really did a great job. i bought a 25’ x 72” roll of synthetic screen and laid it under where i was to spray. it caught most of the paint. i then i folded it over a few times and laid it on the driveway with a few rocks to hold the ends down so that it would dry. i dumped the paint flakes in a bag after a few hours and wow! this was very effective. please be sure to wear a hepa mask when dumping the paint and/or try to cover it as you dump the best you can, adults can get lead poisoning too. also wash clothing separate from family laundry.

~sunshine and happiness

getting the lead out of your home safely

i love all these photos that i see on so many blogs and in magazines with the beautiful distressed paint on old or old looking furniture but it makes me very concerned. i'm all about saving the old but want to make sure that it is done safely. i worry so much about kids and adults being around potential chipping and dusting lead paint. lead poisoning is too common and very scary.

if you live in a house built before 1978 or purchase painted furniture that you believe has been painted before 1978 you should assume that it has lead paint and take these precautions.

 

first try to find someone to come and test your house for lead paint. It costs a few hundred dollars but it's so worth the money. the man that came to our house did swab testing and sent the dust samples to a lab. he also took some paint chips and also sent them to a lab. he did soil samples, sent them to a lab and water samples also to make sure there was no lead in our pipes. he also had this gun that he could point at painted areas and tell us if they had lead paint. this was amazing. i had him check several of our dressers that i was unsure of their age. he was really a wealth of information. we were really lucky to have someone who was so passionate about helping people find all the lead in their house and help them control the impact.

this website seems to have very good information. self help, inc. lead abatement program  this website also seems to have good information on home lead testing from the minnesota department of healthhere are the risk factors for lead poisoning from the mayo clinic here are some of the complications that can arise from lead poisoning from the mayo clinic

here are some other tips that our lead inspector gave us:

lead is usually released in location where you have chipping paint or where to painted surfaces rub. so windows and doors and painted drawers are especially vulnerable. we had some windows in our old house that were near where are daughter played that we chose to never open for this reason.

have your children tested annually. our inspector has been working very closely with a pediatrician in our area and he told us that the government acceptable level is anything under 10 micrograms (a microgram is one-millionth of a gram) in a deciliter (1/2 cup) of blood — can cause damage over time, especially in children. he let us know that they keep moving the number down, he believes that very soon it will be moved to 5 and his belief is that is where it really should be.

he also let us know that when having kids tested it was best to have the blood sample come from their arm if possible. sometimes it is hard to get a clear reading from a blood draw from a finger.

children and pregnant women should not be in the house when you are working on the lead abatement.

you must always do the cleanup with soap and water. we would often clean our work space several times with soap and water (changing the soap and water often) to make sure that we were getting all of the lead dust.

never dry sand any paint that has lead or chance of lead, always wet sand there are these great sanding sponges that we use all the time and wear a hepa filtered mask~we purchased a few respriators they weren't real expensive, considering we have been working on the house for 3 years we would have spent a fortune in dust masks without the same protection or comfort.

always vacuum with a hepa filter.

lead dust is heavy and falls rather quickly. this is good to know that it isn't like drywall dust that takes a long time to settle. i'm not sure how long you need to wait to do clean up, but not as long as with drywall dust.

we had a window seat where are daughter played that had lead paint on it, our inspector suggested that we paint over it again to cover the lead and then also cover that with contact paper so that we would not have any paint chipping.

our inspector noted that we had paint in our basement. His suggestion was that we never have our daughter down there and that we have specific shoes that we wore down there and left them out of our living space.

one thing that our pediatrician suggested is that you should never use hot water from the tap for cooking because if you do have any lead in your pipes it would come out with the hot water vs. the cold.

sorry to welcome some of you to our world of lead neuroses. i really felt that i needed to share my information. i am not a lead specialist. please contact a professional and/or consult the links that i have included for more information. my list is just a suggestion of some additional precautions that you might take when considering lead abatement in your home. lead poisoning is very scary and serious. please take time to make sure that your family is safe.

hope this helps raise your awareness. be well.

thistle-the magnolia warbler

i've been away from blogging a bit trying to catch up with house projects and my family. i have so many things stored up and in process to share very soon. my hope today was to share a very exciting rescue story of our new friend thistle. we originally thought that thistle was a female goldfinch because we were having trouble finding any other information. my neighbor who seems to know all the birds in our region found this info on line and it is most definitely a magnolia warbler. thanks jill.

yesterday my husband and daughter were sitting in our kitchen and that heard a very disturbing knock at the window. a very sweet little yellow bird hit our kitchen window. they let it be for a bit and it did not get up so they found a box to put it in and left it on the porch with a plants around it to protect in from any predators (we have several outdoors cats in our neighborhood). our new little friend named “thistle” kept hopping out of the box and landing on his back and getting stuck there. we decided to put him in this bird cage that i picked up on the curb one day for my girl. we thought he would be safer in there.

thistle seemed to be better today. he was hopping around the cage and spending less and less time on his back. we were going to take him to wild wings a local wild bird sanctuary we were thinking that he maybe had a broken wing and/or a broken leg. when i picked my girl up from school wild wings was already closed so we planned to go out tomorrow. we came home and changed his water and went out to work in the yard…when helen came back in she found thistle upside down in his tiny water dish. i think he must have fallen in there and couldn’t get out. the saddest thing is that she went up for her bath and when she was up there she asked me to check on thistle and that is when i found him…i was so glad that she didn’t see him in the dish like that. my husband and i were so sad to have to tell her and we went up to let her know and she told us when she came in she found him in the dish and was afraid he was dead. so she already thought that he was dead but was afraid to ask. heart-breaking. it’s so amazing how quickly you can connect with an animal. we were all so sad. we had a little service for thistle and buried him in the backyard next to her fish starblaze that she buried last year. she requested that i take pictures of the service. i think that she wanted me to share them.

such a sad day here.

so yesterday right after thistle’s accident my husband and daughter made a silhouette of a hawk to put on the window so that we wouldn't have another bird accident, this was not the first bird we heard hit the window.

{this moment}

{this moment}

 

 

a photo~an extraordinary moment~no words~pause~savor~remember...

another thoughtful idea from soulemama

spring thunderstorm

i love a spring thunderstorm and we really need the rain here. the poison ivy i planned to attack today shall live to grow another day.

raindrops and jumping puddles

Sent from my iPhone