Painting is Finished

We finished the final coat yesterday, except for a few touch-ups and a little work on the upstairs dormers... as is pretty obvious in this picture, we were racing the weather. (It's supposed to rain tomorrow.) What a relief to finally have it done. Now, with the exterior finished, we can concentrate on the interior work all winter.

For some reason, there are ladybugs all over the dome. I don't mean a few here and there; I'm talking thousands. It's common to see these kind of swarms during Indian summer; the bugs will be gone once it freezes again. But still. I think they are attracted to the flat concrete surfaces of the dome, which may look to a ladybug brain like a cliff (its natural winter habitat)... or perhaps they think they have found the mothership, who knows.

Dome Primered

Mike & I were out at the dome painting this weekend... the primer coat is almost finished. The dome looks completely different now. The finished color won't be white, however; it'll be more of a light beigey natural shade.

Painted Dome

There is actual paint going on the actual dome! Mike started the primer coat today. He's using Loxon, an acrylic primer specifically meant for concrete. He has to roller it on because it's almost always too windy to spray on the ridge -- it'll probably be a four-day job.

Finished Dormers

The dormers are all complete! We finished the wide first-floor ones with a colored stucco product called Dryvit... the smaller upstairs window dormers are plain concrete & will be painted with the house.

It rained off & on last week (what a wet season we've been having!), but the forcast says sunny & cool for all of next week. Paint at last!

The apple trees, by the way, responded well to spraying & put out another batch of leaves just in time for the coming frost. Oh well. It looks like they are in good shape to thrive next spring.

Bad News from the Orchard

Something is eating the leaves on the apple trees. We thought that deer were the culprits, so Mike built some protective cages; but alas, the deforestation has continued unabated. Now there's also some kind of little green worm spinning spiderwebby cocoons around the branches. Hmmph. I have no idea what the critters are, but we'll hit 'em with a broad-spectrum pesticide & see if that does it. I hate spraying, but I don't think we can avoid it here.