REBUILD Northwest Florida is finished with us

The final, final inspection is done. The inspector, Dale, took the construction permit and all the paperwork with him. He also removed the REBUILD lawn sign. He said to expect big savings on the insurance. Final paperwork will be mailed soon.

Almost the Final Inspection

An inspector from Escambia County came by this afternoon to sign off on the work done by the contractors who did the retro-fitting of our house. He says there will be one more inspection, but we can put things back in the attic now. Just one more step and the project will be done?

It's the end of the REBUILD Project

The final step in the house's wind mitigation rebuild was today's installation of new impact-resistant garage doors.


Installing the new impact-resistant garage doors.

We got a call last week to expect the installers on Monday between 8:00 and 10:00 A.M. They arrived at 9:45.

As with all the REBUILD Northwest Florida work, replacing the doors was a noisy process. And this procedure took longer than the earlier ones. The two installers were here over six hours. It seemed that one of them was a trainee and he was doing a solo installation of one of the doors.


The new, reinforced door panels -- ready to install. They are much stronger than the old doors.

Almost all of the retrofitting is invisible. You can see the new garage doors but the old doors were in great condition, so the new doors look about the same. The rest of the work was inside walls, under soffits or in the attic. Invisible.

Final inspection comes next.

Hurricane Shutters

The hurricane shutters are installed and stored away in the garage. We are ready for the next big storm.

At 9:30 A.M., right on time, an installer arrived. A few minutes later another one appeared. After lots of very loud drilling of holes and the placement of anchor screws they were finished right at noon. Done.

We have a total of ten windows, including a set of French doors leading to the backyard.

The shutters consist of overlapping galvanized steel panels, about a foot wide and as tall as the window plus a few inches to fit over anchor pins. The panels are attached at each end with washers and wing nuts.

When not covering the windows the panels fit together in one neat cluster in the garage. The footprint for shutter panels for all ten windows is amazingly small, about a square foot.

Now there's one final step, we get new, reinforced garage doors.

REBUILD Northwest Florida, continued

The last work done by the REBUILD folks was on December 1. Since then no one had called regarding the last two steps in the retrofitting of the house. At 5:30 P.M. today we got a call from the people who install the window covers: they can come tomorrow morning and start work between 9:00 and 10:00. It should take about three hours.

They must have had a cancellation.

Reinforcing the Roof, Day 3

A pickup truck, with a crew of two men, arrived with a big trailer
full of hoses, heaters, pumps and goo.

Today there's another crew here to inject a foam adhesive sealant into all the roof-to-wall connections. This is done with pressure hoses. They got here a little after 1:00 P.M. and spent an hour assembling hoses, heaters and goo. The goo apparently has to be heated then sent up a hose to the guys in the attic.

There should be no discomfort to the residents of the house. The fumes are totally safe to breathe. But "it would be a good idea to air out the house for a couple of hours" after they are finished. They were finished around 4:30.

The installers were wearing hazmat suits and they were breathing through respirators.

Two more steps and we will be finished with REBUILD Northwest Florida:
(1) new, reinforced garage doors;
(2) shutters on all the windows and over the French doors to the backyard.

The Retrofit Continues, Day 2

Monday's crew reappeared 7:05 this morning ready to put the soffits back up and finish the other two projects they started. There was talk on Monday that they might be back yesterday afternoon to finish up but they didn't have time.

We needed Monday's work completed today because the roof deck attachment people want to start tomorrow afternoon. They cannot begin until the current roof work is finished.


The photo above shows walls, roof beams and a hurricane strap. After they removed the soffits, the ends of the roof beams and the top of the wall were exposed. The strap was securely attached to both with screws. This isn't exactly how our roof beams look. I got this photo from Google. But the concept is the same. And the strap is the same.

(1) We have a new front door. This one is wind and impact resistant and it works beautifully. And locks easily. I mention this as we had planned to get our handyman to replace the old, rusted and cranky front door that was getting very hard to open.

(2) All the roof-to-wall connections along the non-gable ends of the house have been reinforced with metal clips and big thick screws. All the soffits are back in place and the wood trim to cover the joins has been painted with white primer. Very neatly.

(3) Up in the attic they added lots of wood 2 by 4's for bracing and more metal clips. This was done inside the house, to reinforce the gable ends.

Today's crew was done by 11:30. At 1:00 P.M. tomorrow another crew should arrive. They will use adhesive spray to glue the roof to the walls between the newly reinforced beams.

It's Mitigation Day!

Or more likely Mitigation Week...or Month.

Workers from REBUILD Northwest Florida are here to retrofit the house, especially the roof and windows, to withstand a Category 3 hurricane.


Their website says, "REBUILD Northwest Florida coordinates construction management services for its Residential Wind Mitigation Retrofit Program in Escambia and Santa Rosa Counties."

The workers arrived early, about 7:30 A.M. and we expect this phase of the rebuild, or Mitigation, as we have learned to call it will take a day or two. The front door and its framing are getting replaced by one worker. Two more are removing the soffit around the edge of the roof -- from the outside. Later they go into the attic to install metal clips and wood braces to reinforce the attachment of the roof to the walls.

It's very noisy.

Last spring Jack applied for this and it took many months for estimators to inspect the house and get the application approved.

The homeowner pays 25% of the total cost. The balance, up to $15,000 is paid for by several organizations including FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency; Florida State Emergency Response Team and Escambia County Local Mitigation Strategy. I love the latter's slogan: "A Partnership for a Sustainable & Disaster Resilient Community."

In the next few weeks work will include installing stronger garage doors, foam sealant around all the new construction and removable hurricane shutters for the windows and doors. We expect the whole thing will be done by Christmas.

Signs of Spring -- At Last

A few days ago I saw some color in the hedge. Today there were lots of blooms on this one bush. Soon the whole front yard will be full of blooming azaleas. Many different kinds.

Patrolling the Neighborhood

Joey the Cat has gotten very good at jumping the backyard fences. And snooping around. Click on the images to enlarge them.

Patio Flowers in Florida -- November 2010

Click on the image to enlarge it, then click again to make it even bigger.
Now that the weather is milder the flowers and foliage are looking good in the backyard.

Kitchen Organization

For years I had to rummage around in overcrowded kitchen drawers to find measuring cups and spoons. At last I hung them all on the wall by the cooking prep area.

Potted Peppers

It's time to harvest the hot peppers. These are about two inches long and are very hot. They grow, and ripen, with the ends pointing up.

First Swim -- 2005 to 2010

Here's how the pool looks today.

Our first swim of the year is usually when the pool temperature goes above 80°F (27°C).
• May 13, 2005
• May 18, 2006
• May 13, 2007
• May 21, 2008
• May 13, 2009
• May ?, 2010

This spring cool nights and cloudy mornings are keeping us out of the pool. In fact the pool has lost four degrees in the last three days.

UPDATE -- Friday, May 14, 2010 -- after several sunny mornings and some mild nights we got in the pool today. The water was 81 degrees. Refreshing.

The Trinacria On The Garden Wall

Our backyard has a dozen or more sun faces and decorative plaques hanging on the fence. A while ago my cousin Lorrie sent us a ceramic plaque with a design called a Trinacria It is the symbol of Sicily where she lives. In ancient times Sicily was called the Kingdom of Trinacria.

Click on the image to see a larger version.

We loved the plaque but worried about its safety -- hanging by a string above the concrete slab of the patio. So last week I took it to the frame shop and they made a shadow box for the Trinacria. The box is lined with dark green linen and is about 14 inches square and 2 inches deep.

It is now hanging on the living room wall and I won't worry about it when I wake up on windy nights.

Here's a link to a slideshow of the sun faces and plaques that were in our backyard last summer.

Spring is here

I took this photo today. The azaleas are starting to bloom in the front yard. These plants have bunches of very small blossoms -- each flower is about an inch across.


Click on image to enlarge

Susie the Cat

Susie getting ready for another nap.

Backyard: The Pool At Sunset

Taken in Pensacola, Florida on November 13, 2009 at 6:10 PM CST.

Panoramic photo of the backyard

We got our new camera, a Canon PowerShot A570 IS, over a year ago. I am now reading the user's guide.

It turns out you can stitch sequential photos together and make a long, panoramic picture. I tried it in the backyard. Here is the link to it. When you get there use your mouse on the slider at the bottom of the picture to move left and right.

The Pool Is Open

The pool is looking good, the water is clear and the palms and palmettos are green and healthy.

We had a very chilly spring and the pool took forever to get warm enough for a comfortable swim. Usually we are in the pool every day after the first week of May. This year it was early June before we could really enjoy the water temperature.

Now the weather is so hot here in Northwest Florida that it is trying to break 60 year old records. And the pool is almost hot.

Ducky helps steer leaves to the skimmer and in emergencies keeps the chlorine level up.