Merry, Merry!

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.

In Sarasota Visiting the Ringling Museum

Main Entrance to the Ringling Museum

At the Ringling through January 29, 2012, there's a stunning poster show organized by the Cincinnati Museum of Art and the Ringling Museum. All the posters were printed by the Strobridge Lithographic Company. Posters shown were mostly from the 1880's to the 1920s. You can learn more at the Ringling Museum's website.

Tomorrow we return to see Ringling's new Tibbal's Learning Center with Howard Tibbals grand miniature circus.

The Circus Comes to Town

Cole Bros. Circus of the Stars is in Pensacola for the weekend. Out at the Pensacola Interstate Fairgrounds.

Beautiful new tent, 12 huge tigers and much more. It's "The World's Largest Circus Under the Big Top." With free children's tickets. And free parking, too.

James Beard's Quiche Lorraine

The only quiche I have ever made is from the old paperback James Beard Cookbook. First published in 1959, it is still in print. The copy I have now, my second, is from 1979 and it is the 26th printing.

Here's a link to the original recipe for his Quiche Lorraine. Lots of eggs, cream and crisp bacon. I have adapted it slightly. I use a frozen pie shell, the 9-inch deep dish size. And usually I don't have real Gruyère cheese on hand so I use a blend of fresh grated Parmesan and Vermont white cheddar.

Celebrate the First Day of Autumn...

...with Nyåkers Ginger Snaps. Possibly the best cookie I have ever eaten, they are made in the village of Nyåker in the north of Sweden.

World Market has a big stack of them. There's a new seasonal tin with brown and orange fall leaves. I am sure the festive traditional red tins will be there before Christmas. Check out this link to the official Nyåkers Pepparkakor web site.

Here's what J. S. Marcus said about these cookies in the Wall Street Journal on December 12, 2008:

The farther north you go in Europe, it seems, the more cookie-like becomes the gingerbread.

Panforte, gingerbread's Italian cousin, is dense and gooey and chock full of dried fruit; think fruitcake-flavored candy. Lebkuchen, Germany's contribution, really is a bit like bread—sweet and airy and chewy all at once. Swedish "pepparkakor," or gingersnaps, are thinner and less sweet than other variations, and that makes all the difference.

Pepparkakor—literally "pepper cookies"—are a highly spiced version of a simple rolled cookie: just flour, shortening and sugar, flavored with cloves, ginger and cinnamon. Eaten year-round, pepparkakor are especially popular at Christmastime. At their best, they have a rich but delicate crispiness, with just a trace of sweetness, allowing the punch of the spices to stand out.

The thinnest and richest of all come from the north of Sweden, from a firm called Nyakers, named after the village they're made in. One of a few premium Swedish brands, Nyakers pepparkakor are a featured brand in the food halls of Stockholm's NK department store. They can also be found on many Swedish supermarket shelves and are distributed to Scandinavian specialty stores and gourmet food shops around the world (www.nyakers.com).

Christine Olson-Giebel, a Wisconsin native of Scandinavian descent, discovered Nyakers after she moved to the San Francisco Bay area, where a Swedish acquaintance offered her a sample. "I bought them immediately," she recalls. Although she had grown up eating gingersnaps, Nyakers' version was a revelation. "I like that they're incredibly thin and crisp," she says. "They're like catnip for humans."

She also recommends using the cookies as the lone ingredient in a fine cheesecake crust. "You just put them in the blender, turn it on, and you're done," she says.