They tore out the bad boards around where the owls nested earlier this year. There’s not much left! I’m standing in the neighbor’s driveway to get this picture. Sure wish I could have gotten closer so I could see in. Dave said the hole was pretty gross. The owls had torn out all of the insulation and used it as nesting material. Then there were the normal things all over that that one would see with any nesting birds… but big, since owls are rather large. And lots of bones and things left over from the small rodents they ate while they lived there.

They started replacing the tongue and groove boards on the chimney box with new tongue and groove, but we put a stop to that. The agreement was that they’d replace those smaller boards with grooved plywood on this side. So, they took that off, and made a trip to Home Depot to get the correct stuff. They ended up tearing off all of the old tongue and groove boards (surprise to us), and installed the new plywood all in one day. The new chimney box looks fabulous! And since it’s plywood now, it should stay in place a lot better when those gale-force winds blow their way through the canyon straight at our house later in the year. Yippee!

While the work was going on on the chimney box, on the other side of the house they started applying some primer. Even with the completely ghastly, sort of pale turquoise color it looks better! Just proves how badly the house has been needing painting.