The historic house museum pages for Kansas and Kentucky have now been moved into the database. Lots of new links were found.

The historic home museum pages for Utah and Oklahoma have been updated.

Looking at some of the other pages I was noticing that most of the rating were averaging out to 3. I was surprised that houses like Hearst Castle were only rating as a 3, and were receiving the same ratings as some houses which I won’t name, that certainly aren’t on par with such masterpieces as Hearst Castle.

So I looked at the database the rating script uses and it’s apparent that the spiders that the search engines use are now smart enough to follow Javascript links and were voting. Even worse, although the script prevents a user from voting multiple times, it wasn’t preventing spiders from voting multiple times, and they were in fact voting five times, which accounted for the average of 3.

I’ve modified the scrip to include “nofollow” instructions which hopefully will keep the spiders from voting. I’ll keep and eye on it and see. If it doesn’t end up working, I’ll look for a different solution.

Just finished updating the house museum pages for Delaware and Georgia. I’ll be adding photos to these pages later, but I figured at this point I’d concentrate on getting the rest of the state pages updated to the new database format.

After last year’s fire that I started while heat gunning the exterior of our 1888 Victorian, I started researching alternative methods of paint removal. I had previously stripped the entire exterior of our 1914 bungalow in San Jose without incident. But our current house has blown in insulation which presents a definite fire hazard.

I looked at several different chemical strippers but they were all expensive, time consuming, and messy.

I remembered hearing about the Paint Shaver Pro a few years ago and I had always considered that it must be too good to be true or why would people still be using heat guns or chemicals. Well I started looking for reviews on the Internet and generally they seemed favorable.

The biggest stumbling block is the purchase price. The 6 amp model is $599. But considering that the small fire I started with the heat gun cost me more than that to fix, well it was a no-brainer. Especially since I got away very lucky with the fire and caught it early.

I tried getting a used one off of Ebay but they always ended up going for close to the new price so I finally just ordered it from their web site. I received it about 10 days later. I just went with the 6 amp model, and none of the accessories. The blades last a long time and several Ebay auctions I saw people were selling lots of extra blades they never ended up using.

The biggest difference other than price between the 6 amp and 8 amp models is that they say with the 8 amp model you don’t need to sink any exposed nails. Well I’ve hit a few nails with my 6 amp model and it doesn’t seem to create much of a problem, not even nicking the blades.

I used a couple of boards that were going to be removed to practice on. Once I got started I couldn’t believe how fast it really went. In one day I easily finished stripping the south side of the house. Using the heat gun it would have taken me at least a week or more, plus a lot of electricity. There were a few areas that it couldn’t get into, mostly because of the exhaust vent, but I can sand those small remaining areas.

The shaver can leave some circular marks but they sand out easy. It’s a lot easier sanding the redwood without having to go through all the layers of paint.

I have v-rustic siding so it still leaves the groove that needs to be stripped. A previous owner caulked all of the joints which was a really stupid thing to do so I’m still spending a lot of time removing the paint and caulking from the v grooves, but it’s still progressing a lot faster than the section I did last year.

The fact that I haven’t had to call my fire department out this summer was an extra bonus. It’s embarrassing when you’re a fireman to have to call out your own department to extinguish a fire you started.

I’ve recently added the new pages for Alabama, Alaska and California to the house museum database. I’m still working on loading photos for the California page.

It took a full day to load the data for California. So if anyone wants to help reduce the burden, please contact me at info@vpa.org and I’ll let you know how you can help.

In addition to installing the blog software, I’ve also been busy working on a long overdue update to the Historic House Museum section. For a long time I’ve wanted to get the museum information into a database to make it easier to maintain. I’ve started working on the programming of it.

The biggest chore is going to be entering the existing data into the database. I’ve done two states so far, Alaska and Arkansas. You can take a look at those pages to see the new layout.

In addition to providing more complete address information, major new features include the ability to rank museums you’ve visited, and a small thumbnail of the museum.

Once all 50 states are done, there will be a search page added that will allow you to search by style or year built as well.

If you would like to pick a state and help with the conversion process, please contact Matt at the email address below.

Our webmaster Matt Knowles has installed a WordPress blog for the VPA web site. Members are invited to write articles, post photos or other content that would be of interest to our group.

In order to post content in the blog, you will need to be a current VPA member and then contact Matt and he will set up a user id for you.

9 years ago when we moved to Ferndale we thought that since our house sits on Rose Ave, that we should plant the 15o foot long front exposure with rose bushes. We bought 13 rose bushes, some Cecil Brunner and some Gertrude Jekyll.

Within days we discovered one of the major differences between gardening in San Jose and gardening in Ferndale. Deer. While we were at the nursery picking out the roses, we also bought 3 apple trees and 3 blueberry bushes. The deer demolished all of those in a matter of weeks.

The roses barely survived, but after our yard started repeatedly flooding we had to do something to prevent that and while that work was going on, we transplanted the roses to the back yard.

We built a concrete retaining wall and then started building a trellis fence on top of that. It’s still not finished but it’s at the point where we can start growing the roses up on part of it. So we started moving some of the remaining Cecil Brunner roses back to the front yard.

I can’t wait until June to see our lovely arbor entrance in bloom.

Rose Trellis

Members make ornaments for sale to support the Hill House operating fund.