Hello! This week was pretty darn productive. Ronnie had a great time with this hilariously tiny digger machine Kevin rented for him. How cute is this big boy digger? Ha! The excavation that began last week along the fence we border with the bar is now complete, and ready to one day soon receive a dumpster! Hooray! 

Outside, Troy finished up the final dormers on the back of the house. Hooray! That’s all we can do with the dormers for now. There are still two remaining, but they are on the west side of the house. That’s the side with masonry issues, and none of that can really get resolved until the temperature warms up in the spring. Ah well! At least PP&L came back this week and added the remaining meters. This means we are all set up and ready to have separate meters for each delineated space. Here is the outside of the house in last night’s storm. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize the crazy winds had blown the upstairs door open, so I got to shovel snow both inside and out this morning. Oops! 

Inside, the new electrical boxes are installed as well, which means any time now, we’ll be able to have lights on the other side of the house! Hot diggity! It will be delightful to not have our day end at sunset, though we still have to finish determining and implementing all of our heat sources. In preparation for the inside electricity and fresh plumbing, we have to determine the locations of our major appliances, at least in our apartment. I made a handy dandy graph paper design and little baby cardboard versions of appliances. It was fun and gave us a good overview of what could go where, but it’s still a bit of a struggle to see how it feels in real life. To remedy that, I made full-sized cardboard cutouts of the appliances, and we tossed them here and there in the new kitchen until we came up with a layout that fit and also felt good. Cardboard refrigerators sure are easier to move around!

A fun job for everyone this week was the 1st floor kitchen floor! This was the only spot in the house that the floor was truly compromised, with several joists rotting and cracked. All the rotted wood was removed, creating quite the fun basement observation deck! The remaining floor was raised–it had sunk at least 2 inches on the good side, and several more on the bad–and the joists were not only replaced, but extra-specially reinforced with support walls in the basement so this will never-ever happen again. Quite the hole, right? Even though this job isn’t quite finished, it looks a million times better already! 

The other really really exciting thing this week was finally getting to recycle the massive electronics pile! YES!! This was the last big “what are we doing with these?” thing to get out of our way. Now the large parlor downstairs can be organized much more effectively. Whew! It took the entire truck bed AND backseat of my truck to get them to the recycler! Byeeeee!

Ok, I think that’s pretty much it for this week. I look forward to sharing this week’s progress with you next week!