Hello! Snow, ice, and sub-zero windchills don’t necessarily play nicely with home renovations, but even that didn’t stop progress here at Pigeon Manor! Early in the week, Paul, Guy, and Dennis all earned themselves some well-deserved hot showers running the pex lines for the future first floor radiant heat system. They had to be all up in the basement ceiling, and I can’t imagine that’s a very pleasant place to work! 

Once that was complete, it was back to work on the demo. There are still several 3rd floor ceilings with wrecked plaster that needed to be removed, plus the back stairway was un-insulated and far too narrow, so those walls went by the wayside as well. The goal is to get all the nasty messy demo completed now, while the house is still so open and un-heated. That way, when the heating system is complete and the roof and dormers get sealed, we can keep the heat in and not have to breathe in plaster dust. 

Those crazy frigid high winds caused some mini-snow issues on the third floor, but nothing too terrible. In the western-most room, there were pigeon tracks in the snow! I’m not surprised. Until the masonry can get repaired, that section of the roof is still pretty much wide open to the pigeons. They are discreet enough to never be seen by us, but I had assumed they were back in some form or another. As long as they don’t have any more babies, we’ll be ok! 

We’re fortunate enough to know some great electricians, all named Johnny, which is fun. The Johnnys both braved the heat-less 2nd floor to start the process of running all the new wires. Having lights soon is going to be awesome! We also started buying some small electric heaters to try out in our future apartment to see if it will be enough supplemental heat when the radiant heat system gets going. Rather than going with the old-school electric baseboards, I did some sleuthing and got a super funky electric fireplace and some in-wall or table-top infrared heaters. So far I’m pretty excited about them. They are far less dangerous and space-consuming! 

As you can tell, we don’t really have a place for it in our tiny apartment yet, ha! But I’m happy to report it works awesome!

Well that’s it, we finally got through January, folks. Whew! See you next week!