Relief!

After a December and January straight out of the depths of you-know-where, February is turning it all around at lightning speed. In fact, I dare say that this week has been the best in months and months and months.

Our economic woes were swept away on Monday when Mike got a new job complete with some awesome benefits.

If that wasn't enough of a reason to celebrate, I got the stamp of approval from our insurance agent. They had one more question about our skid steer, whether or not we owned it and if it was used for business. The answers were yes and no, and they seem to be good with that. They will renew the policy. What's more, no to-do list for the year!

I mean, I'm sure they'd love to see the siding replaced and a real railing on the porch instead of just the temporary one - but we'll be taking care of that in the spring anyway.

What a relief all around.

Meanwhile our hardwood is still acclimating. Friday it will be ready to go! Mike may be able to get his hands on the floor nailer for a discounted price this weekend. Although he will be working Saturdays from now on... and with Sunday being ATV riding day... well, that leaves him to floor on his own on whatever day of the week he decided to take off. Unless we do an evening or two together. I'm sure it will work out somehow.

I even dare say that if things keep on this uphill path, we may even be able to complete the hardwood in the living room sooner than expected.

Floods and Updates

It was as I had expected. That inspector was definitely a hard ass. And the strange thing was, he had been instructed only to take pics of the boiler, the bathroom, and the kitchen. All of which are in perfect working order. Mike tried to explain to him that we'd made improvements to avoid cancellation and pointed these out to him, but no no. He didn't need any of that.

Apparently he had a photo of the house with the farmer's porch on it - so they'd been to the house before without our knowledge, taking pics of the exterior. And that's honestly fine with me - but we JUST added the railings a few days ago. Not to mention the gutters. Again, Mike tried to explain this, but to no avail.

When I found out around 4 yesterday, I immediately got on the phone with our rep to make her aware of it. She was going to be following up with the insurance company anyway. And she better not take any guff from them if they try to say things aren't done. I wish I could talk to them myself.... on second thought, probably not the best idea.

"Home insurance cancelled due to psychotic home owner." Yeah, I'm definitely a liability.

Anyway, long overdue, here are some pics of the recent inspection-ready improvements:

Gutters and downspouts on one side - Mike's advice - it is easier to put them together on the ground and then put them up as one unit instead of trying to attach them to the house piece by piece.

Gutter on the back - much needed!

Temporary porch railing - lookin good.

Ah the exterior lights are back up again. It's all for temp, but still...

Completed basement railing - a little funky, but still functional.

And now on to the drama.

After clicking on the title to this post you're probably wondering where the flood's at. Well, it was a dark and stormy night. (Last night.) We started out with snow in the morning, which changed to rain in the afternoon and evening as the temperature climbed from the 30's to the mid 50's! What an incredible change. The wind was wild, the fog was everywhere, and by the time I got home, melting snow was creating huge rivers and puddles.

Around 7 I suddenly turned down the volume on the TV - I heard water. Not just dripping water either - this was definitely a fast moving waterfall dripping on some kind of hard surface. We started walking around, hoping that it was just the new gutters doing their job. Unfortunately, when we reached the basement - we discovered our favorite back window leaking again.

And not a small leak either.

Immediately, Mike shut off the boiler - which you can see in the pic is right in the line of fire. I had to quickly prop up a wooden sleigh bed I was storing near by on a few pieces of wood to keep it out of the fast growing puddle - although luckily that was the only thing I was worried about being damaged.

Mike grabbed his gordan's fisherman outfit and rushed outside, where he discovered that it wasn't so much the falling rain off the roof, but a river of melting snow running off the hill, straight into the window.

He was outside for nearly an hour with a shovel and the skid steer trying to divert the oncoming tide. Meanwhile I'm in the basement snapping a few pics... I guess I nearly gave the poor guy a heart attack. He thought the flash was something electrical arcing out in the basement!

Note the faint line about halfway up the window glass - that's where the water is. Trapped in the window well. It looked like a fish tank.

Eventually Mike was able to divert the water and slow the flow as it were. The flood ended with a quick vacuum of the basement with the wet dry vac.

Thank god the inspector wasn't around for that!

Waiting, But Not Wasting Time

I'm happy to report that this week really turned around for us after Tuesday.

First off, that presentation I was worried about last post was scheduled for this morning instead of Wednesday morning. So we actually had Wednesday and Thursday to work on it, much to my relief on Tuesday night.

Secondly, still no call from our home insurance rep. I'm still not sure if that's good news or bad news, but nevertheless it's given us (us, that's a good one because I'm pretty much useless at the moment) It's given Mike a chance to work on several projects.

Wednesday, he spent the day on gutters. Or, rather, preparing for the gutters. Because really once he got up on the latter and started inspecting the roof line, it was obvious that some prep work needed to be done first. One major area of concern was over the mudroom.

And we knew this was a problem because back when we did the roof, I noticed while cleaning out the attic - Hey! There's a big hole to the outside where the roof meets the wall! At the time, we brushed it off and said, "we'll take care of that with the new siding."

But of course with no new siding as of yet, and temperatures creeping below 0 lately - probably a good idea to plug that hole. So, using some of our extra PT decking (the ugly pieces left over from the farmer's porch) Mike trimmed out that area. Later, the gutter will attach directly to this piece.

Notice how the piece just melds into the farmer's porch. Perfect!

If the weather hadn't been so cold and snowy, Mike could have actually installed the gutters yesterday. He wanted to, the nut! But really, the snow plus major wind chill factor - even I'm not that much of a slave driver.

Here's the second area that is in desperate need of a gutter. This is the back of the kitchen, and when it rains, the water just slides off the roof. If conditions are just right, it can actually seep through that window and sometimes the wall itself. We had several major rain events one after another back in fall that caused a flood in the basement window directly under this kitchen window - not good.

Anyway, tomorrow the high temperature is a toasty warm 30 degrees. (Ooooo!) And sunny! (Ahhhh!) So hopefully Mike will be able to continue on this project then.

Yesterday, while the weather outside was frightful, (and at my suggestion) he started in on the baby room floor. If you remember, this room was the most unstable one. Jump on the floor and watch it buckle and shake the whole room! Not good if you can imagine the future shenanigans of a small Mike in there.

Our carpenter and good friend TJ suggested we just rip off the top layer of flooring altogether and put down 3/4 then 1/2" plywood before we hardwood to really firm things up. So Mike spent the better part of yesterday demo-ing.

In this shot you can see the old hardwood still in the closet area. The rest is the very old subfloor.

Of course, once the old hardwood was up, it became obvious just how unstable the actual subfloor itself was! It buckled to nearly the breaking point when walked on, nevermind jumped on. Luckily, we had some 2x6's in stock. (God, just call the basement the Miscellaneous Lumber Co!) And Mike began reinforcing the room from underneath.

He got quite a bit done and only has two more 2x6's to install to complete the reinforcing job. Very cool.

Plus - that's not all! Yesterday being the 15th, Mike went down to the FD and bought our burn permit. He spent some time burning what he could in the afternoon, but everything was still pretty wet and frozen. I imagine we'll get a fire going tomorrow too and continue making a dent in the ever present brush piles.

So let's refresh - this weekend:

1. Install gutters
2. Continue burning brush
3. Complete baby room beam reinforcement
4. Purchase plywood (?)
5. Dump run

I don't know about that plywood purchasing. We don't have any 3/4 in stock, and that's what we really need right now. 7 sheets of it to be exact. We have some 1/2" although I'm not sure how much. That'll be pricey. We'll see - we'll definately be at the HD anyway for some additional gutter connectors.

Oh - and lumber liquidators is tempting me with a 12months same as cash no down no payments no interest offer. I'm wondering if I should just screw the world and go for it. Buy all the 3/4 aztec cherry for the downstairs. (Which is really just the babys room, hallway, and living room.) I have to take some measurements and all that first... but it's almost tax time and I could use the refund to pay it all or at least make a dent.... right?

Something else to think about. We're officially more than halfway to Feb after all....

Happy New Year?

2009? When did that happen? It was 1999 about 5minutes ago.

Let me tell you, my absence from this blog is a good indication of just how badly our holiday season went. I can't go into details on the internet, but here are some high level highlights - the poor economy finally hits home, there's a death in the family, work and home to-do lists become overwhelming, and all of a sudden free time evaporates and we don't know whether to scratch our watches or wind our butts.

At this very moment I'm enjoying (enjoying - HA!) a momentary lull, soon to be followed by a mad rush of late night last minute presentation preparation for a giant meeting likely to be scheduled for first thing tomorrow morning. In this momentary lull, we're awaiting confirmation and further instructions.

Yeah. Perfect example of these more-than hectic last two weeks. And it's only Tuesday.

In the midst of all this, I got a cancellation from my home owners insurance company in the mail on Saturday. Reasons - mostly all that we had done our best to repair over the past year. Ok, red flag. They're supposed to know we made repairs and I told them they could come and reinspect at any time... and this was waaay back around Septemberish.

I got on the phone with our insurance rep right away and was pleasantly surprised to hear that she was there on Saturday. She would check into it for us and call me back with an update. I still haven't received that call yet, but it's ok. It gave us time to reexamine that list. After all, this is no time to be switching to a more expensive plan.

There's nothing we can do about the siding. The entire front of the house is Tvek'd and it's going to stay that way until spring. Sorry. But we built the farmer's porch complete with temporary stairs & railing, added a railing to the basement stairs and upstairs overhang, re-did the entire roof, removed the wood stove from the garage, and finished the mudroom. Honestly I would imagine that would be enough to subdue them for another year, but after all the bad luck we've come across lately, I worried about it.

So we removed and threw out the old garage chimney setup as one extra precaution. (Not that it was connected to anything, but can't hurt to be rid of it, right?)

We also decided to go and check out gutters. The insurance company had issue with all our missing downspouts. And since adding the farmer's porch, even more gutters are missing. Knowing nothing about gutters and how much they cost, we researched at the deepHo last night. Turns out metal gutters are cheap! About $9 for a 10ft section and $20 for a 16ft section. (How they figure that is beyond me - but whatever.) Cheap! And all the little connectors and many of the accessories were under $1 each.

We couldn't believe it and started loading up a cart. No use losing the insurance over $9 downspouts. When all was said and done, we had picked out enough to cover the house - although not the entire farmer's porch. (One thing at a time - besides, hopefully the porch will count as "still under construction.")

Mike is likely to have time to install them tomorrow - weather permitting. If not, then definately by the end of this week. Cross another item off the list.... as long as they don't call me in the next hour and want to inspect tomorrow. Knock on something.

Also, Jan 15th starts the official town open burning season! That wonderful annual time to get rid of all the brush that we cut or lost during numerous winter storms. Weather permitting, we should be burning all weekend. Thus further cleaning up the yard.

This brings me to another point about the insurance company.

It's so hard to decipher what the insurance company is complaining about sometimes and what exactly they'd like you to do about it. Great example, the insurance co mentioned debris in the yard - that's a big WTF. We have some items next to the garage that I wonder if they consider debris - just some scrap metal and heavy auto parts/tractor parts that Mike would rather keep out of the garage. But the amount is not excessive. I've been to several homes that should have been condemmed for the amount of junk in the yard. I wonder though if this is what they're even talking about. Or maybe they object to our backyard brush burner made from our old oil tank. Nobody knows! I suppose we'll find out soon enough.

This little unexpected home insurance side trip is unfortunately keeping us from what our real focus should be on - baby's room. It's all painted, but the flooring needs to be done ASAP. After that, trim, closet doors... time is ticking away and don't think we haven't realized. There's only a few months to go and all of a sudden all of this "we'll take care of it after the holidays" stuff is upon us like a sack of bricks.

What a way to start 2009.

A Good Sign

I may be jinxing myself here - but I haven't received any callbacks from the home insurance co after placating them with a couple tasty improvement morsels. I really expected them to schedule another visit, but no news is good news in my book.

And I'm sorry to say that despite last weekend's three day length, nothing much got accomplished. Mike has more work to do for everybody else that's been helping us out this summer - fabulous trade offs, I love it. But that means now that our roof and porch are done, it's time for him to really spend time with our neighbors and friends. And that's ok.

I managed to clean up the rest of the roofing mess from around the yard and tidy up tools that were strewn around the house. So everything looks kosher, and I feel good about that.

Dadoo will be over this coming weekend for some mad tiling. I think it'll just be he and I, as Mike has more obligations to fulfill. That's ok - it's not a lot of tile and we'll manage just fine. As for the wood portion of the show, I'm not sure. Mike's been so tired from his misc jobs every night and weekend of the week, I feel horrible asking him to do anything. I might just wait until next weekend, or even after that, depending on how he feels.

Like I said, the room is small, so I imagine we could even bang out that floor some weekday evening. I'm not too worried about it. We already have the wood, and the home depot rental department is just minutes away for the stapler. I will be upset if it's not done by the Halloween party on Nov 8th though.

I'm not even worried about the closet doors. Although I have a 10% off coupon at the home depot that expires tomorrow. I was really thinking about using to at least purchase the doors. Again, I can't do it without Mike, so if he's tied up or tired out, I'm just going to let it go. He's really just been exhausted!

Do you HAVE to remind me?

A couple months ago I switched home insurances - from the stupid MA Fair Plan to something more economical. And of course, this meant a home inspection. I always dread these things because, of course, this renovation is still in progress and many things are not finished. Many little things that people like home inspectors like to eat you up over.

When I've had these inspections before, I've been very quiet and let the inspector roam around by themselves. This last time, however, I had a woman who was very talkative and had questions about this or that. But I felt good about the whole thing because she was nice and very complimenting of our upstairs and kitchen. I knew the exterior would be an issue. And she asked about the wood stove in the garage - and I knew that would be our downfall for sure.

But the months went by. No phone calls. The switch went through and we got our new insurance plan in place. I thought, maybe it was ok because they knew we were renovating.

Then yesterday I get a phone call. A phone call with a list of grievances that must be addressed, fixed, removed, etc.

The siding must be replaced.
The chimney must be properly sealed.
The roof must be replaced.
Gutters must be installed.
Railings must be installed on all stairways and exterior entryways.
The wood stove must be removed from the garage.
Debris must be cleaned from the yard.

And honestly, none of this is really all that surprising - except for the debris part. Mike always has junk all over the place by the garage - and the garage is a freakin disaster area all the time and I can't stand it. BUT, I don't see why that would be an issue. I've seen all these places on TV that are absolute disaster areas - and I've been to houses with so much junk in the yard that they were actually condemned.

All we have in front of the garage is the little trash hut, ramps, the grill, some bits of scrap metal, misc parts, and I think there's a snow shovel.

Whatever - it's a good excuse to make Mike clean.

As for the rest, the only thing that worries me is getting it all done this summer. As you know, the farmer's porch and front siding are in the works. However, I hadn't planned on refinishing the rest of the house's exterior.

We did talk to a guy about doing the roof this summer - so that's only a problem of monetary fundage. Gutters are no big woop-de-do, although I hadn't planned on it. That's just another expense, plus time. The wood stove we can take out of the garage any time. And indeed, we do plan to put it in the basement this winter... but then that comes with building another chimney in addition to our current "unsealed" chimney.

And I don't even know what they mean by "unsealed." We built that chimney ourselves with concrete and terra cotta - a kind of, build-your-own-chimney-kit that we purchased from a local masonry place. All it needs in the surround, a decorative facade, and the cap. So... ok. Yet another cost.

The insurance company will be back out to inspect again in mid-September. And obviously, we have to show major progress or else they'll cancel us. More summer fun! Yay! I don't even want to count how many weekends we have to get all this done. It's like a reality show or something... I just wish I would win a million bucks if I did complete everything.