Catching Up

It's been a while since the last post. As move-in date draws nearer, all the things that need to be handled seem to be converging and conspiring to eat up all of our free time on weekends, and a bunch of time on weekdays as well.














The town gets a black mark for requiring a drywell into which our water conditioning system will flush. I don't know why this wasn't identified as a requirement from the beginning, but it's a drag. The drywell is separate from the septic, so we're spending extra money for site work to build it (we were already over budget on the site work anyway), and the civil engineers placed it inconveniently (and billed us, of course), requiring a whole extra "sewer" line the full length of the house (which means unbudgeted plumbing costs).














The water conditioning system, however, is a supreme improvement over the old one. The guy who put in our new system installed and maintained the treatment system in the prior house (before we had it), and while it was fine in its day, it was pretty bad by the end. The new system will be easy to get at in the mechanical room in the garage, rather than buried in a half-height area beneath the stairs. Paul the plumber (we like the alliteration of some of these guys' names and trades), did a sweet job on the plumbing for it, with labeled shut-off valves and real pressure release valve at a height that we can hang a bucket off of when needed. the new system will be much more efficient, as it will only flush itself after we hit a certain water usage level. The old system had a timer, and that wasn't very accurate, either. So, our new system should use less salt, uses a less-invasive salt than the old one, and should give us a better quality water. We're still using a Multipure system at the kitchen sink for our drinking water. I've been a fan of these for years, and swear by the drinkability of the water; I'll trust that they provide the asserted levels of purification.

The finish work is proceding well - with a bunch of things underway, from the hardwoods to the countertops and the pantry shelves to some of the light fixtures. Hopefully this will all wrap up quickly as we're scheduled to move in on the 23rd - just two weeks away at this point.

We took too long in ordering a few basic items, so the washer and dryer won't arrive til a couple of days after we arrive, our new dining room table will get there about the same time. The use of a folding table for a desk will be verboten in the new house, so the old dining room table will serve that purpose for one of us until an appropriate desk or writing table is acquired. This experiment in sharing an office will be interesting - I feel an anticipation not unlike Les Nessman from the old sitcom WKRP. We haven't figured out stools for the island in the kitchen, but that can happen at our leisure (as will several other things).

Once we arrive, there's a lot to do, including blacktop for the driveway and basic landscaping (at least loam and basic grass seed). We'll do a landscaping plan and build it out over time. Hopefully we'll be able to include a lot of native grasses and plants and avoid having any space that looks manicured.

A bunch more progress was evident on our visit to the house today, but the electricians were pretty busy working and we didn't end up taking any photos. Hopefully we'll get some photos early this coming week and I can get some up to show how close we are to reality.