Home base

Progress on the house is good. I'm buying a paint sprayer tomorrow to just get it done. All of the appliances needed major work and we put in a new furnace today. It was such a relief to see it fire up and work with my old thermostat because it was used and all the wires had been cut. The oven took some tinkering. Unshielded sparker wires actually loose power by induction if they are too close to metal. The fridge is just dead. The water heater and furnace are also dead from basement flooding.

Oh and I fixed the doorbell, which is sweet because I hadn't heard it since I was about 7.


This is me as a toddler. That's my mom.


Our attic yielded some treasures, including my old clothes and a few old toys I really loved. I've kept all the good bits for whenever we have kids.


My sister just showed up to help out for the last week. More finished house pictures to come soon.

Also, today my truck made a distinct 'ping' sound, and started running way better.

Bloomington House

I've been working hard to get my house back in shape to rent out.

I showed up expecting to use my dad's Toyota truck, but it had a blown clutch. So I had to replace that first.
That took a day and a half, which is less than half the time it took me to do the last truck clutch in my old pickup.
I can't wait until electric cars come along and we can stop wrenching.








The house is pretty much covered in Virginia Creeper. Scraping off the old paint is the worst task on the whole job. Unfortunately I've become the black belt paint scraper.



We have a very old furnace. It was originally designed to burn coal or wood or whatever you want, like Freddy Kruger gloves. It is seriously creepy. It's convection forced too. It's been converted to gas and is super inefficient.
I'll probably replace it with a used mid 90's unit.






I had to replace some siding where the carport came down last time I was in town. It was a lot harder to do than I though. First of all, the original boards are old growth knot-free cedar... and somehow were cut by a master craftsman to fit just so. It looks ok now and with a little paint it will look perfect.














The old and new toilets. We can't flush the new one until the sewer line is done. Should be a few days still at this point.





I'm hiring my buddy Sasha's 17 year old brother to continue digging this ditch we started to dig out the sewer line...
Also my friend Greg seems into it and brought his own shovel, so I might let him dig some too. I had a strange dream about mineral rights in this context a while ago.

It is going well. We're saving $3000 over the lowest quote by doing it ourselves. Roto rooter can stick it.