MicroSSG

Where did the time go?

MicroSSG

It's May 26th now and we've settled into the house. As with any "mature" home we've had expected and un-expected repairs. I hate clearing clogged plumbing lines, which seems to be a new past time. Finally replaced the original "drum" trap in the upstairs bath, no more bailing tub water into the toilet! That only set us back $450 all said.

Added modern electric wiring to my computer room and a portion of the living room. There is plenty more wiring to go to get this puppy into the 20th century, not to mention the 21st.

Nancy started peeling off wall paper from God only knows when from the walls to discover they papered the ceiling as well. Guess what, yeah, I'll be doing the ceiling! Then some wall repair followed by a good dose of pulling out non-original trim and putting in the original Hickory trim. That can't be cheap, at least the bathroom is tiny! We also have to pull the window out, at least the interior casing and strip the paint off of it, stain it to match trim re-install it and weather proof that sucker. Finally, we'll paint and the first room will be restored.

Next up is scraping the outside, replacing rotted wood, while the wood is down I'll run electric up the walls for part of the second floor. I'll take the time to insulate the wooden portion of the house, re-lap the wood siding, caulk every seam and paint the sucker some nice shade of brown/tan. Any input from an English Tutor Historian would be nice.

The final major project for the summer is to cut a roof cap for adequate attic ventilation, add three more air ingress/egress ports to improve circulation and insulate the attic! This should help cut down on energy bills and make the house more comfortable winter and summer

Next year I plan to add Geo-Thermal heating/cooling for the house and another Geo-field for heating the driveway and the sidewalks! No more shoveling in the wintertime!

and the other biggie will of course be the removal of all the concrete, sidewalks and drive way to accommodate the Geo-Thermal piping as well as to add some sorely needed parking for those visiting Spartans - Go Green, Go White!

Year three is looking like the year we deal with the windows! The original Fenestra's are beautiful, but rusting away. I would love to have them pulled out and fully restored, but haven't found anyone willing or capable of such a feat. Then I would need to build interior double pain storms to help the single pains retain heat/keep out the cold. Any help here is appreciated. I hate to have to replace the windows with new ones as this would be a major blow to the houses originality and character...

Oh, there's much, much more, but I can't even afford the first three years, so I'll stop here and draw the line to measure progress against.

Paul