Day 288

The kids and I have been moving wood around the last couple of days. We have finished off all of the wood that we had stacked up on the porch off of the 1st floor kitchen. It was nice having the wood out there. It was easy to get to, and mostly covered. The rest of the wood is stacked under this porch's floor. Here it is also mostly covered. But we have to go outside and down an extra flight of stairs to get to it, not to mention the snow. Actually most of the snow has melted, but I am thinking about future snow, or mud as things continue to melt.

So as we know that Thursday and Friday are going to be horribly cold again lows at 4 or 5 degrees and highs only in the teens, I decided that while it was still 20 or 30 degrees we needed to move a bit of this wood. Day one of wood moving involved carrying a large pile directly up to 2nd floor and stacking it next to the wood stove. And stacking a much larger (at least 4 days worth of wood) pile of wood in the Dining room down on 1st floor. If we are lucky this will be enough wood to get us through this really cold days. But I wasn't finished. Day two of wood moving was me throwing up some more wood from under the porch and having the kids stack it up on top. Now if it is still cold or we get a bunch of snow we should have an extra couple of days to burn. I would have done more, but we ran out of time. Tomorrow we will start our days of cold and I want to spend as little time as I have too out in it.

Day 287

There is one slight problem with our wall, it complete blocks this area off. :D Now this might sound like a crazy problem. But with the doors closed, Merlin, our cat, isn't able to get inside. So time for a solution. I do not want to cut a 'cat door' into our new wall or one of our beautiful wood doors. So that leaves the plaster wall in our bedroom. As we are going to knock this down sometime in the future it doesn't sound like to bad of a plan.

After supper, Jonathan used the can of Great Stuff to seal up the cracks along the wall that go into the ceiling out over the kitchen and bathroom. I got to do a little destruction. I knocked that little hole in the wall in our bedroom. Wow, one little cat-sized can let in a ton of cold air. But it is needed. We covered that wall section with plastic on the landing room side, putting a little slit by the hole. Then on the bedroom side, we covered the hole with another piece of slitted plastic.


Here is the hole before we covered it with plastic.

All that was left was to show Merlin his new door. It does let in a bit of cold air yet, but nothing like the wall before the drywall or leaving a door open for Merlin.

Day 286

Jonathan got up and headed to the bathroom to get ready for work. Just a couple of minutes later he was back in our room. I was surprised to see him so soon. He had decided that it was already getting cold and maybe it would be better if he took a vacation day and we tried to finished up the wall project and maybe finish the insulation in the landing room.

We worked a bit more on the wiring. We got the outlets hooked up in the kids' room. And as we started on some more home automation wire, Jonathan noticed that we weren't going to have enough wire to finish the job.

Some of our walls are starting to look like a wiring superhighway.

So, we ending up going to Lincoln to get some more supplies.. There were some things that we either can't get here in town or they are so much less expensive if you go to Menards. So we made a quick list and got our shopping done.

When we got back we put up a bit of insulation. (We would really like to get this room warm enough for us to be able to actually use this space yet this winter. But we don't even know if this is going to be possible.) Then we realized that we should actually be working on the wall between the tower room and the landing room. So we hauled up our pieces of drywall from the first floor and started getting the wall up. As everything does, the wall building took more time than we had hoped. But just after we put the kids down to bed we got the wall finished. :) I love drywall. Well, I don't actually like putting it up. But having it up is one step closer to having a finished room. It looks so much different than just having the studs up covered with plastic and blankets.


Look at our new wall, isn't it just beautiful. :D
To help you get an idea of where this is, the door on the left is Jonathan and my bedroom, the door on the new drywall goes to the tower room (living, dining, and laundry room), and the door on the right goes to the kids' bedroom. I took the picture standing in the landing room.

Day 285

Today we got all of the wire to the outlets. We still have to connect them. It seems to always take a couple of trips to Ace Hardware before we have everything we need.

In the afternoon, the kids and I went to UNL's gymnastics meet with the girls scout troop. Jonathan decided to stay home and see if he could get some more work done as the weekend was passing by way to quickly. He got most of the network wire in place.

We finished the day with putting the rest of the insulation in the exterior wall. Then we covered it with plastic.

Now our only concern is that the weather forecast is showing cold temperatures coming back our way. We have the plastic and blankets all off of the walls so that we are able to work in the walls. That has made it much cooler in the other rooms. On warm days like it was on Saturday this isn't much of a problem. We were hoping to get the drywall up on the wall instead of putting the plastic back up, but I don't know if we can get that done in time.

Day 284

We worked in the landing room today. First thing that we did was finish cutting out all of the old pipes for the kitchen and the radiators up on third floor. Now we will have room to get the new stuff up and get some insulation in place.

We also spent some time today cutting and hauling wood. It was a really warm day... and we actually saw the sun for about 1/2 hour. It was wonderful. I have really missed the sun. I wish it would have stayed out a while longer.

We got the wiring to the lights and Jonathan got them hooked up. YAY! Next will be wiring the outlets and the network cables. Hopefully we can get that done tomorrow.

Day 279 - 283

This has been a pretty quiet week. We have had no animal visitors, except our cat, Merlin. We have had no blizzards, snow or below 0 temperatures. We have been doing the regular daily activities.

The only noteworthy thing is the "fog". Wow have we had fog lately. I don't even know how many days it has been foggy, but over a week. It is foggy in the morning, foggy in the afternoon, and foggy at night. If it is a fog blanket that has been keeping us warmer, I am all for it staying around. But it would be really nice to see the sun again.

It is going to be in the 40's tomorrow. We are going to try and get the wiring done in the landing room.

Day 277 - 278

Still not much work done on the house. We were busy with the finishing of the derby cars and the race today. :) Check out Lisa's Place for more information on our Derby fun.

Day 273 - 276

Winter has slowed the work down quite a bit. Most days we don't actually work on the house much. Jonathan and Zeb have been working on their cars for the cub scout derby. I will be adding pictures soon. With the warm weather (30's - we are so happy), I have been more interesting in going into the cold regions of the house and doing things. I have been getting back to sorting through boxes and putting things on shelves downstairs.

Day 272

Well, it was nice to share the pictures of my house with Uncle Mike and Aunt Ollie. As we sit here in the messy middle of everything it sometimes doesn't feel like things are moving along. But to go back and look at everything we have done in 272 days makes me feel pretty good.

Day 271

Day two at my parents' house. :) Warmth. :D When we packed up to leave, I didn't even wear my coat to load the car. It was 35 degrees out. That is a full 55 degrees warmer than it was just two days ago. It felt like summer was on its way. When we got back to our house it didn't even feel that cold inside. I am so looking forward to this week of warm weather. We will be able to get a bunch of wood hauled. Melinda got sick in the car on the way home from Grandpa and Grandma's, so hopefully we all won't come down with the flu. I have plans to work on the house during this heat wave.

Happy Birthday Lin!

Day 270 part two

Well, we poured many gallons of boiling water down the drain as we were using a heater to warm up the pipes in the basement. It seems to have at least mostly thawed out. So finally by lunch time we got loaded up in the car and headed over to my parents' house. When we got there all but one of my Mom's brothers were there. So it was really nice to spend a little time with them. Later that afternoon, both of my brothers and their family came over and we got to celebrate Christmas.

It was so warm and cozy at my parents' I almost forgot about our freezing pipes and cold house.

Day 270

We were planning on getting up early this morning. My uncle and aunt from California are at my parents house. And we were going to give Christmas a second try this weekend. Jonathan got up a bit earlier then I expected, but I thought he was just going to use the restroom and put a log or two on the fire. So I stayed warm and snuggled under the blankets. Then he came into the bedroom and said, "We have a problem." as he turned on the light and started putting on his shoes. In my half asleep state, I saw him looking at the floor in the corner and thought "Oh, no.... now what." I was thinking there must be some other animal in our house. But not that "lucky". It seems that during the night (-20 temps) the pipes froze. We have water nowhere in the house. So we got dressed and headed down to the basement so check it out. Jonathan got the heat gun and started to warm the pipes where they come into the house. While he did that I made a couple of trips up to second floor and back down to the basement, checking to see if the water had started to run. It actually only took few minutes to get the water running again.

But this seems to be only the start of our problems today. We also have discovered, (by the water running down the wall in the basement) that the drain has also frozen and has a crack in the ancient cast iron pipe. Jonathan has made a trip to Walmart to get another little space heater and some supplies to see if we can get that to thaw out as well.

Christmas or rip the walls down to find out where the water is leaking from the drain. Which would you choose? Well the day is still early, it is only 7:30 a.m. And we have no idea what we can do yet. I will have to update you later.

Day 268 - 269

Jonathan stayed home from work on Thursday and Friday. Schools were closed due to blowing snow and weather so darn cold that nothing alive should be outside on Thursday and Friday. With all of us home you would think we could work on something. But mostly it was too cold to leave the fire. So we snuggled, watched some movies and tried to stay warm. We are really glad for the insulation and are just hoping that weather people are right and the temperatures get above 0 next week.

Stay warm everyone. Put another log on the fire. :D

Day 267

Snowing, snowing, and so to be blowing.

Six more inches of snow are supposed to be coming our way today. Schools in the area have been canceled again. If this keeps up all of the kids will be going to school until July this summer.

The kids and I brought in a huge load of wood. I am hoping it will get us by for a few days. The high temps for the next two days are 0 and -1 degrees. I don't even want to say what the lows are forecast for us. Right now we are quite warm and cozy by the fire. We amazingly had it up to 72 degrees in here. :D I think all of our new insulation in the ceiling is helping.

Day 266

Global Warming

So who out there has some of that Global Warming? We could really use some of that around here. As I sat down here to write, it is -9 outside.

I think that whoever thought up Global Warming has gotten something seriously wrong. And I am not just talking about this winter. During the summer the kids would always want to go to the swimming pool. Everytime that we did, I would stand there in that water and wonder what was wrong with summer I was I freezing and this was in July and August the hottest parts of summer. I remember summers where you would just lay still and hope that there was any kind of breeze. But not this summer. I think we only had the a/c on just a couple of days.... and there were actually days that I felt cold, but it was just stupid to think about turning the heat on. And now winter.... HA, even before winter, just in the 'fall' we have gotten so much snow and so many days of below 0 temps that it is hard to believe.

So if there is anyone out there who has Global Warming, please send it our way. But as far as I am concern, I am more worried about Global Cooling.

Day 264

Jonathan got Grandma's heater hooked up in the basement. It seems to be able to keep it at least 40 degrees in there with these terrible cold outside temperatures. So that is very good.

We had a bit of excitement this afternoon. Merlin (our cat) has been going up to third floor alot. He likes it up there, but he also uses it as his hunting grounds. There are sometimes birds and bats up there. The last few days, I have been hearing sounds of a bird. But I haven't gone up to explore, as we have all of the windows covered with plastic I can't get them to go outside. So it will just have to find it's own way out or have fun with Merlin. The only thing I am slightly worried about is that when Merlin comes back down to second floor he opens the door. If we don't get out there to close the door, maybe the bird will come down. Well, now you might be able to guess at what our excitement was...

Jonathan was in the basement working on the heater, and the kids and I were in the tower room. I heard the bird, and it sounded like it was closer. So I went and peeked out the door. Sure enough the third floor door was open and Merlin was guarding the wall. The noises were clearing coming from behind this piece of drywall. So I headed down to the basement to get Jonathan.

Well, what we had was not a bird. It was a squirrel. As Jonathan was trying to get it. The squirrel went through the wall (like Merlin does) into the tower room. It walked right past the kids and went to hide in the corner. Merlin wanted to chase it. So I grabbed him and locked him in the bathroom as Jonathan chased the squirrel around the room. He finally did get it and carried it outside. When he put it down, he said it ran across the street as fast as it could.

Day 263

Jonathan and Dad worked on getting Grandma's old gas heater set up in the basement. Wow I hope that works. I am really getting tired of carrying those 40 lb bags of pellets. And of course paying for all of those pellets is getting really hard to do. It is hard to believe that we are only 12 days into winter. I hope that spring is as early as winter was this year. Sunny and 60 by February 1 sounds pretty good to me. ;)

They didn't quite get the stove hooked up. But it does work. So we should be able to have it up and running very soon. But get the rest of the insulation up in the tower room ceiling. YAY!

Day 262

Happy New Year!

Happy Anniversary Eva and Luis!

Last night we let the kids stay up, and we watched the Lord of the Rings. We only made it through the first two movies. Ella was excited because this was the first year she made it to 12:00. Zeb made it also. But little Melinda closed her eyes sometime during the second movie.

Mom and Dad came over this afternoon. We put up some insulation up in the tower room ceiling. We want to be warmer.