Onward

We are onto week three which is usually the week you discover additional problems and then some fun things. The furnace actually DOES work - David hooked up a thermostat and we fired that baby up - here is what we found:

A) It came on with no problem at all

B) it is way too powerful for this house. This is a cement block house that had single pane, aluminum windows and no insulation to speak of so I'm sure that's why it will blow your socks off. We turned it up to 72 and it was like being trapped in hell. The fan blows up the vent so hard you could actually do a re-enactment of the subway grate scene that Marilyn Monroe did in The Seven Year Itch. David demonstrated in a tee shirt and sweatpants last night.

C) it scares the absolute Be-Jesus out of Reuben when the fan comes on. Every time it came on last night he got a squirrelly look on his face, tucked his tail and went upstairs to hide on the futon. No amount of comforting helped and he would not eat his dinner with it running. He actually started eating, the fan came on and he disappeared upstairs and had to be coaxed back down, until it went off again - it took him 3 hours to eat! He will either starve this winter or we'll have to wear parkas between 5 and 6 pm.

We were going to wait til spring to see if we really wanted to replace it but I think it will go sooner than that. It's an older, not very efficient furnace so we have to replace anyhow, better soon than later.

The upstairs bedrooms are not as bad we had originally thought - the floors in two of them just need some minor repair where David had to take it up to install the beam (he had taken out a support wall). One of them is bare wood and I think with some linseed oil it will pretty cool. The middle bedroom  David plans on using as a home office so he can do whatever he wants with the floor and the rest of it. We have the phone situation figured out, we did end up with a land line but it's only $15 a month and that's cheaper than a 3rd cell phone. The no cable thing is also working well, most of the stuff we like to watch is on Hulu or Netflix and I don't think we've even noticed this week.

We DO have a bit of a dampness issue in the basement, when it rains you can really see it. But I've been running the dehumidifier and it's completely gotten rid of the musty odor. When it rains we just run the fan on to dry it out faster so we don't end up with mold for now. It will be an easy fix in the spring I think and it's not so bad it's ruining stuff. It's really just one end of the basement, the rest of it is as dry as a bone. And this house is closer to my office than I had originally thought - if I take the back roads it's only 45 miles. And I say only because I was driving 64 from our house in Garards Fort - that's 40 less miles of travel a day for me. The dogs are getting used to the place this week, they have been off their game as it's a big change for them, but soon I think it will be like we've never lived anywhere else.