Ah, old houses. You relish in their charm, explore their personalities, and love them for their flaws. Well, some of their flaws. The inexpensive flaws. The past couple of weeks have been somewhat trying between several leaks found in the roof and a rather cat attributed smell coming from the downstairs bathroom, but we’ll get to that in a bit. I do try to go sequentially sometimes. This will be one of those times. Maybe…if I don’t get sidetracked- hey, is that a chicken?
Two weekends ago (thereabouts anyway, I was stuck in the coma that is Christmas in retail so my timing may be a bit off) we were able to acquire more wood for the wood burning stove downstairs. That thing is pretty much all that’s heating the house right now. Therefore, as I’ve said before, it’s freezing when you come in at nine o’clock in the morning. Anyway, Harvey, the man who supplied us with the most wonderful burnable substance stuck around to help Dad get the old furnace out of the store and into the dumpster which was cause for great joy. However, it was not what brought the most joy that day. Mom and Dad got something else out to the dumpster. The freeloading blue couch!
The blue couch from upstairs, left behind from whenever the old tenant departed. We were glad to see it go.
But wait, there’s more! Tadpole came back, bearing us more gifts (of a not free nature but one can always pretend). Fifteen rolls of insulation, sixty sheets of drywall, and one hundred and seventy 2x4s which they managed to get into the house in just over an hour. Once again, my parents are beasts.
Tadpole’s back with more supplies!
All that needs to be inside?
An hour late, it all was safely stowed in the house.
While all this was happening, we had Chris Brown at Urbanna Builders’ Supply Co. over, putting in our exterior wall insulation (link to their website at the end of the post). You know, since we just have the wood burning stove and don’t want to freeze our butts off when we move in. Did I mention February as the month we wanna move in? Mom and I are going to be texting each other from our respective beds buried under blankets arguing over who has to get up to deal with the stove. Of course we all know I’ll lose because she’s Mom. That should be obvious. So yes, the exterior insulation will be much appreciated.
Look at them, drilling holes, insulating things.
Quit blowing holes in my house! Wait, we’re not in Pirates of the Caribbean, the holes are good things, they mean warmth!
Sunday was when we found a leak which led to putting a bucket in the attic which also led to cutting into the wall and finding water damage. Upon further investigation two more leaks were found.
House: 3, Wilbanks: 0.
Mom’s cleaned it up and got the wood to dry out since this picture was taken. it looks way better now, though it’ll still need repairs.
Luckily, we won’t have to get rid of too much damaged wood to repair the water damage, though we did have to get the roof repaired. Bright side, it no longer rains in our house. Wilbanks: 1.
Also, the mysterious smell in the downstairs bathroom still there since before we started working on the house, got worse as it warmed up. Fairly sure it involved a cat. I’ll detail Mom’s epic expedition to find and eradicate it in the next post, let’s just say we could smell the vinegar and bleach upstairs…
Upside of that Sunday was they got the framing done on my bedroom, so there is actual building going on now! Building! That’s good if we wanna be in by February. Bedrooms, you know, nice things to have.
My bedroom has actual definitions now!
Mom and Dad took their first selfie through the framework of my bedroom.
Oh, and note to self. Cardboard may or may not stop the hoard of blown exterior wall insulation…
Insulation, from the wall. Next time, use stronger cardboard to cover holes.
We almost had a white Christmas after all.
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