Things Getting Done...

I realize that I haven't been posting much about progress on the house lately. Thats mostly because there hasn't been much to say - we've just been unpacking and moving in. We aren't exactly DONE with unpacking yet, but we are tired enough of it that we've started working on some little projects around the house, such as:

>Switching the refridgerator door to hinge on the left hand side. Cary took on this project on Wednesday, and it's great to finally have it done. Now the open side is towards the rest of the kitchen (as it should be), and the door swings out towards the wall.

>Putting a new dryer vent tube on the dryer. For some reason, the first vent tube cracked and split, and the tape connecting it to the vent outlet didn't seal properly. I don't know why, maybe it got tweaked when the dryer was repositioned or something. Ross noticed it at the housewarming party, and yesterday he swung by the house with a spare peice of new vent tubing for us to replace it with. We still ought to get a hose clamp to hold it in place securely, but it's already way better.

>Insulating the pipes for the radiant heat system in the mechanical room. Since the mechanical room isn't actually heated, it seemed like a good idea to me to wrap the hot water pipes to reduce heat loss where they come out of the house and connect up to the munchkin. Probably won't make a huge difference in the efficiency of the system, but it felt good to do it all the same.

>Replacing the thermocoupler in the shop heater, so we could turn the pilot light down to an appropriate sized flame without it going out. I'm not sure how much a difference that will really make on our overall propane consumption rate, but I'm all about cutting down of waste where I can.

>And of course, we've gotten a phone hooked up. Which was WAY more of a hassle than it had any right to be. I also filled out and mailed off all the warranty cards for all the appliances, which took about an hour and was probably a total waste of time, but whatever - it's one more thing to cross off the list!

We've also had some visits from various tradespeople, such as the painter and the plumber, to complete a few touch-ups. The faucet is now in on the clawfoot tub, and the missing drain-pull knob from the upstairs sink has been replaced. We also got a package in the mail with the two missing kitchen cupboard knobs in it, so now we have 100% of our hardware in place. Steve is actually coming out to the house today to finish up a few other items from the "punch list" - things like adjusting the mounting of the dishwasher so the door closes more easily and reseating the bedroom light fixture so the insulation doesn't poke out the side. It's really great that Mark takes all these finishing details so seriously. :)

The next big project on my list is refinishing the wood cook stove. First though, I think I need to clean out the shop - during the move we piled stuff in there willy-nilly all over the place and now there isn't even enough space available to work on the stove, let alone a clear path to get over to it. So the plan for THIS weekend is to clean up and organize the shop, maybe take a trip or two to the dump, and get everything in order to tackle the stove project sometime soon. Wish us luck!