As Long As We're Down Here...

The hits just keep on a-comin'. The financial hits. The basement floor hasn't been poured yet, so there's still time to bring in the plumber. We're getting new toilet piping, partly to repair an old problem with the way one toilet sat on the pipes and partly to reroute the pipes now that they're running through open space rather than along a wall. We're getting a new supply pipe, taking a different path from the meter to the water heater. And, oh yeah, a new water heater, since our current one seems to be about half-full of mineral in six or seven years. And new connections from the basement supply to every water-using fixture. A new floor drain, plus new drains and supplies for the laundry. And, since our new basement could be finished at a later date, it's a great time to rough in the hookups for a future toilet, sink and shower. It all makes sense, and it all costs money.

What it probably also means is another night in a motel, although the plumber says his goal is to get us one toilet and one sink by the end of his day digging up the pipes.

Then there's the heat, and the air conditioner. Almost all of our old sheet metal ducting came out, and from all appearances it should have. But this means all new sheet metal, and the heating guy wants to change cold air returns into heat vents and vice versa, and we haven't seen his bid yet, nor do we know how much of that was part of the original. It appears that our furnace and our central air unit will be all right to re-install, the second mercy shown by this project. The first mercy: we've had no weather below 48 degrees at night and only a few days over 80, so the absence of heat and A/C hasn't been a burden.

We hope to have concrete poured by next Friday, maybe sooner. After that, the plumber can get back in to mess with supply pipes, and the heat guy can start cutting metal, and the washer and dryer can get down into place, and they can block up the places where girders held the place up, and install the windows, and build the new stairway. I'm guessing that we have about three weeks to go.

Then they can come into the house and start patching cracks where the house settled slightly differently on the new walls. And finish rebuilding the porch. And get at the roof before the snow flies.

It appears that early retirement is not going to be an option.