Ah, the joys of home improvement

Joe came over yesterday and dug our window well holes. It took him all of an hour with the mini-hoe we rented. Last night Jeff marked out the cut lines, and this morning the concrete cutters arrived to cut the foundation. And it's snowing. Lovely. Especially since we are going to have a gaping hole (TWO gaping holes) in our foundation until the windows are installed - next Wednesday. Yes, a whole week. In February. I would have liked to schedule the cutting and window installation on the same day, but since the windows won't be in until March 2, and the concrete cutter's price goes up March 1, and they don't work weekends, I went this route. Oh well. We can deal with it. We'll just cover the holes with plastic sheeting and paneling ripped off the walls, shut the doors to those bedrooms, and wear jackets in the basement.

We have been getting bids to have our electric service upgraded and our panel replaced. We weren't really planning to do this right now, but since we're ripping out most of the basement ceiling and replacing as much wiring as we can get to, we found that we need a few more circuits, which means we need a larger panel. And we learned that the existing panel in the basement is not a very good one. In fact, its reputation is so bad that some insurance companies will pay to have it replaced, even if there is no known problem with it. So we figured this is as good a time as any to just upgrade the service, too. Bring the whole thing up to code and have the house grounded properly.

We found another Turvort mystify-er. We have a register in our upstairs living room. It's large, and I always assumed it was a cold-air return. Well, Jeff took part of the basement ceiling down to get to some wiring, and guess what? That register goes nowhere. NOWHERE. It just covers a hole in the drywall, and opens into a wall cavity. I am so confused. Still to be solved is the mystery of the drop-downs in the basement ceiling. I used to think it was ductwork, but after seeing where thing actually are and where the ducts actually run, I'm not so sure.

BWAH!!!!! (That's the sound of me giving up on figuring out why things are the way they are.)

So just a warning to all of my family coming for Lauren's blessing on March 7 - everyone will be cramped into the upstairs. The basement will pretty much still be out of commission. I guess people can go into the family room downstairs, but a good part of the ceiling and walls will be demolished. It's a work in progress. Please have patience with us.

Later maybe I'll post photos of the snow drifts in our basement.