Saturday 2/11/06: First major change inside is to take the brick chimney, in the middle of the house, out of service. We do this by installing a SWG power venter. Very cool unit. (...no pun intended) Unit took me a little longer than anticipated to install. After hours of checking & testing my electrical connections, I stumbled on the fact that the relay-mounting socket had a bad contact. I removed the relay from the socket & connected the wiring directly to the relay until a replacement could be delivered. Good thing too, ...it was getting a bit chilly in the house.

Wednesday 2/8/06: What a pleasant surprise! Team Jodice arrives today to start on the foundation walls. These guys are amazingly accurate & thorough....

Saturday 02/04/06: It rained all day Friday. Despite the fact the house has some pretty significant holes in it, no water found it's way in. ....although, the house is a tad tougher to keep warm. Thank goodness for these unseasonably mild temperatures!

Team Jodice returned for a few hours Saturday morning to remove the forms from the newly poured footings, mark out the foundation walls & place the wall's forms.

Meanwhile, JC & I are emptying the 2nd floor. .....two life-times of "stuff" to relocate! Today we start, in earnest, to play the "what-should-we-do-with-this?" game. My stock answer is dumpster-bound!! It's always interesting to empty a room of it's contents. You never know what you're going to find. Can be a pleasant trip down memory lane ...or an embarrassing reminder of a past ill conceived fad. Meanwhile, with all of this relocating of the stuff, ....the house continues to get smaller. The pets are freaking out too now.

....focus on the finish line, focus on the finish line...

Thursday 02/02/06: Happy Groundhog Day! ....I just love that movie, BTW.

Phil, the excavator, arrives at 7:30am. ...this guy's a work animal. First order of business, the big CAT needs a drink. After that, Phil completes the big dig 'cause the footings are being poured today. ...hopefully ahead of the big rains coming in tonight & tomorrow.

Monday 01/30/06: Team Jodice arrives @ 7:30. Today promises to be exciting if the number of trucks in the driveway is any indication. On the agenda: Reroute the bath & kitchen waste lines to the new sewer connection on the south wall & frame in the new office in the basement. That means I need to be out of the bathroom early today. ...damn! I didn't get to brush my teeth before they broke the old cast iron pipes. Mints, anyone?

Pretty cool tool they use to break the iron pipe. It's this large thick chain link with a cutting wheel on every other link. Wrap the chain around the pipe, ratchet the handle a few times and voila! Nice clean break. ...on with the show!

Plumbers got most of the iron pipe out & left the iron vent stack in place until we can remove the remainder of it poking through the 2nd floor and out the roof when the dormer is installed. Then they crudely broke the iron pipe where it exits the house on the east wall. ...oopps, someone forgot to plug the old pipe which is still connected to the sewer line and I arrived home to hear the sounds of running waster water in the sewer system via the open pipe in the wall.

Meanwhile, carpenter is framing a 2x8 wall in the basement. This meant he had to push up & away some drop ceiling tiles. 2 of these ceiling tiles had 75-watt flood lamps in a recessed fixture. The guy simple leaves the lamps burning as he moves the tiles, fixtures and all, over an adjacent tile in the ceiling. Yep, you guessed it, ....it burned a hole through the tile!! *sigh*