browser life

Ok, after MONTHS of delays, I am FINALLY going to get the basement fixed! That's the good news. The bad news is I will likely be offline for about two weeks starting November 24.

The carpenter who had started the project back in April was supposed to come back and put everything back together in September after the foundation was fixed and the secondary drainage system installed. Well, the foundations guys did their work, but the carpenter kept putting me off, saying he was swamped with other projects. Before I knew it, I was looking at a weather forecast for snow the first week of November and realized I had to come up with another solution before winter hit too hard.

So, even though it was not in our best interest financially, I called a handyman company because I had used their Denver branch a few years ago and knew they could work fast. The owner of the Sioux Falls branch came out to the house personally to assess the situation and give me an estimate. I about passed out when I found out how much it was gonna cost (let's just say it will take us a minimum of two years to pay off), but I had already been burned by going cheap, so after checking around a little, I signed on the dotted line.

Here's what they're gonna do starting on Monday: haul away the wood stove, seal up the vent for the stove, remove the rest of the brick fireplace, replace two of the leaky windows with new vinyl ones, seal off the third window that's under the back deck, replace rotted studs in the walls, file down the bolts in the wall anchors so that they're even, put in insulation and drywall, paint the new walls plain white, fix electrical shorts, rip out the rest of the carpet that is damaged, put down vinyl flooring and put my scrapbook area back together. We're not going for anything glamorous, just weatherproof. And since removing the rest of the brick is going to be messy as hell, I'm hiring someone to clean the vents as soon as the basement is finished.

Since I am preparing to "vanish" for a couple of weeks, I am trying to make some space on the DVR, get the check book caught up and other projects, so I don't know how much blogging I'll get to do between now and Monday. I will probably schedule a few goodies to appear here while I'm gone, but I can't promise any significant posts. And when the basement is finished, there will be the matter of cleaning up all construction dust and debris before I can use the computer again, which may take some time given the toll any sort of housework has on me.

Will pop in when I can.