That Blue House

      On the week of July 4th 2018 I began painting the exterior of my house. Yesterday, I finished it.  It was the North and South facing sides that needed completing due to their extreme height. The front and back had been done, but I touched up a few spots on those sides as well.  I just need to paint the white trim now around the windows.

     Here's a few shots of "That Blue House".  Ignore the unpainted "mudroom" around back in the last photo, that is likely going to be torn off the house when construction is done. I'm just storing tools and lumber in there.

      

Finally, I have running water!

     Yes, you read it right. After 7 weeks, I have running water at the house. Mark this date on the calendar.  I had a new well pump installed on July 30th, but corrosion and sparks in the breaker panel every we turned on the breaker caused a big delay in the arrival of the H2O.

     It took a few weeks to get the new electric service and new panel up and running, but when we finally did get it completed, the well pump would not run. A call to Tyler Pump and Well Services,  got a quick reply.  Gary Tyler and his crew came out to the house today and fixed the issue.  The true measure of a good company is how they stand behind their work in the event of a problem, and that is exactly what Gary Tyler did.  Thanks for the great service after the sale, and the prompt professional treatment.

     The water was quite cloudy and dirty at first, here you can see its brown color:

 I'm going to try to attach a video to this post below.

Electric panel swap out (part 2)

     Today Matt came out to the house and swapped out the cable to feed the new breaker panel & service disconnect.   Matt is a commercial electrician in N.Y.C. and a member of IBEW  ( http://www.ibew.org/ ),  he deals with stuff way bigger and badder than this everyday, so I figured this was a piece of cake for him.
      The first think he did was to cut the cable and route the leads to the disconnect switch, he grounded the box to an 8 foot ground rod driven into the earth, and then he bonded the neutral lug to the box also.

          Moving to the outside, Matt pulled the meter, disconnected the old cable to the old panel,  connected the new cable, put new butyl putty around where the cables enter the meter base, and then re-installed the meter.  All done in about an hour and a half.

 

          Flipping on the breakers for the first time with the new box was uneventful, as everything simply worked as it should.  This chapter is now in the books, on to other projects.

Fritz

Electric panel swap out (part 1)

      Today I began running the new electric service cable, I wired the kitchen, dining room, and well pump circuits up to the new panel,  and I installed the service disconnect switch.  Matt is definitely coming up this weekend to swap in the new cable to the meter.
   

      I also finished trimming the windows in the library(see post below) and got all the hardwood for the floor into the dining room loaded into the house.

Trimming out the walls & windows

    I finally got around to installing some wood trim in the library.  I got the 1/4 round piece on top of the entrance/arch casing, and I got the middle window done.  I started the other windows, but ran out of material. I'll need to make a trip to Lumber Liquidators and get 5 more pieces.

 

edit (8-31-20):  windows all done,  crown molding next. 

Playing with concrete. (episode 3)

    Another 42 bags of concrete mix have been removed from the shelves of home depot.  I poured the third and final section of the outer foundation wall on the North side. It is 13 inches deep where it met the stone, and slopes downward to 10" as it heads out toward the yard. I bought in some dirt to meet the pour and tapered it down away from the house. This will hopefully be the end of the rainwater getting into the basement.  It was quite dry down there yesterday.

     I also concreted a 24" iron casing onto the top of the well opening. After a 24 inch extension is placed onto the concrete, the dirt can finally be backfilled  around the hole and the lid replaced.

New electric service soon

Just got the service entrance cable and the disconnect switch, so we should be able to install the new electric service and wire up the panel this weekend my friend Matt is coming to give me a hand with it.