Merry Christmas everyone! Work on the house this week has been relatively light during the holiday season. We were able to make some progress, however, and things certainly are not behind schedule.

The remainder of the work largely depends on two things: the rewiring of the house, and the arrival of items that have been ordered (windows and bathroom items).

The guys doing the rewiring of the house have been working hard, even up to and including coming in to work this past Saturday. They’d made the lofty prediction that they would be completed with their work by Saturday, but we weren’t too confident that this would happen. I came in to check the progress on Sunday afternoon and they still have some work to do. That’s okay. They’re very hard working and very friendly and accommodating of our requests.

Another task that needed to be done was to lift part of the floor that was in the entry from the dining room to the kitchen which was sagging. As before, the goal was to get the floor “as flat as possible”, as getting the floor completely level would be difficult and just plain not worth it. We were willing to live with the impurities of “this old house”.

The plan was to put about a 10-12 foot long header from the dining room floor joists, supporting the joists under the entry way. This would be mostly in the crawl space below the dining room and partially in the basement, being supported by two footers, under the dining room and under on a foundation wall in the basement. Eli was able to oversee the lifting of the other section of the floor, but not available for this go around. On Monday, after cutting a hole in the dining room floor, Mr. Seth was tasked with digging a hole for the footer on the north end of the header. Like before, he was able to hit solid ground pretty quickly (thankfully).

On Wednesday, I had Sonya’s help so we placed the header. It was fairly easy to get the 12-foot header down to the basement and into the crawl space. From there, we placed the two bottle jacks needed to lift the header into place. Then we strategically went back and forth between the two bottle jacks, lifting the header and the floor joists until a level where the most significant sag was placed was showing “zero bubble”. Good enough for us! I lifted the header just a little bit more to account for some settling, cut the posts, hammered them into place, and lowered the header onto the two posts. It looks and feels so much better!

Hiccup Number Two. I wrote about the water heater last week and my options for what I was going to do. I’d spoken to several people about the situation and the consensus was the following: 1. The current water heater wasn’t going to be easily or cheaply vented out the side wall of the basement, and 2. I should really go with a tankless water heater at this stage of the renovation. I texted a plumber friend of mine to see if he was able to come out and help. He said he was willing to in a return text, but that it was going to be a “cash under the table” type transaction. Fine by me! And then I didn’t hear back from him. So I reached out to our realtor for a contact. He gave me one, but he was with a company and not on his own. I could feel that this was going to cost me. He came out, took a look at the situation, and gave me three options: 1. Full installation of a tankless water heater for $4500, 2. Full installation of a traditional tank water heater for $2000, and 3. Installation of a tankless water heater that we chose for $1200. As much as I wanted to go tankless, it just was not something we were prepared to pay for, so we went with option 2. The water heater will be installed on 12/26.

Family is in town this week for the holidays. We’ve been having a great time catching up. Of course, they’re interested in the progress of the house, some of them seeing it for the first time. Sonya’s brother, Tom, is a body builder who has recently broken records in a deadlift competition in Virginia. His son, Gavin, is also into competitive body building. Perfect! I told them that I had an extremely heavy wood-burning stove that needed moving out to the barn. They were very willing to help. We moved it on an over-stressed appliance dolly, out of the front door, to the deck, and the trailer waiting in the front yard. We trailed it to the barn and off of the trailer into the barn for now for later use. Very helpful!

Having all of the grandkids on the Hill side of the family couldn’t go without a family photo shoot! Cindy contacted a friend of hers, who actually lives down Indiana 44 a few miles, to come and take some pictures at the property. This is going to be such a great place for many more photo shoots to come. While we are waiting on the “professional pictures”, here are some pictures that were taken with our cellphones.