Happy New Year everyone! The last thing that Sonya said to me before falling asleep at about 1:30am this morning, following a New Year’s Eve party we went to, was, “This is the year that we move into our new home!” Very true! We’re all getting very excited at the idea of moving into the house, although we have a long way to go before we get there. A flurry of activity was there this week, between the electricians who were wrapping up the rewiring of the house and installing the new box, and the guys there putting in drywall.

It appeared as if the electrical would be completed this week, but that’s not the case. I spoke with the lead on the job, Gilberto, about when he thought it would be completed and he told me that it would likely be Thursday or Friday of this week. The power to the house was disconnected, and the old 100-amp fuse box was taken out and the new 200-amp breaker box was installed. When I showed up to the house to get an update on Thursday, the power lines from the street had been removed and it looked like it would soon be attached to a new meter that was being installed. Shortly after I arrived, a line truck from Johnson County REMC pulled up in the driveway. They had gotten an alert that there was a power outage at the house and had come to investigate. After that, I’m not exactly sure what happened, but electrical work stopped at the house. No one came to continue on Friday. And as of right now (Monday, 1/1), nothing is turned on. I’m speculating here, but I think that the county may have shut down their work, because they were not informed that the power was being switched over. The power would be switched from 100-amp to 200-amp service, which is something that the REMC would probably need to know and I’m not sure they were informed. I do know that a new meter is being installed, probably because of the change in service, but possibly because it just needed to be updated. As a non-electrician, these are just my guesses. Anyway, we’ll probably have to wait until the REMC is back in the office, tomorrow (Tuesday 1/2), to continue on with the electrical work.

Eli was able to have a little fun with his new truck on Saturday, 12/30. Sonya decided that the bushes in front of the deck on the front of the house needed to come out. Eli bought some straps to complete the task and was able to, fairly easily, pull them out at the roots. It does look a whole lot better! Although it did expose the true condition of the deck, which is pretty bad. No worries. That’s a fairly easy fix.

With the rewiring of the house drawing to an end, it allowed the drywallers to start buttoning the house back up. They started in the girls’ room upstairs. This room continues to impress all of us. It’s going to really be a nice room! We got some pictures of the drywall up before mudding the seams.

On Friday 12/29, Sonya and I went to Menards to get lighting for the house. We chose lighting for the kitchen and got lights for the closets. Sonya had picked up some really cool lights for the living room and dining room ceilings on Marketplace earlier, so we were already good there. We also got ceiling fan / light combos for all four bedrooms. It’s fun picturing how everything is going to end up looking!

Finally, on Wednesday 12/27, our plumber came out to install the water heater that we needed. Not too much to report here other than we decided to move the location of the water heater to give better access to the north crawl space. He routed the vent out the side of the house and we are all good there. It’ll be nice to finally have hot water in the house.

That’s all for this week folks! Thanks for following along!