Happy Holidays!

 10 December 2021

Oh my how time flies! It's been nearly two months since my last post and a few things are going on around here.

Amy has been doing a lot more painting. The north gable end is done and looks great!

She also got to work on part of the south side.

And here's the house all dressed for Christmas!

I have been working on the electrical in the workshop when I can. I've only worked with MC (metal clad) wire a little bit prior to this. Stripping the outer jacket off without damaging the wire inside was a little tricky, but since the county requires all of the exposed wire to be MC, that justified the purchase the proper tool to cut the cladding off. Much better than trying to manage with a hack saw!

There's a lot of wiring to do! You might notice that there's already "stuff" in the workshop. Makes it a little harder to do the wiring, but we just couldn't wait to get some of this out of the house and off the porches.

There are a fair number of light switches I'm putting in. Some might say too many. But I like to try to anticipate where we might want or need to turn lights on and off from, and go ahead and put one there..

There are six of these lights per section inside the workshop. I have no idea how bright they'll actually be. I hope we're not blinded!

We also decided to treat ourselves to a Christmas gift for the house - gas logs for the fireplace in the kitchen!

Log set from Amazon, 100 lb tank from Lowe's, propane from Blossman's, and all the pipe and fittings from Lanier's Hardware in Lexington. First I need to replace the cardboard and foam that we were using to plug up the flue with something else that won't burn! Our Leonard trailer stepped up to the plate again, doing double duty as a sheet metal brake. This metal piece will seal the flue and I'll have rockwool insulation on top of it.

My longest masonry drill bit was about an inch short of getting all the way into the fireplace from the outside. But with some careful measuring, I was able to drill a matching hole from the inside of the fireplace (on the second try). This is the pipe coming out from the fireplace. The left side of the "T" will go to the propane tank and the short piece on the bottom is a sediment trap.

I've got a shut off valve located on the inside. There is a flexible gas hose in the bag on the floor. These logs sure will make the kitchen and keeping room cozy on those cold, wet, winter days.

Happy Holidays! Looking forward to what 2022 will bring us, mostly...