crawling forward

We've picked an insulator. The quote came in at a fairly reasonable price - or reasonable enough, anyway - and I just called him and accepted the proposal. The only thing that has to happen before they come is getting us wired for sound. Our order of speaker wire came in yesterday, and Don's sister's boyfriend should be coming over either this week or this weekend to run it and put in data rings and whatever else he says we need. I'm hoping I can get the insulators in on Monday or Tuesday of next week, but if I have to wait until after my surgery, oh well.

The really exciting thing is that right after I got off the phone with the insulator I called the DRYWALLER. He is scheduled to start on November 30th. Seriously. For real. Actually happening. Holy crap.

connection

I just finally got hold of the drywaller - I was right, his message service isn't actually delivering my messages. He said he called me, too, and never got any voicemail or anything, so there's some sort of phone line mixup going on. Whatever. I have a new number for him, and I'm keeping it close. In the meantime, he told me that he can't insulate the house -- his insulation sub has retired from the business, and he hasn't gotten a new one yet. So now before I can get him to come in and drywall, I've got to find an insulator. Don is going to say we should just do it ourselves. I really, really don't want to touch it. Time to call for quotes!

the first insulation this house has ever had

Once Don had pulled the wire for the new front porch overhead lights and fans, he could start putting insulation between the new joists over the front porch, to keep us from freezing in our bed once we open the porch back up to the elements. It's practically the first insulation that's ever been put in this house (there were some random bits stuck inside an interior wall, doing nobody any good, at one point).

Don and his dad joked that it already felt warmer after the insulation was in, a joke that turned cruel at around midnight on Saturday night when our heat broke. The furnace upstairs just stopped working. Just in time for snow! On Sunday morning, we called BGE Home (we intend to get a service plan with them, as they're sort of the only game in town), who told us they'd get to us on Tuesday (today). They sent a very nice service man out early this morning to tell me that a) we needed to put some "flooring" up in the attic before he'd go further than the fourth step up the attic ladder (there's a piece of plywood up there that gets moved around as portable flooring -- not good enough!) and b) there was a gas leak somewhere so he couldn't look at the furnace without that getting fixed anyway and c) the service division no longer fixes gas leaks -- and, ironically, neither does the utility division. They just find it for you. The utility people, I mean. The service people don't have any equipment at all for dealing with gas. The service people of the gas company. Whatever. He was very nice about the whole thing, and didn't charge me for the visit since he couldn't do anything. He recommended that we call the utility people, have them pinpoint the leak, and then either fix it ourselves or call a plumber.

We elected to bypass the utility people entirely and just call Len the Plumber, who had a plumber out here by 9:30 AM (I called at about 8) -- no two-day wait here! He fixed the gas leak -- there was a defective part in the line, an angled piece of pipe that had apparently been deformed from the start with an almost miniscule hole -- and then, out of the kindness of his heart, fixed the damn furnace too. Two days of huddling under the blankets and being miserable, gone in the blink of an eye.

In any case, I have a lot of photos ready and waiting to be posted about Saturday's work day, but have been too cold and miserable to do anything about it until now. So stay tuned -- my typing fingers are toasty warm!