Finally! Our house is (about) finished, with move in date Monday Feb. 1. It is ready now, but the cleaning contractor can’t deliver the contents until Monday.

On a second note, I went to the hospital two weeks ago for a week stay. They found I have kidney failure due to diabetes. I am now on dialysis 3 days a week. I also have a bad heart valve (which I have know about for years), causing poor oxygen intake. February 8 I go in for surgery to replace the valve. (Full valve job, – seats, stems and pushrods – If I were a car) .

Conrad

Things are moving! They say they will be finished by mid January. Then we need to get our personal property reimbursement so we can purchase some beds, etc. Then we can move in.

The dry wall was put into places that we didn’t have it before, so we are coming out ahead on the remodel job.

Next major thing appears to be painting.

Conrad

Well, not much to report, as the work progress is slow. The insulation has been installed in the walls, plastic sheeting covering the walls, and the furnace turned on to warm the house for dry-wall work. The heat is needed as it has been down to 0 or lower at night.

Well, someday they will finish (I hope)

Conrad

Since my fire, the insurance company had a contractor clean out the burned wood and water damaged material. When cleaning out the burned wood on the kitchen wall they discovered that sometime in the past we had been attacked by termites or carpenter ants. By past, remember the house was originally built in 1911, so that past goes back a few years. The damage done by termites was actually minamal but needed to be replaced.

The Re-construction contractor has now begun his side of the work. The replaced the termite damage while they were replacing the burned studs. They tore out the old “fiber” board (water soaked) walls to the studs then they sprayed everything with a sealing paint.

Things progress onward.

Conrad

Monday, September 21, was my birthday. I was working in my office (detached from my house) when my son-in-law came running in saying the house was full of smoke.

We ran back to the house, and found a fire in the enclosed back porch in the clothes dryer plug assembly. We killed the power, called 911 and tried to put it out with pitchers of water. No such luck.

The local fire department arrived and put water on the fire and got it out, but not before the fire had gone up the wall to the bedroom just above. Total fire damage was not too bad, but then the water and smoke. The total downstairs of the house had both ceiling and floor water damage, plus smoke damage to all electronics, such as tvs and Directv DVRs (three each). Fortuneately I have good insurance, putting the family up in a nice hotel, and paying us for extra things like taking child to school (walking before, 30 miles round trip 2 times a day now), what we spend (and time) on cleaning our clothes, etc.

I am now writing this from my hotel. I have found out that their Wi-Fi isn’t so great. I manage 2 servers and do a backup three times a week and download to my PC to my external hard drive, keeping at least 5 generations. With this Wi-Fi I can’t do my backup download.

But like the song says, “I will survive”

Conrad