Snowy Noreaster, Power Outage, Generator

I'm not sure that I've mentioned that this house is wired so that it can be switched over to generator power. When we made our offer for the house, we asked for and received the prior owner's generator. We've had to use it a couple of times and last night was one of those occasions.

A Noreaster has been with us the last couple of days. High winds and a Wintery mix of precipitation. It snowed nonstop yesterday but never accumulated to much.

Last night, amid howling winds and 5 inches of snowfall, the power failed. I was out in it at 2:30am. After opening the garage door manually and shoveling a spot in the driveway, I pulled the generator out. I then shut off the power to the house (it would be bad if the power were to come back on while the generator was connected) and then started the generator and plugged it in to the house. The final step was to flip the breakers in the basement to the generator setting.

We are still without power but the National Grid status page is estimating 8am (20 minutes from now). Once we figure out how to tell that it's back on, I'll get to do the whole process again in reverse.

Hopefully, we'll never have to go through an extended outage like the one that struck the region the year before Briar moved back. That one lasted more than a week.

-JC-

Paint in the Upstairs Room

Making progress! It's been quite a job: white ceiling with blue, coffee ice cream and mocha walls. Since this was going onto raw plaster, appropriately tinted primers had to go on first.

Next step is the window and door moldings. Then we can get going on the stairs, floor and floor moldings.

The TV will hang on the blue wall.

This step up from one of the bedrooms has been a concern to me. Once I removed the raised threshold, I found that the subfloor wasn't level with the rest of the subfloor. I've replaced that with subfloor that IS level and replaced the baseboard in the bedroom with a stair riser. 

The ceiling appears to be the same color as the walls here but the ceiling is white and the walls coffee ice cream.

That might seem like a funny place for an electrical socket but the air conditioner sits in that window.

-JC-

Plastering Complete in the Upstairs Room

The plastering is complete and we are very pleased. A lot of drying/curing now needs to take place. The thermostat is set at 60° F and the dehumidifier (visible in some shots) is set at 60%.

Our plasterers have been showing up at 7am and it snowed last night. I was out in the dark blowing the driveway. It really disturbed our fox. He/she was skirting around the edges of the yard the entire time. Of course, the wildlife camera caught nothing. Wildlife camera has been moved.

Looking up the stairs from the kitchen.

Upstairs from the landing.

Looking downstairs.

The door to one of the upstairs bedroom.

Looking from that door toward the far end of the room.

Inside the gable.

-JC-

Making Progress Upstairs

Yesterday, the new room was left kind of orange. We had two plasterers in there all day and it's looking good. One will be back tomorrow morning to finish the job.

Then, after we let it cure for a week, we'll get to priming, painting, installing door/ window moldings, flooring, etc.

-JC-

Happy New Year!

A bit of catching up to do...

My last posting was on our anniversary (12/30) and we did manage to make it over the icy roads to the Gardner Ale House. We almost changed our plans when we had a "snow squall" in the mid-afternoon. I'd never heard of a "snow squall". It was a 10-15 minute storm and it was like the sky said "I have another 1/2 inch for you ... WHOOMP!". Nobody bothered to shovel a mere 1/2 inch so, of course, it all became ice.

We spent New Years Eve with some of our friends just up the road. No snow was predicted but, as we were walking home, it started up and dropped 4-6 inches.

Snow must be very hard to predict. We get flurries almost daily when the forecast says clear. We've had several good, unforecasted snows. Several large, forecasted snows have never materialized. Last night, the report was clear when our phones suddenly informed us that we were in the midst of 110 minutes of very heavy snow - we never saw a flake.

Yesterday was Niko and Maya's last day of break. Briar called late in the afternoon to ask if the kids and Gus could come over to ice skate at our town rink. I ran up the street and reported back that we'd need to clear the snow from the ice before they could skate. They came over anyway.

That snow on the ice was frozen solid. To make matters worse, someone had cleared a couple of patches and just moved the snow around, making frozen piles. The kids skated while we attempted to smooth out the ice. It was just about impossible and they ended up doing what I would call off road ice skating. Lots of falls. Surprisingly, they announced to Briar and Gus on their way home that they had had their most fun ice skating experience ever. Go figure.

That's me back in the corner with the blue shovel. Our house is visible just over the shovels. The guy with the red shovel was from Parks and Rec. He had a sharpened steel edge on his shovel which helped us to make a bit of progress

Finally, we've hired someone to plaster the upstairs room. We wanted to have smooth walls and textured ceilings like the rest of the house but I, apparently, used the wrong materials green board and paper tape when I should have used blue board) and there's a high likelihood that the smooth plaster would slump off the walls. The smooth plaster goes on wet and stays wet while it gets reworked up to 6 times. It soaks through and slips off. The texture plaster has an undercoat that dries quickly followed by a quick drying texture coat. We're going to need to go with texture all the way around.

He started today and, so far, has covered everything up and applied a pink (looks orange on the green board) sealer to everything. He'll be back at 7am to start plastering.

-JC-