House & Food...January 5 -- February 3rd

January 7th. -7 outside. 34 in the basement :) (Snow was helping insulate the bulkhead).


January 13th. Chicken Stew? Chicken in a crock pot with root vegetables?. I was actually pretty disappointed -- it really lacked "pop."



Thursday, January 18th. Got word that Wes will be coming to start tiling tomorrow. Shit, better neaten up!


Like a sadastic game of Twister, he texted me to let me know to not step on the tiles, just the cement board. I had my hands full of groceries to.

Monday's progress. Now I'm just not allowed to step where the paper towels are :D




January 24th, time for Beef Stew. This did come out very good :)





Saturday, January 27th. I ran to Home Depot to get supplies for hooking up the Washer / Dryer, and while down in Lisbon swung over to Campbell's stand since they had said on Facebook they were open for the morning. (In winter they open the stand up on mild days for like four hours)

Dryer outlet wired in.

New valves for the washer water supply. I found at Lowes later right angle adapters so the hoses can hang straight down instead of bending at 90.

This outlet needed an adapter...it was set back not taking into account the sheetrock.


Let's take a look at this dryer and the change the exhaust from the bottom to side...
Download service manual, mother of God...this IS the procedure to change it:


Sunday, January 28th. Hot dog! Got up early re-assembled it, it works!

Um...almost. No heat.

Took off mid-morning, picked up Eric, and spent the afternoon in Salem Sam. Started at Far From the Tree Cider House. Most of them were very good, except one that me and Eric both decided tasted like ass :D

Some mid-week troubleshooting...I have no power on the black. I know my tester had been red for it at least at one point (it wasn't red, I re-did the outlet, it turned red, now it's green again). My meter confirmed it.

After I did some debugging during the week it looked like a power problem with the new work ended up calling the electrician who came today and sure enough I had a bad breaker. At the breaker he got 100v between the two legs, it should be 240v. I wonder if it was changing, which would explain why my circuit tester was acting funky on it, and there wasn't 100v when I tested it with my voltmeter up stairs.


Saturday, February 3rd.

Electrician came out to fix the circuit, and I had him move the stove outlet about 6" to line up better with the stove back while he was here.
Meanwhile I got the washer hooked up since I was now optimistic I'd soon have a drying dryer.

One of the Neptune line's "features" is it drys as fast as it washes...I suspect they achieved that claim by slowing down the washer. Is an hour long washing time normal? I don't remember that :D

Leaving the back open to check for leaks

And we have a fail!

Thought it might be the vent, which after I cut it off and tried again it wasn't. Small amounts of water drained, but when it would try to pump out the washer in earnest it came flooding back in.

I bought a $10 snake at Lowes and fortunately found a blockage pretty quickly -- it was basically soil at this point. Worked the snake through it, ran the hot water hose down the drain, put on the new air vent, and everything worked A-OK now.

I guess I got to think about painting soon...

First time since October I've had a working stove and dryer. First time in 10+ years I've had a working washer!

Chicken Chowder and the ultimate Bachelor Fridge Pic...

Not everything was used...


It came out really good -- basically Chicken Pot Pie without the pie, and I didn't thicken the liquid; next time I will try to thicken the cream when I start cooking it.

That fridge sure looks lonely :D

Cheers 1983, AI 2018

Watching Cheers on Netflix...and that scene literally describes Artificial Intelligence today -- "We don't know what the computers are correlating, just that they are."

https://qz.com/865357/we-dont-understand-how-ai-make-most-decisions-so-now-algorithms-are-explaining-themselves/

Have I mentioned it's cold?

Pipes made it through the night OK. Was down to about 31° at 3am though.

Windham Airport temps yesterday and overnight:

And the National Weather Service round-up from around the region that is consistent with the -8 below overnight:

Thru Day 92 / Happy New Years...

Although I now have an OCD conundrum that I have been filing the HouseRebuildWeb photos under Home_Garden_2017 so I either need a new folder or bifurcate how I store them on my PC vs. how I store them for the web #SysAdminProblems

Not a lot of photos as I didn't have a good weekend, but we made some progress:

Anyway, we're in the middle of the longest below 20° streak in the last century:

But I started moving some boxes back to the house...letting them warm up overnight before even considering opening them:

Well at least all the lights work in the fridge!

But dayum there was a lot of stuff to wash, and now to figure out how to put back this puzzle:

-2° last night, with wind chill warnings, and the basement just got down to 32° with no pipes frozen. I call that significant progress from past years where I would definitely be in the frozen pipe range with multiple cold days with no significant daytime temperature recovery.

Gluing down some shims so when I screw down (from the bottom) the butcher block they don't rotate.

Some sanding to finish fitting the butcher block

So, especially without tile on the floor yet, moving the stove is a bitch and even felt feet don't slide easily on this cement board. So I built a wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am dolly for it. Even had a piece of left over plywood that was the exact 24" x 28" I wanted, and a furring strip cut in half so I could use some 3/4" screws.

Still needs a bit of work, maybe a couple handles I can screw to the front of the dolly as needed...then damn stove wants to slide on the plywood easier than the wheels want to line up and roll into position.