More Odds'n'Ends

No photos this time - unfortunately the appearance of our house has not changed much during the last month. Things are kind of poking along and hopefully that will change as soon as we get our big inspection.

Doug wants/needs a 3 phase electrical hookup for his mouthpiece equipment and although we applied, paid for, and received permission for a residential version of this, the power company sent out a commercial inspector who wasn't familiar with residential meter applications and we had to redo everything to meet commercial requirements. We have to add some extra things to the box on the outside of the house and it's been kind of a pain for everyone involved.

In the meantime we ordered the replacement basement steps from the same excellent company that made our upstairs stairs. Doug installed them and they look great and feel really solid. They are at the correct steeper angle now so we have more floor space, more clearance overhead, and more useable room underneath them. Doug is going to have an excellent office/studio area now.

Doug finished up with the bathroom exhaust vents and is almost finished with the central vacuum. I still can't believe that we are having such a thing in our house. It wasn't my idea. We saw it at a home show and Doug went nuts and bought one immediately.

There are two outlets on each floor and the hose stretches (hopefully) to all corners of the house. There are also going to be two plates at floor level in the kitchen that kick open with your foot that will suck up anything that you sweep up to it. Supposedly the system is very quiet and the suction is greater than any normal vacuum cleaner. All of the dirt goes from the hoses down through pipes in the wall into a can in the basement that gets emptied out every couple of months or so. I don't think we need something this fancy, but it will probably be fantasically convenient after I get used to it.

Also this month Doug did a week long tour and went to the trombone festival in Salt Lake City. I'm glad he got a break, even though it always delays the progress when he goes out of town.

I should talk.... I really haven't been helping much lately. Between gigs it's all I can do to keep the grass mowed. We didn't used to have so much grass, or maybe it's that grass takes longer to mow than weeds. I had a nice break last week playing at the Glenn Miller Festival. As soon as Doug is finished generating sawdust I will be scraping off all of the foam that has seeped through the cracks and doing a thorough vacuuming of all surfaces in preparation for wallboard. That's a bigger job than you might imagine.

But I really really really mostly want to hurry up and start putting the rest of the siding on. I will be so happy when that happens!