All I wanted for Christmas was a new water heater installed, and yesterday my dreams came true.

When we moved our old water heater out of the basement before demolition, it broke. We salvaged one from Morgan’s sister’s remodel project and when we got it in we realized that it did indeed heat water, but the thermostat was busted so it was either on or in emergency shutoff mode. Despite the real danger if that shutoff mode failed to function, we have been living with it like that for a year and a half.

We would turn on the water heater before we needed water, and off again when we were done, a situation made less onerous by the proximity of the water heater to our basic needs. Still, not ideal.
Our situation doesn’t really allow for anything too fancy to be our permanent replacement. Heat-pump water heaters need a lot more space around them to function properly than our little mechanical room will afford, and we don’t have gas service to our home, so a flow-through/tankless model won’t work either. (Don’t get me started on how much I hate electric tankless systems; I have lots of experience with one and I loathe it.)

I did spend money on a lifetime-warrantied model, though, with a plastic tank that will never rust out. A precaution we might not have needed as much as other folks, as we have a drain in the floor of our mec room. But what the heck? Why not buy the longest lasting version you can?

Anyway, I am super delighted with my Christmas present, and look forward to just doing some dishes and taking some showers without having to anticipate the need for hot water first.

 

I’m giving myself another break this year with the Christmas cards. Even though we are pretty used to living in construction, it’s one less thing for me to deal with. Frankly, I can say more and show you more this way anyway. So, here’s our end-of-year greeting:

In 2015 we went from this

To this

We got these

And this one continued to grow

The garden bloomed

Good times were had

Morgan turned 40, Huck started middle school, we ran out of the big pile of money we had borrowed to do the house. None of this was a surprise. I decided after a crazy attempt to land a larger workspace I could share with others that perhaps I could just hang in there and keep something solid and reliable while the house continues to shift around us. It has been a good call so far.

We continue to strive, to learn and grow and to try to create something beautiful around us. We hope we get to see you in the coming year, and that you are feeling as blessed as we are. Happy New  Year!

One thing we miss with all this upheaval is just somewhere to put our stuff. We had a whole basement, and we will have a shed eventually, but the closets in our bedrooms are teeny-tiny and the attic is full of loose insulation.

We have been using the attic anyway, as well as cramming the attic space above Morgan’s shop, but when we lost our front door we also gained a nice walk-in closet, which will eventually be for the master bedroom that our living room becomes.

You wouldn’t believe how nice that 8x6sf space is to have– I don’t have to grab a ladder for every little thing that I don’t want out in my living space– coolers, totes, wrapping paper… Now, if I had a private working area to wrap presents in!

 

Morgan has gone back to working for other folks to make some money again. Last week he took a few minutes (literally, like ten) to pop our last window into place.

We will probably be on hold for three or four months now. Perhaps this weekend I will take some time to peel the stickers off the windows and do some general tidying, as we will be living with this version for a little bit. 

Looking back to a year ago, we have come SO FAR! I’m sure we have a long way still to go, but it feels really good to be weather tight and windowed up. 

Last weekend Morgan took some time to pull our water line in through its permanent port in the wall. Since we are living here during all of this there are a lot of temporary mechanisms in place, among which was a large coil of pvc pipe near our front porch that came in through the window to deliver our water.

  
It’s a small thing, but it feels good to get the small things dialed in, especially when they stand in the way of other small and not-small things happening, like installing that window. Another small step in the right direction!

 

 
 

 

This past week we got roofing/decking material applied to our new roof/balcony. A banner day here at the Hammershack, where falling rain is a soothing sound once again!

We could not wait for City Light’s mysteriously cumbersome process of moving our power line to complete, so there is about a 2.5″ hole where the existing power line still drops through. It’s well protected, or as well protected as it can be.

Just a couple more things to do before we are weatherproof– a parge coat needs to go on the west lower wall before that last downstairs window can go in, and just a wee bit more Tyvek (we’ve been picking up scraps from friends to avoid buying another big roll) and then the closet window upstairs. 

Once we are weatherproof, Morgan will go back to earning money for a few months and we will hang in limbo. We don’t have heat or insulation, so the prediction of a mild winter is welcome. We at least will have a container around us that stops the wind, which is way better than we had last year! 

Now, where did I stash those electric blankets…?

This week the doorway that has always served this house as a main entry became a closet.  

 
For the time being, our new front door, though perfectly functional, doesn’t lead into a space we are actually living in, so our back door is the primary entry and exit. The thing is, when you step into our back entry, this is what you see:  

   
This was especially awkward for a few days when we had to take our doors off to weather-seal them.

You might think that building some walls around that toilet would be a high priority for us, but with the impending shift in the weather, we’re more concerned about creating some roofing to keep us dry. Many tasks lie between us and that all-important goal, such as moving our electrical drop. 

In the meantime, we got these little cuties to keep us warm. 

   

Another big thing that happened here this week was more earth-moving. We hadn’t quite dialed in the new entryway when last we had a big machine on site, so Patrick came over on Tuesday and Wednesday to do a little land-sculpting.

We’ll be building some stairs next to the house to get from the front door to the upper driveway, so that needed some accommodation. Then the funny island of land that we have inadvertently created out of what was our front yard will need rock walls to hold it together, so we had to scrape more dirt away to make room for those.

This work now makes it possible for us to finish the exterior of the West wall and put the last window in, put the main water line into the house where it actually goes, wall-in the closet that was our front door… the list goes on! Now that kitten achievement has been unlocked, the new goal is the all-important weatherproofing of the exterior.

After much wrangling, we have a run of stairs. They are functional, not the finished product, but as Morgan says, we’ll be living with this version for “a while”. My uncle Tom told us that they made stairs like this in one of their homes and lived with them for five years before remembering that they had another finish in mind :). These will suffice until drywall goes in, and then we’ll probably get the real deal.

Notice the extra-thick treads on the lower run– these stairs will be drawers in the future!

We are still using this very exposed potty. Walls will be built around it eventually. For now it’s part of the stairwell.

Huck will get his kittens after Labor Day, as we have two camping trips between now and then. He’s super duper excited.

Huck has been waiting for the stairs to be built, because when they are, we’re getting kittens. I had told him we needed doors and windows and walls, but then we realized that stairs would be crucial to connecting us to the larger space, a space the kittens can roam in.

Stairs are tricky, and believe it or not, these are Morgan’s first real run of them. He is, as usual, taking the time to learn and do it right, and he has the extra challenge of working with the original house, which is not square.

We got a little taste of the future this weekend when he installed some temporary stairs to the back door. Found some construction stairs at Second Use and used some of our credit there to hook us up, and now we can enter one of our doors the old-fashioned way.  

  
Huck did get one encouraging piece though– this little hole in the wall was made for future fuzzy buddies.