Thursday June 29th in the Basement

The basement is apparently where all the wiring in the house goes to die. There were so many wires hanging from the rafters, intertwined with so SO many cobwebs, it was hard to determine what was what. As the years went by, and new wiring was introduced, the previous owners never removed old wiring, they just disconnected the old and left it there alongside the new.

The below is a terrible photo, but it gives you an idea of the cobweb situation.

Matt and his friend Ron worked from 9 until 3pm, solving wiring mysteries. They would just choose a wire and follow it to its source. More than not, there was no source, just a cut wire, or a dead end of some sort. These they pulled and put into a huge pile on the floor. Kara worked alongside them all morning with the wet/dry vac, just sucking up cobwebs! They succeeded in connecting all of the basement lights, and disconnecting everything above that. Slowly they'll work toward re-connecting the well, replacing the main, and then get everything else back on line.

At some point these big oil drums will need to be cut out and removed from the basement - that's going to be a tough job, but will open up a neat little alcove.

It was a hot day, but the guys kept cool down there! I kept busy preparing for yet another rehearsal, as well as washing another wall (this time with a product new to me called Dirtex, that's supposed to be better for walls than PineSol, as it leaves no residue and is pretty hard on dirt), running to get people food and watching Kara remove some more flooring, which will get its own post.

Another thing that will happen in the basement, is a new pole. Right now the posts holding up the floor above in some areas are actual tree trunks! But the floor is sagging in the kitchen above, so what Matt will do is dig a hole, fill it with cement, and then place this metal pole atop it, and secure it to the beam above. The pole has a handle on the side, and every week or so, Matt will give the handle (or crank?) a full turn, raising the pole a bit. He plans to raise the floor above about 3 inches. This affects our timeline for painting, and for window installation, because everything is going to be affected by the floor being raised. We will have to give the walls time to settle, and then we can patch cracks in the walls and install windows.