Jeff and Jeanne

Today was “Black Friday”.  While we don’t normally go out into that chaos, we did make a trip to Art Van and Potters (local lighting store).  At Art Van we ordered a new table and chairs.  a nice round table with 6 chairs was on sale today.  While they were out of stock we were able to order it at the sale price.  We just have to wait until mid February.

But that wasn’t the old, and only part of the new.

  The old was this awful, ugly, cheap looking chandelier that was in our eating area.  It’s as bad as it looks.  It’s plastic made to look like brass.  Even the “crystals” are plastic.

   The new is this nice new brushed nickel chandelier.  It’s an early Christmas present from Jeanne’s Mom.  It’s so much nicer.  We love it.  We also picked up matching pendant lights for over the kitchen sink.  Those will go up shortly.  We need to figure out what to do with the bulkhead over the sink.  It’ll be some demolition, painting and wiring.  Hopefully we can get to that soon!

So far, the ’07 deer season is a bust!  Well, almost.  Josh did get a spike opening morning.  There has just been very little activity around the farm.  I talked to Mom today and she said Dad, Jason and Josh went out today and saw nothing.  I think they’re planning on going out again tomorrow.

So, with seeing no deer, I was able to take some pictures.  If you browse through them, you can see what happens when you get board in the deer stand. 

Yes, I cut holes in my house! But that’s ok, it’s our house!

So, why was I cutting holes in the house? Well, to get some extra air to the furnace for the second floor. It was recommended by the house inspector. Yeah, I know that was almost 5 months ago, but why bother with working on the heat until the heat is needed? We were also noticing a minor gas odor after the furnace had run. It doesn’t run much, because we are keeping the upstairs temp down around 50°F to 60°F.

So, here’s the offending furnace. Since we’re not using the upstairs right now, he just runs enough to keep the pipes from freezing, and the occasional use of the upstairs bathroom.

The duct needed to run from the closet the furnace is in, to the room in the garage where the water heater for the upstairs is. Then out the side of the house in the general area of the patio.

So, we got two fresh air vents and a length of 4″ flexible tubing and started cutting holes. The first one in the closet. That one was easy. And no siding was involved. If I missed, the worst I’d have to do is patch some drywall. After some measuring, measuring, and more measuring, I cut the hole in the side of the house. Right where I wanted it. I added the vents, both inside  and out. On the outside vent I used a liberal amount of silicone to keep it from leaking. I also added a piece of window screen behind the louvered vent to keep the bugs out. Here’s what it looks like on the inside.

After that, it was just a matter of connecting the two with the flex tubing. That was it.

Now, hopefully, it will take care of the gas odor. We’ll see. You can see all of the pics by clicking here.

Update 10/13/2007 - Well, while it does pull a lot of air when the main burner is on, but, the smell is still there. It might not be as noticeable, but it is still there. I’m not sure what the next step will be.

We had a big weekend. I had a huge project, a small project and a big project.

The huge project was cleaning up the leaves. From about 1 pm to 6pm on Saturday we picked up leaves. The front yard was easy. It took less then an hour. I basically just had to mow it with the bagger on. The back yard was a different story. We used the mower, blower/vac (as a vac) and rakes. Even with the mulching of the mower and vac, we still filled two 32 gallon garbage cans and eleven 30 gallon lawn and leaf bags! I think I still hurt!

The small project was getting a under-cabinet tv and putting it up in the kitchen. Saturday morning while I was making coffee, I kicked on the tv we had on the counter and started to flip through channels and it went black. No picture no sound. DEAD. I even opened it up and checked the fuses. No luck. So, after a trip around town to find the tv we were looking for, we found it at Meijer. 7″ lcd under-cabinet mount. And it only took a few minutes to install. I just had to drill 4 holes. I think it took longer to clear out the cupboard.

On to the big project. Ok, so it wasn’t a real big project, but it did involve cutting holes in the house! More on that later.