Nor'easter!

Okay, folks, here we go again. It totally wouldn't be Saturday if it weren't precipitating some kind of record-breaking stuff from the sky! And of course, it's always right after a crucial step in the construction process. This time it's snow from a nor'easter that's supposed to dump up to 18 inches right into my living room. Even though the builders said it's "no problem at all" to have a foot and a half of snow sitting on our decking, we just weren't comfortable with the idea of it.


Besides,we like to keep John amused by giving him something to smile about each day, so this is for him.


By the time we got to the farm, there was already an inch of snow on the plywood. Luckily it was very dry and powdery, so it blew right off, and the wood was still fairly dry. After blowing off the snow we anchored a 20X40 tarp that we got early this morning at Harbor Freight (thanks for the tip, John) with bungee cords, skids, spare framing lumber and pieces of block. Maybe we're being worry warts--what else is new?--but it's our house, and we don't want it to get saturated with snow. This oughta do the job.


When we got there this stack of wood looked like this:


So we stapled plastic on it to protect it.


Tomorrow when the sun comes out again, we'll go down and try to get the snow off the framing and the tarp, remove the staples from the plastic on the stack of wood, and make sure the driveway is cleared so the guys can get right to work on Monday. We don't want them to have to spend any time on extra-curricular activities so they can get as much done as possible this week. After all, there are only three work days before the Christmas break, and of course it's supposed to rain on Christmas Eve and Day.

Keith checked out the main sewer pipe under the demo trash from the old porch. He had planned to disconnect the toilet and plug that PVC pipe so it wouldn't break and let stuff fall into the septic pipe when the porch came down. But they did it this week without notice, so he didn't get to take care of it. So of course the PVC elbow coming from the toilet broke down below ground level, and all kinds of junk and soil had fallen in. He dug the soil away from the pipe to expose it, then scooped out the large pieces of debris and vacuumed out the soil.


Then he plugged the hole with rags that he taped so they don't fall in, and covered it with a bucket to mark it. Probably the plumber was going to replace that connection to the cast iron pipe anyway, but now it definitely can't just be capped and left in place. Just to be clear here, I did mention that we're worry warts--right?