The last 10 days at Salt Wall Lane have been very productive indeed. All the insulation is in and the interior is actually rather quiet. But last weekend we had some real noise. We had some folks Kel found on craigslist.com come up from Sudbury and in exchange for the dirty job of removing our 250 gallon oil tank, they got to siphon our 60 gallons. It was a filthy job and ended up taking them near 4 hours from the time they arrived (1.5 hrs. late) until the time they packed up their hoses and trailer and bounded off into the night. They left quite a mess and the house smelled of heating oil for a few days, but it was a relief to get that thing out of there. I am pretty excited to have two separate units in the house all gas and electric powered. We have a unit in the attic that handles the upstairs climate and another in the basement which handles the first level. The cost of having a much more comfortable house should be worth it, yet still save us some money in the long run.
Other progress that I didn’t participate much in, was the removal of the breezeway/mudroom/den door to the house. It has been opened up and will be a nice walkway into the kitchen with hopefully a lovely rounded set of wooden stairs. We also pulled off some more knotty pine paneling in the den and plan to add drywall in its place. So 3 of the 4 walls of this room will be drywall, leaving one accent wall with the pine paneling. No longer having the remote controlled side entry door from the breezeway to kitchen, we needed to replace the knobs and locks on the two front facing entry doors. Kel handled cutting the holes and installing the lever and deadbolt in the new breezeway door and I installed the new front door knob and deadbolt. We reconvened after both doors were functioning as intended and Kel brought to my attention that we had bought three locks with differing key codes. So it was back to Lowes to find three of the same locks with the same 6-digit tumbler codes. But not so fast I discovered…
Schlage locks had a pretty cool built-in technology. These days each lock or lever come with three keys. Two that match the lock and a third blue key. These blue keys serve as a master for that specific lock and allow owners to reset the tumblers inside the locks to sync all other doors that have blue keys to one set. I know it seems confusing and I was sure to ask the old guy at the home improvement store the question I have learned to be most valuable when doing these projects, “What can I do that will screw this up?” But here is the deal: you pick the lock you want to serve as your main key (in our case, the breezeway deadbolt) so I took the breezeway lever’s blue key, put it in the lever knob and turned it a quarter turn to the left and pulled it out. Then I took the breezeway deadbolt’s blue key and inserted it into the breezeway lever and turned it back to 12 o’clock and now the lever and the deadbolt were in sync with one key, the breezeway deadbolt. I followed this same trick with the front door and by inserting the front door’s blue key and turning it slightly to 10 o’clock, pulling it out and inserting breezeway’s blue key and turning back to 12 o’clock, the front door was synced to the breezeway deadbolt.
Tip: Only way to screw this up and lock up your tumblers and have a worthless lock is two not insert TWO blue keys back to back. People have been inserting blue key from Lock A and then immediately inserting regular key from Lock B and ruining the whole setup. So remember kids, always follow the first blue key with a second blue key. It’s that easy!
Oh, on another note, the exterior shutters arrived and Kel installed them on the siding. They were flat front black Builder’s Edge shutters from Home Depot. They look great on the front and side of the house. We plan to paint two main entry doors black to match and should be a nice contrast to the white accents and the slate blue siding. We also have moved the 20 year old, fully functioning refrigerator to the basement. Time to fill it up with a variety of ice cold libations.
Getting back to work…
Something that has been bothering me since the day we closed was the overgrown backyard and the odd vine trellis thing. I envision one day soon (next 6 months) having removed all of the chain link fencing and replacing with a 6-foot wooden privacy fence. Until I can save up for those materials and wait for the ground to defrost, I will slowly rip away all overgrown-ness and find a way to dispose of it (still considering trading in my Altima for a pickup of some sort, but that is a different discussion).
This Sunday I spent the morning leading up to the Rex Grossman Interception Clinic, sawing, digging, prying and all out attacking this vine fence. I finally won and it appears my backyard has doubled in size. Next weekend I take on the garden from hell. It has not been tended to for almost 10 years, so who knows what I will find. Hopefully it’s too cold for any brown recluses or any cottonmouths.
The sheet rock, cabinet re-facing and granite install happens this week, so the house and rooms should really start to resemble a normal living space. We. Are. Stoked.
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