Of Mussels, Raccoons, and a New Door

It has been a busy July with no signs of slowing down. Recently we had the in-laws stay a few nights and while they were here Lauren cooked up some mussels over the fire pit….Yum! Frank and Joan know about our episodes with critters around the house so we joked that they may get a visitor during the night while they slept. It almost happened. The day after they left we heard this “noise” up in the eave beside the guest bedroom. Armed with a flashlight and a stick I opened the door to this area of our house, looked up in the rafters and saw 4 baby raccoon faces staring down at me. They started moving once I disturbed them so by the time I got the camera I could only get a good picture of this one. To hopefully keep them away we turned on a light, turned on a sports radio talk show and put some ammonia in open bowls….so far, so good which just means…I don’t know where they are now.

I also installed a new insulated fiberglass side entry door to replace the old beat up wood door we had and we stained the deck. Just like putting a little lipstick on a pig. The door was good buy from Marden’s for $149. We also bought a new $8.50 door knob for it but it wasn’t making the grade so we ending up buying an $86.00 door knob that works ten times better, I guess.

I hope your July has been as nice as mine so far.

When One Thing Is Connected To Another

Last week when we installed our free granite step it did two things:

1) Make us appreciate our new step

2) Make us realize how bad our driveway and covered porch look

So this week we installed a new gravel driveway. We had a couple of tree stumps which had exposed themselves at the end of the driveway taken out and then Buster from Cross Excavation who plows our driveway in the winter came over and put down the gravel. Initially they dumped a truck load of stone dust mixed with some gravel and spread it around and thought that was what we wanted. I explained that our idea of gravel was different than this and the next morning when he arrived we showed him some pictures of nice gravel driveways that Lauren had pulled from the internet. Looking back we should have done this in the beginning but hey we’re young and still learning, right? So now Buster better understood what we wanted and he did right by us and hauled a few more truckloads of ¾” crushed stone and spent more than ½ of the day spreading it around.

Last spring we had two asphalt paving companies give us an estimate to pave the driveway and they came back with estimates between $6,700 and $8,000 and one of them did not include the tree stump removal. We were quoted $650 for this gravel job complete so I would say we made a good decision. That takes care of the driveway so now on to the covered porch.

How to Move a Large Granite Block (and install a free step)

When we bought this house the steps were a mix of large uneven stones which caused you to step up higher than you normally would and they looked like this:

We knew we had some larger pieces of Granite on site which were sort of symmetrical and decided we could use one of them to make a new step for free. The challenge was how do you move it from where it is to where you want it when you don’t have a bucket loader or backhoe? The answer is you need the following tools:

A big heavy duty crowbar (5 feet long and 18 pounds in weight)

Assorted rocks and blocks

A heavy duty wire cable with a hook on each end

Three steel pipes (all the same diameter is best)

Long wood planks

An Automobile

A cold beer

* I just need to mention here under the Principle that Desire Moves that I did not have the steel pipes I needed, but I KNEW that I could get them for free somehow. Sure enough my Mind’s Eye led me to the pipes I needed at the dump just one day before this project. There they were, just waiting for me in perfect condition and with no cutting required.

First assemble all the tools (excluding the beer) near the piece of granite. For those who have not had much experience using leverage you will learn fast. The longer your lever (crowbar) the easier you can lift heavy objects. Place a smaller stone or block about 4 to 5 inches high very close to the piece of granite and then put your crowbar between them getting the tip of the bar under the granite and then pull or push down on the smaller rock which is known as the fulcrum. Sorry if I’m sounding too technical here for such as Caveman job but I want to help educate fellow Cavemen and women when possible.

Once you get one end of the granite lifted have a helper (carefully) put some blocks under it and then wrap your cable around the granite and hook the other end to your car. If you have a trailer hitch good if not, attach it to the frame under the car. Next, lay one end of a wood plank under the granite and as the driver “very very slowly” moves forward, put the pipe pieces under the block of granite which will now roll along with such ease that you’ll feel like building a pyramid for your next project. As the last pipe rolls out the back of the granite block return it to the front. Turn the planks and the pipes in the direction you want it to go and with a little pushing or pulling she’ll make it to the destination. Our granite block was only 30 feet away from our step but we did have a small incline to get it over initially. It took Lauren and me less than 2 hours to complete the task start to finish and now we have a nice granite step for free. Oh yes, now it’s time for the beer.

Cooking with Gas

Amber and Tommie bought us a very nice Anniversary/Birthday gift in the form of an Amana gas cook stove. What a pleasure it is…not that I do the cooking, but it is just nice to see Lauren using a real cook stove instead of what she referred to as the “Easy-bake” oven she’s been working with for the last year.

Once the realization set in that we were not going to be able to “remodel the whole kitchen” worthy of a photo shoot in Better Homes and Gardens we’ve begun to make the kitchen “workable” and this cook stove takes it to a new level. It’s a funky kitchen to be sure but with this new addition it seems…well, wicked nice. Thanks Amber and Tommie.

Tommie helped me get the stove surround started. Our buddy Dennis from Community Energy installed the gas line and got the stove working. A few weekends later we have a finished product. What’s really nice about this design is that I can stand on the back side of the stove and very comfortably rest my arms on that shelf and watch Lauren cook. I used 2” x 6” framing for the surround which allowed for the built in shelving you see in the photos. Do you like the two little shelf brackets near the top? I thought it needed this finishing touch so I drew and cut them out on a piece of pine. The bead board wainscoting on the back side is actually solid pine tongue and groove plank paneling. The pieces are about 3 ½” wide but they are only ¼” thick. I had a plywood backing behind it to add strength and stability to the half wall so I just nailed the bead board to the plywood but if you’re going against sheetrock you will want to use something like “Liquid Nails” to install it. The plank paneling is easy to work with but because it is so thin you may find that at some of the knots you have a see-through hole. Because we were painting this I just filled the few holes with latex caulking but if you were going to stain or clear finish it you would want to use wood putty.

Leave a comment telling me what you would love to see Lauren cooking on the stove when you come for a visit. I’ll be providing the wine and a cheese ball.

We Are Wabi-Sabi

Thanks to my brother Erik and the subscription he gave me to the Mother Earth News I have just discovered something that makes me enjoy life even more. I can now find contentment and peace in everything I have and everything that surrounds me by engaging in Wabi-Sabi. What is Wabi-Sabi? I had never heard of this until I read an article in the current issue of the Mother Earth News last night written by Robyn Griggs Lawrence titled Wabi-Sabi: Finding the Beauty and Peace in Ordinary Things. To quote from the article “Wabi-Sabi is the Japanese philosophy of appreciating things that are imperfect, primitive and incomplete.” “It’s slow and uncluttered and regards authenticity above all.” “It finds beauty in cracks and crevices and all the marks that time, weather and use leave behind.” Well if that is the definition then I live in a Wabi-Sabi Mansion and the photos you see here may make you extremely envious.

Think for a moment of one of your favorite objects, a well worn but oh so comfortable sweater with holes, a piece of pottery or drawing your child gave you long ago, or a piece of furniture passed down from your grandparents with a few ding s and a knob or two missing. Dwell on it. It’s comfortable, it was made by someone you love, or it has history told by the scratches, water marks and a missing knob. You probably will never get this same feeling of appreciation by going to Wal-Mart or Target or wherever and buying a mass produced product fresh out of the perfectly packaged cardboard box. Wabi-Sabi is about appreciating old and used items, appreciating hand-made items, appreciating the imperfections that are life.

If you read the article on Wabi-Sabi in the Mother Earth News you’ll find a list of 12 Ways to Wabi-Sabi. It’s all good in my book and I do encourage you to read it because then you may find that you can accept things as-is, as good, just as they are right now and feel content about it.

Sure…I have plaster missing from my walls and ceiling…but it looks kind of neat and it has a certain warmth to it….and it makes me think of who actually did that work….and what it was like back then. I can get lost in the beauty of the imperfection and I believe that is what Wabi-Sabi is trying to say. Now I just have to convince Lauren.

Lots to be Thankful for.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. It’s a beautiful and sunny 28 degree day here in Bethel this morning. In just a few hours Lauren, me, and her parents Frank and Joan will be heading over to Rooster's Roadhouse to eat our Thanksgiving Day dinner. Lauren’s parents ate at Rooster’s Roadhouse last year on Thanksgiving Day when we were still out in California but after they knew we were going to buy this house we live in now. (They have a habit of scoping out the situation as soon as they know something is happening.) So last year they came across Rooster’s Roadhouse by chance and LOVED the meal they had. We heard about how good the meal was so many times from them that it has now become a joke….”You had a good Thanksgiving at Roosters? Really, tell us again, we’ve never heard that story before.”

It has been a busy November, TBTB…Too Busy to Blog. Just over a week ago we got our new washer and dryer installed and Lauren did the first load at the house. That was on Tuesday November 16th where I had Mike Field of Field Plumbing and Heating install the washer hookup and new drain. Then later that same afternoon Brian Strickland of Autumn Electric came over to install a new 220 volt line for the dryer and a 110 volt line for the washer. I had already installed the vent cowl for the dryer exhaust the previous weekend so by the time Lauren came home from working at her new job it was all systems go and ahead of schedule. So we are thankful for our new washer and dryer.

I’m also thankful for my new $5.00 thermometer I hung outside the kitchen window. I get to see just how cold it is every morning and I write the temperature down on the calendar. It has been a mild November so far with many mornings in the mid 40’s.

Now we’re going to go workout and swim at the Bethel Inn before we chow down our Turkey dinner. I hope everyone who reads this has something to be thankful for.

How to Remove a 248 Pound Cast Iron Tub - from the Second Floor - with Ease

Yesterday I decided it was the day to act. The goal was to get rid of the 248 pound cast iron tub located on the second floor. The other goal was not to pull a back muscle, give myself a hernia, or damage the stairs in the process. Like all big jobs sometimes the best thing to do is break the task down into smaller pieces, like 10 pound pieces. To do this the tools required were:
-Sledgehammer or Splitting Maul in my case
-Safety Goggles
-Ear plugs
-Three or four 5 gallon plastic buckets
Thankfully cast iron is a relatively soft metal and is easy to break apart. This task only took a little more than one hour including the clean up time. The five gallon plastic buckets made it easy to haul it down the stairs. We then drove it over to West Paris Metal Recycling where they unloaded, weighed it and then gave me a check for $21.08. It was a good day.

Doors

Recently we’ve been scraping and painting doors in our house. I actually love some of the doors in this house because they appear to have been so well built. The rails have tenons that fit perfectly into the chiseled mortises at the stiles of the door which are then pegged with wooden pins. They are solid and even though they show the wear and tear of everyday living over the many years they exude a sense of pride. I can imagine that patient carpenter or cabinetmaker working with a clear sense of purpose while building these doors, build it well, build it to last.

After scraping and sanding as much of the old paint off as I could they were ready to paint. One of the areas where “light has dawned on Marblehead” is that there really is a difference in paints. You would think I would have known this by now but I thought if you were paying $35.00 a gallon for Benjamin Moore “Premium” paint you were buying the good stuff. Wrong. Benjamin Moore has this paint for $50.00 a gallon which is the good stuff called “Aura” and despite the cost it is worth the extra $15.00 per gallon. We found that in the guest bedroom on the doors and trim it took one primer coat plus three “Premium” coats to fully cover the wood whereas I could get away with one primer coat and one “Aura” coat to fully cover this door. I guess the secret is better pigmentation and a higher percentage of solids in the paint which is the “stuff” that actually sticks to the surface. It sure does go on nice and spreads like butter. By the way, if you’re planning on painting in an area of higher humidity and wetness like a bathroom or laundry room Benjamin Moore has a special “Aura” Bath & Spa paint which provides a mildew resistant coating.

So in researching information on doors I came across the following factoid: The oldest door in England can be found in Westminster Abbey and dates from 1050. This got me to thinking; my doors are old but where is the oldest door in America? I couldn’t seem to find a straight answer to this question so believing the oldest door may be located on the oldest house I Googled “Where is the oldest house in America?” And the answer was: The Fairbanks House in Dedham, MA is thought to be the oldest standing timber frame building in North America. Built circa 1637-1641. http://www.fairbankshouse.org/index.html

A Fine Door

I would have guessed something nearer the coast like Plymouth, Salem or Ipswich but Dedham it is. Now that I heard about The Fairbanks House I’d really like to check it out. They have some really interesting photos on their website. If you have any experiences and opinions on good or bad paint please leave a comment. Thanks for stopping by.

Now for the Trim

Feeling New at 52

Happy Birthday Peter! Today’s my birthday, I’m 52 and for reasons that I think I know, I feel good.
I am feeling a real peacefulness now and it’s because I’m doing what I want to be doing and I am right where I want to be. I am feeling content and thankful for my situation.
Some of my family is doing well and some are struggling. I hope those who are struggling are able to find a way that makes it better.
There’s a special feeling that I get each time we accomplish something here in Maine. Early last week we had our first good rain because prior to that it had been snow. Well that rain pointed us to a leak we had in the roof and that leak happened to be directly above our heads in our bedroom. It was a bit depressing to be honest because we thought the bedroom and my office were the two rooms in the house that were “good enough” to move into without much work (except major cleaning) so when this leak started it was a bummer. It wasn’t a major leak but not certainly one you could sleep through unless you like Chinese water torture. It had only managed to drip on one pillow by the time we noticed it. Fortunately the next day was sunny so I went to Western Maine Supply (my life-line) and purchased a gallon of roof patch tar. I climbed up on the roof, straddled the ridge, made it to the front chimney which is where the leak appeared to be coming from and noticed plenty of gaps for water between the chimney, flashing, and roof shingles. So for the next hour or so I used the whole gallon around the two chimneys we have. Today it was raining all day and I’m happy to announce No Leaks! That’s the special feeling I’m talking about.
Last Thursday Amber, Tommie and Maya came for a two night visit. They were our very first sleep over guests but the catch was they had to bring their own beds. It worked out well except I think it took Tommie some getting used to the lack of a bathroom door on the first floor and the lack of a complete floor on the second floor bathroom. At the moment if you’re sitting on the toilet you can look to your left under the tub and see down to the first floor which of course means if you’re on the first floor you can look up to the toilet. So yes, total bathroom privacy is still an issue here but we’ll fix that.
Amber and Tommie helped Lauren paint the kitchen while they were here and though it’s not quite done it is looking really good. Thanks for your help.
While they were painting I went out to the yard and started cutting down a few trees with my new Husqvarna Chain Saw that I bought at Lowell’s Saw Shop in Bethel. I don’t have many trees on the property but we wanted to clear out around the edge of the lot where the stone wall runs so we could get some more sunlight and have the stone wall stand out better. It felt good to cut down the trees and gather up the brush. I love trees but we happen to be surrounded by them. Last night Lauren and I went to Sud’s Pub and had a Baked Haddock dinner for our birthdays and then Lisa the bartender brought us out a nice piece of chocolate cake with a candle on it. 52 is good.

The First Meal

Today is our official 1 month celebration of living in this house and we have lots that we’ve accomplished. One big accomplishment was having our first dinner guests for a sit down meal. My sister Anna, Doug, and their daughters Helen and Ella came for a visit last Saturday and were our very first dinner guests. This is yet another example of how Desire Moves because Lauren had a strong vision of having family over for some homemade beef stew served in blue bowls and on red plates around a big table in the dining room here in Maine and… it happened! Lauren bought the bowls and plates at Crate and Barrel in California with a gift certificate that some of her friends had given her from work as a going away gift. Doug helped me bring in the dining room table from the barn to set it up and minutes later we were having our first meal. The beef stew was delicious as Lauren had the beef slow cooking in a Crock Pot from the night before and pre-roasted the vegetables before adding them in near the time of eating for a great texture and taste. Served with hot bread, butter and beer it was Delishio! Nice job Lauren.

We have been doing so many little projects that I’m starting to lose track of what was done. We’ve cut doors to make them fit better, primed and painted the kitchen ceiling, painted the bathroom floor, installed two new sets of accent lighting in the kitchen which required installing junction boxes and we put in a new countertop in one section of the kitchen to make it clean and workable. For the counter we used ¼ inch birch plywood and then put three coats of Good Stuff on it which makes it a food safe surface. Good Stuff is more like a paste then a poly-urethane so you apply it with a rag versus a brush. To be honest, I don’t know how this can be food safe because you need to have ventilation when you apply it, you’re supposed to avoid eye and skin contact and it ate through the fingertips of the latex glove I had on. The pictures above show how the kitchen looked when we bought the place and then how it looks now. We’re calling this temporary because we have plans (in our mind) to really re-do it nicely when we have the money (in our pocket).

I also started to cut some of the limbs on the pine trees in our yard which I’ll be cutting down to allow for more sunlight and it will also make the yard look bigger and our stone wall will be more noticeable. There’s also a fair amount of bamboo I have to get rid of. It’s not the nice tall bamboo that Panda Bears eat. It’s about 4 to 5 feet high and from everything we can tell and from everyone we’ve talked to this could be a real challenge.

Finally I need to talk about “noises in the night.” When we moved into the place we replaced and installed a bunch of new smoke alarms. To be exact five new smoke alarms and one carbon-monoxide alarm and they are all battery operated. About a week ago at 3:05 AM one of them went off. It only beeped once but it was loud and one beep was all I needed to bolt out of bed to see if the place is on fire. I couldn’t smell smoke or see flames upstairs so I ran down stairs and checked out all the rooms and the basement. Nothing, no smoke, no flames, just one loud beep. I chalked it up to weird smoke alarm behavior and eventually went back to sleep.

Three nights ago at 5:15 AM Lauren and I both woke up to this sort of high pitched squeaking sound. I jumped out of bed to try to figure it out. What was it and where is it coming from? At first it sounded to me like a bird had somehow gotten into the house and was now flying around frantically trying to get out. But as I searched around the sound had stopped and I was stumped. So I went to the bathroom, because I usually do that anyway once a night and heard the noise nearby again. With my flashlight in hand I aimed it at the noise just in time to see the tail end of a mouse scuttle under some boards in the floor. I told Lauren what our noise was and she laughed saying something like “Oh brother…. a raccoon, mud, and now a mouse. So first thing in the morning I went to Western Maine Supply and came back with eight mouse traps. I smeared peanut butter on all of them and set three in the basement, three near the area where I saw the mouse and two in the ell to the barn. I felt confident I would have one by the next morning but when I woke and checked all the traps, nothing. Mmmm?

Oh well… we went to Portland today and had lunch with Amber and Tommie and to give Amber “The Pickle” which is the green van we have borrowed from Lauren’s parents for the last two months to take back to Gloucester. Of course it was nice to see them…because it always is. We ate at Gilbert’s Chowder House having some seafood and chowder. Speaking only for myself I’ll give it 3.5 out of 5 Lobster Claws…Sorry Gilbert….the chowder was too cool to begin with and the clam cakes were…eh…okay but not great. Your waitress was very nice though.
We made it back home about 5:30 tonight and lo and behold… I got one. Sorry Mr. Mouse but the trap I had set pretty close to where I saw him was too much temptation. It must have snapped perfectly and then it fell eight feet down hitting the bathroom floor landing just one foot away from the toilet. Can you imagine….? Oh well, never mind. Here’s to one month of living in Bethel and more adventures! Thanks for checking in.

I SPENT THE DAY ON THE ISLAND

The nice thing about owning a home that has soooo many projects to work on is that when I wake up in the morning I’m not exactly 100% sure of which one I will tackle and what I will accomplish. Well today I spent most of the day on the island. In our kitchen we “had” an island that was, shall we say “custom-built” and which was a little oversized given the space of the kitchen. Lauren said it was like having a Mini-Cooper parked in your kitchen and I have to agree with her. So with hammer and reciprocating saw in hand and safety goggles for my eyes I began to demolish the sucker. It was satisfying de-construction and I’ll reuse the butcher block top for a future work bench and some of the plywood to patch up part of the barn. The rest of it made it to the transfer station before it closed today but not before I had a tasty pork burrito at Hot Taco topped with a little Hula Girl Chipotle Habanero Sauce…mmmm...baby!

It Feels like Home

We did it! We moved into our house a week ago today and have had seven days of house projects and seven nights of warm comfortable sleep. Our biggest surprise and delight is just how warm this house is. We never turn the thermostats higher than 68 degrees and it always seems to be warm. In fact I think I probably made a $5,000 mistake by putting baseboard heat on the second floor because it has never come on until we finally forced it to come on last night for the first time. We’ll set the thermostat to 62 degrees at night on the first floor and the second floor seems to stay at 67 degrees with the rise of the heat. Oh well another lesson learned.
It was a busy week and although I can’t show you anything as impressive as a new heating system we did accomplish a lot of little things and that is what we “need” to do because this house has a thousand little things that need to be done. First we got our new FRIGIDAIRE Refrigerator delivered to the house. It has an EnergyStar approval and averages only $41 an year in cost, yay…go green! Because we bought it at Agren Appliance in South Paris, Maine we got a free DVD player and they’re taking care of the $100 rebate we receive. I have to side step here for one moment to acknowledge my memory of Annie Van Ness, Lauren’s Grandmother who always called any refrigerator, no matter what make, “the Frigidaire.”
Another important item we had installed was the Cable Internet and TV Service from Time Warner Cable because….well like everyone else in the US that’s the only choice we had. Oh yeah, I could get Satellite or I could string together some coffee cans and stick an aluminum pie plate on my roof. Whatever happened to free TV? Yes we have “choice”; Pay or… stay in the Dark Ages. I apologize, I digressed.
Let’s see, we got our bedroom set up and we have my office space functional. We found the curtains we were looking for so now we have curtains in the bedroom instead of a bedspread hanging over them. I replaced some old broken floor boards in the first floor bathroom and enclosed one of the two doors in it so we had sensible place to put “The Frigidaire” (yes, we put it on the other side of the bathroom). I replaced some of the old smoke alarms with new ones and installed an extra one. I insulated many of the gaps and cracks in the basement foundation with fiberglass insulation and GREAT STUFF Expanding Foam Insulation. When you can see daylight between some of the granite rocks you know you need to fill it. I removed the old stovetop and oven and will haul that to the dump later today.
Lauren is a cleaning and painting machine. There are multiple layers of dirt, grease, crud, and grime on every surface area in the house and armed with TSP and DAWN Liquid Detergent she is cleaning, scrubbing, re-cleaning and then painting. Until we can get to the point where we can actually remodel the kitchen and bath we’re just trying to get it to “clean and bearable”. She’s doing a great job. Lauren also seems to like going to the hardware store as much as I do. That’s a picture of her in front of Western Maine Supply taken yesterday just as the snow started to come in. I think she likes some of the recognition she gets from the guys coming into the store. Hey, if it puts a smile on her face…it’s okay.
It wasn’t all work and no play last week. Lauren had three of her longtime friends, Mary, Mona, and Cindy come up for a visit from Gloucester on Tuesday. I got to hang out with them that night where we had a nice supper and then went to Sud’s Pub for a drink and where Scott the bartender commented on my “Harem”. After that it was over to the Funky Red Barn where we played a game of pool and there were only two other guys there but Mary knew them because they were from Gloucester too. It’s a small world.
On Friday we went out to dinner with Susie and Gary who we had rented an apartment from in their house for the month we were here while waiting for our heat to be installed. We stayed a little more than a month so instead of charging us they said “take us out for dinner and we’ll call it even”. So we went to the Jolly Drayman at the Briar Lea Inn which is an English style Pub and had a wonderful dinner and wonderful time. Gary actually bought the Briar Lea years ago when it was just an old farmhouse and turned it into an Inn by installing ten bathrooms and a ton of other work so we now know a lot about the history and evolution of the place.
Well it’s Sunday and I’ve got work to do. I have to go to the dump for starters. The other picture above is the scene from our bedroom window this morning. Thanks for checking in and hope you are all well! Peter

You Can’t Beat the Heat

Today was a momentous occasion. It is the day we finally got heat and running water in our house. Check out the photo of our new heating system. It’s a tank less NTI gas burner heat and hot water system that is barely bigger than a bread box. Had I not seen one live and in action I would not believe something this small could provide all our heat for 2 floors AND our basement AND all our hot water needs AND another zone all ready for when we expand to make more living space in the back of the house. I want to thank Roger and the crew at Community Energy who did the work; John, Gary, Dennis, Mike and Keith and any others who I missed. This system had the house temperature from below freezing to 65 degrees within a couple of hours. Lauren got right to work with the hot water mopping up the layers of dirt, dust, and grime that had managed to accumulate over the past year or so while I started to tighten up the place with more insulation in needed spots and trimming doors so they could actually close. Our plan is to clean up and prepare a little more tomorrow and then move in lock, stock, and barrel on Sunday. Don’t look for our house in Better Homes and Gardens yet. We’ll be living with broken plaster and half built walls for awhile taking on as many projects as we can at a time. But that’s okay because this is what we chose to do and I’m loving every time I swing the hammer.

Desire Moves – Part 2

Last night marked the end of one long journey and the beginning of a new one. Yesterday we rolled into Bethel, Maine after leaving San Diego seven days and 3,442 miles ago. Luckily I was able to line up a couple of locals (Tim and Walt) to help me unload the truck of all our personal belongings. They were great and in a little more than 2 hours we had the whole truck empty.

Now the next phase of fun begins. The first thing I noticed in the house was our brand new 200 amp electrical service was installed replacing the old rusted out 100 amp service. We have lots of available spaces now to add circuits for when we begin to add new lights and outlets in the house, shed and barn.

We have one minor; no make that two minor items preventing us from moving in the house right now. That would be heat and water. I spoke to the heating guy today and he said he may be able to start later this week. In the meantime Lauren and I need to find a place to stay. Right now we’re staying at the Bethel Village Inn aka Ruthie’s which is a very nice, convenient and affordable motel on Main Street in the center of town. The picture above is from our motel room looking toward Gould Academy taken this morning. (Note our now empty Penske Truck). We know that the heat and other stuff we need to do at the house may take a while and that Mr. Murphy (of Murphy’s Law) always shows up at a construction project making it longer than expected. Because of this we are looking at renting an apartment with a kitchen while we get some of this work done. We have a lead on a place and have an appointment to see it tomorrow morning. It’s all good. It’s all Desire.