Good morning, Everyone!

I noticed that it was April 11 since my last post.  Life has certainly taken a shift into high gear around here.  A lot has happened.  Dennis and I were supposed to take a long-awaited trip together.  Unfortunately the farm sitters and lamb sitters did not come through so I went alone, as usual, and Dennis stayed to feed sheep, dogs and lambs.  I shortened the trip to two nights away.  It is funny the way things work.  I had to go to Prince George to the specialist there.  Of course, when one lives in the back of beyond, one tries to take advantage of any distance one must travel, and turn necessity into pleasure.  Since I had driven the 3 hours to Prince George, I thought why not go another couple of hours to Williams Lake to see daughter Rebecca and family?  So off to Williams Lake I went.  It was a good trip and caught me up with all the news that CBC Radio One can offer.  The next morning I drove to Ashcroft to see a heritage house that we are interested in buying.  Yes, we are thinking of selling the farm and moving to Ashcroft.  Here are a few pictures of this beautiful house:

I would LOVE to live there.  Unfortunately the route to get there includes selling the farm, the livestock and all the equipment.  It would be a complete lifestyle change.  The other option would be to subdivide the waterfront and house and approximately 4 acres off the farm, sell the waterfront and house and keep the main part of the farm to the north of the road.  That, of course, will take eons of time, by which time this lovely house will be sold.  I fear my dreams of living in a community are not yet to be fulfilled.

So, back to reality.  We have been renovating our tv room in the basement.  When we first moved to this house 10 years ago, we hired a "builder" to build a room in the basement for tv watching.  He slapped together a weird room, dark and ugly and charged us an exorbitant amount of money.  I hated the room from the start and grew to hate it even more when outside excavation during the building of the deck caused water to seep in and destroyed the carpet - twice!  We finally hired our go-to man, John Plesko, to get the job done right.  He moved ducting, lifted pipes, moved walls and doors.  He even found a drain that was sloping the wrong way (done by the other guy) which caused my kitchen sink to drain slowly.  Here are a few pictures of the work in progress:

 The start of the ripping down the old room.  Some of the spots you see are on the camera lens.

 The door you see above will be moved to the left of the large post.  There was also access to a closet under the stairs in the original tv room.  That door was moved to outside the tv room.

 The little window you see in this picture was installed the first day.  The original room had no window.  John installed the window first so he could put his fan in the window to blow out any dust and debris, preventing it from coming back into the house.

 You can see the drain pipe that he has elbowed to run under the window here.  That was the pipe that originally sloped away from the central drain.

 He has teed in a drain for a future toilet and a future sink drain is teed in above.  Good thinking so we don't have to tear out walls to access the pipes.There will be pipe access but it will be tight so we thought it a good idea to do it now.

 He cut all those drain pipes you see here and shortened them by 2 inches then put them all up again.  That was certainly a feat of coordination to fit them all together all at once, by himself!

Here are a few pictures of the finished product.  You can see I still have the plastic on the foot rests of the couch!  We don't have the tv moved back in yet but I wanted to show you an idea of how nice the room looks now.  We have not finished sorting the seepage problem outside yet, but we know what to do and will have that complete this summer.

I have yet to get dimmer switches for the sconces.  The dark marks you see are on the camera lens.  I really do need a new one!  The tv will go under the window and the sound system components will likely go to the left, in front of the small bump out there.  That is where the septic pipes are so we had to have a small notch in the room.  The window will provide fresh air circulation and you will notice to the left of the left wall sconce there is a heat register.  The previous room had no heat.  The room is insulated all around it to prevent sound from travelling through the house.  I am very, very happy with my new tv room!

Another part of this renovation involved setting up a water coil in the wood furnace and a holding tank for that water.  We looked at doing it ourselves but it is a rather complicated affair.  We tasked John with the project and, true to form, he did an incredibly terrific job! Here is what it looks like now:

 Here's how it works:  the cold water goes into the top of the pre-heat tank.  It comes out the bottom and goes into the furnace, through the water coil then comes out the top pipe back into the top of the pre-heat tank (top copper pipe).  When the hot water tap is opened, the water then comes out the very top of the pre-heat tank and into the hot water tank that has the electric elements within.  The back tank you see here is the actual hot water tank.  The electricity comes on to keep the tank at the correct temperature.  It should come on a lot less now. Even without the furnace on, the water will go through the first tank prior to going into the hot water tank.  It will allow the icy cold lake water to come to room temperature prior to being heated.  Again, it should save on electricity use.

The white pipe going into the floor drain is to accommodate any over-heating which may occur when the furnace is raging in the colder months of winter.  It likely won't happen but John did that to quell my fears of having scalding water shooting through the house!  At any rate, our electric bill should be reduced significantly, especially in the winter, when hot baths are a necessity at the end of the day!

bye for now.