Icetown

We've made it through the worst ice storm in Springfield in the last 20 years, maybe even worst in history. The roads were never very bad, but the tree damage was so severe that 75,000 customers lost power. We were lucky enough not to lose power for more than 10 minutes all weekend. The street behind us is out. Oddly enough our other house downtown hasn't lost power yet. The photos above show the damage caused by the ice at that house. The only house damage so far is a small section of gutter that was knocked off the house. We were lucky! As of today power is still out for 25,000 customers/households. They expect some to still be out through the end of the week, and it is cold–21 degrees today. The ice is even thicker just a few minutes north of Springfield in Willard and along I-44. Think 3/4 inch on the top of each branch. Not circumference, radius! Needless to say, the plumbing work has been postponed on the new/old house. You can't even drive all the way up the driveway. I think the trees at that house will live, but they won't be pretty. Some large trees in the area were uprooted or split flat into many pieces with a stump sticking up in the middle. Pretty surreal.
We are fine and Andrew doesn't know anything is wrong other than that Mommy is off another week of school. Missouri State canceled classes today. They are using one of the old arenas as a special needs shelter for city residents. Ken (my father in law) said it is a mess. One very overweight man broke a toilet by sitting on it. Luckily Jenny's parents didn't lose power either. People are buying generators for upwards of $2,000. Gas and kerosene are running out all over town and lines at all hardware and convenience stores are out the door and winding around the parking lots.
We are a very blessed family to have made it this long through the disaster!

plumb crazy

The plumber is almost done repiping the horizontal pipes in the basement with this plastic "Pex" piping. Apparently it is all the rage in the plumbing world. If the pipes freeze, they won't burst because it expands a little. I bought a 50 gallon water heater for him to install and it was an ordeal just to get it from the store to the house because I had to borrow a pickup. He should put that in and a 3/4 horsepower garbage disposal on Monday. The water pressure looks good! We need to get a new shower head though because the old one is really rusty. The water shoots out really fast without the head on though!

He snaked the sewer and finally got the root cutter to go all the way through to the main line 3 times. He had trouble getting the video camera through and said it is just too blocked. He definitely recommends abandoning the old line and rerouting around the garage with new pipes. He'll give me an estimate Monday – if he can still work in an ice storm! I have Monday off for MLK Jr. Day. It will be really expensive to do I'm sure so we may have to put off one of our other projects. Or see how long we can live without a sewer!
I'll get photos of the house up soon.

Jan 9 update

Just a little update on our house progress:
I arranged for the plumbers (Delong Plumbing) to start repiping the house at 1012 S. Fremont for this Thursday. If all goes to plan they should be done Friday sometime.

I met a wallpaper remover this morning at the house and he estimated the removal for the whole house to be $1800–$2000 for 75 hours of work. He charged by the hour so I should probably ask for a reference or two. This guy doesn't mud the walls afterward, so I'd have to get someone to do that. The other wall guy I talked to charges by the amount of paper removed and he does the mudding too, so I'll have to figure out what would be better. Any suggestions? I'd like to get the walls stripped before we do the floors.

New (old) house remodeling started

We are moving! Not real soon, but work has started on the basic remodeling of Jenny's Grandma's old house. Dorothy moved to an apartment in Springfield after living more than 50 years in her 1918 Craftsman style home. Now the Montgomery's are moving in. It's nice to keep it in the family. Jenny's grandpa built the detached two-car garage in the back yard many years ago. I painted it for Dorothy while I was in college. Jenny's dad and his siblings have their names in the cement from when they added a back room in the 60s. My brother Jeffrey and I have both worked in the yard many times. A lot of history!

We are excited about the neighborhood (a few blocks from Missouri State University) and neighbors we already know. There are several remodeling things we would like to do before we move in to make it more comfortable for our little (growing) family. For instance, the plumbing needs to be replaced in the basement, bigger water heater, garbage disposal, sewer worked on. We want to remove all the wallpaper in the house, which is everywhere, and paint. We want to remove the carpet and clean up the wood floors underneath. We would also like to paint the kitchen cabinets and get new cabinet fixtures. This is the basic remodeling needed at first. Eventually we would like to add a bathroom and closet to the main floor and remodel the two other bathrooms and kitchen. We figure we'll be here a while so we'll be able to take our time with these large projects.

We plan to get our house on the market this month, so we'll see if we can keep it clean for a while. Having a baby changes everything!