Move In Day

 Move in day was November 13, 2009. There were some issues that I wanted to address immediately.

The brick wall around the lower level was literally falling off the house. There was a gap between the brick and the house that was several inches wide in some spots. I couldn't have water and snow getting behind there. There had been a few half-hearted attempts to repair this over the years, with black caulk; by the time I took over, it was a real mess.

 The pool had to be drained, for insurance purposes. By the looks of the thing, no one had maintained it in years.

The roof leaked around the chimney, causing water to come into the Master Closet and the walled off chimney area. The roof also had some spots where there was a significant amount of mold/lichen growing on the shingles.

The furnace was an antiquated beast. This was probably the original furnace from the 1970's!

 The windows and exterior doors were all very old. The windows had wooden frames, and many of them were rotten. Some of them were single pane windows.

 The only way that I could conceive of to get all of these things handled reasonably quickly was to hire a contractor. Had it been Summer, I likely would have tackled some of them myself, but it simply couldn't wait. I hired a local contractor that I had some repoire with; AGW Contracting LLC, based out of Plover, WI.

They were able to get to work for me starting in mid-December. The work lasted through mid-January. The next few blog posts here will be dedicated to the many things they handled for me.

I took care of the pool myself, I'll also show you how that went.