Dinner is not ready yet!

We'll start with the kitchen, drywall has been hung with the help of some friends and the missionaries from the church. (Here I am working with Elder White)

Chris did the mud and tape, so it is almost ready to be painted.

Space is at a premium in this small kitchen so we created a small storage space above the pantry. When we took down the lath and plaster, there was a vacant cavity so we decided that it would be a great storage area. However, we will need a ladder to reach it.

These are not eyes in the wall. The description of the house and its construction that was made with the blueprints talks about "speaking tubes" or a historic intercom system in my words. We found these speaking tubes in the kitchen and decided to preserve them. However, we do not have the porcelain mouthpieces that were attached to them. (We have found similar tubes in the servant's room and in the upstair's bathroom.)

The story of the birds and the bats

Okay, what's up with the wildlife here. A friend told us that we would have "Missouri Moments" living with the wildlife, and so we have. When we got back from our short trip, late Monday evening around sevenish, I opened the basement door and to my surprise, I discovered a bat flying around in the basement. It managed to escape. (As of today I still don't know where it is hiding). Then we replaced a window in the tower bedroom, which meant that I removed the window and the casing. Chris was vacuuming out the mortar and rotten wood when she found what appeared to be a small piece of wood. So, she tried to vacuum up the wood until she noticed that it had a face and started to move, yes it was a bat. A few days later I discovered a bird flying around in the attic tower. I thought that the birds and bats were supposed to leave for the winter. However, they seem to like our house, as well as the flies and Asian beetles (which we thought were ladybugs).

Oh the weather outside is frightful, but the furnace is so delightful

After an absence of a couple weeks, we are back. We had a little vacation to attend a wedding in Utah for one of our sons, and then off to Washington state to visit a son and daughter and two grandkids, a nephew and niece, followed by a visit of parents and siblings in Idaho. So now the weather is getting cold, but Botts and Tye of Chillicothe worked on the heating in our absence. So here is the finished product.

With custom-built ductwork.

And a large heat pump.

We have heat, but it will take a minimum of two units and possibly three to completely heat the house, so we opted on one unit at a time. The downside to all this is I haven't sealed all the holes in the windows and other areas, so we may be the only house in Trenton that has no snow in the yard when it starts snowing since we may be heating the outside until all the leaks are sealed. It is nice to have some heat. Many thanks to Boots and Tye for their help and professionalism.