February 21: Barter System

During our inspection, the inspector told us that he wouldn't live in the house withot having the furnace taken care of. It hadn't been cleaned since 2001 and showed it. This did concern us so we got a new filter and a carbon monoxide detector immediately after taking possession. I was telling one of my directors about this and she said she knew someone who could look at it for us... her husband! He is HVAC certified and could at least clean it for us and give us his opinion on how soon we should buy another one. Sweet.

I thought he might be able to clean our furnace, hook up our gas dryer, and run a gas line for our new gas stove all in one day. Ha ha ha. Well, I thought that since I didn't know how much work would be involved. He did clean our furnace which took quite a while because it was filthy. He had to buy some parts for our dryer hookup so he wasn't able to get to that. The stove would just have to be another day too. We were so thankful that he came over to work on our furnace. His prognosis wasn't too hopeful... That's okay, we can take care of that this fall. In exchange, we would babysit their two adorable little girls a couple of times... and give him beer. I love the barter system.

Other happenings of the day include: I finished scrubbing the master bathroom shower and scrubbed the basement shower. I also started priming the trim in the laundry room.

Nate finished taking all of the insulation out of the crawl space and helped Troy out with the furnace. After having the fireplace professionally cleaned, Nate started our first fire in the fireplace!

While shoveling snow, Nate talked to one of our neighbors he'd met when looking the place over before we bought it. He owns a carpet business and said he'd give us an estimate for the carpet we want. He beat Home Depot's price as well as two other's, so we found this to be a mutually beneficial relationship. Besides, it's nice to work with the smaller operations when possible, even though Home Depot is currently one of my favorite stores.