After another short break, we’re back to work on the house and beginning to feel like we might actually be making some progress.  With some subtle changes in the weather lately, getting out of the 5th-wheel and into the house is taking on a new sense of urgency.  The mornings are still clear and warm and the afternoons are still bringing rain and thunderstorms, but there’s a bit more chill in the air and the trees are starting to show their fall colors.  Winter may not be far off.

Sandi and I made a quick trip back to Washington to attend our daughter’s wedding and wrap things up with our house there.  I had no idea that we had so much stuff that the 26 foot U-haul and my utility trailer wouldn’t be enough, but with the camper shell on my pickup and a 12 foot, enclosed trailer, we managed to get just about everything that was left.  Thanks to some great friends and a couple of our kids, the few things we left behind either found new homes or ended up at the dump, and the house is ready for it’s new owners.  This trip back was completely issue-free; no lost pets, no washed-out driveway, and no tow-truck bills.  Sandi’s sister and brother-in-law both recently retired, so they followed us down to see our adventure first hand and help us out a bit.

The Digger Guy saga continues.  When we left for Washington, he had brought his equipment to the property and was going to get started the next day, promising we would have an operating septic system by the time we returned.  We had barely gotten on the road that morning when he sent us a message asking for some money up front for the purchase of the tank.  Fortunately, we hadn’t gone too far and we were able to meet with him and get him taken care of.  When we returned a week and a half later, I was glad to see the progress he’d made, but I wasn’t terribly surprised to see that he wasn’t finished as we had hoped.

The old tank has been collapsed and filled, the new hole has been dug just down the slope, and the new tank has been set into place.  It still needs to be connected and buried, but surprising absolutely no one, we’ve hit a new snag.  When he came out to finish the job, the bearings went out on the excavator.  He contacted a machinist friend in Texas who crafted new bearings for him, but they didn’t arrive until last night.  As of this morning, repairs and maintenance are underway and he expects to be back out later this afternoon or early tomorrow.  As a side note, he seems to be a really decent, hardworking guy.  I’m not sure his business management skills are what they could be, but he does seem to be trying to get us up and running.  The aggravating thing is that this experience seems pretty typical of contractors in this area…..  a little slower and less reliable than you might find in other parts of the country.

But, we’re not sitting idly by while we wait.  We ordered our kitchen cabinets a month ago, and they came in while we were gone.  I’m really beginning to dread these trips to Colorado Springs, but this time, neither traffic nor the weather posed any problems, so we made it down, got the trailer loaded, and made it back with no problems.

I have a little bit of electrical and sheet rock work to do before I can actually install them, but we have our cabinets, and they look pretty good.