I've spent several evenings at the house I recently purchased, including getting a few small tasks done ahead of a two-week deadline. Why the deadline?

I've been considering whether to sell or rent the place and I've given myself two weeks to get it into good shape before that time.

The problem is that I tend to get carried away when given too much time, so a nice tight deadline helps keep me on track. If things continue going as they have been, that likely won't even be a problem.

The neighbor's parents used to live in the place, so he's given me quite a bit of very valuable insight into what it needed and what had been done in the past. For instance, he told me the place had a good well with excellent water. However, when I turned one the electricity to the water pump, nothing happened inside the house. When I went outside, I discovered that the water was being pumped out on the ground from beneath the fiberglass structure (made to look like a rock) that covers the well.

I quickly ran back down to the house to switch off the water pump. Then, upon removing the 'rock', I moved some of the insulation and the first thing I saw was a dead mouse. The second thing I saw, just as I was preparing to reach my hand toward the shutoff, was a black widow spider, still in its web. I'm not sure if two had interacted, but I wasn't taking any chances on ending up like the mouse. After I knocked it to the ground with my pocket knife (it was a little sluggish because it was so cold outside), I smashed it with a rock. Actually, I smashed it several times. The black widow is one of only two poisonous spiders native to this area. You can identify them by the red hourglass marking on their abdomen. They love dark places, like underneath well covers. I once found one in my mailbox, and on another occasion I found one hiding in some old telephone poles I had to move. While only 5 percent of their bites are fatal when delivered to a healthy adult, that's enough to make me want to avoid them.

After carefully looking for other spiders and finding none, I took back off some of the insulation and investigated the leak. Luckily, the break was near where the water comes out of the pressure tank, so it shouldn't be too big a problem to repair after I douse everything with some toxic spider-death compound. I'm leaning toward adding heat tapes to see if that will stop the freezing problem, which apparently existed sometime in the past (at least once). That should take care of everything. So far we've cleaned the carpets, replaced the ceiling light fixtures in the bedrooms, fixed an outside entry into the hot water heater and replaced a hard-wired fire alarm. I've also had some painting done, the lawn and surrounding areas mowed down and bushhogged, the driveway scraped down, the electrical wiring and outlets checked and the heat pump repaired.

I'm hoping to get some fresh gravel hauled in and a few other things done before my 'deadline' is reached, but I'd probably settle for having things done before winter sets in for real. This past week has been a real surprise, with nightly lows near freezing for several days. I'm looking forward to a 'thawing out' soon.

The heat has been keeping the place pretty warm so far, so I'm glad that my biggest scare has turned out to be nothing major. That scare took place when I switched on the heat pump and it would only blow cold air.

At that time, I could envision needing a $4,000 unit that I really couldn't afford to buy. While I was weighing the options, from expensive repairs to replacement to purchasing a different form of heat, I called the fellow who worked on the rest of the electricity and he came over to check things out. As it turned out, the breaker in the outside fuse box that supplies power to the heat pump unit was faulty, causing it not to receive the electricity it needed to operate properly. As soon as the breaker was replaced, everything was fine.

I still have a piece of flooring to replace, including what feels like a soft place in the plywood underlayment under the washing machine, some new floor coverings to install, new bathroom fixtures to place and a front porch that was painted improperly instead of stained to tackle, but those tasks aren't concerning me as much now that the forecast has been changed to warmer weather for the rest of this week. Maybe I'll be able to find some excuse to work outside a few days this week. I won't need much of an excuse after having to build fires for several days.

Perhaps I'll even take a few hours just to goof off in the sunshine. Now there's a plan I can get behind!
 

Get the whole story - read this week's edition of The Alleghany News!