27 May 2016

Sonny and Brandon got started on the wood bin first thing in the morning.  Steve also was here early doing his plumbing thing, including putting in vent covers around the house.  Eric returned and, in a few hours, finished mudding the garage.  James also arrived and got to work digging all the big rocks out of Chree’s 20′ x 16′ garden, filling the bottom of the excavation with Ploof’s Special Topsoil (aka: sand, but it does grow grass nicely), and then topping the area off with a truckload of all-purpose compost (APC).  Expect our home-grown tomatoes will cost about $200 each this year… Sean also showed up, ostensibly to take pictures of the finished house, but for that he’ll have to return another day.  Standing in the living room and looking at the installed custom cabinetry, Sean pointed out that the cabinet that houses the WiFi router and DVR was sitting much too low with respect to the TV enclosure.  I had to agree, the lines just weren’t right.  So Sonny and Brandon quickly ripped out the router cabinet, put a couple of 2⅝″ shims in place, covered the front shim with a piece of scrap drywall, and had Eric mud over the face.  All done in about ½ hour… at least, that’s the way it appeared at the time…  Larry and Earl got here mid-morning to continue installing the security system.  So Larry says to me, “Do you know that the alarm panel has to be the first connection on the phone line?”  “Yes,” says I, “Cary told me that.  But (dawn rising over Marblehead), let me go check where the kitchen phone line ties into the loop.”  A few minutes later I discovered that (1) the kitchen phone was the first connection on the phone line, and (2) Sonny and Brandon had finished the wood bin except for the very top board, i.e., there was still access to the inside of the wall where the phone lines were running.  Whew!  After figuring out which line went where, I reached through the gap and (fingers crossed and eyes closed) cut the line to the kitchen phone.  Then Earl and I used that line to pull two new lines down through the wall and floor into the mechanical room.  After doing our electrical magic, we had a new line from the router box down to the security box and thence into the house phone line loop, including back up to the kitchen via a splice in the cut line.  Sonny and Brandon then went to reinstall the router cabinet.  After Sonny finished inserting “all” of the lines into the 3-gang junction box that is inside the cabinet, I noted that the all-important line down to the security panel was missing from the collection.  “Ooops,” he said, “that wire must have fallen out…” and was now at the bottom of the wall with only two small holes giving access 3-feet up.”  “No problem,” says Brandon, “Mr. James Bond here will use a mirror and a coat hanger to fish the line back up.”  Only two problems with that: we didn’t have a mirror or a coat hanger.  But I did fashion a hook out of some AWG 12 wire I retrieved from the dumpster.  After fishing around blindly for a few minutes, Brandon relinquished the hook to Sonny saying, “A hundred bucks if you get it first try.”  “Hold on,” says Sonny a few seconds later, “I’ve hooked something.”  And, as Sonny’s and my good luck would have it, sure enough he had snagged the missing phone wire.  Mid-afternoon, with the house getting a mite toasty (the outdoor temperature topped out at 89° today), I asked Steve if he could get the air conditioning going.  Took him awhile to figure out the wiring (which he ended up jury-rigging), but Chree, the dogs, and I will be enjoying cool sleeping accommodations tonight… and forevermore!