Well, I wrote a large check today, probably the first of several, so I guess the home renovation has begun in earnest now.

I'm not doing any of the home renovation, you understand. I don't mind doing minor repairs and patch jobs, and I'm even fairly competent at them, but there's a lot that's beyond my level ... and there are a few things that aren't beyond my level but which I now pay someone to do because, for example, it's worth it for me to pay someone ELSE to lie on their back under the kitchen sink with a cabinet edge cutting into their back and their arms and shoulders cramping in a confined space and very possibly water dripping onto their face.

(This was not always the case. I used to drive junkers and do all my own auto work, simply because I couldn't afford anyone else. I even rebuilt an engine once -- granted, it was a '73 Beetle and one of the simplest engines known to mankind. But these days I don't even change my own oil. I just have gotten to the point where the money-pain calculus of lying on my back under a car wrestling with the drain plug has changed substantially. And I stopped understanding automotive engines when they stopped having carburetors.)

Anyway, so, we're finally getting off oil heat because we're tired of insane fuel bills, we're going to electric heat pumps, and we're losing the radiators (good riddance); we'll have two big mini-splits on the first floor, and we'll do ceiling registers with ducts in our "attic" for the second floor.

Because the attic is a completely unfinished space with no floor (you have to balance on the joists if you want to poke around up there) and no access (you drag a ladder up to the second floor and climb up through a 2'x2' hatch) and not big enough for me to stand upright under the highest point of the roof and also contains one circuit's worth of knob-and-tube wiring which is still running the second floor ceiling lights, we have a separate project to deal with that first. One goal is to insulate and you can't insulate around knob-and-tube, it requires clear airspace, and the electrician is not going to want to work up there with nothing to stand on and no easy way to get up there, so we're installing folding stairs and putting down some plywood to stand on and other little niceties like that. That's job one. The contract to do that part is what I put down a deposit on today.

Next will probably be the electrician, who is coming by to assess tomorrow morning (the plumber came by to assess today). They'll put in a bigger service panel and do the dedicated wiring for the mini-splits and the attic equipment, and replace the fucking knob-and-tube. Then will come the plumber to actually install the new equipment and its ductwork. And a hot-water heater. Oh, yes, I forgot to mention the hot-water heater. We have no water tank; it's "demand" hot water from the furnace. Demand has frequently outpaced supply.

And we need to get some folks in here to do insulation. The house basically has none. Anywhere.

MassSave, the state's energy-efficiency rebate program, will pay us back for some of it. But it'll still be five figures, and the first of those is not going to be a 1. It's OK, we can pay it. And it's the right thing to do. But ugh, the rest of August and probably a bit of September is going to be a time of great upheaval here at the homestead.

The cats are not gonna be pleased. We've tried to warn them what's coming, but they don't listen.