Spent the first night in the new place. No way of getting enough fresh air into the poorly-insulated house. Single-glazed windows in the original part are useless. No attic fan (yet). And since they put in air conditioning (versus an evaporative cooler), there is no way to get fresh air through the HVAC system. So, sweating in the monsoon heat.
Totally stopped noting hours of labor on the new place last week already. Too tired to do so after a day’s worth of bustling stuff around. I will not calculate my sweat equity in this way. Much has been done although the serious tasks, many of them, are still waiting. Right now just getting the simple and free modifications & cleaning done. There is a lot of poorly poured concrete ‘retaining walls’ and sidewalks that are useless and will have to be jack-hammered out. And in their place, a single set of new retaining walls properly designed and executed to keep up-slope drainage away from the house, and to secure the Pine Knoll parking area. On the south side of the house, removing all generations of concrete poured up against the foundation. seal foundation block, and set in some French drains, … and on and on and on…
Still haven’t looked into the main attic (no access from inside the house), or spent significant time in the crawl space. Mitigation, mitigation, mitigation — of the imperfections of prior systems. Takes energy that I don’t presently have — between the Lyme’s fiasco and a bum shoulder (acting up for the first time in 20 years — probably from all the heavy labor versus simply doing yoga, swimming, and lifting). Take it easy, whilst bleeding the savings account.