House Improvement

So if this is a Home show blog, what are we doing on the home?
Not much, as our pocketbook and previous educational commitments allow. Though he reads less, Study boy still has school work to attend to. I am still enjoying Christmas holidays, even though Twelfth Night came and went.
It has not all been leisure though since we arrived home. Our first week was spent getting a new hot water tank because the old one was leaking onto the basement floor. That took one day to settle on a quote for the work, and another whole day to have the work done, plus a day in between waiting for the workmen to come do the work, and a half day after to finish up some tedious something or other.
Understand that we do not take house improvement lightly, and in that respect I can assure you that we bought the most fashionable (read expensive) hot water tank we could find. We justified the expense the way we always justify our expenses; that is to say by congratulating ourselves that it is a quality hot water tank, and we (hopefully) won't have to replace it ever again. Plus, it is an extremely energy efficient model, so much so that we anticipate getting a $500 rebate from the provincial government for it, so that was our one big act of green for 2008.
We took advantage of the Energuide Audit a few years ago, getting our application in just before the Federal Tories axed the program. We raised the rating of the house from a 42 to a 70, and timed it well enough to also qualify for some money from the Nova Scotia provincial government, who created their own provincial Energuide program through Conserve Nova Scotia. It pays to be green. If you live in NS and don't know about the grants you may be eligible for, check out the link above.
Our other home improvement efforts since we arrived back have not been so laudable.
Just before we left, we moved the kitchen to it's new location, but like everything else in the house it is not finished, so we arrived home to wonder where our tenants had been storing their dishes all this time. In very short order, we decided that two shelving units that were bought in St. John's for the bathroom, would go very nicely in the kitchen as a temporary cupboard. Peter had his doubts as to whether they were attached to the wall well enough, but so far they have not fallen off. Keeping the fingers crossed.
We found the septic pump alarm went off soon after we got back, but we were fairly lucky on that account. Lucky because the weather had been warm and the ground was not yet frozen when we had to dig it up. (Unlucky though that we had to dig it up at all.) Also lucky because even though we didn't know exactly where the pump was buried, and the marker had disappeared, we hit the chamber dead on with our first try. There was some debate as to where it was located before we started the hole. Peter thought it was in line with the corner of the garden shed, I felt it was 45 degrees more toward the driveway. In the end we both compromised to keep the other happy and were rewarded for our felicity with a bulls eye. We did a little septic dance to celebrate. (I took a picture, but unfortunately blogger seems unable to read it.) Continuing lucky, we found the pump actually was still working, but it was tripping out the GFI. The temporary Red Green fix was to bypass the GFI until the weather is warmer and we can replace the pump before it really, truly stops working. Keeping fingers crossed.