Blunder 1 of what I am sure will be many

The rest of Friday went to plan.  I was able to borrow a neighbours scaffold and take the siding off the back of the kitchen.  I found by far the fastest method was to use the flush cut saw to cut off one or two top nails in from one end of the siding and then pry from the end in.  If I pried at about the middle depth of the board, both the top and bottom nails popped out as I went with no spitting.  I was able to get 20ft pieces off with no cracking at all and in very little time (1- 3 minutes a board depending on length).

I rounded out the day moving the scaffold to the south side of the house to get ready for more siding removal.  Saturday was a bit of a dud in some ways.  The day started with my typical Saturday breakfast with a neighbour but then when we got back we discovered that their cat had been missing all night and had not shown up for breakfast.  This was extremely unusual for their 17 year old cat.  This cast a sad vibe to the day and I just could not get into ‘real’ work. After a search of my yard for the cat, I posted some signs and then spent the day doing a major clean to the front and side yard, stacking a whole bunch of salvaged and new wood, altering and erecting a sun shade in the front yard over the wood piles (will keep the rain off as well).

Today was much more productive. Did some computer work confirming needed concrete quantities before heading across the street to finish loading a garbage run to the transfer station.  This was followed by a run to the storage locker for the final items from the house.  This took much longer than expected because it was a very busy day at the locker and as I have an upper locker, I had to wait to get the rolling stairs to both get up to the locker and then to get back down. I then spent the rest of the day (and far longer than I planned) finishing off the temporary power pole.  I should have been done in under an hour.  I had to deepen the grounding plate hole another 6″ to get to the 24″ required, and I had to install the grounding plate and tie it back to the panel.  That part went just fine.  Then I tried to install the panel cover for the first time.

Note to self, when building an enclosure around an abject like a electrical panel – make sure you leave enough room for the cover!  Well, you can see where this is going.  I had built the enclose too small.  As you can see from the below left photo, I had to raise the height of the front of the enclosure a full 2″ so that I could get the panel cover on. A waste of time and probably the first of many blunders I will make during the building of this house.  I popped out the two side panels and cut new ones.  By the time I made these edits, completed a second cabinet that will house my first aid kit and possible some of the web cam gear, applied torch on roofing to the two cabinets roofs, and painted the cabinets so they were ‘weather proof’, close to 4 hours had elapsed and it was 8PM and time to crash for the night.

Tomorrow morning I will call for inspection on the temp power pole and if I pass arrange with hydro to make the swing over.  Otherwise, I will be continuing the removal of the siding, removing some of the electrical circuits that are in the exterior walls coming down soon, and removing the roofing and roof structure.  I am going to try to get at least 12 hour days in all week to get somewhat back on track to the schedule.

Thanks for visiting.