Old house living

I think we are starting to recognize two things about our house: First, that there is a lot we don't know about being homeowners, especially in cold climates. Second, that our house is going to have constant problems that we have to deal with.

On the first front, we started to have a strange gurgling sound and then a sulphur smell emerging from our upstairs bathroom. It turns out that the likely culprit is the plumbing vent freezing over. There is maintenance that we can do in the late fall that will help prevent this problem, but it is something that we probably will deal with from time to time. Or maybe often.

On the second front, the night after our furnace was "fixed" it stopped working again. The plumber who fixed our sewer problem also does furnace and heating related issues, so this time we called him instead of the company who installed the furnace. He indicated that the first person who came out actually probably didn't do anything helpful at all, and identified numerous problems. Most of the problems likely could have been avoided if the furnace was on a yearly maintenance schedule, which apparently it was not -- it appeared that maintenance had not been done for quite some time.

But now that is all taken care of and our house is warm and cozy. The weather here has actually been quite nice the last couple of days – even getting above freezing. We went out to the sledding hill today and it was busier than it has ever been. I didn't take any pictures, but here are a few photos of a walk that Jeff took with Maren yesterday. They encountered a mountain and Maren wanted to explore, but had some trouble climbing up :-)