Fall is definitely coming. While not every day, we are getting more and more frost in the morning. But the lawn is still growing due to the recent round of rain, most notably the very, very mild brush we had with Hurricane Matthew (basically about 30 hours of steady rain and almost no wind).
My Dad and I took the opportunity to do some prep work yesterday – we went to Great Road Farm and Garden in Littleton and I bought a snow blower and we also made arrangements for them to pick up my Dad’s snow blower and repair it (broken starter cable – which is riveted into the machine instead of bolted/screwed – so a bit more work than we are really looking for).
Based on last year’s meager snow fall, it looks like the extended roof and eves design is going to be great to keep walk ways clear – but the snow will be coming off the roof. When it does, it will end up in compacted piles in ways that are not going to be easy to deal with by the driveway snowplow. So we went looking for a snow blower that has a bit more oomph than the low end, with ice augers to chew through frozen junk a bit more easily. A lot of the home equipment places around us have closed as the eastern part of Mass. appears to have collectively decided hiring landscapers is better than doing things for yourself – so we had to go westerly to Littleton. Great Road Farm and Garden seems to be going great guns however and they had what I was looking for.
I ended up with a Husqvarna ST324p – which has weights to keep the front end down and plowing through the compacted snow instead of rising above and power steering (good since it weighs almost 400 lbs). Hopefully it will work well.
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- Showing the two different anticipated snow drops from the roof.
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- Showing the ice auger blades and along the top, the extra weights to help prevent it from floating over big piles of snow
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- Windshield frost in the morning before going to work
We also ended up deciding we needed to mow the lawn again at my parent’s house (our normal routine is that I use the push mower on all the slopes and hard to get to spots, Dad uses the John Deere to hit the general area mowing)
Whats going on in terms of the house?
Things are progressing in very small increments. The Bank’s assessor finished their report – all we need to do at this point is to get the certificate of occupancy and update my house insurance and the final payment to Paul can take place and the construction loan auto-converts to a mortgage.
Getting the occupancy permit is turning into a project in and of itself. The house has all the permit sign-offs but the Carlisle Fire Chief is looking to collate and gather all the paperwork around the common driveway and the culverts over Page’s Brook that have been generated since the early 1980’s. What was desired by Chief Flannery was a bit unclear to us for a while, but we a hoping we have a path forward now and are almost done. This is the last thing holding up the occupancy permit (fingers crossed – that we know of !!!)
Paul still needs to put down the last coat of finish on the floors, spread the loam around and grass seed (while it is still getting warm enough during the day for it to germinate!) and other small punch list items and then we are done. From there, it is let everything settle for a week, purchase and have Hunter Appliance install the refrigerator, microwave, washer and dryer and then pull everything from my storage locker and put it in the house.
🙂
Speaking of Hurricane Matthew. The day after it blew past Massachusetts, from my office in Boston I had a great view across the harbor and into the bay side of Cape Cod. There was a very strongly defined band of clouds visible as the sun came up. A few hours later, it had all blown through to the north and you could see to the horizon – crystal clear – it was pretty neat.
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- Sunrise from my office in One Boston Place (Washington Street) on the day after Hurricane Matthew brushed passed Massachusetts. Very defined band of heavy clouds offshore – which cleared about 2 hours later and a crystal clear day to the horizon