Another remodel update

You may be wondering how the remodel is going. Oh that! Yes, the happy answer is, “I don’t have any idea!” John’s dealing with it. Yay! That was probably my main motivation for getting a new job.

Last I heard, they were still installing brick. I’m curious to see it after it has been oiled (it will be darker and less orange).

John decided to take out the old kitchen cabinets, and is having trouble finding new ones that he likes. Since there is often a few-week delivery time on cabinets, I doubt the kitchen will be usable anytime soon.

I think he plans to move in anyway, without a kitchen, because (presumably) I’ll have a house in Santa Fe with a working kitchen. The townhome (if we buy that one) has a really tiny kitchen, so most of our kitchen items will have to be boxed and stored for awhile.

I’ve also been pushing John to buy the solar panels and batteries asap. That is the main part of this project I’m actually excited about. It’s an ideal house to go off-grid, because it’s already on well water, it’s all-electric (also has a wood stove), and there’s plenty of space for solar panels and no trees blocking them. Also we need to update the aging heating system anyway, so we can go with an efficient heat pump. And it already has evaporative cooling, which is way more efficient than central air.

I’m anxious to get the equipment purchased because of rumors that our current administration is going to limit the import of solar panels from China, and they are pretty much all made in China. I just want to be sure to have them, even if we have to store them for awhile. So John made an appointment with a solar guy. Yay! Buy those babies! And plenty of them!

I doubt I’d even try to go off-grid in Santa Fe, at least not with that particular townhome. There’s not enough space, too many neighboring trees, there’s an existing in-floor radiant hot water system that’s probably not all that efficient, and is on gas anyway. I’ll just head out to Placitas if there’s an apocalypse 😉