That’s awesome that the wallpaper is going to work! Sorry to hear your sister didn’t come through for you.
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I don’t have pictures yet but we’re almost done!!
It looks really really nice now. And our sofa will be delivered tomorrow. We ordered it last summer, but some time before delivery date we heard they accidentally built the wrong size. They delivered it anyway and let us use it temporarily while they built a new one. That’s the one that will be delivered tomorrow.
And siblings, aaarghh. But that’s what happens. At least with mine.
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We are still in the cold 
one part in the heating system short-circuited because it wasn’t built properly and moisture got in, and now some other parts got damaged because of it (possibly an internal fuse in the heating system?). The contractor had to call a specialist and we hope he’ll be able to visit tomorrow and fix it.
We’re supposed to have family over this weekend but they can’t come if it’s still cold (they’re older and can’t deal with cold). They’re also people who don’t like surprises and last-minute changes so that’s great 
Sibling has promised to come over asap so hopefully this time it will work out. We need some extra help to move our oak dining table back to the house. It’s too heavy for the two of us to carry it.
On the upside, the wallpaper is gorgeous! 
And we got the box of Christmas decoration out of storage even if we can’t really decorate yet. I have put up a few decorations on the windowsill in the bedroom to at least have a bit of Christmas spirit around the house. We’re still aiming to finish the living room before Christmas!
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I hope the specialist can get that fixed in a hurry! No heat in December is not okay.
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Keeping WARM thoughts for you and hope your heating system is fixed very soon!!
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Congratulations on the wallpaper finally working out! I am so glad you didn’t have to start from scratch on that. And best of luck getting the heat back up and running ASAP. I hope your sibling comes through this time and you get your table back in place and at least a few things checked off the list.
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Why is it that such things happen at such a wrong time!!!
Can you get a space heater to use temporarily? We have three just in case…I hate being cold!
Hope you get it fixed! Can’t wait to see the wallpaper!
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I’m very lucky that my craft room / home office has AC and that it can be used as a heater. So as long as I don’t leave this room at all until Monday I’m fine Insulation has proven it’s worth now. It’s freezing outside but still 50-55F indoors, without heating. Not exactly warm but it used to be much colder.
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We figured we didn’t need those anymore so we gave those away… and we’re too cheap to buy one for just a couple of days (hopefully).
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Since it was the only warm space in the house I spent Friday night in my craft room! I’ve already unpacked a lot of my supplies but it has also been a drop off site for a lot of things, so it was a MESS. It had four dining chairs that I carried back to the living room and some stuff I’m planning to hang up today (mirror, light fixtures). That’s totally not my very full mending basket to the right 
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We keep our house at 61F in the winter. We’ve known colder times!
Heating a pan of water (increasing the humidity) can make it feel warmer, so can an extra sweater!
Wear a hat - the body priorities keeping the brain warm over all other parts of the body. If you wear a hat (insulation) the rest of you will feel warmer! 
Hope your heating is fixed soon!!
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our heater would never come on in California if we did that! We keep our place between 72 to 76 so we only heat up a tiny bit in winter and cool in summer.
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I have a friend who lives in Nevada and was horrified to hear that we keep the temps so low in winter!
For the most part, I’m quite comfortable with it! It’s odd though, before I went through menopause I used to feel like it was freezing when it was 67 degrees - even though we kept the house cool back then too. Because the zones for our furnace don’t work correctly (and the furnace man never wants to enter our crawlspace again) bedrooms can sometimes get up to 68 which is almost intolerable!! (yet is perfectly fine in summer)
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TheMister and I have been noticing how we perceive the interior temperature differently depending on what time of year it is more over the last couple of years. And of course, how different “sweater weather” is vastly different depending on where you live!
I am grateful that every tradesperson who has seen our crawlspace has responded with something between relief and moderate delight! It’s entered though the side vs the floor and does not require crawling! I haven’t measured, but it’s got to be around 4’ tall w/o much hanging down below to obstruct viewing or passing.
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Oh, trades persons that have worked on our house can only dream of that much space. You have do the army crawl on your belly to get around under ours. Our HVAC is in the attic, though, so that technician gets out relatively unscathed.
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In our new house, (new to us, it was built in 1981), the crawl space is apparently ‘okay’. Not the best, not the worst that most people have seen. (According to the guy who did our inspection, and a few tradespeople we’ve had in.)
BUT… Sometime between '81 and '95, the original owners put in a pool out back, and a Bonus Room, over the garage. Basically they finished what was some attic space over the garage, and added a hallway with some extra closets, to connect it to the upstairs bedroom areas. When they did that, they added a small pool equipment room to house the pool filter (like a garage space, unfinished plywood walls & shelving), AND a second staircase to the upstairs. It goes from the back of my kitchen, straight to the bonus room.
Building that staircase and the small pool room, they had to add on the world’s tiniest addition to the house, which covered over the original back door, and extends beyond the original foundation. So they needed to build a little more foundation for it, and they needed to connect the two crawlspaces. (An area about the size of a medium shed.) They knocked a hole in the side of the original cinder block foundation, so someone can crawl into the area under the pool room if needed. But the hole is just big enough for an adult to crawl through; 2 cinder blocks wide and tall.
Jim calls it the “Nope Hole”. As in someone sees it, and decides “Nope, I’m not crawling through that to fix anything.” Poor guy has had to go in and out of it several times to repair the dryer venting, which the previous owners knew had fallen out of the exhaust vent, and decided it was fine to just let it vent into the crawlspace. Just what you want in there. Warm, moist lint.
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I’m curious why a slab foundation wouldn’t have worked for such a small addition? I’m always interested to hear about these behind the scenes construction things.
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My house was built in the 70s. The crawlspace requires crawling AND because we have some brick walls inside the house it is often necessary to crawl around a wall to get where it is you may want to be. BACK then there were various vents to the crawlspace so there actually was some light and air. I crawled a fair bit of it back then when I wired a sound system for my then studio (the garage and was was meant to be a dog run and canning room ). The vents to the crawlspace made heating more difficult and easier for mice to enter the home and later research indicated that they weren’t actually needed so I have them closed off. We may revisit having some system where we can open and close some ventilation in the future.
The crawlspace in the home in which I grew up was half you could stand and half you had to crawl. At one time I set up a studio for myself in there. There is a Toshiko Takaezu plaque to Miya Grotel in the corner under the kitchen which I helped place there (as a back up to the one Toshiko donated to Cranbrook Art Academy) and completely forgot about until many years after my mom had moved out of that house.
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There is absolutely no way under the sun that I could do into a crawlspace like yours! I’m getting anxious just thinking about it.
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I’ve never lived in a house with a crawl space and I’m not sure how common they are in the midwest so I’m curious, what’s their purpose? I’m only familiar with a basement or flat slab that the house sits on.
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