Our story left off after the gutting of the rear cabin in July 2025. On August 2nd, I received a photo from Andrew while I was visiting my mom out of state. He had begun addressing the wood rot areas and, as he removed a little siding here and there, more and more wood rot was exposed. Eventually an entire wall was torn down.
He tarped it up and it sits untouched at time of writing (the Feb '26).
The rear cabin is on a journey. We subsequently learned that the foundation needed to be redone, decided to double the size of the structure, applied to the Portsmouth zoning board for something called a dimensional variance, petitioned the abutting neighbors within 200 ft as instructed, presented our case at the board who said, "You don't need to be here. Why don't you just move it out of your neighbor's setback since you are rebuilding?", got permission to expand, fired our builder for providing zero guidance throughout, and started researching demolition. Today Mr. Asbestos came by for the required demolition inspection and we realized he'd been over before. He's the same guy who tested for mold spores on the 3rd floor last summer. ... It's a tiny state.
The cabin, which was the center of my property woes for so long, is now an accessory thought befitting its size.
The main house vs. winter is a battle.
We're having a real winter here in New England. We've had two dips in to arctic temperatures in the past three weeks. We had a foot of snow in January and it'll be with us for a while more. Thankfully these have happened on weekends but regrettably that means Andrew hasn't had a day off from fixing stuff in almost a month.
A timeline:
- Jan 25th, Winter Storm Fern: Temps drop in to single digits (F); kitchen cold water line freezes.
-- Pull out dishwasher, aim heaters at water lines, melt ice.
- 2nd night of single digits: Fail to drip our faucets. Both lines (hot/cold) now frozen.
-- Repeat maintenance the next day. (New rule: we drip faucets when temps get below 15 deg F.)
-- The dishwasher doesn't like being unplugged and refuses to come back online. Troubleshooting reveals that a relay needs to be readjusted every time the dishwasher is reinstalled.
--- What this looks like: Dishes in the bathroom sink, insulation piled up on the kitchen floor, the dishwasher in the middle of the kitchen, space heaters aimed and plugged in strategically so we don't trip any breakers.
- Following weekend: In the cellar, discover a pinhole leak in the hot water line leading to the kitchen (unmistakable result of the frozen water line).
-- Andrew does some plumbing work and replaces the line using a good portion of his Saturday.
- Feb 7: Wake up to the smell of melting crayons. Run all over the house to make sure our handful of electric heaters aren't on fire. Discover that the smell is coming from the vents.
-- We have an oil-fed, forced-air heater in the basement. It's about 20 years old. The furnace has two main parts: an oil burner and a fan [for circulating air out to the vents].
-- We pay for a service plan that's supposed to come to the rescue during emergencies. After chatting with the weekend on-call mechanic, we agree to turn off the system for a while and let it cool off. Andrew decides to pull apart the fan and finds FOD stuck in the motor. He removes it and, after a few hours, the melting smell disappears.
We're due to drop down to 1 degree F this night so the risk of losing heat is a real threat.
- Feb 8: Wake up to kitchen water line frozen again, and now this time the drain is frozen and clogged as well (from dripping the faucet?).
-- Maintenance routine of removing the dishwasher and pointing heat the lines thaws the water source.
-- The drain is a different story. It's PVC running outside the house and down in to the ground to connect to the septic. We end up using some moving blankets and wooden boards to build an igloo around the drain pipes, and point a heater at them for hours. We're able to partially thaw the candy-cane vent, but now the sink is draining through that. Andrew decides to replace the frozen line and, after sawing it open, we realize just how solidly frozen the situation was.
Kitchen is now back in business except for the dishwasher, which doesn't like being unplugged.
(Did I mention I'm working nights this weekend and supposed to be chilling out during the day?)
- Feb 9: Andrew puts in his two weeks notice to his employer and is sent home same-day (big career move in the works for him!!). We spend a lot of time recovering, connecting, walking the dog and lying around that afternoon-- and I'm grateful we did.
- Feb 10: Around 2:30 a.m. I wake up to the sounds of metal contacting metal, coming from the heater blower. I bump down the thermostat to make it kick off. A few hours later, the house has reached the new temp (55 F) and the heater kicks on again. I bear witness to the sounds of the blower motor churning to a slow death. I bump the thermostat down to 50. When Andrew wakes up I let him blink the morning in, break the news, and ask him to turn off the breaker. We're turning this one over to the professionals.
Our blower motor should be here in 2-3 days and that's about all there is to it. The heater is out of service.
Current situation: We're forecast snow tonight but thankfully the temps are only dipping to 31. My living room is a balmy 48 F. We have condensed life down to two rooms, the office and the kitchen, with an electric heater in each. We're ok but the house feels like an eerie ice berg that's betrayed us.
Takeaways:
- The age of our home (built 1865) isn't the problem: It's the shortcuts taken during the renovation. Failure to insulate behind the new kitchen cabinets, running a drain line on the outside of the house instead of underneath. Removing heat ducting to the master bedroom in order to knock out a wall on the first floor. We do feel betrayed by the previous owners, who beautifully renovated and clearly never lived here through a winter. This is a textbook flip.
We will hopefully have enough subject matter experts parade through the rear cabin this year whom we can ask about this stuff; maybe one of them will have a sustainable winter solution for the main house.
- We need to get off of oil heat and figure out an electric solution -- and not during the middle of winter. The blower is one thing, and not a catastrophic expense. The oil burner is another, and would be a terrible investment in future energy.
I am grateful for:
-- Andrew being home this week during the day. I am praying that this all settles in time for him to fully focus on his new job starting Feb 23rd.
-- Potential good news (fingers crossed) about the rear cabin asbestos inspection today.
-- None of this has cost us a significant amount of money thus far.
-- Andrew's ability to fix our house.
-- A community I know we can lean on if it's just too cold to live here this week.
-- Being led to this property. I know we are here for a reason. It's easy to think of how simple it would be to be nestled in our previous home down the road. ... But that's not a productive nor heat-producing train of thought.
