We’ve made so much progress so quickly renovating our odd North Country bungalow. Until recently, we had our fingers crossed that the aging galvanized steel water main wouldn’t burst. The first time Jill’s dad saw the house, he looked at the cut off valve and said, “Do not touch that. Don’t even look at it.” It was long past its expiration date.
Rather than roll the dice and hope it lasted through the winter — winter being the absolute worst time to deal with a broken water main — we had it replaced. The first challenge was cutting off water at the street, because the valve extension had corroded and wouldn’t turn. The guy from the city tasked with turning it off went away and returned a few minutes with a new extension.
Then the digging started.
That sandy-looking stuff? Cat litter. The previous owner and her housemates had disposed of years of cat litter in the front yard. I have a stack of zoning code violations that tell the story.
A steady stream of neighbors showed up to tell the team excavating the main exactly what it was, and what they should do with it. The supervisor was a paragon of patience, though he told me later that it was hard to hold his tongue.
A few hours later, we had this. Exciting, isn’t it?
Two sections of sidewalk were sacrificed, and three weeks later we did the city a solid and replaced it.
The finishing touch will be new grass, but that’s going to have to wait until Spring.
