The new oil tank

Back in January I got a call when I was in the city from Petro, my oil company. Seems they were making an oil deliver and were worried that there was a spill in the basement (they normally deliver from outside the house into a pipe that goes down into the basement tank). I told them where the hidden key was, they looked downstairs and all was fine, but they cautioned me that my tank was very old and it was in need of replacement soon. I ignored that and mentally filed that away. Who has that kind of money?
Cut to a few weeks ago. I get another call from them. Now they are telling me they can no longer deliver to me as my tank is too old and not safe to deliver to. Ugh. Of course my first thought is this is just a ruse to get me to spend more money, but on reflection, the tank is as old as the house--almost 70 years!--so it's probably wise to bite the bullet and get this over with. A new tank it was. Given that I had just done the KIND freelance project, I was due to get some cash flow soon.
Here's the old tank. I had painted it white years ago so that it wasn't such a hulking MASS down there.


So I set up an appointment with their sales rep to come take a look at the layout of the situation so he could give me a bid. I BEGGED him to give me the best price he could. I said I was a 20 loyal customer, that I was a senior citizen, etc. I tried every trick in the book. He came back he next day with a quote of $2600. Not cheap. But not as much as I was expecting. We made the appointment for the installing crew to show up the following week. They arrived about 10am and it took them the better part of the day. It was a big job. They had to disconnect the old tank, bring the new tank downstairs, transfer the unused oil, the haul the old tank back upstairs and out to their truck. It also involved adding an extra access hole to the outside that needed cement sealing all the way around.
Here's the new tank:





And here's the new pipes going outside:



I don't love that it's black, maybe I'll paint white someday. I do need to paint the wall in back of it, that looks pretty crummy.  At least this is something I won't ever have to think about again. Whew.

Branch down!

Last week we had what I hope is the last winter storm of the season. It dropped a fair amount of snow and there were some high winds. I have a dead tree right at the fence line in the backyard. It's probably getting weaker by the year because this storm knock down a large section of the top of the trunk. It fell amongst the bamboo and right on top of the fence, breaking the top of some of it. The branch is so wedged in among the spindles of bamboo and so heavy that I can't remove it. I tried breaking out my circular saw to cut it into section to try and remove it but with no luck. The saw doesn't cut all the way through the trunk. So Plan B was to call my yard guy, David, to see if he could chainsaw it out of there. He's coming by next week to take a look. Watch this space for further developments.

Sag Cinema Rising!

When I got back out to the house this week (I've been in the city for 3 weeks doing a freelance job), I came back to find they've started construction on the new Sag Harbor Cinema. They've been excavating the foundation for a few weeks but this is the first sign of the edifice itself going up. I still think we're a good year out for it to open but this is very encouraging. It will be nice to have our Main Street back to it's lovely self.





For reference, here's what it used to look like...