July 4th week

A holiday in the middle of the week always seems to screw everything up. It's been a weird week, simultaneously busy and boring. There was progress though.

Monday morning the plumbers came on site and called bright and early to have some questions answered. Paul's phone ringer was off so he didn't hear the phone ring, but he was on site at 7:30 anyway so it all worked out. He was surprised to see the plumber had installed the tub in the main bath (the one we couldn't figure out how to squeeze into the alcove.) And Elliott did it all by himself. Amazing. I guess that's what happens when you have experience with these things. We settled on where to put the whirlpool faucet and a couple other little details, and they finished plumbing the whirlpool and tub. Problem: They wouldn't install the shower in the master bath. We would have to arrange for that to be done. Ah well. Guess we'll do it ourselves. Here's what they've done.






We were surprised that they didn't do any plumbing in the basement. Queried about this, Rich said they won't do any basement plumbing until much later and it shouldn't be a problem. Okay then. Dunno how a rough plumbing inspection passes with none of the water or waste lines installed, but whatever. We won't see them for at least two weeks.

On Tuesday and Wednesday we working on figuring out how to make a tile shower stall. With no real knowledge of what we were doing we wrecked a $25 shower pan liner on Wednesday. Frustrating. Paul did some more studying, and now we think we know what we're doing. Apparently first you put down a sand mix base to create the slope toward the drain, then once that cures you make your shower pan without cutting it anywhere. When that's in you pour a 1.5" thick mortar mix base, then when that cures you can tile the walls and then pour thinset and set the tile floor. We'll be working on this over the next week, so we hope it goes well. At least the framing we did this week came out pretty well.



The furnace and AC condenser, and the electrical materials were delivered on Thursday. Kathy received them and they were placed in the garage.

Friday was a busy day. The phone rang at 7:30; a truck would be coming to drop off the fireplace between 10 and 11. It rang again a half hour later; a semi would be coming with ductwork. Paul decided to work from home in the morning and then go to receive the materials. When he got there he found two carpenters making basement stairs. :) So he settled in with the pocket computer and answered e-mail, looked at the locksets and figured out what tools he'd need to install them. The first truck came around 11, and with some difficulty a pallet containing a fireplace and miscellaneous materials was hauled into the garage. Paul was just heading out to shower until the other truck driver called to say she'd be arriving in ten minutes. Okay, back to the house. Kathy arrived before the truck did. When the truck came the driver cut apart the film holding all the boxes on the pallet and we carried them to the front yard and there they sit.

The carpenters finished up shortly thereafter. They had built the basement stairs, put a step in front of the whirlpool and installed the remaining garage door. Excellent.

Shawn called as Paul was on his way to work to let us know that was done (Which we knew, but we were able to tell him the work looked good.) He inquired about payment of his invoice. We haven't heard from Milwaukee Title all week. Paul called; our manager was out until the 16th and we'd have to call the backup, April, on Monday. Okay.

We're still waiting on a drywaller bid. Paul called today; he hadn't been over yet to look at it but said he should be there by Monday and we'll be in touch early next week. The sooner the better, it's getting to be time.

And finally we got a hold of the electrician. He'll be starting on Tuesday and would take a week. Then we need insulation and drywall and siding after that. We left a message for Dan Lewis with Integrity to schedule the siding installation starting around July 17. Likely it'll take until the end of July before we get the house "built" and can start finishing activities. We'll see how it goes. We'd still like to be in by the end of next month so we don't have to pay September rent. We hope two months will be enough time to finish, given how much has already happened in the past two months. We're halfway there.

And that will be enough for this week.