Paul & Kathy's New House

Updates

2010-05-18T18:27:00.007-05:00

Okay, so we still haven't gotten around to installing the lattice. We've been working on paying for our new patio set instead. Made the last payment the other day and brought it home, and Paul assembled it with minor hassle. We also put our fountain up here and divided off its corner of the deck, maybe to have some plants surrounding it. Also we strung solar rope lights around the perimeter of the deck for a little ambiance. Everything looks great. We lost the pictures of the rope light though, so we've just posted these.

Yes, the patio set really does have 5 chairs.

Mistake-fixing day

2010-03-31T23:49:00.002-05:00

Today was a long-overdue day to fix some construction errors. Most important of these were the patio doors. Ever since the house was built, the French doors leading to the backyard (and now, the deck) have never hung right - the screen doors would bind at the top and bottom, and the entry doors were sticky and hard to close and lock. Paul set to fixing this today.

It took hours. First the entry doors were fixed. After much hinge adjustment he finally got to the point where they would both swing freely without binding, and were much easier to lock than previously. Then the screen doors. This proved to be a gigantic hassle that took most of the night to fix. It turns out that the opening for the screen doors was a quarter inch too small, and the result was that it was nearly impossible to mount the doors without having them bind.

Finally, he gave in and jerry-rigged the astragal (the stick between the doors that allows one of them to be fixed in place so they don't both swing all the time) so it held its door more closely, allowing enough room for the active door to swing freely. With that done, he finally (it's been almost three years) installed the pneumatic closers on the screen doors so they can't swing all the way open and bang on the lights or wall or whatever else. The sweeps still need to be installed on the screen doors too, but first some appropriate screws need to be located. That won't take long to finish. But the doors *finally* work properly. It's sure nice to be able to get in and out the doors easily, because until that was done nobody would ever want to go out to the deck.

Later he had to fix something on the deck itself. When mounting the handrail supports on the west side of the deck (the side with the stairs) he wasn't paying attention and installed them an inch too low. This showed itself to be problematic when the spindles went on - they extended so far below the rim joist that it would have been impossible to attach the frame for the lattice, so this needed to be fixed. Paul had to unscrew the handrail, then all of the spindles' bottom two rows of screws where they were attached to the rim joist. Then he unscrewed and raised the supports and put everything back together. Took about an hour, but it looks much better.

It's a pleasant night. Paul rewarded himself by sitting on the deck with the laptop and a Leinie's, listening to the tree frogs as he types this. Makes it all worthwhile. :)

Spindles, the thrilling conclusion.

2010-03-30T18:39:00.003-05:00

Paul finished the last 36 spindles today. Each one has four screws, and each screw hole had to be pre-drilled. That's 768 pulls of the trigger to get this done. Tedious. But it worked out. Looks like a deck now. Paul's plans actually ended here, but we still need a lattice and a handrail for the stairs. So that's coming up yet. Just detail work. The real work is basically done. Check out the pictures.

Spindles part 1

2010-03-29T18:53:00.002-05:00

Didn't get anything done with the spindles on Sunday except to measure and mark their locations. Went to Menards today to buy 96 spindles (42" 2x2, one tapered end, on sale for 89 cents each) and two more pounds of deck screws. 60 spindles are installed so far. It takes extra time because they're so thin you have to predrill the screw holes so the spindles don't split when driving the screws. Anyway, looks good so far but no pictures yet. Will finish tomorrow and take pictures then.

Handrail

2010-03-27T23:39:00.006-05:00

Yes you can haz.

The posts were set plumb and lag screwed in place Friday evening. The handrails were attached in two hours on Saturday afternoon. Starting tomorrow, spindles. It'll take about a hundred to do the whole thing. Then lattice for underneath and a handrail for the stairs and we'll call this good.

More deck construction

2010-03-24T21:47:00.005-05:00

Spent yesterday and today installing the stairs and dry-fitting the railing posts. The stairs required the only digging in this project - flat patio blocks were set at ground level for the stair stringers to sit on. The stringers are screwed to the rim of the deck with angle brackets, the treads are 2x6s cut to 4 feet long.

The railing posts came from Menards. Each one is just attached to the rim with one screw for test fitting, so they are not expected to be straight yet. If Paul gets home from work early enough tomorrow maybe he will get some lag bolts to attach them permanently. After that, handrail and spindles, then a lattice or something else to close up underneath, maybe close up the stair risers, get some patio furniture, and by then the weather ought to be warm enough to enjoy.

Picture time:

Deck continued

2010-03-23T00:12:00.003-05:00

We obtained two treated 8' 2x3s and another box of deck screws. Paul installed the 2x3s at the end of the deck and finished screwing down all the decking. This took a couple of hours in the early spring chill. Katie helped by putting out two screws for each board in the rows where he was working. So the platform is all done. Looks great and is nice and sturdy. No new pictures because it doesn't look any different except that all the tools and materials were put away. Tomorrow, stairs.

It should be all finished by the weekend. We hope it warms up soon after that....

We're building a deck!

2010-03-22T00:20:00.013-05:00

So it's been two and a half years here, and just as long since we updated the blog. So far so good, but in that time we have also continued to work on the house. The lawn is established and doing well. The basement is being finished and is well on its way, with offices, a gym and a rec room started and a half bathroom, closets and finishing work yet to be done. We still haven't replaced the stairs, the master bathroom needs a remodeling already and half the house has been repainted. The girls now have their own bedrooms, so the front bedroom is Katie's space instead of a junkroom.

But the big job at the moment is outside. We have gone two summers without a deck, but no more. There shall be a deck. Due to restricted funds, it is a relatively simple deck and we are building it ourselves.

We started last Thursday (the 18th) when a 65-degree sunny day arrived. Paul had already scheduled the afternoon off work to take care of something else, and took advantage of the weather to get to work. The little platform we built outside the patio door to pass code has been there all this time, but it's time for it to go.

Construction is similar to the old platform. It's built with Dek-Blocks. See www.deckplans.com if you want to know anything about this construction. Basically, no footings, no concrete to pour, no digging. Just put blocks down, install joists, and attach decking. You can make a lot of progress in a hurry, and it's cheaper and less time consuming than the traditional way.

We started out planning to build a 16x10 deck. First step is to build the frame. On Thursday Paul finished the frame, intending to deck it the next day. Here are photos of the work.

Katie likes to help.

As we looked at it we guessed it might be too small. We debated how much larger it ought to be, but eventually Paul gave in and set to expanding it to 16x16. The big problem with doing this was handling the materials. 16-foot treated 2x6s are a righteous pain to move......

So on Friday, instead of installing decking Paul bought more Dek-Blocks and 16-foot joists along with materials to extend the end boards out six feet, and installed it. It had gotten cold, and he was not even a little bit happy about working in the conditions, but the job got done nonetheless. The underpinnings were done; nothing left to do but put the decking on top. We are using 2x6s on top. We know a lot of people like to use 5/4 pine, cedar or composite decking nowadays, but because it's thinner the deck has to have joists 16" on center, which would means twice as many deck blocks and 16-foot joists. We don't want that. Too expensive. Our joists are 30" apart, which is okay with 2x6 decking. So if that means we have to stain the deck every so often, then so be it. We wouldn't use cedar, since we'd like the deck to be gray and spending the extra money on cedar instead of green treated lumber doesn't make a lot of sense if it's going to be hidden anyway.

Saturday it snowed and was very cold. No work. On Sunday the sun came out, and after church Paul went off to Menards to pick up 35 16-foot-long treated 2x6 boards. Holy crap what a nightmare. He decided to rent their truck, since using the minivan would involve making multiple trips. We're not going to go into all the details about what was all involved in getting them home, but suffice to say he loaded the truck by himself and almost returned it late because it took so long to load.

Paul picked up his nephews to help unload the truck.

It took a while to get all the decking installed. Putting it together is like assembling a jigsaw puzzle - you have to flip and turn boards sometimes to make sure all the crooks are side-by-side so you don't have any big gaps. :) Anyway, it became clear that it was going to get dark before we finished. So although all of the boards are attached, most of them are only attached at the ends. We'll screw down the middles ASAP. Then we have to find a board roughly 2x3 to use at the end, since it didn't come out quite even for some reason. After that, then we'll start on the railing and stairs.

We built a house!

2007-11-25T21:01:00.000-06:00

We have been informed that our occupancy permit has been issued. :-) So this is the end. We are now the legal occupants of 2027 W. Wood Avenue. We don't have the permit yet; it was mailed to our old address so it should be along in a few days.

Paul put up the mailbox. We need to remember to call the street department for garbage containers. The truck is going up for sale tomorrow.

The house isn't quite done, of course. There is still trim to be installed and things to be fixed, and lots of organization. Paul spent the day finishing up the whirlpool tub. Not perfect, but not bad. And, of course, we'll start our lawn next spring.

There won't be any more updates. We hope everyone will see the place over the holidays. Thanks to all who have been reading!

More updates

2007-11-12T23:54:00.001-06:00

Uninteresting but important work continues. The grading was re-done Thursday and the last of the junk hauled away. Paul called for the survey Thursday night. We bought a washer and dryer pair via Craigslist on Thursday, and spent the evening acquiring the necessary pieces (new dryer cord, vent, new washer intake hoses) and hooking it all up. After a few false starts with excessive water leaks (that's why we needed the new hoses) it was all up and working properly. We like the new machines. The dryer is very fast.

Paul spend Saturday installing the new silt fence, and more organization. The shower door in the main bathroom is in. Paul made mistakes in its installation, but at least it's in. We also have a new cabinet above the washer and dryer, and the laundry room is finally clean and organized. Maybe we'll want a little table or something in there, but we'll see. It looks good.

Closing on the mortgage was uninteresting, it was just a lot of paper signing.

The surveyor came Monday. Tuesday he picks up the results from their office, takes them to Oak Creek and schedules the building inspection.

Recent activity

2007-11-07T23:53:00.001-06:00

Okay, things that have been going on this week so far:

The final grading certification wasn't issued; there were some grades that were over a foot and a half off. That meant the excavator had to come back to adjust grades along with moving the fill pile. They did that today, along with smoothing out the yard. After they finish up, which might be tomorrow, we'll have to call for a new survey and then the inspector has to come back again. Don't know if that will get done this week or early next week.

Nonetheless we are closing our loan on Friday. This is to convert the construction loan to a mortgage.

The watchword for the past few days has been "organization". We dropped $600 on closet organizers and shelving the past few days, and Paul has worn himself out assembling and installing them. The closets of the two bedrooms in use now have closet organizers and Kathy swiftly filled them with clothes. It's been nice to get rid of all the boxes around here. Also Paul put shelves in the two bathroom closets, and they were quickly filled too.

This has led to a happy result - tonight Paul emptied the garage. The truck was loaded with trash again, boxes have been moved into the house (many into the basement for storage; some upstairs to be picked through), things staying in the garage were shoved up against the walls (to be properly organized sometime next spring, perhaps), and for the first time tonight we parked the cars in the garage. :)

Nothing happened today.

2007-11-02T21:13:00.001-05:00

That's why we have time to write a post. :)

Paul picked up the insulation certificate that had been faxed to his office, and it is here waiting for the inspector to come back on the third building inspection. He also called engineering at City Hall to see if they were going to issue the final grading certificate, but it seems that hasn't been done yet. We are thinking of moving the fill pile ourselves. It's not that big, and we could use a little fill on either side of the driveway. Problem is there are bits of broken sidewalk mixed in there and they're probably too heavy for us to move anywhere. And the pickup is out of service again; battery is always dead. Don't know yet if it's not taking a charge or if something is draining it. It takes a jump so we could use it when we need to but can't shut it off because it won't start again. Blast it all. We needed to sell that truck to help pay some of the bills. More problems.

Kathy fixed up the laundry room closet for the cat to live in. Paul has become one with the couch, to Kathy's annoyance. He's feeling very worn down tonight, and there's a lot of work to do this weekend.

Building reinspect

2007-11-01T20:39:00.000-05:00

We're not quite there yet. Almost.

Due to his late bedtime Paul took the day off of work and slept in until ten. When he got up he finished off yesterday's inspection to-do list. Took only a few minutes to install the screws, and slightly longer to insulate around the window and pipes with Great Stuff. Messy substance that crap is.....

Then he moved the top basement stair handrail to the opposite wall. Kathy was not pleased but it's more important to pass the inspection right now. Anyway, then he went to the surveyor's office to pick up the finish grading survey.

It was fortunate that he did that. Jeff, the regular building inspector came today (the backup, Ed, had come yesterday) and took a copy back to the city engineering department for analysis. He also did his own inspection, and approved the things Ed noted but had a couple of his own he wanted fixed. We were missing a batt of insulation in the basement ceiling, which took Paul all of thirty seconds to fix just after Jeff left, and he wanted the last tiny fill pile gone and the silt fence replaced. Darn it. Didn't want to buy and install a new one of those. Also we were missing our insulation certificate.

Nonetheless he dropped off a folder containing papers welcoming us to the community, providing community information and a few booklets of permit and code requirements for putting up sheds, swimming pools or decks.

So Jeff left. Paul called Alpine Insulation for the certificate, which he faxed over shortly thereafter, and called the excavator to get him to remove the fill pile. Darren didn't want to do it until the engineering department approved the grade so that he wouldn't have to make two trips. All right. We'll have to call the engineering department tomorrow afternoon to see if they'll approve the grading and maybe we'll even try to shovel the fill ourselves; we'll see.

There are plenty of other small to midsize tasks to be done. Paul finished installing the travertine ledge above the fireplace and took a few things out of the garage, and Kathy touched up some paint in the family room. We're still putzing with things a bit but Paul is worn down and won't be too ambitious to work on much inside the house for awhile.

Goodbye to Parnell Woods

2007-11-01T02:55:00.001-05:00

Wednesday night, 2:45 a.m.

Paul spent seven hours tonight thoroughly cleaning and emptying the condo and just arrived at the house with the last load of possessions.

Thus concludes our nine-year experience of life at Parnell Woods Condominiums. And good riddance.

No rest for the oddly-not-yet-weary. Paul is still going to complete the building inspector's checklist before bed. Whether he'll get up in the morning, though, is open to debate.

Final building inspection

2007-10-31T15:30:00.000-05:00

3:00 p.m.

The building inspector arrived. This actually turned out to be much less painful than expected.

Each of the three Pella outside doors (two garage doors and a patio door) were missing one screw in each hinge. And there wasn't enough insulation under the tubs and around the pipes going up from the basement through the floor to the bathrooms. Finally he wasn't sure about the handrail. It wasn't continuous and that may not have passed, so it would either have to be connected or Paul would have to remount them on the other (outside corners) sides and that would be fine. Kathy doesn't want them remounted. We'll see.

It will take about a half hour to fix all the insulation and screw problems, so Paul called for a reinspection tomorrow. These can be fixed tonight after the condo is cleaned, which is the main project for tonight.

Also, the surveying was done. Paul will pick up the sheets tomorrow afternoon and deliver them to the city engineering department.

Tuesday activity

2007-10-31T01:30:00.000-05:00

1:30 a.m. Wednesday morning

Paul spent the evening cutting and mounting boards to close up the open risers on the stairs, and installing handrails. The handrails look great, the stairs not so much. I can't believe this could possibly pass inspection but I can't find anything in the state code that it violates. Maybe we'll get lucky and it will work.

Then he spent the late night tiling around the fireplace. Looks great, but we're one piece short. Kathy bought these little 3"x6" pieces to go above the tile, and we need one more cut into quarters to be mounted on each end of both sides. Looks great otherwise. Paul spent more time wiping mastic from where it didn't belong than actually setting tile.

$260 for all the supplies. Yeesh. Ah well. It's done.

We didn't hear anything from the surveying.

We'll see what happens tomorrow.

Craziness continued

2007-10-29T15:04:00.000-05:00

Post number 80. With any luck we won't make it to 90. It occurs to us that it was barely five months ago that the foundation walls were poured. Seems like five years. We thought of that because the foundation walls are being poured for the house next door.

Anyway. A lot has happened so let's start from the last post and go from there.

Electric repairs were done over the end of last week and the weekend. An outlet was added near the appliance garage (maybe it'll be useful, to run an extra appliance or something); the washer outlet was replaced with a GFCI, the microwave outlet was extended, conduit was installed to protect the Romex inside the island, the shower trims were installed (Paul bought these at Menards, they fit just fine) all three bedroom closet lights were replaced with covered ones, the AC wiring was altered slightly, the smoke detectors were wired so they would all sound when any one went off, and Paul cleaned around the breaker box.

Last night we determined that we would not be staying in the rented condo for another month. That means as of Wednesday night we will be homeless. The landlord wanted the carpets professionally cleaned. No problem.

So, we arrive at this morning. I guess we'll just go chronologically -

Paul drove Katie to school. On the way back Kathy called to say the plumber was on site to finish up the necessary work there. Surprise!

Paul called the plumber to let him know he would be there momentarily. Fortunately he had outside work to do. The plumber's tasks included changing the downspout connections into the underground drain, caulking around the hose outlets, and removing the sprayer from under the sink. Not too difficult. He was done by 9:30 and called for an inspection. Fortunately the inspector was able to come today too.

We got a message from the landlord that we should call their preferred carpet cleaning place. So we did. They're coming tomorrow. Yikes. That gives us the rest of the day to move out of the condo.

Then Paul heard from the surveyor. They wanted to see the grading certification form. Paul eventually made it to Minuteman Printing and faxed it over. When he called to confirm receipt they said they would get here tomorrow or Wednesday. Good deal.

Mixed in with all this, Paul took six loads of wash to the laundromat up the street since we still don't have a washer and dryer.

Kathy came around ten and we waited for the inspectors. The electric inspector arrived first, and suggested a few wires be stapled down but passed us. :) An hour later the plumbing inspector came too, and was satisfied with all the work the plumber did so that passed too.

Then we moved the couch, the kids' old chest of drawers and our bed to the house. In the interim the fireplace guy called to let us know he would be there shortly. We were at the condo and raced back to the house. He just beat us there. So he came in, and promptly told us our trim around the fireplace would have to go because it's flammable and it gets hot around the fireplace. :-/ But he got it going, and for the first time we have fire. :-)

Ashley went and turned on the fireplace when we weren't looking and we left the house with it running. We smelled it when we returned. :-( Now we have to leave it run to burn off the oil and gunk in the firebox. Paul quickly pulled the trim off and opened the windows to keep the smell under control.

And that's where we are now. Tonight we'll finish emptying the condo so the carpet can be cleaned in the morning.

Disaster, ulcers getting worse

2007-10-24T14:42:00.000-05:00

Both inspections failed, both over relatively minor points but both are in noncompliance. Primary problem is that the electric list is going to Jeff, who didn't do any of the final work. This is probably going to be real bad, if Jeff starts wondering why he is getting this message when he didn't do the work.

Fireplace is scheduled for Monday 1:00.

Final grading is going on. That's good. Nonetheless we're completely screwed. We won't be in this month because there are bound to be noncompliance issues with the structure, and there's no way that will be resolved by next Wednesday. Maybe Thanksgiving. The plumbing inspector pointed out we have building issues to deal with yet. We need proper stairs, because we still have construction stairs with no risers. He also thought the trim should be done. Looks like we'll be installing those two remaining doors after all. Paul will be busy this weekend.

We should have had these inspections done much earlier. We didn't know they had to be done. We thought the building inspection was done after the final grading and all the inspections would be done then.

Signing off for the day

Inspections tomorrow

2007-10-23T18:23:00.000-05:00

The kind of day that gives stomach ulcers. Kathy reported that there was still no action on the fill hauling. So Paul went to the house, and started making phone calls to the city inspection department. We have to be out of the condo by October 31. That's eight days from now.

After some talking it was determined that we needed to get final inspections of the plumbing and electric; if those passed we could get a building inspection and that would be it for the building. One problem: The contractors had pulled the permits, so they had to call for the inspections. That was fine for the plumbing; Paul called Midwest and asked them to call for the inspection. The secretary called back a moment later to tell him that it would be between ten and noon tomorrow. The electric was a bit more problematic because we didn't have Jeff come back to do the final electric. Paul had Al call, and shortly later Al called back to say that inspection would also be between ten and noon.

So Paul has to patch all the holes in the garage wall and by the whirlpool, and he's home tomorrow to meet the inspectors. We hope they won't have a fit over all the stuff in the house. We really hope they pass so we don't have to have any more work done.

Still, we can't get our occupancy permit until the final grade is certified. Paul called the grader. They were very apologetic that they hadn't gotten out to finish yet. It's not drying out around here; it's rained every third day for the last two weeks. We hope they get out here this week.

We still don't have the fireplace going; Paul finally reached Dale this morning but couldn't get a date/time for installation confirmed. If they don't show up tomorrow Paul will have to call and find out when they're coming. In the meantime the switch boxes will have to be covered. It would be nice to get that done once. We'd like to see it in operation.

In other news, Paul put up the fence over the retaining wall this weekend. It's 90% done and looks great so far; there will be a picture when it's complete. Here are pictures of the window well and the landing Paul built a couple weeks ago.

More news tomorrow.....

Egress window well is done. Whirlpool works

2007-10-17T19:22:00.000-05:00

The crew from Finishing Touches was here on Friday, Monday and today. They finished up at twilight. The well looks great. Needs to have the drain attached yet, Paul will do that tomorrow or whenever.

Paul cut two tiles and the drywall they were attached to out of the whirlpool base. He tried to be nice about it, but it ended up that the easiest way to do this was to beat it with a hammer until everything broke. :) Once inside he found both GFIs needed to be reset. With that done, everything kicked in and worked. Now he needs to find a little piece of half inch plywood and stick two tiles to it, then screw that to the base and our access panel will be done.

The grading crew will be along as soon as it's dry enough for them to work. That likely means not tomorrow. Maybe Friday.

More puttering around the house

2007-10-14T19:42:00.000-05:00

My kingdom for a bottle of white glue. It's the only thing standing between us and a finished kitchen. Paul finally trimmed the kitchen window and cut all the trim panels at the floor and the back of the island. Couldn't find anything to glue it down with though. So it'll have to wait until we scare up a bottle somewhere.

We discovered the whirlpool doesn't work. The pump doesn't kick in. Now we have a new problem to solve. :-( And we forgot to make an access panel under the tub to fix it, so now we have to cut apart some of the tile joints to make one.

We still have to finish up the basement stair light, install closet shelves, mount the in-wall speakers in the master bedroom, trim the master bath and parts of the kitchen, hall, laundry and powder room, put up the fence on top of the wall, and organize the basement and laundry room.

Should keep us busy for awhile.

Puttering around the house......

2007-10-13T21:54:00.000-05:00

Kathy made a long list of things that Paul still needed to do to get the house done. Most of it is low-effort work but it needs to be done. So he started on the list. The kitchen cabinets now have handles, finally. 36 handles were installed. Also Paul started closing up the extra hole by the basement stair light, installed the dining room chandelier and screwed down the island and its countertop. All long overdue stuff.

Work will continue tomorrow.

Cable TV

2007-10-11T23:47:00.000-05:00

The cable guy came this afternoon to hook us up. So before that happened Paul ran and terminated all the cable this morning. All the dangling wires in the basement are finally gone, it took maybe an hour or so and went okay. The cable guy arrived around 2:00, and after an hour of running cable outside and then inside, we got a great signal on the little TV in the family room.

So then we picked up the 51" projection set from the condo, rolled it into the new house with only mild difficulty, and after a bit of wiring and a run to Radio Shack all our A/V was done and we finally got the digital surround sound going. :) Looks and sounds great.

Paul also picked up the remaining computers from the condo and set up the network printer and the file server next to the wiring cabinet so that's going. We're glad to have it.

That's it for electronics left at the condo. It's all here now.

In other news the window well will start tomorrow. Paul will try to be on site early to answer any questions.

House is complete!

2007-10-09T20:58:00.000-05:00

The electric installation was completed Sunday. Paul also finished installing all the network jacks Sunday night (as he is a network technician, this is one of the few things at which he is truly competent....) and that went well. Some jacks needed to be repunched, but no big deal.

Phone service was brought to the house on Monday, and with it came our DSL Internet service too. Only problem was that nobody had connected it to the inside wiring. So that was Paul's job too. He picked up a roll of outdoor phone cord at Radio Shack and, after a few false starts due to the stripped wire breaking, soon had the network interface connected to the phone block inside. He connected a couple jacks to the block, and just like that we had two working phones in the house. Then he connected the DSL modem a few minutes later so we have an Internet connection here too.

Cable is coming Thursday, so Paul will just have to get his coax cables spliced and connected to splitters tomorrow night. That won't take long.

Now we just wait on the landscaping. Finishing Touches Landscaping is coming Thursday to start constructing the wall. They should be done by Monday. Paul tentatively scheduled the final grading for Tuesday. On Wednesday morning we'll have the surveyor come in the certify the grading, and assuming that's done correctly we'll have the inspector come by as soon as possible thereafter to give us our occupancy permit. Then we'll finish moving and that will be that.

Last week we had moved boxes of stuff from the basement of the condo to the garage of the house. Today since the weather finally cooled off we moved the stuff to the basement here so the garage / receiving dock :) is ready for more stuff.

Paul moved a little bit of stuff from the condo to the house today and wanted to do more but he is oddly worn down and doesn't have the energy to do much. We cleaned out some stuff but he's done by 9:30, which is early for him.....

Air conditioned comfort

2007-10-05T23:25:00.001-05:00

The A/C is working and a blessing it is. It's hot. We shut the doors and cooled off. There has also been progress with the basement lighting.

The furniture arrived and looks great. We couldn't fit a chair intended for the family room in it. It's living in the blue bedroom.

Paul terminated nine important jacks upstairs. There are about ten remaining to be done. When those are done he'll punch down in the block downstairs and then our phone wiring should be done. Also we'll be doing some minor cleanup tasks and emptying the garage into the basement so we can continue cleaning out the house.

Plumbing done. And we have heat!

2007-10-04T23:20:00.000-05:00

The plumbers worked Monday and Tuesday. This was completely uneventful. Our whirlpool works now, and the master bath toilet is working again. Also they installed the gas line and the thermostat. The power to the furnace had already been hooked up, which meant that we now have heat. :) Too bad it's 80 degrees out and what we actually need (in October!) is air conditioning. It was wired, but kept popping the breaker due to a short in the outside wiring. It should be fixed tomorrow.

After all this time, all the outlets in the house finally now work. The kitchen outlets were all correctly rewired and tested working, which just left the homework desk outlet and the master bath. Paul fixed both of them tonight. A hot wire had fallen out of a wire nut in the homework desk outlet, which was easily repaired; and he replaced the GFI in the master bath with a new one. That worked well.

So that just leaves the doorbell and smoke detectors, which have to be connected in the panel, and the light above the basement stairs. Bad news is that we have an extra hole in the basement stair wall. :-( The first hole for the box was cut in a stud space that was heavily blocked and there was no way to fish a wire down through. Once we pulled up the pictures of the pre-drywalled house and saw this, we decided to make a new hole on the other side of the stud where the space was wide open. Fishing a wire through here took just a minute, and that's where we stand right now. It will be hooked up in the panel soon too. When these tasks are done the house itself will be complete and ready for inspection.

But we can't call in the inspector yet because of that window well. We hired Finishing Touches Landscaping to build a block well for basement egress. This will be pricey ($4300) but what are you going to do. It has to be done. They'll start next week and once that and final grading are done we will call in the inspector. Actually, maybe we'll do that after the A/C is done and get the HVAC inspected right away so that's out of the way.

Tasks remaining for us are to install the base molding in the kitchen, punch down all the phone/network/CATV wiring, put up the fence, and move our stuff out of the condo. This latter we have been working on the past few days with moderate success. The garage is a disastrous junky mess full of crap brought over from the storage unit and the condo. We have to move these things into the basement before anything else can come in.

In other news, we filed our fourth and final draw, and our living room and family room furniture will be delivered tomorrow.

That's it. See you next time.

A party at the house

2007-09-29T23:33:00.000-05:00

Got a visit tonight from Paul's parents to see the house before they go away on a two week vacation. His brother Steve, as usual, drove them down; and we were surprised by his brother Ron and sons coming down too. We celebrated Kathy's birthday upcoming on Tuesday. Of course, a good time was had by all. The odd thing was that our guests were gone by 8:30 and we then left the house - this was the earliest Paul had been home from the house in a week. Unused to having a whole evening with nothing to do, he cleaned the kitchen at the condo. :)

We had the house clean and looking great because we spent much of last night and today placing furniture, hanging pictures, fixing paint chips, cleaning grout off the walls and floors and just generally cleaning up. Unfortunately it's still not completely done, but will be soon. Electric work has been continuing all week. The furnace and air conditioner are wired but still have to be connected in the panel. Same with the stove, dryer and dishwasher. Also, after all this time we finally have power in the family room. There had never been a hot lead to that room. With minor difficulty Paul and Al fished a wire through the wall and today it was connected in the panel. We also still need the GFCIs connected correctly in the master bedroom and kitchen and a box installed above the stairs in the ceiling and switches hooked to it.

The plumber didn't come Thursday, Paul got them for Monday. Unfortunately they declined to install the faucet we bought due to the difficulty of removing the Moen rough-in pipes that were installed, so we are getting a Moen trim kit from them. Most likely it will be pricey and Kathy won't be happy with it but at least we'd finally get the plumbing done. It and the drain need to be installed in the whirlpool, the gas hooked up and the thermostat installed and that should be that for that.

We have been emptying our storage unit so we don't have to pay next month's rent. This has gone rather better than expected. It only took about a dozen or so runs with the pickup and van to nearly empty it. There are two more truckloads for tomorrow. We've been putting everything in the basement and garage, and the garage is pretty stuffed now, but we'll organize it when we get the chance. Also, we spent a lot of time and effort working on the window well problem the last couple days. However, this morning Paul, after trying for an hour and a half to make a stable base on which to set the 8,000 pound wall, determined there was absolutely no way to pull this off with the manpower, equipment and knowledge we had at hand. We are going to have to hire somebody to build the well for us if we want any chance at getting this done right. That will mean more delays, which is pretty upsetting. On the other hand, we're nowhere near ready to move out of the condo so at least we'll be able to use the time to clear out and clean it, and figure out how to organize the house.

So Paul used the time today to build the landing outside the patio doors. He was pretty tense about this as all the directions for building these referred to ledgers and concrete post holes and inspections and whatnot. Then he found that Home Depot carries all the materials necessary to make a floating deck. It doesn't attach to the house, just set the concrete piers on the ground nice and level, install 2x6s and screw them down. $150 bought all the materials to make the 6x5 foot landing, and two hours of shoveling, tamping, setting and cutting later he was nearly done. Would have finished but he underestimated the amount of lumber necessary and ran five boards short. We'll get those tomorrow and finish up. Turned out to be a very easy job. It's nice being able to get out the patio doors without risking a turned ankle.

Tomorrow's activities include that, completing the emptying of the storage unit and assembling the final draw for filing Monday. And the usual miscellaneous, helping with the electric and organizing.

Carpeting, hot water and a full garage

2007-09-25T22:21:00.000-05:00

The primary activity the last two days has been painting of millwork in the carpeted areas. That was done Monday. Today the carpet installers arrived at 9:30 and went to work. It was kind of an odd setup, eventually involving six different people who came in and out as the day went by, but either way by 3:30 or so all the carpeting was in place and it looked great. Finally, the OSB we've been walking on and abusing for four months is nowhere to be seen.

Electric work continues. The hot water heater is hooked up and works fine. Now we have hot AND cold running water. Woo hoo. :)

The whirlpool faucet will arrive tomorrow. We called the plumber and HVAC guys to come back Thursday to go to work. We also called the excavator back in, he will try to get it done Thursday or Friday. Paul will contact him Thursday morning to find out when he will be coming so he can be there.

If the electric is finished we could maybe have the inspector come Friday afternoon, otherwise more likely Monday because that will give Al the weekend to finish up. He may need it. Still remaining to be done are the furnace, air conditioner, stove, dishwasher, dryer, installation of ANOTHER missing circuit (there was no feed to the family room; the whole room is completely dead) and fixing the light over the stairs. That's just off the top of my head, I can't remember if there's any more. The smoke detectors and doorbell are in but the wires aren't run to 110V yet. We also have a dead outlet in the homework desk. That's kind of a biggie because we'll be using that to charge up our electronics. We also need to get the fireplace going.

Kathy is anxious to empty the storage unit to avoid paying another month's rent on it. So Paul dragged four pickup loads full of stuff to the house and left most of it in the recently-cleaned garage for the time being. We were specifically looking for the dining room table and did soon unearth it, but we were unhappy to find the glass tabletop had broken in two. Now we'll have to go have a new top made at the glass shop. The pedestals and chairs survived fine, at least.

Think that's it for now. Wonder how much more progress we'll have by the end of the week.........

Millwork and electric, day 65

2007-09-22T23:51:00.001-05:00

No, not really, it just seems that way. It was a productive day. Paul finished installing all the base molding in the areas to be carpeted. Gap filling and painting have followed and the work looks good. We should easily be ready for carpet installation on Tuesday.

Electric work continued too. We started with a mild crisis this morning when Paul decided to find two buried fixtures - the powder room light above the sink and the light above the landing for the basement stairs. First the half bath light - Paul was looking for an electrical box and not finding one drilled a couple of extra pilot holes to look. Eventually he wondered if there really was a box at all or just a loop of wire, and he enlarged the very first hole made. And there was the wire. He pulled it out. Later Al mounted a box there, and Paul attached the fixture so we finally have light in the powder room. He also has some extra pilot holes to fill. :-(

The bigger problem was the light above the stairs. Paul realized that the garage wall backed up on the stairs, and it occurred to him to just cut out part of the unfinished drywall in the garage and just patch it back up later. Well, two big squares and loads of insulation later, Paul finally found the wire coming up from the switch and followed it.....way past the point where any box could possibly be. The wire was heading off toward the bottom of the basement stairs where the other 3-way switch for the light was. There was no hot feed to the switches, and there was no box. Damn. Now we have a problem. We have to get a feed from somewhere, install a box and wire it. This stinks.

Kathy was thoroughly unimpressed with the cutting. What else to do, though; it's not we can just magically know where everything is. Some of this stuff wasn't photographed.

Paul cleaned before he left today. So here's what all happened.

Just being a 3-year-old is hard work. Ashley crashed on the dining room floor.

Helping fill gaps in the molding joints.

The completed family room wearing its new shoes. :-) Each one of those arches required nine pieces of base molding.

One side of the living room.

Other side of the living room. The radio doesn't get to stay there, but at least it's off the part of the floor that will be carpeted It was keeping Paul company tonight with '50s music from Toronto's AM 740 CHWO.

Down the hall

The kitchen and dining room, from the family room.

The new driveway.

The new walkway from the driveway to the front door.

Tomorrow? Millwork painting will continue in the carpeted areas. Paul will probably start installing in the vinyl areas for lack of anything better to do.

We have a driveway

2007-09-21T23:32:00.000-05:00

Paul is getting a headache.
Elite was supposed to come this morning to start our driveway. They and the excavator were supposed to coordinate activities this week so everything was ready to go this morning.
Well, at 7:30 Elite called and left a message saying nothing was done for excavation and they'd have to pull their guys off the job. Paul was in the shower at the time, but after getting the message he called the excavator, who said he had sent a guy and everyone was working. And he was annoyed. We don't know when they got in touch or what was going on, but whatever. Paul went to the lot and found that, indeed, Darren's loader driver was digging away and greeted Paul with a what-are-you-gonna-do shrug, and a crew of six or seven concrete guys were setting up. Ooookaaaay. Well, great. Everyone's in a crabby mood but at least it got done. All the strife paid off big though. We were lucky in that an inspector came right away to look at the approach forms. They were good, so they were able to pour concrete right away. It's all done and it looks really, really great. We're completely pleased with it.

Kathy and her mom went at midday and kept painting. That's going very well. By the end of the day all but a couple of the doors that were hung were painted, and windows will start soon too.

Paul arrived mid-afternoon and eventually starting laying base molding. By the end of the day all the bedrooms and their closets had base molding and most of the window casings installed. This job should be wrapped up tomorrow as Paul just has the living and family rooms left for carpeted areas, and the kitchen window needs to be trimmed. We have a little problem in that Paul can't find the top round trim for the front bedroom window so that window isn't trimmed yet. We have never seen it and don't know where it is. We may have to get a new piece. Doing the family room will be irritating - due to the existence of the little arches, trimming that room will require installing no fewer than 34 individual pieces of base molding, most just a couple inches long. Grrrr. That will probably be the end of Paul's day after that nasty job is done.

We still don't have any progress on the window well problem and electric installation is continuing albeit slowly. We did order a new roman tub faucet off eBay so when that comes we'll have the plumber and HVAC guys swing by and finish up. We will probably be looking at mid October for completion now due to these problems unless something really magical happens. Mood status: Below average. We are frazzled, weary and impatient and wishing for this process to be over with. Better than no progress at all, though, so we have that going for us.

In other news, the next door lot (2015 W. Wood) will sell to a couple in their fifties. They'll be building a Wolter Brothers' Hawthorne, a 1750sqft ranch rather similar to ours. It'll be reversed so their garage and kitchen etc. are adjacent to our garage, kitchen etc. so that will mean a little extra privacy for both of us. Good deal. Only problem is our dumpster is on their land (or will be their land around October 5th) so we hope we're done with it by then.

That's it. More soon

Busy, busy, busy

2007-09-17T22:46:00.000-05:00

Picking up where we left off and continuing from there. The plumbing is done except for the whirlpool because we can't find a roman tub faucet that matches the rest of the house's faucets. We'll have to mail order one. It's nice to have running water, even though there's only cold because there's no power to the hot water heater. We've already had one failure; the master bath toilet shutoff valve doesn't work. When it's full open it shuts off. We can leave it halfway open but the toilet fills very slow that way. We'll have to have it replaced.

The plumber was done and left Friday morning. Friday afternoon, WE Energies came to install the gas. :-/ Now the plumber will have to come back to finish up. That's okay, it can wait until we have the whirlpool faucet. We don't really need heat that badly yet.

Electric installation is proceeding, slowly. We have all the ceiling lights in place except the bedroom closets, basement and the dining room chandelier, just because it's likely to be run into as we're working. That can wait until we're almost done. Most of the outlets are hot. We still have a lot of outlets that aren't going yet; some circuits were mis-installed and have to be repaired first. The electrician completely forgot to supply an outlet in the hallway and run a feed to the kitchen and hallway ceiling lights, and the drywaller buried boxes above the stairs and in the powder room. We got the feeds fixed but those buried boxes will be a little more challenging to fix. We also still don't have power to the hot water heater (Paul bought a nice electric one with 5500 watt elements for faster recovery), the furnace, the dishwasher or the A/C.

We have a major problem with the landscaping. We don't know how to do the window well for egress from the basement. We would have been in much better shape if we had bought two smaller windows instead of the one big window because we could buy a simple cheap manufactured product, attach it to the wall and backfill around it. With this big window we can't get a manufactured product that big so we're kind of screwed. The only good news is that the rules that apply to making retaining walls don't seem to apply to window wells made from retaining wall block. I think we'll put in drain tile, fill up the well almost to window level with dirt, compacting along the way to make it stable; set the stones and fill behind it with dirt. We can't think of any other way to do this. It will be very hard work and take a long time but there just doesn't seem to be any other option other than removing and bricking up the window, which would also cost money and the work would all have to be redone when we want to do the basement at higher cost. Any way we look at this we lose, but it seems making the block wall will minimize the total pain.

And inside, work is continuing on the millwork. Kathy and her mom got all the casings painted and started puttying and painting the doors, which was excellent, and Paul set to work on installing casings starting Saturday. He has his brother Steve's excellent Ridgid miter saw and a pneumatic brad nailer, and once he got into the swing of things he made good time on these. Tonight he finished all the casings around the doors that have been installed to date. Next we'll have to get more casings, because we've run out, Paul has to hang the rest of the doors and trim them and then the base moldings in the carpeted areas will start. Maybe we'll have all the millwork done by the end of the week if we work hard. That would be good. Then we have to start on that window well...... :-(

Time to make the 9/30 completion date is running out. It looks like we may need an extra two weeks. :-( We're hoping not to but we'll see.

Retaining wall and plumbing continued

2007-09-12T21:29:00.001-05:00

By the time Paul got to the house at 7:35 the landscaping guys and a new plumber were on site. The plumber had let himself in through the patio door. That was fine, but was also a reminder to install the hardware on those doors to keep that from happening again. The retaining wall is apparently done. They capped it off. The tubes in which we are to put the fence posts are sticking out the top of the fill behind the wall. We hope they plan to use more fill to cover those up eventually as part of final grading. They were gone by 12:30.

Paul spent some time talking with the plumber. Nice enough guy. He told us that unfortunately we had the wrong water heater - Paul had bought a gas one, but it used standard venting (a chimney) and one was never installed, so if we wanted gas we would need a power vent model. Paul found that these cost $150 more than equivalent regular vent models. He is thinking of getting an electric model instead. With NG prices so high he's not sure that having gas really saves any money anyway. The other thought is to put in a tankless, but they're awfully expensive ($1300 for a 3-bath house) and we can't really afford that. We will also need to get a whirlpool tub and drain and a marble top for the master bath. Paul will buy all that in the morning.

Lots of progress today

2007-09-11T21:25:00.000-05:00

What a day. We had no fewer than six separate processes going on today. We had the whole street full of parked vehicles. :)

Paul was first on site after dropping off Katie at school, and started hanging doors. Then the installer from Overhead Door showed up and he set to work installing the window panel in the garage door and our garage door opener.

Then the crew from Travis Brothers showed up to start on the retaining wall. They worked all day on that and got half done.

Then a plumber came from Midwest to start the waste pipes. Eventually a second plumber came too and did some work upstairs.

Then Kathy and her mom came to paint millwork.

And then Al came to continue the finish electric.

Paul got all but five of the doors done. With all the activity it was inconvenient to do the basement and laundry room doors, the laundry closet door is a bifold which has a completely different installation routine (and it was dark in there) and the master bedroom closet door and door to the master bath were cut so large that Paul will have to shim them with 1x4s on each side before trying to install the doors. Other than that they're all installed. They'll need patching and the nails countersunk yet though.

All but one bundle of the casing is painted. Paul installed some of it around the patio door, family room and living room windows tonight which Kathy's mom had painted earlier in the day. Looks good.

The plumber didn't make as much progress as we expected; we think they must have spent much of the day just planning out where to put everything. We were hoping they'd have a toilet in by the end of the week so we could return the port-a-potty but I guess we'll see.

Tiling done! :-)

2007-09-08T22:27:00.000-05:00

TWELVE HOURS of grouting. Ay caramba. The shower, obviously, took the most time but the whirlpool and foyer were done too. It's amazing how much difference grouting makes. Everything looks great. Except for Paul. He's a mess. All covered in grout powder. He looks like the Pillsbury Dough Boy.

Lots of other things happened the last two days too. Paul had gone Friday morning to clean up for the appliance delivery and found Travis Brothers' guy there doing our final grading, which was a good thing. He didn't get done because it suddenly rained hard for a while around noon and he left for the weekend. Our appliances arrived around 4:00 yesterday but they didn't have power yet. Kathy and her mom painted base molding all day, so once we get the doors installed we'll be ready to start installing that. We installed another door today, the closet right off the front door. Al and his kids have been here the last two days and he worked some more on the breaker box. This is going reasonably well - all of a sudden today we had light in the house; the light over the sink kicked on. The fridge works, and the leftovers from today's dinner were placed inside. All the outlets in the bedrooms and some other circuits are live. We're really pleased with that. Tomorrow we'll install the overhead lights in the bedrooms so we can see as we move around the house. :)

Pictures soon

Tile setting all done

2007-09-06T20:56:00.001-05:00

The Six Day Tail-Busting Home Construction Extravaganza has finally, mercifully, reached its end. It's been 90 degrees all week (though oddly comfortable in the house, with all the windows open to let the flies in.) Anyway, Paul woke up late, and we went to Home Depot for a couple supplies and a 5-gallon bottle of water. We took our cooler to the house because we were running out of pint bottles. Paul was a little tense because it had been unplugged in the corner for so long, but it worked fine.

Paul finished setting the tile in the shower floor. That was the last of the tile (as far as Paul was concerned, the last forever and ever and EVER) but on Saturday he gets to go grout it all. :-/ But still it feels good to have the shower this far along, it's been a thorn in our sides for almost two months and we're totally sick of it. He took the tile cutter home to wash it, a job long overdue, and then it can be put in the way, way, way back corner of the garage. :)

Midwest Plumbing's HVAC guys made a surprise appearance today, and we were glad to see them. They hooked up our condenser outside today, building up the ground to final-grade level underneath it, set down the plastic pad, and hooked it up to the furnace. They were going to hook up the thermostat too, but we have a two-stage-heat furnace and President sent a single-stage thermostat. We queried Bob about this; apparently these new Lennox single-stage thermostats have a jumper that allows them to be used in a two-stage system. Brian, the mechanical guy at President, e-mailed us a diagram of how it is to be wired in this way. I didn't get back to Midwest but apparently they would come back to hook up the thermostat; I guess we'll call them when we get around to it. We still don't have climate control anyway because the electric isn't hooked up to the air conditioner; if it were we could live in air-conditioned comfort for a change instead of opening the windows and letting the bugs in.

Paul finished setting the cabinets in all three bathrooms. We still need tops for the two full baths. He also set the door to the closet just off the kitchen and added the hardware (which will have to come back off when we paint the door) and it looked and worked very well. We'll finish that up on Saturday or Sunday. We put down two small pieces of base molding behind the fridge so we don't have to worry about that tomorrow when the appliances arrive. And finally we added a little decor. There will be pictures when we take them. Either way we made a lot of progress and are hopeful we'll be all done and moved in by the end of the month.

Shower wall tile setting done

2007-09-05T20:36:00.000-05:00

Well, it only took about five years but the wall tile in the shower is finally all set. Paul started at 8:00 and, after a trip to Menards for yet another case of tile, a bucket of thinset and a hole saw, was done by 2:00 or so. Took a lot of time to set all those squirrely little corners, and the curb was done too. Nothing left but to clean and reshape the mortar bed a little with a chisel, and then we'll set the floor too. That should go relatively quickly. On Saturday after the floor tile sets Paul will clean and grout the tiles (also the ones around the whirlpool) and the master bath should be all ready for the plumbers.

Paul spent the rest of the afternoon setting the floor tiles in the foyer. This was easy. Only a few cuts. It took a lot of thinset though so we may or may not need to buy a little more to finish the shower floor.

Tomorrow after setting the shower floor Paul will paint as many chairs as his paint supply will allow, set the cabinets in each of the three bathrooms and then start hanging doors. Friday is a work day, then Saturday will be cleaning, grouting and more door hanging. At some point we'll have to pick up our faucets for the plumber. Three bathroom sink, one shower, one whirlpool, one shower-bath. That should be a few hundred $$$. :(

We are having Elite do our flatwork because their price was reasonable. They'll start after final grading, which we need to find out when that will be.

Vinyl flooring

2007-09-04T21:40:00.000-05:00

It's in. Looks good.

Paul was onsite just before 8 to clean the floors. It took an hour and a half to sweep the floors and take out the trash. In the end it was probably kind of a waste of time because when the installers arrived at ten the first thing they did was grind the floor clean. We weren't around much today, we went to Racine to get some fabric paint to change our counters stools' upholstery from turquoise green to medium blue so it would go better with the decor. Paul painted one chair and it worked out reasonably well.

We also picked up tiles to finish up the shower.

By 1:00 or so the installers were done laying subfloor and had it sanded and sealed, and by 5:00 the vinyl was done and they were gone. We can walk on it tomorrow.

Tomorrow's agenda includes completing the tiling in the shower (should be done by noon), painting the rest of the chairs, setting the three bathroom cabinets and if there's any time left over maybe start putting base moldings in the areas that will be inaccessible when the appliances go in. After that we'll start installing interior doors in the areas to be carpeted. When the doors are in the casings can go in, then the base moldings can go in, everything painted and then the carpet installation can happen. We'll get around to the doors and remaining moldings in the vinyl areas later.

Labor Day weekend is over

2007-09-03T19:16:00.000-05:00

And boy did we labor.

Steve came on Saturday and helped finish up the kitchen and dining room cabinets. Worked out fine. We also installed a few ceiling light fixtures and were done by 4:00.

Paul spent the rest of the weekend tiling the whirlpool and the shower. Now that he's getting the hang of the tiling it's going much better. The whirlpool was done on Sunday and two walls of the shower in four hours on Monday. That leaves just one wall (the back wall) and the floor to do. Once dry it can be grouted and then it's ready.

More progress was made on the electric on Sunday, and we've done a few other small things around the house too. We hope the vinyl floor installation is still on schedule for tomorrow (Paul will have to clean the house before they arrive) so that gets done. We ordered our appliances from Colder's today and they will be delivered on Friday. We will call in the plumber to start next Monday because we think the shower should be ready by then. Also we will call a few more flatwork guys and hopefully sign somebody by the end of the week at the absolute latest. Otherwise if Paul gets the chance he'll just keep tiling the shower and we need to see about getting a shower door.

Here are some pictures. Big changes since the last series.

Updates this week and August wrapup

2007-08-31T23:51:00.000-05:00

Our camera died, looks like somebody dropped it. A new one has been mail-ordered (it's another Fuji just like the one Paul broke in May) and when it comes we'll take and post a few photos.

Anyway, we've ended another month. August was pretty much all about interior finishing, as will September be too. I think we went a bit over our time budget by doing work ourselves and having people who are doing side jobs, but we need to save the money and we certainly can't complain about the quality of the work.

The painting was completed on Tuesday. It looks great.

Activity has been fairly desultory for the last two days, but today Kathy's brother-in-law Al came over to start the finish electric. So far he's got half the outlets and switches in place. We're looking forward to having the wiring connected in the breaker box and all those outlets live so we aren't trailing extension cords all over the house, and having electric light that isn't a hot halogen worklight would be great. After the electric is live we need to remember to get Overhead Door back in to install our garage door opener and install the window panel in the top of the door.

Steve is coming again tomorrow to finish up the kitchen cabinets so that's done before the floor goes in on Tuesday, and we'll probably get a start hanging doors too. He's also bringing all of Paul's radios that he was storing to move into the basement. This will be scary.

Paul did enough butt-busting labor today anyway. While Al was installing the outlets his two boys helped Paul clean all the lumber and garbage off the property. Some fifty leftover 2x4s and 2x6s in lengths from 12 to 20 feet that had been laying in the next door lot and next to the garage were moved into the basement; some through the egress window and some down the stairs. Some are still in the garage and will have to be cut up before they will get downstairs. They're all stacked up where the pool table is supposed to go, and we put them there so we could use them to frame walls in the basement someday. We think they shouldn't be in the plumber's way as there's no plumbing over there except the main. The really nasty job was moving and discarding a half dozen sheets of 4x8 OSB off the front corner by the park. We had forgotten about these, and they were covered in wet mud. It was a disaster.

Meanwhile, Kathy bought casings for around the fireplace, painted a stencil on the wall over the fireplace in the family room and hung a granite cross wall decoration next to it. Our first nail in the wall. :)

So, ahead to September. As near as we can figure, this is what's left to do:

1. finish installing cabinets & countertops
2. install fireplace and window casings
3. install doors and door casings
4. paint casings and doors
5. install vinyl flooring and tile
6. install and paint baseboard
7. door hardware and shelves
8. bath shower tile
9. electrical finish
10.install phone and network jacks
11.plumbing & hvac finish
12.appliances
13.carpeting
14.driveway
15.patio
16.retaining wall and final grade
17.pass inspection

Unfortunately all but seven of those are work we will have to do. Paul took next week off of work.

Setting the kitchen and bathroom cabinets should be easy. Once it's done we'll call Midwest in to finish up and get some running water in the house. We need to get our water heater and all the fixtures yet.

We hired our excavator to build us a retaining wall. It's just too big a job for us to handle ourselves, and as Darren pointed out, this is just eight feet from our house. A collapse will not be acceptable. :) We'll do this right. Only problem is we had to borrow more money from our mortgage company to pay for this unbudgeted expense.

We are also having people come in to estimate the remaining flatwork. One came in yesterday, measured, and gave an instant estimate of $3200 to do the driveway, approach, city sidewalk and a walkway from the garage to the front door. There are many people who can do flatwork. We'll keep looking for a lower cost option.

Vinyl flooring goes in Tuesday. :) Then the doors and casings, then the baseboards. After that the carpeting can go in. Also we'll have to squeeze in the window casings, finishing the shower, installing a little landing outside the patio doors, installing all that hardware and arranging the finish grading.

I sure hope we pass inspection. We need to be in by the end of September. One month left. We hope.

More painting. And cabinets!

2007-08-26T23:12:00.000-05:00

The kitchen, dining and family rooms are done. The rest of the house has one coat and needs another.

We decided the living room color is, well, ill-conceived. Kathy picked out a very faint gray to replace it.

On Saturday Paul's brother Steve came down and we installed kitchen cabinets. This went reasonably well. We have the wall cabinets up nice and level, the corner between the fridge and stove is done with its countertop installed and looking good, and all the other base cabinets are done except the one on the other side of the stove and the filler strip between it and the sink base. The countertops will have to be attached after that. The piece between the sink and wall by the dining room was cut an inch and a half too long. We had to cut off the straight edge and sand it later.

Pictures later.

Painting, day 1

2007-08-23T21:35:00.000-05:00

Cliff and Gordie were hard at work early this morning. By the time we got there they had already painted the ceiling and were putting the first coat on the walls. They move quick. The house and weather were oppressively hot and muggy. They knocked off around 3:00 or so but got a lot of work done. We were impressed.

The kitchen will be done tomorrow so it looks like the cabinets will be installed Saturday. Hope that goes well. :) We drafted Paul's brother for help.

Here's pictures of the paint so far. Sorry for the poor quality; we cleaned the camera after these were taken and future photos will look better. The first coat is done in the kitchen, dining room, family room and girls' bedroom along with all the closets.

Texture, primer and tiling

2007-08-23T00:12:00.000-05:00

Hmm. Just noticed we haven't updated in almost a week. Oh well.

Anyway, Jon finished up on Saturday morning spraying texture on the walls. Here it is. Too speckly.

On Tuesday we paid him, and Cliff and Gordie came to spray primer on the walls. Cliff is a family friend and Gordie is a friend of his who lives near our house. They're both retired and the best part is they work real reasonable. :) The primer looks great. The pictures do not, for a number of reasons - there was a little spray on the windows that messed up the light in the rooms, a lot of spray was still hanging in the air, and unbeknownst to us somebody smeared the camera lens.

The primer was drying on Wednesday so we worked on tiling the bathroom some more. Instead of using powdered thinset we bought a gallon tub of Type 1 mastic instead to see how it would work. This was much, much easier to handle. We'll get more and finish up over the weekend.

Painting will resume Thursday. They'll be painting the ceiling and maybe starting the walls. We'll see. They probably won't be done until Monday, taking the weekend off.

In other news the cabinets arrived Wednesday afternoon and we were mighty glad to see them. As soon as the kitchen paint is dry they'll likely go in. We're pretty excited.

Drywall installation done

2007-08-17T23:07:00.000-05:00

Drywall mudding and sanding has been continuing; it doesn't really look that much different. It's done today though.

Meanwhile we did some tile work in the shower, and framed up some permanent shelves on either side of the TV in the family room. This is how it's gone. The tiling has not gone very well; Paul is clumsy and making a mess. The shelves went considerably better. Jon drywalled them today. On Saturday Jon will spray the knockdown, and then he should be done. We hired a family friend and a friend of his to paint our house. They'll be starting Tuesday.

In other news, Debbie at Milwaukee Title was quick on the draw; we got a check today so we can pay Jon next week. That's a good thing. Upcoming, we'll be finishing tiling and painting the casings and base moldings, and waiting for the cabinets and installing them after the painting is done - maybe next weekend if we're lucky. Then the casings, base trim and countertops can be installed, then the plumber and electrician and the floor coverings. If there's anything to do after that we don't know what.

So here's where we are. We'll spare you the expensive, nasty details of what it's taken to get the tiling to this point. Maybe things will go better over the next few days. We also have some last photos of the drywall before it's sprayed. Enjoy the pictures. :)

More shower, more drywall

2007-08-12T22:29:00.001-05:00

We completed step 24 of 26 steps to make a shower. Long story short, that meant laying down a 1-1/2" thick mortar bed in the pan. We figured we'd need about 2 cubic feet of mortar, so we bought four bags of mortar mix at Menards, picked up five gallons of water at home, and went to work. Turned out pretty good, actually.

Also we put down backerboard around the whirlpool. Jon also came too to do some mudding.

On Wednesday we will start tiling the walls.

Master bathroom shower work resumes

2007-08-11T21:48:00.000-05:00

With a full day to work and no subcontractors in the way we decided to get something done around the house and get back to work on our shower. We're up to step 19 of 26. Step 19 is a doozy, though......install backerboard on all the walls.

We bought nine sheets last night at Menards ($8 per 3x5 sheet) and put it in the garage until today. There's not a lot to say about the work, except that it took four hours and we were tired when it was done, and we were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the work we did.

In other news, the drywall sheets are all up, most of the corner bead is done and mudding work will resume Monday. There is one layer of mud almost everywhere except for a few exposed screw heads and the arches are mostly in place.

Tomorrow we will lay the mortar bed in the shower. Hope that goes well.

More drywall, and rough HVAC done

2007-08-09T23:58:00.001-05:00

Jeff finished hanging drywall today and started putting in corner bead. Jon is still taping and mudding.

Rough HVAC is done too. The AC condensor isn't set yet, but all the ductwork is in and the furnace and coil are installed.

Friday we expect the J-trim at the peak of the garage to be fixed, rocking and taping to continue, and ceiling insulation to be blown in. We will also be filing a draw so that we have cash to pay Jon when he's done next week.

We went to Menards to pick up some black shutters to go on either side of the front bedroom window to add a little color. Paul installed them this afternoon.

Finally, we were informed the countertops were in at Menards, ahead of the cabinets. :) Hope they fit. Also, tonight we went to buy our base molding and casings because they were on sale for a very low price (34c/foot.) $500 for the whole shebang, good deal. We think we will install them ourselves, if we can figure out where the miter saw is. We got primed colonial, real wood. They should be nice. Kathy wants crown molding in a couple rooms too, but the sale price on that isn't that great right now so we'll let that go for a little while.

So, here are pictures. Enjoy!

Here's Jon, taping in the dining room while Katie watches.

These are the shutters we added today. We think they look nice.

Drywall continued

2007-08-08T01:29:00.000-05:00

Rocking is continuing in the house; Jeff worked all weekend. On Tuesday Jon came to start taping. The interior is suddenly starting to look much more like a finished house. Pictures were taken Monday and Tuesday afternoons.

Master bedroom

Front bedroom vaulted ceiling

Front corner bedroom, closet on the left

Looking down the hall from the bedrooms to the kitchen

Standing in the kitchen; pantry at center and half bath at right

Standing in kitchen looking through dining room to family room and entertainment area. Ceiling will be rocked on Wednesday and the insulation contractor should come to work on Thursday. We have to call.

Standing in family room looking toward front door. The fireplace looks nice. :) Note the arch cutout niche at right in the living room.

Front door and guest closet

Looking down the hall toward the bedrooms

Walking in the front door, looking toward dining room.

In other news, we were surprised by the appearance of the HVAC installers today. They were supposed to be doing another job in the neighborhood but the basement was flooded so they stopped by us. Unfortunately we didn't have the HVAC plan (where the ductwork would run) onsite so they just carried and unboxed all the materials into the basement. They had us leave the plan by the furnace and maybe they'd start work Wednesday. That could only be a good thing. We had never received any copy of the HVAC mechanical plan so Paul got the electronic file from President Homes and took it to Kinko's for a printout.

Also showing up was the electrician, who installed the switch boxes for the fireplace. It figures - he was ten minutes too late. The drywaller had just finished closing up the fireplace. So that just made the electrician's job a little harder, and he had to install old-work boxes for the switches.

In other news we will be filing the draw soon, depending on how fast we can get the gutter and drywall bills. This will be the third draw of four.

Pictures of drywall installation

2007-08-05T21:46:00.000-05:00

Drywall sheets are still being installed; one guy is doing all the work and he worked every day including the weekend. So far he's finished most of the ceilings, the moistureproof walls (bathrooms, laundry) and starting in the bedrooms.

Progress (?)

2007-08-03T01:02:00.000-05:00

Thursday updates:

Kathy was ill so Paul ended up with an unplanned day at home. Then we were surprised by an early phone call. Integrity Construction called, saying they were starting our gutters today. Surprise!

The drywaller finally started this morning too. He was supposed to start on Tuesday but when we went Tuesday night nothing had been done. Anyway, late morning Paul wandered over to the house to see what was going on. The drywaller had finished the corner bedroom ceiling and was starting in the master bedroom and bath. Just one guy was working with the assistance of a panel lift. We also decided on how the gutter system would work, running a gutter down the side of the garage by the front stoop and adding a downspout in the back corner near the kitchen because no drain was near there, and sending the water all the way across the 70' back of the house was a little too long. So the gutter installers finished up today and will be back Monday to install the last piece of fascia on the garage.

While this was going on a tech from WE Energies arrived to energize the power transformer and get electricity to the house. He then called two more techs in with another truck to get things working at the pedestal, and the three of them got the meter installed and tested, and soon the meter was energized and there was power to the panel. We called the electrician, who told us the GFI was in fact live, so we turned out the breakers and just like that, we had power. :) The drywaller was glad for that as now he didn't have to run the generator anymore. Good deal.

Aaaand..we got a call from Bob; there was a problem with the cabinet order. They hadn't even been started yet. This was bad news; now they are going to be late. The problem was that Mid-Continent Cabinets couldn't get the bathroom cabinet done right. After a few phone calls it was finally decided that they could do it correctly with a taller (34") cabinet instead of the standard 30" and they would do it at no additional charge. All right, that will work.

So that was the day. Tomorrow drywall installation continues.

July wrapup

2007-07-31T19:45:00.000-05:00

Well, here we are and another month in the books. Doesn't feel as though we got as much accomplished as we did in June, but still it was a good month all things considered. We successfully completed all the rough electric, plumbing, carpentry and insulation work, which wasn't as easy as we thought. The house is 99.9% sided (the last piece is in the garage waiting for the guys from Integrity to return to install it and the gutters.) We have water. Our cabinets and countertops have been ordered.

With the beginning of August comes the beginning of finishing activities, starting with the walls. The pictures below are the last before they get covered up. The drywallers delivered their materials and stacked it in the rooms in which it will be needed. They also cut away the film over some of the windows, probably so they could breathe. :) It's really warm in there in the afternoons. It'll be nice when the electric gets installed so we can run some fans or something.

In other news, we are considering hiring a painter for our walls. Rickmeyer Floor Coverings has a house plan to quote us for the flooring. We are still waiting for our electrician's bill so we can order our third draw; the plumber has been paid and the siding guys submitted their bill. We'd like to get this done so we can close out the books for the rough work.

Well, here's pictures. Enjoy. We sense the end of this process arriving and are quite pleased about it. All the work gets done with no inspections until the final, when they come through to make sure everything meets code. Once the final inspection passes, we move in. :-)

Garage

Kitchen

Family room corner

Other side of family room window near entertainment area

Looking into the living room

Front coat closet looking into front bedroom behind it

From front bedroom, looking through hallway to main bath (left) and master bath shower (right)

Front bedroom closet, looking through to front entrance

Standing in front bedroom looking through to corner bedroom

Corner bedroom closet

Master bedroom with the setting sun pouring in through the window

Tray ceiling that Paul insulated yesterday morning

Master bath looking through to entertainment area and family room

Stairs

More updates tomorrow.

Another huge milestone: Insulation complete.

2007-07-30T11:44:00.000-05:00

The lack of recent updates is due to the frenetic pace of activity around the house lately. We're exhausted.

Let's back up to where we left off. Friday morning the insulation installer returned to put film on all the walls and the ceiling. He totally sealed up the house, except for the doors - all the windows are covered with film, all the insulation is covered. The house is absolutely stifling now late in the day when it warms up. It appears the ceiling insulation will be blown in after all the drywall is attached.

In the afternoon the inspector came to look. It failed. :-( Fortunately the work that needed to be done wasn't excessive. He wanted batts installed in the area where we put up the blue sheathing on Wednesday, and sheathing and batts in the vertical walls of the tray ceiling in the master bedroom. This was really only a couple hours of work. We could have had the insulation guy come back and do this, but we were expecting the drywall guy on Monday and so we wanted this inspected again on Monday. So we didn't figure we could get the insulation guy back that fast, and with most of the necessary supplies already purchased and on site we just decided to handle it ourselves over the weekend.

Of course, we also had to trench the silt fence.

So on Sunday after church Paul rented a trencher and dug the trench (and a right PITA of a job this was, too, on the uneven ground) but we got through it. Moved and hammered the stakes. Three hours of labor, but the fence looks quite a bit better now.

Then inside to start the insulation. First we did the window in the front bedroom, which involved cutting down the film and pulling off all the wood sheathing the carpenters installed. After doing that it was time to cut up a batt and shove it into the spaces. We were glad to see that cutting insulation was quite easy, but still after installing the batts and stapling the film back up in the warm, still house Paul was totally wiped out. We finally decided he'd come back in the morning to finish up the bedroom before the inspector got there.

This turned out to be a wise idea. After a decent night's sleep Paul arrived at 7:00 to a house that had cooled nicely overnight and had the film cut, the boards and batts in place and the film stapled back up in less than two hours, including a trip to Lowe's to return some unnecessary materials and pick up a sheet of R-3 as a backing for the batts. Went home for a shower and change of clothes and back to the house at ten to wait for the inspector. He arrived at 10:30, approved of all the work and green-stickered it. :-) This was the last inspection before the final. When the final is done, it's moving day.

In the interim Paul finally reached the drywall guy, who had been out of town all weekend. He wouldn't be starting until Wednesday. It figures. Actually, though, this isn't really a bad thing. Now we can clean enough of the garage tonight to make room for the materials that will arrive on Tuesday, and we can clean the inside and get everything away from the walls so they have room to work. And maybe if we're really lucky the electric service will be installed by then so they don't have to bring a gen.

Ah well. Nice to be able to relax a little now. Pictures later.

Insulation

2007-07-26T22:39:00.000-05:00

It's full steam ahead on the house as the insulation installer showed up at 7:30. Also on site was the excavator to dig out our window well.

All the wall insulation is in; tomorrow he will attach film. Looks good so far. Inspection is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. Hope this work is done by then.

In other news, we ordered our countertops today, from the plans. Hope they fit. :-)

HUGE milestone today: Rough building is complete

2007-07-25T20:20:00.000-05:00

Post number 43 on this blog. Feels like a hundred and forty three. Still, it was a good day. It's funny. You never realize when the critical days are coming until they arrive, and then they catch you completely off guard.

The day started at 7:30 when the phone rang. It was Shawn advising me that his co-owner Troy was on site to cut the lumber as the inspector wished. So Paul got dressed and off he went, and was surprised to find not only Troy just finishing up but the excavator was on site with a front-end loader doing finish grading. Well, never mind that now, there's carpentry to be dealt with. It looked good, and he asked Troy to also look at the fireplace to even out its physical location in the box. A couple of 2x4s fixed that problem too, and off he went.

At this point Paul learned an interesting fact, which was that the garage door installer from Overhead Door had been by at 7:30 and then left. Okay, have to deal with that later. Went to talk to the grader, who was just evening out the lawn and refilling our settled backfill around the house. Apparently not in his job description was fixing the window well in the basement. Paul called Darren Travis about that, and also about the fact that the fill pile was sitting on top of where the gas line needed to go, and about the requirement that the side yard be filled up and a retaining wall installed. Darren offered to put in a bid on building the retaining wall. We'll see what he charges. Anyway, we will definitely have him dig out the window well all the way to the footing and fill it back up with stone so it stops draining into our basement.

After the grader left Paul called Susan at Overhead Door. Apparently the installer had left because of all the activity at the house. Fortunately their site is nearby, so he returned a few minutes later and went to work. In the interim Paul waited for the inspector, who was to come between ten and noon.

Well, the inspector didn't show up. Also, there was a problem with the garage door - Overhead Door had forgotten to order the window panel and was installing a completely plain garage door. Well, that won't do; Paul called Susan up who apologized and said it would be in in two weeks. Meanwhile the garage door is functional as is but it doesn't lock; and Kathy doesn't want it rolled down until it's corrected so she can only see it as it is supposed to look. So up it stays.

Paul used the time to keep up with his mail, drain the shower and pull his coax, then went home for lunch and returned to the house just before two. Finally Jeff, the inspector, arrived at 2:30. The first thing he said was that we needed to bury the bottom of the silt fence into a trench. This was news to Paul, as the original fence hadn't been installed that way. Anyway, Jeff provided a sheet of erosion controls showing how to install a silt fence. Well, we'll see about getting a trencher and doing it again. Anyway, he went inside and looked approvingly at the fireplace vent, then went over to the window.

It was still wrong. Jeff showed Paul what was supposed to be sealed up and why; apparently it had to do with the roof sheathing being too short and the living room being part of the attic space because it had air contact with the outside wall. He explained it a couple times; Paul never really understood exactly but at least he knew what to do, and apparently it just had to be something solid. Even R-5 sheet insulation would work. Well, heck, we can cut R-5 ourselves but if it didn't pass that will delay the insulation install tomorrow. So Jeff agreed to pass the building, but wouldn't approve the insulation unless the blocking was done. All right then. Jeff green-stickered the building and left, and that was that.

Paul went straight to Lowe's for a sheet of R-5, cut it up and installed it as required. Then Kathy and the kids returned from the hairdressers' and Paul finished up installing the in-wall speaker wire in the bedroom. Here's the insulation work.

After supper we went back briefly to clean up for tomorrow's installers, and went home. Good progress today, but still this job just can't get done fast enough. Kathy is chomping at the bit to pick out finish materials. Paul just wants it done. Hoping for continued good luck.

Random item progress

2007-07-24T19:46:00.000-05:00

Things that happened today:
-Fixed the silt fence. Kathy had the brilliantly obvious idea of simply pulling the fence off the stakes and stapling it lower so it touched the ground.
-The fireplace guys came in the morning and installed the vent. Looks good. We paid them immediately and off they went.

-Paul finished pulling the Cat5.
-Our carpenter was in Minnesota. He is now the only thing now standing between us and a completed building inspection. Hope he gets in to work tomorrow.
-The cabinets were ordered. After much confusion it was determined that we are getting the Hampton Arch from Mid-Continent. This is part of their better series. They should be very nice.
-The insulation installation was scheduled for Thursday. That might be tough to make depending on the carpenter and inspector.

And that was it. We still need to pull the coax for cable TV into the bedrooms and family room and speaker wire for the in-wall speakers tomorrow.

More tomorrow, we hope.

Two steps forward, one step back

2007-07-23T18:58:00.000-05:00

Saturday. Paul's co-worker Mike came over to help pull Cat5 for the computers and phones. We got off to a less-than-auspicious start when Paul's cordless drill didn't have the guts to drill the two dozen holes through the sill plates necessary to run the cable to the basement ceiling. We had to take the pickup back to Mike's house to get his generator. He started it up, Paul got the electric drill and had those holes done with a quickness. Eighteen of the 26 pulls were done before Mike had to go home. Paul will finish up on Tuesday and run the coax for cable TV.

We spent the rest of the day at the house. Paul bought some chisels and chiseled out a recess for the bolt plates in the front door so we could install the handleset and deadbolt and lock up the house. For the first time our house is lockable.

We had picked up our house numbers at Lowe's and mounted them to the front of the house. :-) We took down our shattered board with the house number and building permit and mounted the permit in the front picture window.

And we worked on cleaning up the front door. We had never taken the protective film off the door. This may have been an error. The film was stuck tight and left ghosts of all the lettering stuck to the door. It took hours of scrubbing with GoJo, Orange Miracle and whatever else we could find to get most of it off. What a nasty job.

And that was Saturday. Paul locked the house. Shawn would be coming over on Sunday to fix the problem with sealing up the attic in the front bedroom as the inspector required.

Sunday morning Paul went to the house to unlock it for Shawn, only to find the door open and Shawn finishing up his work and getting ready to leave. Turns out he went over the wall through the unfinished soffit. o.O Good grief.

So we thought we were ready. The fireplace guys would be coming the next day, the inspection would be in the afternoon, and that would be that.

At 3:45 we went out to the lot, to find....
The siding not quite done. The peak of the garage roof was partially uncovered, and the gable vent seemed too high.
No fireplace vent installation, and
A failed building inspection sticker, with three problems:
- No fireplace vent installation (duh)
- The attic not sealed up correctly (?!)
- The silt fence not correctly installed

Phone calls were made to the inspector, Tony the siding crew supervisor, Dale the fireplace guy and to Shawn. Dale answered first with no idea why his crew didn't show up and no answer from them when he called. He would ensure they would show up the next day. He had better.

Tony called back next. They were short a single piece of fascia material. We'll call Bob about that tomorrow. Apparently we also had two boxes of siding left over. Seems excessive. We'll ask Bob about that too. Apparently the gable vent location near the peak is correct. Okay. Just looks weird, likely because the fascia siding is missing.

Haven't heard from the others yet. Will follow up in the morning.

But some good news too. The inspector approved our shower. Yay! We will drain the water tomorrow and when we get around to it we will install the backerboard and tile.

In other news, Paul ran the budget, called Debbie at Milwaukee Title for our balance and found that we are still on budget. :-) Also called WE Energies for an install date on our electric service. They said they should start this week and ought to be done by the end of next week at the latest. Good news there but it would be nice if they would be done this week so the drywall guys don't have to bring a generator too. It's possible we're bringing in the insulation and drywall guys too soon yet. We may have to delay them a little.

Also, it appears we finally have the cabinets ordered. Unsurprisingly, there was confusion about the order - Bob called to tell us that he thought we were getting Diamond cabinets; we are actually ordering Mid-Continent Cabinetry's Savannah Arch cabinets. Totally different ordering processes, as MCC cabinets come from UBC instead of direct from the manufacturer. Katie had been operating as though we were getting Diamond cabinets. So we don't have any of the paperwork needed to buy MCC cabinets. *grr* Bob and UBC are fixing it somehow. More power to them, as long as we get our cabinets.

Tomorrow will be an interesting day, and not necessarily the good kind of interesting. Paul will be anxiously expecting his workers to finish up, fixing his silt fence, pulling the rest of the cable and handling the fact that the insulation guys are supposed to be coming in two days and we're not ready. :-/ Hoping for luck. We'll need it.

The week in review

2007-07-20T19:04:00.000-05:00

Well, it's finally over. It turned into a much more critical week than expected. A lot of planning and behind the scenes work had to happen to get this all pulled off but it looks like things are finally on track, as much as possible.

First off is cleaning up the opens from earlier in the week. The erosion control items were dealt with through our own efforts. Paul exchanged the broken sledgehammer for a different one at HF Thursday morning after breakfast, and we went back to the house. This hammer was heavier and had a shorter handle than the first one, and Paul had great difficulty working. It was like trying to pound the stakes with a rock. We managed to get the west fence up, and that was enough of that for us for the day.

Next day before work Paul went to buy a different hammer at Lowe's. This one had a longer handle, and Paul was able to install the east fence with it. Also in the morning he ordered two yards of stone for the driveway. He had absolutely no idea how to order stone, which made the poor woman taking the order quite crazy, but eventually we settled on #2 clear to arrive after 3:00.

That wasn't all that was on this morning's to-do list. The siding guys said we didn't have the gable vent for the garage. Paul told Bob about that Thursday night, and this morning while shopping for the hammer he looked for a gable vent. Finding no half-round vents, he went to Menards and got one there instead. President Homes had never gotten around to ordering the vent, so they will have to credit the cost.

Then came a very short day at work during which the fireplace installers were confirmed for Monday and the carpenter for Saturday to complete the inspector's punch list; the inspector himself was confirmed for late Monday. The insulation contractor was pushed to Wednesday, which was fine, and the drywall to July 30. Paul returned to the house at 3:00, picking up 20 electric boxes along the way at Menards for the low voltage (computer network, telephone and CATV) wiring we'll install tomorrow.

The stone truck wasn't there yet, so Paul installed all the boxes. Around 3:30 or so the stone truck rolled up and dumped its load in the driveway. Paul paid the driver $109 and started shoveling rocks. Lots of fun. Spreading the stone to cover the driveway took an hour and a half with frequent long rest breaks. :-) The gravel pit was nearby, but we had it delivered because it appears that two yards of stone weighs about two and a half tons - at $27.50 per load and two or three loads, it didn't make much sense to go get it.

So that was that for the building inspection open issues.

If only that was all that's been going on. It's not. Other things that happened:

We have been growing increasing concerned about the lack of action on our cabinetry. President Homes' cabinet designer has really dropped the ball and it is a source of serious irritation. With no more activity on Thursday, Paul finally got mad on Thursday night and sent a nastygram to Katie, the cabinet designer, and copied to Bob that either the cabinets would be ordered by Monday or they could cancel the whole thing and we'd get them elsewhere.

That got action. Katie mailed us this morning to say she'd call at 7:30 tonight. She did. We discussed the trivial changes and she e-mailed us a new plan to sign off and fax Monday morning to Bob, who would order the cabinets. Apparently they could be ready in three weeks. That brings us to August 13 or so, which is a few days after the drywall would be done. So that might just work out. We'll have to order countertops immediately after the cabinets are installed and hope they get in early if we are to meet our mid September timeframe to get in the house.

And finally, while all this has been going on, we've been having siding installed. They're almost done now. The house is all but finished, and the front of the garage still needs to be done. They'll come back Monday morning and should be done by noon.

Also upcoming, low voltage wiring and carpentry tomorrow. Fireplace installation and inspection Monday. If it passes, the building portion of this project is officially over. :-) We move onto finishing processes.

Here are some siding pictures, and that's it. We are exhausted. Off to bed.

AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH

2007-07-18T22:41:00.000-05:00

Days like this are when being a general contractor stinks on ice. Speaking of which, a shot of Bulleit splashed over a few cubes sure would go down good right now. Anytime this project can be done and over with would be just fine.

Let's see, where did we leave off. First, the electric. Jeff came on Tuesday and replaced the plastic box for the stove outlet with a metal one. It was re-inspected on Wednesday and a green sticker replaced the red one. That will work.

Not working out so well was the rough building inspection. This was inspected Tuesday. We went to the house Tuesday night to find a gigantic orange sign on the garage wall. It appears the inspector took exception to the damage done to our silt fence and driveway stone when the sewer hookup was installed and informed us that if these were not fixed by Friday we would be prosecuted. How nice.

This led to the purchase of 200 feet of new silt fence at Lowe's (fortunately, only $30 per 100 feet, not as bad as we feared considering how much Darren Travis charged us for installing the original fence - that was mostly labor, it seems.) It also led to what has got to be the most unpleasant part of this project, which is calling out the subs for this mess. Paul left the message for Rich to ask him to bring enough stone to fix the driveway. Rich called back in the morning and got Paul on the phone. There was a brief argument, after which it still wasn't determined whether Midwest would supply the stone or not. We thought they would, but we guess we'll find out eventually.

Paul started to install the silt fence tonight but the head snapped off his Harbor Freight sledgehammer and it was too late in the day to exchange it. So that didn't work out so well.

Anyway, the building inspection. We went inside and found the orange sticker for a failed inspection. The note simply read "Will fax list". Oh great. Too many to write on the sticker?!?!

Paul called in the morning. Jeff, the building inspector, faxed the list. There were four items on it. Oh. That's not so bad.

Item 1 was the aforementioned erosion control problems. Item 2 was the fact that the fireplace vent wasn't installed. Hmmmm. What to do about that. Item 3 referenced the fact that some housewrap was missing on the north side of the house. Hmmmm again. Item 4 was that some plywood needed to be installed inside the ceiling of the front bedroom where it vaults up to make room for the window. Okay, that's definitely a Shawn thing.

We'll skip the sordid details about the many, many phone calls that were made Wednesday morning to the city, Midwest Plumbing, the carpenter, and Bob from President Homes to determine who would be responsible for what. It's too painful to recount and Paul would rather just forget the whole thing because it really wrecked his day. Suffice to say he wasted most of three hours dealing with this. Long story short, we needed to bring in a fireplace installer to take care of (2). The siding guys would handle (3) as they were siding the place where a little Tyvek had fallen off. And Shawn would do (4) either Friday or Saturday. A building company from Menomonee Falls will be installing the fireplace either Friday or Monday. Dale Anderson is the contact, and we'll talk to him again tomorrow after he reviews the plan Paul dropped off on his way home from work.

Okay. The main point of concern for us was that we were missing some Tyvek on the front of the house, and this was part of the reason the inspection had failed. Why this was a concern was that the siding crew started today. If the Tyvek wasn't inspected and found good, we were concerned the city would make us pull the siding guys off the job until the inspection was done, and that would have really been bad news. Paul left a message for Jeff the building inspector to ask about that, and finally on the way home at 4:30 Jeff called back to say that he would let the siding continue if the siding guys would fix the Tyvek problem. That was a HUGE relief. Now the problem is whether the fireplace and framing will be done in time for an inspection to be done in time for the insulation sub to start on Monday as scheduled. We think that doesn't look too good. Paul will have to call Allied Insulation tomorrow to have them wait two days, and then tell the drywall guy the same thing. So that isn't great but it is what it is. We'll just have to deal.

Anyway, it appears we shouldn't have the siding guys in yet anyway. They don't expect to be in until the power is on, so they didn't bring a generator. But even without electricity the crew started. They made some progress.

Not bad at all. In fact, very nice. We should ask them how long it will take them to finish. They'll bring their generator tomorrow too.

Finally, after all this time we STILL have not heard from the cabinet designer. Paul expressed his feelings about this particular issue in a voice mail to Bob, who responded that they would be contacting Katie in the morning to have a status check with her. Interestingly, she e-mailed us late tonight to schedule a call to discuss the cabinets. :eyeroll: We told her to call at her convenience and the sooner the better.

Ah well. For all the misery, forward progress was made the last couple days. What else can you ask for.

In other news, we did go ahead and order tile for the shower floor from a bathroom store in West Allis. Kathy really like the tile patterns they had there. We'll have to see if we can use them. For all that's been going on, believe it or not we still don't know if the shower is approved or not.

Anyway. That will do. We have had quite enough of dealing with the house the last couple days, so here this note will end. Update tomorrow.

Over the weekend - we worked on the house.

2007-07-15T23:25:00.000-05:00

The first thing that happened this weekend was that the electric inspector failed our job Friday afternoon. The dual-gang box for the stove was rated only for 10ga wire and the electrician, as required for a stove, used 8ga wire. Hmmmmm. We called Jeff to fix but no answer as of this writing. Maybe he's away for the weekend. We're surprised to not have seen his invoice yet either.

The heavy wire and other materials missing from the wire delivery arrived via courier on Friday. Paul advised Jeff to come pick these up.

Anyway, so we spent our weekend making our shower. On Saturday we followed the directions in our new book and fit the shower pan liner into the floor. Then we sealed the drain pipe and filled it up with five gallons of water. And then we left.

The next day we returned, to find all the surrounding floors and the basement bone dry. Our pan was holding water. :-) Yay! We had a good shower pan. We went to work to finish up laying strips of liner material in the wall corners as per code, and then stapled up 4 mil poly sheeting over all the walls for additional protection. These are to protect the walls in case water were to get behind the cement backerboard that is the base for the tile.

When we were done we had a dark plastic room. Hope the inspector approves it tomorrow. Likely he'll find a reason to fail it, they always do. :-) The rough carpentry inspection is also scheduled and we see no reason it won't pass.

So then we went to work on the locksets to lock up the house for the first time. We were 67% successful. The Pella doors delivered by President Homes (garage to house and garage to outside) were all cut out and ready for lockset installation. This went quickly and easily; it is straightforward. With the front door we did not have as much success. The large holes were drilled for the deadbolt and the doorknob, and the holes were drilled for the bolts; but they were not chiseled out to hold the bolt plates. We drilled a small hole in the door for the bottom shaft of the handleset, but that was as far as we got. So the house still isn't lockable. We'll have to see if we can get some help chiseling out the door so we can install those plates and so the house will finally be weathertight and lockable.

So that's it for the weekend. Monday we expect rain and no activity except inspections, unless the electrician comes to fix the stove. Keeping fingers crossed.

And here we thought it was going to be a dull day.

2007-07-12T22:56:00.000-05:00

We didn't think anybody was going to be onsite today. We didn't even go to the house.

Around suppertime we decided to get the pickup and get a head start on moving (more importantly, to start decluttering the condo.) Paul went and was surprised to find the entire front yard torn up. Midwest was there and connecting the house to city water and sewer. Surprise!

They were just finishing up. Rich was operating the loader, sorting our fill into piles and straightening up the driveway. Elliott and Randy, the other plumbers, were cleaning up the pipe and other mess left lying all over the garage and yard. Paul called Kathy, and everyone came over. We watched them work for an hour or so, when they left. They had disturbed the rock in the front yard. They were going to put it back, but as long as they were moving it anyway we had them move it to its final location in the front corner of the lot.

We now have a main shutoff valve. It's in the basement, about halfway up the wall (right in reach of the kids....) by the main cleanout, right under the east corner of the front bedroom. That space is intended for a rec room. We'll have to build a closet around it or something; not only to hide it but to keep the kids out. Anyway, when the valve is opened water comes pouring out. There's no water meter. We have free water. Only problem is that the valve was mounted to open up straight up. Catching it will be a challenge. :) Maybe we'll install a hose or something temporarily.

So that was exciting. They will be back after the cabinets and countertops are installed to install all the water and waste lines and the fixtures, a process that will take three days. So we have a few weeks to pick out all our faucets and whatnot.

In other news......
We have a drywall sub. Jon called this afternoon with a bid of $7500 ($2000 less than anyone else) including materials. President Homes was going to supply materials. We canceled President Homes' package, which will save us $2660. Since it's already paid for we'll have to have them issue us a check which we'll see next month.
Paul had Bob send us a list of all materials they were to deliver yet. Among them was the now-canceled drywall, the interior doors and the door handles. Guess we get to buy our own millwork. We need to start thinking about that.
Overhead Door will be coming around July 26 to install the garage door and opener.
Allied Insulation should be starting around July 23. Maybe we can move them up if they're amenable. The electric inspection will be done tomorrow and we will call for the carpentry and plumbing inspections for Monday or Tuesday after we finish the shower pan over the weekend. With those done, we're ready for insulation. When that is done and inspected we could have Jon come in. If everything breaks right we could have the building phase of this project done by the end of July. What are the odds we get that lucky?

Wednesday update - Rough electric installation complete

2007-07-12T00:52:00.000-05:00

Okay, that was fast.
Jeff called Wednesday afternoon to inform us that he and crew had finished up the electric installation already
We stopped by the house at suppertime. It was clean and all wired up. All the Romex was gone (where did it go?) and we'd be getting the invoice and lien waiver shortly. The city inspection was scheduled for Friday.

It's hard to take pictures of wiring. We tried. Here goes.

After that we went to Drexel to look at countertops, as this is an owner-supplied product. We have some likely candidates but we can't quite make up our minds.

So in case anyone is reading this, take a look at these three samples and vote for your favorite by posting a comment here. :-) We don't have to order them for over a month so there's plenty of time. Click the picture to make it look bigger and easier to see.

And that's it. We will be filing the ready-for-service card for the electric tomorrow so that they make plans to come in. We're certain the wiring will pass inspection so it shouldn't be a problem. Will have to contact the city to discuss the following inspections: Plumbing will be inspected after we get the shower liner in; we'll do that over the weekend unless I get to it Thursday night. Inspections that remain after that include rough carpentry (work complete), to be done at the same time as HVAC (not even started yet....who decided these should be scheduled this way?), and the insulation inspection which obviously gets done when that work is complete. When those are done, final inspections are supposed to be done. We should find out how all this is meant to go. After we talk to the inspectors this morning we'll contact Bob to confirm when we should have Allied Insulation come in to do their thing.

So. Let us know what you think of our countertops, and more updates when we have them. Cheers!

Rough electric installation begins

2007-07-10T22:52:00.000-05:00

The electrician called at 7:30 to say they'd be on site by 9:00. Paul got dressed and went over there with the mechanical plan showing the locations of outlets and switches. He got there at twenty after eight, and found the crew of three already there and working. So he went over the plan with Jeff, the owner, and went home so Kathy could go to the dentist. After Kathy came home we lazed around the house for awhile, and then went over to the house around noonish. They were still hard at work, and had questions and followups for us. So we had a few changes and suggestions, and stayed around for awhile. Then Jeff let us know he needed the fireplace in place before he could wire it up. Oh great, who was going to do that?

So the two of us did. We unboxed the thing, flexed our muscles, lifted it up, carried it in and wrestled it into place. One small problem. It didn't fit. The fireplace had a side vent, and its width wasn't accounted for when sizing the box for the fireplace.

Paul borrowed Jeff's cordless reciprocating saw and cut a stud, we pushed the fireplace in and Paul toenailed the cut piece back in. And that was that, and here it is as seen from the living room - probably the first of many pictures to be taken in this direction. We went home shortly thereafter.

We returned after supper to find a surprise - a load of pea gravel in the driveway and a Midwest Plumbing truck and digger in the side yard. Looks like they were about ready to hook us up to the sewer lateral. Cool.

We went in and looked at the electrical wiring done to date. Lots of it, and a mess all over. Impressive.

We were surprised to find they hadn't installed the load center (the breaker box) yet. That'll come soon. After that we went to Lowe's and Home Depot; Kathy was anxious to look at light fixtures and Paul wanted the rest of the materials to install the shower pan.

Speaking of which, Paul talked to Oak Creek's plumbing inspector today. John said that the rough plumbing needed to be inspected after the shower pan liner was in, and that we also needed to install lining in all four wall corners all the way up in case water got behind the backerboard. That was a new one on us, but whatever; just means there are more materials to be bought. He also mentioned that waste and water lines were part of the finish plumbing activities (?!) and we could drywall the upstairs and do whatever else while waiting for that if necessary. Okay, well, that was what Rich was trying to tell us but didn't really match what anybody else told us. Whatever. It'll take so long to get the electric, insulation and siding and the inspections thereof done that likely the plumbers could be back before then anyway. We'll see how it goes after we get the electric and plumbing inspected next week.

Paul talked to Dan Lewis from Integrity. Siding installation is scheduled for July 17.

In other news, April from Milwaukee Title had the checks from the second draw all ready yesterday. Paul called all the subs and let them know how to get their payments, and picked up our check to reimburse us for the materials we purchased. It's nice to have money in the construction fund again.....

Dunno what's going to happen tomorrow. The electrician said he may not be able to come in every day due to previous appointments; he figured three working days total but not to be done until Monday. That's fine. Ought to be interesting anyway.

July 4th week

2007-07-06T18:21:00.000-05:00

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.

End of June

2007-06-29T19:43:00.000-05:00

It's been a good month. Thirty days ago we had a big concrete basin. Now we have a house.

No construction work since Wednesday, which is kind of a downer. Rich forgot to dispatch plumbers to finish our rough work. :-/ He told us to leave him a voice mail to remind him to send people on Monday. We did, to remind him that they need to make the master bath shower pan, install the main bath tub/shower, and finish the water and waste lines. Also that they'd have to come back to finish the HVAC lines; and that we wanted ductwork for the microwave. Shawn will come back on Monday to install the stairs. President is shipping the HVAC materials, but apparently the mortgage company never got around to wiring money for the last of the materials (even though President asked for it two days ago) so now that'll have to wait until Monday too. Grrrr. We could use that sooner so we can get the electrician to start.

Paul filed paperwork for the second draw. This gets payment for the plumber for work done to date, the roofing (complete), the framing (complete) and the flatwork (complete.) Also to reimburse us for the plumbing and heating materials, the front door, the whirlpool and some incidentals. Paul had gone to the bank to wire money to President for the HVAC materials, so we could get that $4800 back right away. But we couldn't find the receipt for the tub/shower unit so we left that go for now. Debbie thought we could maybe have the money on Tuesday. That's good news for everyone.

We ran the schedule on President Homes' website. It appears if we keep things going here we could be in as soon as mid-August, about six weeks from now. That would be great.

Roofing finished, flatwork done

2007-06-29T00:56:00.000-05:00

Wednesday morning the roofers showed up around 8:30 to finish up. It looks real nice. They had two squares (six bundles) of shingles left over.

At 1:00 or so the concrete folks showed up to pave the basement floor. They mounted a pole at the stair corner. We don't know if that was where it was supposed to go. We thought there was another pad between the stairs and the east basement wall. Couldn't find it though. Apparently they couldn't either. No matter, the basement looks great.

Financial news: We will be filing for a draw on Friday to pay the carpenter, the concrete people, the plumber, the plumbing and heating materials, the front door and some miscellany. Hopefully we'll have no hassles. Also the last package of materials was ordered. This includes the electrical, drywall, insulation, and millwork. We didn't order the HVAC materials yet. We'll have to express payment to President to get that and have Midwest come back to install it. With this material purchased and these subs paid, we've spent almost all our construction loan escrow; there's $40,000 left to pay for the remaining labor. That's within our budget. We're in pretty good shape.

Future work news: The plumber didn't come Thursday. We hope he'll be here Friday to do all the rest of the rough plumbing. Shawn said he'd be coming around Saturday to finish the stairs. We don't know if he has anything else to do. We'll have to have him come back for a couple of side jobs; building a landing outside the French doors in the dining room and framing up Kathy's basement office. We talked to the electrician today; he obviously can't come until the electrical materials arrive. We hope he doesn't get too busy after they get here.

In other news, the bid from Stonewall to build a retaining wall and window well arrived. $9000 for the wall, almost $3000 for the well. Ouchie. We went to Menards to buy a spacesaver vanity for the upstairs half bath, and while there Paul looked at the paving blocks and how to build a retaining wall. Apparently it could be done for $1500 in materials, plus tools and lots and lots of labor. We noted that because the wall has to be backfilled, it's actually okay that so much was cut into the park. We'll just build the wall on our property and backfill behind it. Maybe for that much of a price differential we'll just build it ourselves. We don't know.

Anyway, that can wait. With the electrical, plumbing and HVAC done it will be time to insulate the walls and then drywall. That concludes the building portion of the project. (Yay!) The tentative schedule calls for all this to be done by July 16, though it might be a few days after that if we have any delays. Hoping for continued good luck.......

Tuesday updates

2007-06-26T14:54:00.000-05:00

The roofer called. They went to do another job on Saturday. He said they'd be back either late today or first thing Wednesday. Okay. As for siding, the rough plumbing and electric will have to be done first so they can side around it. They are tentatively scheduled for the end of next week, say around July 5.

Got a hold of Rich, finally. A busy man is Rich. They will make the shower pan in the master bath, so that's good, and that will be on Thursday or Friday along with completing the rough plumbing. Also okay. Kathy noticed that the rough plumbing materials arrived this morning so that should be all set. She also noticed that someone from the Oak Creek sewer & water department was there. Wonder why. We found out later that they were there to mark the locations of the sewer and water lines through the driveway, probably at Midwest Plumbing's behest. Also, we had noticed that the sump pump was moved from the location pictured below to the northwest corner of the house under the front bedroom, where we thought it was supposed to be in the first place. That was good. A waste stack is where the sump had been, which was also right.

What else. Need to call the electrician to get him in. Maybe the beginning of next week, say July 2, would work. Have to ask him about that.

Separate people from WE Energies called to find out when the electric and gas could be installed. Darn it, I was supposed to ask Rich about the gas installation. Maybe I'll talk about that to the plumber who comes at the end of this week. We left a message for Rich about it anyway.

Another drywaller named Jon was contacted, this was a relative of one of the carpenters. He'll just go to the jobsite to look around and get us an estimate.

So let's sum up. Basement floor tomorrow. Roofing tomorrow. Plumbing Thursday and/or Friday. Carpenter comes back Friday-Saturday to complete his work and build the stairs to the basement. Electrician early next week. Siding late next week. Then our unhired drywaller should start. Whew.

Think that's it for now.

Flatwork begins

2007-06-25T22:58:00.000-05:00

In all the hustle and bustle we didn't forget the concrete folks were coming by today to pave the garage floor and pour the front stoop.

Nobody went to the house until almost four. This is the scene when we got there:

As we walked around we noted that they had filled the stoop with stone, as requested, filled a bit of the window well with stone, and left the rest in the driveway. We also noticed they had poured the missing footing and spread plastic sheeting down as a vapor barrier all over the basement floor (and used our brand new $150 telescoping ladder bought at F&F on Saturday to get down there, which was left pretty messy.) That's all right though, it'll clean up. The basement floor will be poured on Wednesday. Today is just the garage and stoop. That's fine. Anyway, soon they were spreading concrete around the garage, and then the stoop.

And when they were done pouring it looked like this

We left, and returned a couple hours later. They had finished with the cream coat and were on their way home with the paving already too hard for us to dent with our fingers. The results:

Nice.

In other news, on Saturday we went to Lowe's to pick out a bathtub for the main bathroom. Bringing it home in the pickup was no problem, getting it in the house was only a minor problem, but once inside we found we couldn't get it into the bathroom. :( Paul asked Shawn about that the next day. He said we'd have to cut down the stud at the drain end of the tub and slide it right through the wall; that was the best way. He also said the plumbers would do it. Okay by us.

Shawn came Sunday morning to help put shingles on the roof. Paul stood on the pallet and was lifted up to the roof, where he started to unload bundles. Shawn climbed up the ladder and helped unload, as Paul was moving really slow. Got pretty out of shape after the knee injury, it seems. Time to go back to the gym.

But even with that done, the roofers failed to show up Monday. Hmmmm. A call was placed to Tony at 4:30, not yet answered as of this writing.

We also called Rich, the plumber. Over the weekend we decided that the odd size of the master bath shower area (56x33) eliminated the use of a purchased shower pan, and we thought we might go with all tile. The book at Lowe's explained how to make the concrete shower pan and it looked pretty straightforward, but Paul called Rich to see if making this might fall within their purview. If so it would save us some time and labor.

Bob informed Paul this morning that the rest of the siding had been backordered and would be delivered today. It was.

And finally, KC Drywall / Master Repair was contacted to submit a drywall bid. They came to the jobsite just after five to pick up a plan. We'll wait for that. The bid from the place in Delafield was awfully high and we think we probably won't use them.

Unless the roofer shows up we won't have any action tomorrow. I guess we'll see.

Framing and roofing, random notes.

2007-06-22T11:07:00.000-05:00

At 7:30 Paul went to the house to talk over the punch list with Shawn. He and Troy were already there. Everything was hashed out and all good. The only thing was that we needed the master bath whirlpool in order for it to be framed. That meant today.
Paul went home, got Kathy and we all went to Lowe's to buy the whirlpool Kathy had seen on their website last night. It was $50 off on sale. So Paul picked up the truck from the lot, we bought it and delivered it to the house. It was uncrated and brought in, and within a half hour it was all framed up. Very impressive. It will be plumbed when the plumbers come back to finish all the rough work next week.
The carpenters had been working on the arches in the living room, the problem joist in the half bath, and other miscellaneous things. All is going well and quickly.
Shawn advised that he would be building the stairs next weekend. Cool.

Two roofers arrived on site around nine. After checking everything over they started putting ice and water barrier on. This didn't end up as well as we hoped though. They used up all the shingles on the roof and had to start carrying bags of shingles up the ladder to the roof, which they were very not happy about. At about 80% finished around 3:00 they knocked off for the day. That's not good. Maybe Shawn will let us borrow his panel-lift Cat, which is still on site, to lift the pallet of shingles up to the roof. Also we have only eight cases of siding. We will find out from Bob on Monday if that's adequate.

Paul went in the basement to take better pictures of the drain lines. Then we left them to work and went home.

Followups to yesterday's opens:

Paul called Rich to inform him the half bath was fixed, and to ask about the drain for the window well. Apparently a drain should have been installed to connect to the form-a-drain at the footing, and that was the concrete contractor's job. Will have to call Amy about that.

We'll have to get the fiberglass shower floor and a tub/shower unit for the main bath soon. We'll shop for those this weekend. Obviously the whirlpool is already in place.

Oh, and the surveyor came by and marked our west property line (the boundary with the park.) It's three feet inside the excavation. The diggers took way too much dirt. Yay. We'll have to have them come back and fill it all up so the retaining wall can be built on our property. That'll be a fun conversation to have with them.......

Oh well. That's all for now. Here's pictures.

Rough-in plumbing for the basement half bath.

Under the laundry room

Under the master bath

The sump. Form-a-drain footing is visible.

Drain / waste line hangs a right to go off to the sump.

Another view under the bathrooms.

Living room niche that Shawn and Troy made today. :)

Another shot of the niche

Ice/water barrier

New master bath whirlpool just bought this morning and framing around it. Steps up to the top will come later.

Roofing late in the afternoon

More rough plumbing and drain line

2007-06-21T20:45:00.000-05:00

The plumbers were alone on site today. They installed the drain line under the basement floor and fixed the water pipes in place, and added waste lines for the toilets. The inspector came around 3:15 and approved the underfloor plumbing, so the basement floor can be paved Monday. :) Interestingly, the rough-in plumbing was also approved. We didn't know it could be with so little material installed, but so it was. The only thing is that the inspection isn't complete. The showers and tubs have to be in place before final approval so we'll have to go buy those and bring them in. The whirlpool box has to be built before it can be installed and there doesn't seem to be any water lines for it. We wonder how this is all going to work.

We wonder if we should have a drain line under the window well. Will have to ask Rich about that.

Shawn the framer is coming at 7:30 to discuss the remaining framing needs.

The roofers are coming tomorrow. Siding won't be for awhile. That's fine. It hasn't arrived yet. Will have to ask Jay at President Homes about that (Bob is off the rest of the week, so Jay is standing in.)

We cut a check to President Homes to have them supply the rest of the rough plumbing materials. Rich (Midwest Plumbing's coordinator) will simply keep the things President supplies to replace the stock he used on our job, so we won't be billed for them. That works.

We went shopping for tubs and showers and whatnot tonight. It was tiring. We haven't decided what to get yet but it seems we might need that whirlpool PDQ. Like tomorrow. Apparently the shower pan has to be ordered, they aren't stocked at Home Depot. Bummer. I hope that doesn't slow us down too much.

Anyway. Here are bad photos of the underground plumbing, taken when Paul lay on his stomach at the top of the staircase opening and holding the camera in the basement. We will get better ones when we borrow a ladder and go into the basement over the weekend to clean it in preparation for Monday's floor pour.

Rough plumbing

2007-06-20T20:23:00.000-05:00

It absolutely poured Monday night. At midnight Paul went out and found a quarter inch of water on the floor. Yikes. It had come in through the crown of the roof, an open window and the front door. It was creepy walking around in the dark in the water with showers all around. Didn't even feel like being in a house. More like a cave.
He went again at 7:00 on a sunny Tuesday morning and found the floor mostly dry except for a puddle in the master bath. It was really dirty though and the floor wasn't as smooth as it had been. Too bad we didn't have our roof. It'll be okay though.
The HVAC guys came midmorning and installed some flexible ductwork, vents and the thermostat wire in the hallway. That was it. Also the roofing and siding were delivered. Impressively, somehow whoever did the delivery got bundles of shingles up on the roof. We're not going to ask how, we don't want to know.....

Today the plumber came to start rough plumbing. They brought everything with them that they needed, for which we're sure we will pay a handsome price. :-/ But at least it and they are here. Elliott, the plumber, called at 7:30 to discuss where things would be going. Paul was just out of the shower and getting dressed at the time, so he went out fifteen minutes later to meet the plumber and give them the full size plan we left for the HVAC guys yesterday morning. We decided that the sump pump would be going in the front and stacks near the half bath and the full baths. Dunno how that's going to work yet with the basement plans Kathy laid out, but we can make closets and/or walls around them to hide them.
They installed some CPVC stubs for the water lines and drilled holes for the stacks. Kathy was onsite midday and Elliott informed her that one floor joist was located in the way of the half bath's toilet and would have to be moved. Paul called Shawn to have him come out in the morning and fix. Also talked to the roofer, they won't be out until Friday morning. Ah well, that's fine.
Other than that it seems things went fairly smoothly. Paul took lots of pictures to remind us where everything is going, otherwise we'll forget ourselves. And now the whole world can know too. :)

Bathroom vent

Shingles on the roof

Laundry room plumbing

Above the laundry room ceiling

Looking from the laundry room into the kitchen

Kitchen sink plumbing. Behind us on the floor is a pipe for the refrigerator's water supply.

Looking into the family room from the kitchen, the pipe on the right goes into the half bath

The half bath as seen through the pantry, an impossible view once the drywall is up

HVAC flex ductwork, looking through the TV niche into the bathroom. The angled wall in the center right is the main bathroom linen closet door.

Main bathroom's sink goes behind the family room shelves

Looking all the way back to the kitchen from the master bedroom

Master bathroom sink. Whirlpool goes on extreme right.

Standing in front bedroom looking through hallway into both bathrooms. Main bath door in center. Thermostat wire visible in foreground.

And that's it for the main level. Paul went into the basement for the first time since framing began, because the plumber had left his ladder here. The basement is a dark, muddy mess. The good news is that the plumber used the newly-installed sump pump to pump out the 4" of standing water in the basement, which was very cool.

A good look at how the first cap is built. The sill plate, bolted to the top of the foundation wall, is barely visible. The joists sit on the sill plates, running the entire width of the house from front to back. The floor sits on top of the joists, and OSB covers all sides of the cap.

Half bath and laundry room CPVC water lines hanging down. The pipes at the fixtures are short copper studs bonded to the CPVC after a few inches.

CPVC water lines hanging down under the main bathrooms

Below the front bedroom. Sump pump at left. Thermostat wire beneath the hallway at right.

The sump pump.

Muddy mess under basement window. We will need to visit at some point how the window well will drain, because this can't run into the basement like this.

Mud on floor under basement window

The windowsill covered with a thin coat of mud

The dark scary cavern that is our basement today, as taken from under the kitchen. Obviously the flash won't carry 68 feet. :) There won't be another picture of it until the floor is paved next Monday. Maybe not even until the electrician installs lights.

Tomorrow we expect completion of rough plumbing and for Shawn to fix the floor. He has another reason to come back - we are missing two 6x6 poles. One pad has nothing standing on it, the other has a badly curved 2x4. We only ordered one additional 6x6 but we'll have to call Bob for another.

That's it. See you tomorrow

Busy day

2007-06-18T23:09:00.000-05:00

The framers are pretty much done. We went to look at the house at 7 this morning, and went over the list of open issues. The framing is pretty much done. The arches in the dining room and family room needed to be done, and Shawn was to handle those today. The windows and doors needed to be installed but were not yet on site. The whirlpool needed framing to be set into, and the fireplace needed a box to sit on. So we hashed over that for awhile, called Bob for the dimensions of our fireplace, and settled on having it a foot off the floor. We took off to retrieve the front door from storage and with much difficulty it was brought on site. We gave the crew lunch money to thank them for the work and took off.

Later that afternoon we returned. Only two of the crew were left, completing window installation. It was almost done. Also arches were installed over the family room shelving and the big arches in the dining room passageway. He didn't do the passageways on either side of the fireplace or either side of the pantry. That will have to be complete before drywall.

Later in the afternoon Paul finally reached Rich, the plumber, and the HVAC guys are coming tomorrow to start their work. They'll have all the underground plumbing done by the end of the week. Major problem though: We realized we never ordered the plumbing materials. That's bad. The plumber will supply the materials needed for this week's work and bill us, but we'll have to talk to Bob in the morning to get this straightened out.

Also, a full size plan set went to the electrician We forgot the mechanical plan. Rats. Have to leave that for him when he shows up. He doesn't have to come until next week after the basement floor is paved.

A small plan set was mailed to a drywall company for a bid.

And that's all for the day. Possible high stress day tomorrow as we deal with the plumbing supply mishap, see how the underground plumbing is coming, expect the delivery of roofing and siding materials and hope the house isn't too wet after tonight's thunderstorms.

Here are some pictures. Adding the windows really made a huge difference.

Friday updates

2007-06-15T13:08:00.000-05:00

Nobody is on site today. Paul isn't leaving the house and the framers are off doing other things today.
First thing Monday morning we'll meet Shawn on site to go over everything, and they'll install the windows and doors that day. Then they'll be done.
We found out from Bob that the reason they wouldn't have the roofing and siding materials onsite until Thursday is because that's the soonest they could get adequate supplies of silver soffit and fascia material. We elected to change it out for white soffits and fascia instead, which they had in stock and could deliver Tuesday. So that puts us back on schedule, and actually the contrasting colors should look nice.
The roofer will be shingling on Wednesday and starting siding after that. The flatwork will be done a week from Monday, that's June 25. We need to get the plumber in there sometime before then and the plumbing inspected. Rich from Midwest Plumbing hasn't returned our calls yet. Paul left him another message today. We'll expect to hear from him on Monday.
That leaves the electrician. We don't know whether to schedule him before or after the flatwork. We'll call him today to find out.
And that's all for this week. But that was enough. Lots of good work done. We're pleased.

Roof sheathing looks done

2007-06-14T19:39:00.000-05:00

Paul's surgery went well. We didn't see or talk to the crew today, except to drop off a cooler of bottled water before we left. They appeared to have finished sheathing the roof. If anything else was done we can't tell. We didn't get out of the car to look. Paul's not moving that fast today.

Bob e-mailed to say that the roofing and siding won't arrive until next Thursday. That's not great. We have the roofer scheduled for Wednesday. We will see if we can get our roofing materials early. If not we'll have to reschedule the roofer.

It looks like a house!

2007-06-13T19:43:00.000-05:00

The framers are working fast. They put all the roof trusses up and sheathed most of it. Looks great! It's a little amazing and overwhelming how much progress has been made in a short time, especially since things went so slowly for so long last month.

I think tomorrow they'll start all the putzy little work to complete the sheathing in the valleys of the roof and whatnot, and they have to do the soffits. That'll keep them busy for a couple days.
We have chosen to not mess with the picture window. The windows and doors will go in Monday. The roofer is coming Wednesday and wants one day to shingle and then will start siding. We should ask Bob when the garage door is going in and the locksets are arriving. With those done the house will be weathertight and lockable.
Paul called Rich at Midwest Plumbing and Amy at Elite Concrete to schedule them. The underfloor plumbing has to get done soon and inspected, and the floor paved afterwards.
We have an electrician. Amusingly, last night we got an e-mail from Jeff at Greater Milwaukee Electric Company saying he was looking for work and wondering if we would accept his bid. Nice timing there Jeff. We told him he had a job. He can start when the basement floor is dry.
Weather continues to be dry and warm. It's all good.
Paul is having his knee scoped tomorrow. That means that assuming he doesn't die on the table, either he won't feel ambitious enough to update the blog or he'll have time on his hands and nothing to do and will put in updates. It remains to be seen.

And, in other news.......

2007-06-12T21:23:00.000-05:00

Plenty has been going on on the planning front.
Our electrician called Monday to say he was going out of business because of uncollectible receivables and wouldn't be doing our job. Great. Now we have to find a new electrician.

A letter came from President Homes to remind us we needed to pay for future materials before they would be ordered and delivered. After multiple phone calls to Bob, the escrow company and the mortgage company, it was determined that President would bill the mortgage company directly, which always paid immediately, and materials would be sent without delay. This was excellent news, as Paul had scheduled the roofer for Wednesday, June 20. In the interim, the windows were scheduled to arrive on Monday the 18th. That meant the front door we ordered from Menards about six years ago and waiting in storage could finally be installed.

Yeah, those windows. To Paul's considerable annoyance, it was determined that we should look into replacing the living room picture window with one that goes as far down as the corner bedroom, for "balance". We'll look into the cost of that in the morning.

Paul's been calling around looking for a concrete contractor to do the flatwork because we don't know if we want Elite to come back to do it. There's been no contact about the footing to date, and Paul is getting mighty annoyed about it. But nobody has gotten back to him yet, and he's annoyed about that too. Paul is rather annoyed lately. :-) Keeping our spirits buoyed is the fact that work is proceeding very well on the framing, and the weather is perfect. Hope this holds out for the roofing.

We will need to contact the plumber tomorrow to remind him to think about coming in, and keep trying to get a concrete guy. If we can't get one by the end of the week we'll have to have Elite come in because we're running out of time.

Ah well. That's enough until tomorrow.

Interior walls. Our rooms have been defined

2007-06-12T20:40:00.000-05:00

The framing crew was back on the job at 7. We stopped by for a short time and left until after they were gone. Let's take a tour of the house.

Garage looking into the house

Looking through the garage door into the house

Laundry/mud room, closet in the back (right hand side)

Half bath

Kitchen

Shelves, pantry and homework desk

Dining room and an almost-6-year-old child

Family room

Fireplace will go in the center, flanked by passageways to the living room beyond

In the living room, looking south into the family room

Down the hall, looking west into the bedroom wing

Looking into the main bathroom, first door on the left in the hallway

The front bedroom

The front corner bedroom. The kids plan to sleep in this one. Closet on the extreme left.

Master Bedroom

Master Bath

The walls go up

2007-06-12T19:09:00.000-05:00

The framing crew showed up at 7:00 Monday morning to start work. When we got there they already had two garage walls up.

We stuck around long enough to watch an impressive sight - they lifted the entire 60' long south wall which they had assembled on Thursday in one shot, got it up without damage, and were off by just an inch. Whoa.

We left shortly thereafter and let them do their thing. Paul returned a couple hours later to drop off a cooler of bottled water for the crew, and went to work. When we went back they had the whole outside done, and the east side of the interior was done too.

Thursday update

2007-06-07T13:15:00.001-05:00

Not much. We picked up a cheap camera last night so we could get some pictures, and a replacement for the Fuji is on mail order. We'll be using the little pink Sanyo for pictures on the lot now and leave the good camera at home for more genteel environments. :) The pictures from now on won't be too impressive but at least they should be better than the cameraphone.

Nasty weather is predicted for today. Paul visited the lot at 8:00 in the morning, wondering what the framing crew was going to do, and found them at work and a load of nifty-looking pre-assembled walls being dropped off. Fortunately Shawn had already decided it wouldn't be a good day to erect any walls due to the high winds and forthcoming storm. So they were going to stick build the garage walls and whatnot, and come back Friday to erect everything. So the bones of the house are all going up in one day. The roof trusses will be arriving Monday. This is moving pretty fast.

(later)
Hmm, maybe not so fast. Shawn had inquired about window delivery when Paul talked to him in the morning, so Paul called Bob who had him call Jessica at which was supplying the windows. Window delivery is scheduled for Thursday 6/14, a week from today. Called Shawn with the news. He thought that might be too soon and would have them Monday instead, but he'd follow up in a couple days to be sure. Then he mentioned that he might not be able to get to our job on Friday, because an earlier job where window delivery had been delayed got its delivery and he wanted to finish them up. So he'd be by us again Monday, unless they finished early on Friday in which case they might stop by in the afternoon. I guess we'll see.

Framing begins

2007-06-06T17:46:00.000-05:00

Not that much has happened the last few days. We got the lien waivers from the excavator and surveyor. It rained over the weekend and the basement filled with 4" of water. On Monday we discovered that Paul was a dope and left the camera out on the lot on Friday and it sat in the mud and rain all weekend, so now we have to buy a new camera. That was dumb.

Paul called Waste Management on Monday for a 20 yard container for trash. It arrived the next day without incident. Also we ordered five more 24x36 copies of the plan for future contractors. $90 plus tax for that. Sheesh.

Met a retaining wall specialist from Stonewall Builders (clever. :-) on Monday to discuss the large retaining wall that will be necessary so that the ridge from which many of these pictures were taken doesn't erode into our back yard, and the work that will be necessary in the egress window well. He will get us quotes. He asked about drainage for the window well as there is no stone there. Hmm. No idea. Need to ask somebody about that. Don't know whom though.

Anyway. So all the good stuff happened today. Paul went to the lot at 7:30 to meet Shawn and his crew from Titan Construction and provide them a plan copy, and they went to work. Unfortunately that meant we missed all the good stuff. By the time Paul got home from work they were just about done. The main beam, the poles, the sill plate, floor joists and floor boards are all in. Paul snapped this picture with his camera phone. When we get a new camera we'll try to grab some pictures inside the foundation.

It looks really different now. Kathy thinks it's too small. :-) It'll look bigger when the walls go up tomorrow, assuming that it won't rain (bad assumption, storms are scheduled.)

Shawn also informed us that the concrete company neglected to pour a small footing inside the "L" of the basement stairs. 4 foot long. No big deal, just needs to be done. We'll have to let them know about it. He also informed us that he was pleased to find the foundation was nice and square.

We have yet to find anyone who has something good to say about the concrete company we hired. Dammit. (Sorry.) Why does nobody tell us this stuff. I think we will have a word with President Homes about their continued existence on the subcontractor list President provided along with a "gentle" (i.e. fish slap to the chops) hint that people who are building their first house just might appreciate a little bit of extra help choosing subs.

Debbie called from the title company in the morning to tell us the money for the draw was in. Paul went on his lunch hour to pick it up. It is important that every cent be documented with receipts. We forgot to charge for the construction insurance and the print copies. Have to get that next time.....

Ah well. Day's over, gotta get up and do it again tomorrow.

First draw, and lumber delivery

2007-05-31T13:29:00.001-05:00

We read through the checklist of paperwork to bring to Debbie, our construction fund escrow agent at Milwaukee Title and Closing (they were hired by the mortgage company.) With everything in hand, Paul took the documentation folder that Kathy had bought to keep our paperwork organized off to their office in Waukesha to file.

They took our signed certificate and draw request forms, the W-9, the cost breakdown schedule, a copy of the plat of survey and a copy of the building permit. Problem: We needed lien waivers from the companies that had provided services to us. A lien waiver is a document from the subcontractor stating that they had been paid and thus would agree to not put a lien against the property. Well, let's see. The only people who had done work for us to date were Edgewood, Travis Construction and Elite Concrete. So Paul called all three. Travis' office manager/wife faxed the paperwork over immediately. Amy at Elite called to say that since they hadn't been paid they couldn't give a lien waiver (duh) but without the cash in hand to pay them, we had to make other arrangements. Apparently the way this is done is that Milwaukee Title would cut a check directly to Elite. Phone calls and arrangements were made, so that'll work. Nothing from Edgewood yet. That's okay, we don't need them until the checks are ready next week.

As Paul wrote this his phone rang. It was the driver of UBC's (the lumberyard) truck calling to verify the address. He was already on the lot. We thought they were going to call when they left the yard in Lomira to give us a chance to get there, but unsurprisingly that didn't happen......We'll go check it out after work. Paul told them to leave the materials on the neighbor lot. Should be all right there until next week when Shawn comes out to work. Reminder - need to call for a dumpster on site for Monday.

We were annoyed to find that the lumber was not tarped and that a few OSB boards were left exposed. Not seeing how this is a good thing. We specifically asked for them to be tarped. There's not a lot of exposed material, but still......

Debbie from Milwaukee Title called back. Apparently Paul didn't fill out the cost-to-complete form right, all the money that was going for closing costs and to President Homes wasn't included. Sigh. Thought we didn't need that. Anyway, will have to leave her a message with those numbers as she's out of the office Friday.

That'll probably be it until next week when the framing starts.

The foundation, part 10 - the exciting conclusion!

2007-05-31T13:08:00.000-05:00

Wednesday morning. The excavator told me his crew would be out in the afternoon to start. By 4:00 they had backfilled all around the perimeter of the house, and it's finally possible to walk right up to the foundation. Nice.

The next day they came back with stone and filled the garage and stoop, and hauled away the entire front fill pile. All of a sudden this looks more like a place where a house will be.

There is a debate about where our west property line ends. Paul thinks the excavator cut away a little of the city's property and we'll have to fill some back up to install the retaining wall and fence. Maybe it's time to look at landscapers to check out this problem before all the fill gets hauled off. I guess we'll see.

The concrete company's bill arrived with no surprises. Time to go request a draw. That'll be in the morning.

The foundation, part 9.

2007-05-29T10:57:00.000-05:00

All right, Memorial Day weekend is over and it's time to get back to work. A little scare this morning. Paul called for the inspection of the foundation first thing this morning, and the inspector asked about whether the steel beams were installed. What steel beams?! We didn't know anything about steel beams. Oh god, don't let this screw up the timing.......
Paul called Bob at President, who was just as puzzled. He thought the inspector must have been referring to the main beam of the house, but ours isn't going to be steel. It's LVL, and the framer was supposed to install it. Called back the inspector, who said that he was talking about the main beam. All right. He was okay with the framer installing an LVL beam, so the inspection is on for late this afternoon. Probably should have verified an exact time, but oh well. We can check back later maybe.

Stopped by the lot around nine and found a crew of four at work, roughly half finished shoveling stone into the pit and attaching sheets of insulation to the outsides of the walls. Good deal, but whew, it's hot today. Took pictures and took off, then returned with a cooler full of soda and water for the crew. Then off to work.

(later)
Paul returned to the lot at 3:30 to find an empty cooler (Wow....all twelve drinks gone. That was one thirsty crew), the work completed and looking good, and a green inspection sticker wrapped around a lag bolt on the front wall of the garage. Our foundation was approved. Excellent. Too bad we weren't there to meet the inspector but that doesn't matter, it's all good.

Backfill tomorrow.

Quiet time continues

2007-05-25T12:00:00.001-05:00

Paul was up unreasonably late last night to work on a project so he was a bit slow on the uptake this morning. He put some money in the bank, and then went out to the lot. The tar spray was done. Good.

Then off to the excavator's office to pay the $4700 bill for work done to date that they had inquired about. The only other bills sitting around are little ones from Port-a-John for the monthly fee and from the surveyor for replacing the offset stakes that were missing on May 7, and those got mailed too. We had opened a separate checking account back in April to handle construction funds, so all of these were written out of that account.

As soon as we get the bill from Elite Concrete we'll have to go get our first draw - Elite can give only 15 days before the bill is due because they have such massive out-of-pocket costs providing concrete materials. Hope we don't have any hassle with the draw, we really don't want that to get held up in red tape. We could have gotten a draw early and it seems that the title company that is handling our construction loan escrow won't give us a hard time, but with plenty of cash on hand there was no reason to incur the extra interest charge and fees for having extra draws.

(later) The roofing and siding contractor called back. He WAGes he needs a week to install the roof and siding, and they only need a couple days' notice. The framer thinks he needs 10-14 working days. If he starts on the 4th, that means we're looking at June 20th-ish for roofing and siding and June 27th for flatwork. The plumber will have to be called when the roof is going on, likely that means around the 11th. The electrician waits until the house is framed. Only thing left before inspection next Tuesday is foam insulation sheets and stone around the outside. Time to go update the schedule on President Homes' website, and kick back and relax for awhile.

Thursday morning updates

2007-05-24T11:07:00.000-05:00

Wednesday night. Time to reset and get everyone back in the loop. We checked the city's permit requirements, and found we needed to schedule some inspections fairly soon - foundation, underfloor plumbing and basement floor. Paul called Elite to ask about wall and floor permits. A voicemail arrived shortly afterwards (that's strange, why didn't the phone ring?) advising that we'd have to call for the wall inspection ourselves, and that it should be done the afternoon before backfill. Okay, no problem. But she didn't understand why we were asking about the basement floor inspection, because that wouldn't be done for six to eight weeks.

Um, WHAT? Our schedule called for flatwork to be done before framing. And even if it were done afterwards, six to eight weeks is way too long.

Anyway, we also left a message for the framer, and one for the plumber asking him to remind us when he needed to be contacted because we forgot, and e-mails for Bob asking what he thought. We also asked him about the cabinet designer, because we haven't heard from her in two months, and mentioned a issue with the basement window. Paul was looking at the materials list, and saw that the window trim was champagne color. We would have preferred white. We asked him if it could be changed.

The replies came back early in the morning today. Rich, the plumber, called back early to remind us that he needed to know when the trusses were on and the roof boards would be installed. Okay, no problem. That's a while away yet. Bob said we needed to check with the HVAC guy if the basement floor needed to be done before the HVAC would go in (obviously, the furnace has to sit on the floor.) Well, the plumber is also the HVAC guy, so we had to call Rich again anyway. He expected the floor to be done shortly after the roof was on so we needed to get the floor done in about a month, not six to eight weeks.

Bob also put us in touch with Katie the cabinet designer, who thought we hadn't gotten back to her approving our draft plan. We thought we had. We'll get it straightened out soon. We should have a little time on this. Also, the window had already been ordered and they couldn't change it anymore. Hmmmmm. Paul called Jessica at Pella to see if it really was too late for this. She said she'd check and get back to us.

Shawn, the framer, called to say he'd start on June 4. Okay, no problem. Apparently the materials will still be delivered on May 31 and sit until Monday. Something having to do with quotas of getting material out before the end of the month. Good grief. Oh well, what are you gonna do. Shawn implied that the wall panels are already done and sitting at the lumberyard in Lomira waiting for delivery. Cool.

Finally, a briskly toned message to Elite advising them we needed the floor done in four weeks or we'd bring in somebody else. Can you tell we're just a little bit skittish dealing with them? :) She replied shortly after telling us that 6-8 weeks was just a guess, she only needed two weeks' notice as to a date when the underfloor plumbing would be done and she would schedule it and have her guys out on time.

Oh. Okay. That'll work.

The excavator's wife/office manager called Paul too. She was wondering if we would get an early draw to pay the bill they had sent. He told her she'd get paid by the due date on the 30th.

Just waiting to hear from the window company yet, and the siding/roofing contractor now to advise him of the new start date for framing. We'll have to start getting bids for drywallers and the rest of the crew we'll need to finish the house. Maybe tomorrow. We need a break. :)

The foundation, part 8. The walls, exposed.

2007-05-24T02:23:00.000-05:00

Wednesday, May 23

Now we've finally caught the blog up to the work. This was the day they took the forms away to expose our foundation walls. This is the beginning of the endgame, there's nothing left to do but tar-spray the outsides for damp-proofing, install insulation on the outside and finish laying the stone on the outside for draining.

Look at these beautiful walls. :)

The last photo is the garage foundation. It's only 5 feet deep, and soon it will covered over by the garage floor. Once that happens, those walls will never be seen again.

Now we get a little break. Backfill is scheduled for May 30.

The foundation, part 7. The walls.

2007-05-24T02:03:00.000-05:00

Tuesday, May 22
They had said they'd measured the footings perfectly, and the wall crew would be there the next day to set the wall forms. Excellent. Time to go to the office for the day.
Kathy went there mid-afternoon and found them building walls.

This is how it looked after work:

Hey, neat, we got the decorative forms with the brick pattern. We hadn't even asked for them. Cool.

This was just about done. They would come back the next afternoon to pour.

Wednesday, May 23

We got to the lot in the afternoon and found the crew there, waiting for equipment. Soon the same conveyor we'd had the previous day arrived, and he set up. Then the concrete trucks rolled up. One, two, three......my god, how many are there? Eventually six rolled up.

The foundation, part 6.

2007-05-24T01:29:00.000-05:00

Monday, May 21. Paul writes....

I had been under the weather Sunday night, and not feeling any better Monday morning called in sick at the office. No rest for the weary though, Katie had to be driven to school. After she was dropped off at 7:30 I drove down to the lot, and found John and his crew hard at work mucking out column pads again. Went to talk to John briefly, who said he would be on site for the inspector no matter what. He had taken quite the tongue-lashing from his bosses over the weekend over the failures during the previous week to get those footings poured. Nice to see that Elite is buckling down intending to get this job done. Too bad this kind of effort wasn't put through three weeks ago.

Went home to shower, and returned to the lot at 8:15. Everyone was gone. Terrific.

Called up the city inspection department and asked for the inspector. He came on the phone. He seemed audibly annoyed once I told him where I was calling from. Seems he has been seriously displeased with the way Elite has been handling the inspections - nobody on site for two straight inspections probably didn't help his mood. I assured him as the general contractor we would get this thing done right, and I'd definitely be there when he came back. That was scheduled for 9:30. He told me he wanted the column pads dried out, and stoppers on the ends of the garage footings. The garage footings are supposed to have stoppers installed at the ends to completely close them off so that there was something to stop the concrete from falling into the pit, and they were missing on Friday. He hadn't written it down, but clearly this would be a problem. We hung up.

I looked at the garage footings. No stoppers. Sigh. Not knowing if John would return, I grabbed scrap materials and spikes and set up the stoppers myself. Not much fun jumping all the way into the bottom of the pit on a bad knee, but somehow I did it. I couldn't do anything with whatever water was remaining in the pit, so I just had to hope it wouldn't be a problem. I sat on the tailgate of my pickup and waited.

9:07. John returned without the crew, whom he had taken to another job site. I told him the inspector would be along in twenty minutes, and there was still water in the corner under the kitchen. That puddle was a foot and a half deep. Nonetheless he went to go dig it out.

9:40, the inspector arrived looking particularly dyspeptic. I suppose that would happen on your third trip to a site. Nonetheless he was pleased to see people there to actually talk to. He went up, looked around, nitpicked a small cave-in against the form in the southwest corner, and that a garage footing stopper needed to be pushed out a little further. But then he gave his blessing to pour. Hallelujah, we can resume work. John said he'd be back at 1:00 to start pouring. I went home.

We went to the lot at 1:00. The whole crew was there now and crushed stone was being dumped in our driveway. They were waiting for equipment to pour the stone. Elite had rented a conveyor from their concrete supplier, Gleason Redi-Mix of Racine, because their own conveyor was on another job.

Eventually the conveyor arrived, and a huge monster of a truck it was. I was asked if they could set up on the next door lot, and I told them it would be fine. Easier than driving up on the still-steep hill that the excavators had cleared near the front stoop. And finally the work began.

The stone to fill the pit was poured first. When that was done, there was a short break. Then the concrete truck arrived.

And just like that, it was done. All that stress, just to get this bit complete. We went home around suppertime, pleased and tired.

The foundation, part 5. Delays, delays, part 873.

2007-05-24T01:13:00.000-05:00

Thursday, May 17.

We swung by the lot looking for evidence that some pouring activity would be going on. There was not. What there was, was a little red sticker. Our footings had failed inspection.

The results at home were predictable, and need not be explained here.

At 2:40 an e-mail arrived from Elite, asking if there were any evidence that the inspector had been by. We informed her that yes, this had indeed happened, and that we had failed because (a) a big cave-in at the back of the lot was covering the forms up, (b) the forms were still full of water because nobody had pumped them out, (c) the column pads were the wrong depth and (d) the bottoms needed scraping. This mail was cc'ed to everyone involved at President Homes and to the framer, who had been inquiring about the state of affairs on our lot. It also reminded her that lumber was to be delivered on May 31 so it would be important to get all the work done by then. She assured all of us that they would take care of it immediately, and reminded us that the excavator had cut the garage wrong thus leading to more delays when it rained over the weekend. Whatever. She contacted the city to arrange another inspection for Friday afternoon the 18th, and scheduled the footings foreman to go fix the problems and wait for the inspector.

Friday, May 18.

Paul went to the lot around 11:15 a.m. and found John and a co-worker kicking back and smoking in their truck. They had hand-dug the huge cave-in and were pumping out water. All right, yeah, you earned that smoke break. Asked when the inspector was coming, they said after noon. Off to the office for the afternoon.

Things happened fast that afternoon, all without any of the involved parties knowing the full story. Around 2:40 Kathy went to the lot. Guess what. The inspector had failed the job again. Too much mud in the bottoms of the column pads, and the inspector wanted somebody on site for the next inspection. She was furious. Paul notified Elite via e-mail. She said they had mucked out the pads and she had looked at it herself around quarter to two. The crew had left at 2:15, the inspector arrived at 2:30. Elite's guys hadn't stayed for the inspector.

4:25. We were informed that the owner himself would be dealing with the inspector on Monday morning. Excuses were offered. They earned no response from us. The weekend arrived.

The foundation, part 4. Hallelujah! Work resumes!

2007-05-24T00:57:00.001-05:00

Thursday, May 10.
John, Elite's footings foreman, and a crew of four Mexicans arrived with form-a-drain and went to work. Within a couple hours the entire perimeter of the house was laid out. I'm sure they must have had loads of fun splashing around in that muck down there. Out came the transit and the levels and the string, and they measured and measured. It all looked good. We were just thrilled that something was getting done.

And then we came to ANOTHER problem. John measured three times, then realized there was going to be big trouble. He told us.
The garage was excavated too shallow. It was six inches too high. They couldn't put the footings forms in there until it was fixed.

For about the 90th time, AAARRRGGGGHHH!!!

We contacted the excavator. I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise he tried to blame the foundation people for wanting the wall at a non-standard height. But after some discussion and clarification, it appears that Elite did want the garage at the standard height (five feet exactly, from the dirt grade in the basement to the dirt grade in the garage) but his guys had cut it wrong.

Frustrations continue to mount at home. More screaming. Getting very tiresome. But we're at the point where we won't turn back now, since we actually appear to be on Elite's schedule for a change.

The excavator came out Monday morning, May 14. Elite had also asked that the dirt pile at the front of the house be cut down a couple feet so they could have room to move the concrete trucks there. They ever-so-generously informed me that if the excavator would cut down the pile that Elite wouldn't backcharge them an extra trip charge for having to come out again to lay the garage footings. How nice of them.

The work was done by the end of the day. The foundation scheduler let us know that if it didn't rain the next day they'd be out to finish setting the garage footing forms, then pour them the next day, then come back in a week to set and pour the walls. Sigh. Well, whatever.

Would it come as a shock that it rained on Tuesday?

Wednesday came. The garage forms were set. Elite called for an inspection. The inspector came out the next day.

The foundation, part 3: The complete f@)&##up.

2007-05-24T00:43:00.001-05:00

Monday night, May 7.
The owner of the foundation company reported to the job site with forms in tow to set footings. Paul was in attendance.
They couldn't set footings, because the survey stakes were gone.
Argh. AAAARRRGGGHHH!!!!

Why? Dunno. Were they disturbed when the excavator came back in to clean out one of the many cave-ins that have been occurring over the last few days when the rain weakened the walls? Were they stolen by kids playing in the lot? We have no way of knowing.

Now they tell us the schedule is screwed up and - get this - they don't know when they can fit me back in ??!!?? Sheesh. How about you fit us back in when we're ready. But they told us they might have to sub-subcontract the job to another concrete firm that's short of work because they're so overbooked. Whatever you need to do, lady. Just get it done. You mishandled your job scheduling, you fix it. About three weeks ago would be a good time to start.

Here at home, much screaming ensued. Kathy is ready to kill the first person she can get her hands on. We e-mailed Bob looking for advice. He didn't have much to offer but suggested we let Elite subcontract the job as that would be the fastest way to get the job done, which is the only real goal here. And we need to get moving. Travis Brothers sent a bill for excavation work because they got tired of waiting. The pit has 3" of rain water; the bottom is clay and it does not drain so it's been standing there for a long time. Frustrations are running sky high.

May 8 dawned. The ever-reliable surveyor, the one oasis of competence in this entire screwed-up mess, went out and replaced the stakes in the afternoon. We told Elite. They said they'd be back on Thursday the 10th.

The foundation, part 2: Delays, delays, delays. Again.

2007-05-24T00:28:00.000-05:00

April 20 came, and with it came rain. And no crew to work on footings. We called. They told us Tuesday.
Tuesday came. It rained. No footings crew.

April 25. They assured us they would definitely get the footings in place early the next week. That was May 1. Then it became May 2 or 3. Fine.

On Sunday, April 29 they suddenly realized they didn't have a house plan or survey. I wonder how they planned to do the job way back on the 20th without a plan. Hmmm. Perhaps they never intended to do the work then, and have been righteously screwing me over and letting our pit get sloppy and wet? Wish we had thought of this much sooner.......

April 30. Paul drove to their shop in Racine County to supply the house plan and survey. Rain has been continuing sporadically every few days.

May 2. Now Bob, our construction coordinator with President Homes (he arranges for timing of materials delivery) is wondering why there's no action on our job. We wish we knew. Kathy is having a fit over the constant delays and demanding the contract be terminated. Bob tells us that it's likely everyone is running behind because of the weather. We accept the explanation for the time being.

May 3. No activity. That does it. Now heads are gonna roll. Paul called one of the people who gave us a bid last month. He was too busy now to take on the job, but knew some who weren't. We called. They could be in the next Monday if we wanted. We e-mailed him a plan.
After this the scheduler at Elite and Paul had, shall we say, a frank and open exchange of ideas via e-mail. We finally managed to drag it out of her that we were third in line for having our walls poured. Hmmmmmmm again.
Well, too late to worry about it now. She told us they would be setting footings on Monday, May 7 and wall pour one week later. Fine.

The foundation, part 1.

2007-05-23T20:04:00.000-05:00

It was early April and we still didn't have a foundation contractor. None of the contractors from President Homes' list had ever gotten back to us, and it was time to get somebody. Paul hit the yellow pages, and found that one redi-mix company could actually supply a list of qualified contractors. So we called them, got a few guys and solicited bids. They came in, and we were shocked - they were all $5,000 and more over budget. This was really, really bad. We worried over our funds.
Then Elite Concrete called asking if we had gotten a bid from them. We invited them to give me one. It arrived via e-mail, and it was right in our budget. Whew. We accepted it immediately, and finally we were ready to go. Or so we thought. Paul called Port-a-John to get a portapotty on site, and filed applications with WE Energies for electric and gas. They got in touch to locate the gas and electric meters, and sent me cards to return when I was ready for them to come in and install them. Good deal.

We, Travis Brothers and Elite worked on coordinating our schedules, and finally decided that April 18 would be the day to dig the foundation, and two days later Elite would set the footings. The big day came, and first thing in the morning the excavation crew came out. Look at that nice hole.

The process begins.

2007-05-23T19:16:00.000-05:00

When you sign with President Homes, you are acting as your own general contractor. You design your own house (or use one of their plans) and President provides a budget, schedule and materials; other than that you're mostly on your own. We like having this kind of control over the project, and it saves money over hiring a contractor, so it was the way to go.

We had spent much of February hashing out the final design of the house. It was based off of one of their designs, the Westwood 4, but had been modified so heavily it was unrecognizable from how it had started out. With the design finally settled in early March just before closing, it was time to get to work.

So, first order of business was to hire some subcontractors to do the work. We got a list of subs from Eric, our materials coordinator at President, and started e-mailing. The bids rolled in quickly. We were pleased to find that for the most part we were able to get bids slightly under the budget that President had written.

Second order of business was to get a plat of survey. A surveyor goes out and draws exactly where on the lot the house will sit and elevations all around. This is necessary for the building permit, the excavator and the foundation contractor. We didn't have a surveyor. Paul picked up the Yellow Pages and made a call. The first place that picked up the phone only handled surveying for large projects, but he did have a recommendation for a company that would take on projects our size. So we called Edgewood Engineering out of Big Bend, and they were happy to help us out. They went out and did the work, and a couple days later we got ten copies of the plat of survey and a reasonable bill. Good start.

Next, we applied for the building permit. This is a 3-week process. We gathered up the survey and house plan, filled out the forms, took them to City Hall and waited impatiently. A week later Kathy got a phone call stating there was an issue - the grading plan called for the east side of the house to be cut two feet lower than the west side, but the house plan didn't account for this. So we had to call the surveyor back and ask them to fix the grading plan. This they did without any trouble.

In the interim we started to hire subcontractors. First we hired Travis Brothers to do the excavation, the same people who lowered the lot. Titan Construction was retained for framing, and Midwest Plumbing for plumbing and HVAC. We didn't have an electrical bid we liked, and no foundation contractor had ever gotten back to us. This wasn't too good, we needed them soon.

On April 6 we got the call - our building permit was ready!

Also ready was a bill for $3000 worth of permit and impact fees. Yikes. Good thing we had money saved up for just such contingencies......

Still, how exciting. We bought a board and some stakes and made our sign post.

Check the first picture. It had taken so long to get to this point, the city changed the street signs. :) The next two are the last photos of this plot before it became a construction site.

Waiting, and waiting, and waiting........and then.......

2007-05-23T00:59:00.000-05:00

Now with the work done, we waited for the city to approve the new survey map. Months went by. We even considered looking at other lots. We realized there was no way we'd be able to start Katie at the Cedar Hills school, and finally were able to enroll her in St. Roman's parochial school. We put the condo up for sale in July, expecting we might have to move at any time. The condo didn't sell. There was no action on the land purchase, which was probably just as well because without selling the condo we couldn't afford it anyway. Life was getting frustrating.

Fall and winter came, and still no action. Christmas wasn't really happy.

February 2007 came, and suddenly everything happened at once. Our contract with our realtor had ended, and we signed a new one with RK Realtors. Within three weeks, we had a buyer! At the same time, the lot finally became available for sale. Our lender approved us even without having yet sold the condo, and we were nervous, but once the condo was sold we knew everything would fall into place. On February 28 we finally got to stop calling it "Lot 4" because we got our address. :) 2027 W. Wood Avenue. Very good.

We closed on the lot and the contract with President Homes on March 6, just nine days before we had to be out of the condo. We were fortunate to rent another condo in Parnell Woods, just down the lane from our old place, which made moving easier.

Early March was a busy and exciting time, what with moving and buying the lot happening at once, and we felt great when it was done. Now it was time to set our sights on building.