I am flounder, Gene is Eric Stratton.

The excitement continues at 488.  The drywall is up and we now have ROOMS!  Though the process about sent us both over the edge (imagine huge pieces of drywall being dragged across and dropped on brand new polished concrete floors) we are very pleased with the work that they completed.  The finishers will be here this week to mud, tape, and sand.  So the week between Christmas and New Years we should be able to clean things up a bit and start priming the walls and ceiling.  The storage room is the only room in the basement that we are finishing for now.  I am not sure that we will even let the primer dry before we start unpacking the POD.  Though the POD has been very convenient and their service impeccable, we are very ready to GET IT OUT OF THE YARD and find a few items that have been missing since the move.

To prep for the drywall Andy and Doug spent some very long hours last weekend replacing warped wall studs, reinforcing ceiling beams in the living room, framing in the garage doors, and building attic access doors.  I worked with Andy running speaker wire throughout the house so there is no shortage of good music in our future :).

The saga continues with the roofers.  The owner of the roofing company has apparently ‘lost it’ and is sending in crews with expectations that are impossible to achieve (sound familiar??).  If they finish the day without finishing our roof he fires most of the crew.  Helpful??  I don’t think so.  Anyway, so a really nice man named Charlie showed up yesterday as a subcontractor to our roofing contractor.  He seems to have a lot of experience and is supposed to ‘finish the job’ for Summit.  He was on the roof until dark in 10 degree, damp and windy weather and didn’t finish the job.  Before he left he told us that he is going to tell Summit that they will need more material and another guy to get the job done.  GULP!  I hope we see dear, sweet Charlie again…

As mentioned earlier we are finishing the storage room in the basement which means that the radiant tubing for the heated 1st floor  has to be hung this weekend.  This is Andy’s project and he has been scrambling to get the radiant tube design completed and the tubing attached to the underside of the floor.   It really isn’t a difficult application, however feeding >300 feet of very stiff PEX tubing through small holes at 9 feet is proving to be more troublesome than originally thought.  Keep your fingers crossed that things roll a little easier today and we get it all hung.

On top of Christmas shopping, I have had the distinct pleasure of picking out all of the lighting fixtures for the house.  Wow, has that been a time consuming task.  The big box stores didn’t get any of our business I can proudly say!  I have been purchasing our lighting from Bellacor, Croft and Little, The Lighting Universe and Euro Style lighting.

Enjoy the pics!

Here are some photos to go along with the last post.  You’re going to have to work for this one, the comments are all in the popups for the pictures.

All but one of the doors are in now, Jill stained the front door yesterday and we’ll start wrangling with that this week.

Another banner week at The Casa.  Tommy is nearly finished with all the ductwork and set his unit yesterday, and should be wrapping up soon. His trunk line is something of a work of art - he is a lot like Doug in his attention to detail.

The Electricians from Galloway descended on Wednesday and came back today to finish their rough in, they will probably be back early next week to finish.  The plumbers wrapped up on Tuesday with their rough-in, and completed a pressure check.  A different trim crew will be back after the drywall is hung to set the fixtures, etc.

It got really cold this week, so we put a renewed focus on setting all the doors in.  We started with the french door in the basement, and it took quite a while to figure out the approach and get everything prepped.  The door installation was complicated somewhat by the thickness of the wall - giving a whole new meaning to the term jamb extender.  In order for the hinges to operate, the door is set all the way back in the opening, leaving 8 or 10 inches of the jamb exposed - far more than a standard door.  To make up the difference, we installed some thick pieces of aluminum underneath the door to bridge the gap from the interior to the outside surface.  It took a little bit of grinding and cutting to get them to fit but they will work very well.

Last night we set the steel door in the garage, and that leaves only one single door to the back deck, and the front door remaining.  We’ve had some procurement issues getting an unblemished door from Red Rock, but it should be on the way shortly.  We will most likely install the sidelights and the dinged up door in the interim, hopefully this weekend.

The other exciting surprise was the delivery of the Napoleon wood burning stove on Wednesday night.  We wasted little time in testing out Malissa’s flue, and had some nice fires the past few nights.  Now that the door openings are covered (the ones that still lack doors are covered with plywood) it makes it quite comfortable inside.  The first few fires let of a lot of paint fumes as the stove seasons, but nothing too overpowering.

Once the electricians finish, we’ll install some central vaccum outlets and will be ready for drywall - that may start next week if everything falls into place although I highly doubt it.  I’ve spent a little time building forms and am trying to get the materials to make some concrete window seats, it would be nice if I could get at least a few done to have them in place before the sheet rock is hung.

Happy weekend.