As expected woefully behind on updates.  It feels like we have been struggling to stay ahead of the trades for several months, and are finally getting a little bit of a break.

Beginning with the installation of the central vac to stay ahead of the drywall hangers, there has always been a pressing need to do something to get out of the way of something else.  I took a break over the past few days to work on a side project, a much needed break from sanding baseboards - more on that in just a bit.  First I’ll catch you up on the highlights since my last post.

• As mentioned, Doug and I installed the pipes for the central vaccum.  The unit is not installed yet, but is standing dutifully by in the mechanical room waiting.  This was to stay in front of the…
• Drywall hanging.  This stage changed things immensely and was terribly messy and loud.  I cringed nearly all day every day sure they were going to destroy something.  No serious damage done, but one of them did step into a return air duct.  Lucky he didn’t fall through into the basement.  Not the most personable crew, but to borrow a phrase from my days at PacifiCare, when you pay peanuts you get monkeys.  Doug and I hung the drywall in the storage room downstairs (this wasn’t part of their original bid) to stay in front of the…
• Drywall finishers.  I never thought the inside of the house would look so much like a war zone.  On top of the slop, they had space heaters to crank the heat up to 80 degrees, along with about 98% humidity.  I literally couldn’t stay upstairs the kerosene fumes were so powerful.  They did a reasonable job as well with relatively few callbacks to finish things they left out or overlooked.  Several fuel spills that wept through the paper and plastic into the concrete floor were a cause for some distress, but no permanent damage was done.
• Endless priming and painting. Once the drywall was finished, we made a mad dash to prime the whole house in a weekend.  The walls we mostly did with rollers, and I did the ceilings with an airless sprayer.  A little fickle to keep spraying at times, but a huge time saver.  Especially with all the floors covered already, it made painting the many square feet of ceiling a reasonable job.
• Garage floor.  Doug and I poured just shy of 16 yards in the garage, and I had some extra pex tubing so I put that under the slab to enable me to someday hook it up to a solar collector to heat the floor.  The floor is incredibly flat and still very shiny, Doug used a power trowel until late the day of the pour and I put two coats of cure and seal on it.
• Garage doors installed.  Through an understandable miscommunication, the wrong color doors were installed, but no big deal.  They are steel doors trimmed with cedar, the only hangup is the steel is painted a beige color, not at all how it appeared in the photos.  Very paintable, just need to add that to the list.
• Furnace activated.  Tommy came out and got everything live for us and mounted the swanky blue thermostat that can also be used to launch ICBMs.  Just in time too, as we apparently had a…
• Flue fire.  The exact cause is not known, but the greatest minds in fireplace science told us we had a flue fire at some point.  Wood that was too green, fires not hot enough (or too hot) and improper configuration of the flue pipe caused the thimble to get a hairline crack.  We pulled it out and called in the experts (thanks Malissa!).  No permanent damage done, just need to get it repaired.
• Floors finished.  Micah and his crew came back after we pulled up all the plastic (laden with drywall mud, cigarette butts, candy wrappers, and assorted other detrius) and gave the floors a final polish, sealed the cracks, and added a few…accent pieces where we had previously left some knockouts.  They came back a bit later and poured the shower pan for the walk in master shower, which also turned out great.  I couldn’t be happier with the work they did.
• Lights! The electricians made several more trips to make lights / outlets hot, and to hang some fixtures.  They wired in the floor lights which look amazing (pics soon I promise…).  All has been well on that front except for the omission of data cables.  When we met initially, we had a fairly detailed conversation regarding the ability for a Cat-5E cable to support both voice and data, and I sprayed orange paint (three dots) in all the locations I wanted a plate with phone, ethernet, and coax.  Since we didn’t explicitly document it, of course they only ran one Cat-5E to each of the locations.  This one cable can support voice OR data, but not both.  Probably a small thing but highly annoying, and I wasn’t going to pay them to go back and run the additional wires.  So at some point I’ll be in the attic pulling those wires to get them done the right way.
• Siding has resumed after several fits and starts with Gene.  He is back with a new and much improved crew to repair and replace some of the damaged sheets, and they installed all of the cedar around the front entryway, which looks great around the…
• Front Door! After what seemed like a never ending staining / sanding / polyurethane / sanding / sanding project we got the door assembled and installed in the opening.  Of course the pre-hung door didn’t come with hinges or the lockset drilled all the way through so it isn’t fully functional yet, but it beats hell out of scraps of plywood and foam.
• I spent many hours assembling and installing the IKEA cabinets, of which every single component is packed flat - meaning much assembly required.  All in all it has gone great and we really like the cabinets and vanities.  The closet shelving (Stolmen) is pretty slick too.
• We have the interior stair railing built and installed, that was a project worthy of it’s own post.  We got 1 1/2″ square tubing, and doug welded it to a 3×5″ piece of angle iron bolted into the floor joists.  Each of the uprights has 5 holes drilled through it, and we pulled through 3/8″ wire rope and attached it with a series of turnbuckles.  Works great with the rest of the house.  We also have the back deck railing mostly installed as well.  Many of these tasks were done in a rush to satisfy the…
• Self-important bankers who were dead set on making things more difficult for us.  We had locked in a rate at which to convert our construction loan to permanent financing, and the bank kept asking me about ‘move-in readiness.’  Being a logical person, I would always ask them to define ‘move-in readiness’ in order to make sure I prioritized the right things.  Answers always varied but boiled down to ‘it depends on who is inspecting the house.’  When pressed for clarification, I would get helpful advice like
  

  Things that are functional are required, while cosmetic things are not.  For instance, you must have doors installed on all closets.

  At this point I stopped paying attention due to the cloud of smoke coming out of my ears. In the end they generated a ton of heat but no light, and all of their blustering came to nothing.

I’m sure I’ve forgotten a few things but I’m sleepy and you should probably get back to work.  As promised, here is my side project - I cast a sink for the guest bathroom out of concrete.  It took a fair amount of time to build the form and prep everything, but I think it will look great in there.  This is glass fiber reinforced concrete, or GFRC, which is a little different than a standard concrete countertop.

Cheers!