A new roof!

Sometimes it seems like nothing is happening and sometimes, it seems like there is a lot happening!

In some respects, nothing happened. Once the window installers got the windows "in", they haven't come back to finish up. There are quite a few fasteners that need to be added to the windows to meet the code, and they haven't finished installing the sliding glass doors yet. (They haven't installed the stops that make one door catch the other to open all the way, and they haven't finished all the fasteners there either.) So far, my least favorite contractor. The bonus: their installation manager is a jerk, too. YAY. So it's been a week since they were there to do anything.  The extra bonus: Their guys didn't clean up after themselves, and left blobs of caulk and pieces of window shims all over the house, everywhere they worked. My personal favorite? The pile of cigarette butts in the dirt behind the house. I think they spent more time smoking than working.

Ok, rant over. Friday morning, the roofers started installing shingles, and the plumbers finished up. I went out of town because Sarah was swimming in a State Championship and didn't get back until Monday afternoon. Here is a picture of Sarah's new bathtub filled with water and ready for the inspection.

By Monday afternoon, the HVAC company had finished installing all the vent work and the dehumidifier for the A/C system.

This is one of my favorite things. We never tend to run the A/C enough to get all the humidity out of the air, so now we will have a whole house dehumidifier!

On Tuesday, we passed the "Roof in Progress" inspection, and the roofer showed up to finish the shingles and flash all of the penetrations from the plumbers and the HVAC. Each of the bathroom exhaust vents will exhaust to the outside and so will the vent hood that we install in the kitchen. 

We also finished the attic stairway today, cutting off the extra ladder portion to make it the right size for our ceiling height. We are now thinking that this is why the one in the last house never felt quite right when we were climbing it? Looks great now!

The framers came and fixed the island that was in the wrong place, and finished up a few other things as well as the sheathing over the sliding glass doors.

We are very happy with the progress and will be thrilled if the electricians show up tomorrow like they are scheduled to and get started. Fingers crossed!!!

We love our Plumber!

One of the best choices we made when choosing contractors was our plumber. He lives locally, and ever since we let him know we wanted him to do the work, he has been keeping close watch on the house. As soon as something is ready for him, he is already there doing the work.

We talked to him a couple weeks ago when he stopped by the house one morning while we were waiting for an inspector. He reminded us to order the tubs to have them ready for him. This is the one we chose:

He knew they were getting close to being framed out, and on the last day even stopped by to talk to the framers about the size of the tub surround for the master bathroom.  He has also made some good suggestions like installing a recirculating hot water system so we wouldn't have to wait for hot water in the kitchen and changing the size of the tub surround to give more room for "stuff".

He called yesterday to ask what type of shower faucets we were going to want, because he was getting started today. And when we stopped by around 9:30 this morning, they were already hard at work getting the plumbing stubbed out.  At the end of the day, they had it all done and two tubs were in!

Also today, the sliding doors got framed out and the front door went in. There is some finish work to be done on the windows and doors, so the window installers will probably be back again tomorrow.

We were so happy to get to put in a doorknob! (It's the small things.)  This won't be the permanent one, but something to put in through the construction process. 

Front Door

Yesterday, the framers finished up the coffer in the living room.

And we got to install the attic ladder. This one was tricky- we couldn't just get a standard ladder. The ceilings in most of the house are all at 9'4", but since the garage is lower, the ceilings in there are 10'6".  Since the standard attic ladders only go to 10', we had to get one that went extra tall. But, we got it in!

Our only setback today was that we discovered that the kitchen island was not in the right place.

So the dimension from the other side of the back kitchen wall to the side of the knee wall should be 9'3 1/2".  

This is a bad picture, but the actual measurement is a little more than 11'9". We think the wall just got flipped around the plumbing. The framers said they would take care of it. I'm sure they will. 

One last thing happened: Our shingles got delivered to the roof this week!

Slow Progress- but progress.

     Not many posts last week because it didn't really seem like much was happening. The windows were supposed to get bucked on Tuesday, and the roofers were going to start on "Tuesday or Wednesday." 

   I got word from the window installer that they had one of their crew calling sick on Monday which put them behind, so they were not going to come until Wednesday. Wednesday morning around 11am, I drove by the house expecting it to be bustling with activity, and was surprised to see nobody. 

Nobody? How could this be?

   I got another email from the window company that their guys were showing up "mid day" to do the buck and to make a delivery. And by the time we went back a couple hours later, the roofers were there and the windows and their installers arrived. Let me tell you, it is a little nerve wracking to know that these things (Roughly $20,000 worth of doors and windows!) were just going to be dropped off but not actually installed for a few days. They needed to install some 2x4's and 1x4's around the openings, that needed to be inspected before the doors and windows could actually go in. 

We did move all the windows, and the front door, into the house so they weren't visible from the street. 

My new front door!

The new sliding glass doors (Double paned, low-e, impact glass= VERY HEAVY!!)

There are two 3' panels and three 4' panels. 

And the roof got dried in. The roofers work so fast!  They showed up around 1:00 and were done by 5!

But no framers on Wednesday. We got word late Wednesday that they needed more lumber to finish up. So on Thursday, we ordered it and it got delivered on Friday, but the framers would not work again until Monday. 

The windows started going in on Friday. 

On Monday, the framers were back, but no window installers. I guess they needed to work on their trailer. On Friday when they were backing in, something happened to one of the wheels and one came off. I guess they didn't get it fixed over the weekend. 

But the framers nearly finished up. They got the tray ceilings done in the master bedroom and in Sarah's bedroom. They also got the pocket door frames in and the bathtub surround for the Master Bathroom. 

Clean up, Clean up, Everybody, Everywhere....Oh wait...It's just us.

The framers started working on the interior walls on Monday.

This is looking into the Laundry from the Garage

Owen standing in the front bedroom window

Sarah's bathroom is on the left, her closet in the middle

Looking into the Master Bathroom from the bedroom

Living room view into the Master Bathroom

This is the living room wall

Knee wall for Kitchen Island: Pantry is on upper left

Looking out the front door, the craft room will be in the left

So, the framers are working hard. Pete and I got to do some hard work, too. We got the dumpster dumped today, so it was time to clean up more concrete.
Before:

After:

 More after:

More work to do yet. But this is all the stuff we put in!

Gimme an inch...

So it rained a lot on Thursday, and the framers did not work.  The house had a lot of water in it anyway, so while Pete and I were waiting for the inspector, we swept the water out of the house and started chucking stuff into the dumpster.  We were pretty bummed at first when we saw the sign on the dumpster that said "NO CONCRETE" so I called to ask about it and they said we could put SOME concrete in there but not to fill it all the way up. We needed to clean up all this stuff!

On Friday, the weather was beautiful so we went back to the house and still no framers. We spent some time cleaning up nails and other dropped stuff all around the house, along with random concrete piles. Seems like if they finished and still had some left over, they would just pour random blobs of concrete out in the dirt. And when they swept the inside of the house, they just swept that right out into the dirt too.

I didn't expect them to work the weekend, so I was pretty surprised when I pulled up on Saturday. I saw some stuff sticking out of the dumpster, and my first thought was that someone in the neighborhood was using our dumpster to throw stuff away. then I looked into the garage and saw that they had installed all of the R-5 Foam board insulation around the concrete walls and they marked out all of the interior walls.

What we didn't anticipate is that the electrical run that should be going from an interior wall to the kitchen island missed the wall by about an inch. 

We are not sure what the solution will be here. Perhaps they can drill into the slab behind the pipe and just bend it to go into the wall space (This is probably our preferred method) or we will have to move the wall a couple inches (not preferred). Moving the wall is going to entail moving other walls and the pantry, and would also create an odd kind of bump out that I'm not sure we want. 

This pipe sticks up right behind where the refrigerator & freezer will be. 

So, I sent a note to the electrician to see what his thoughts are on it, and I'll try to meet the framers there in the morning to see what they think also. 

They also removed the forms around the tie beam that is over the sliding glass doors, and framed that in.

Let's see where we get this week!