First, be advised that I am still sick, pretty much as a dog, but our landlord insisted on showing the place today, so I had to leave for that, and I had to be at Danny's doctor's office at 2PM for a joint meeting with his mom. So on the way, I dropped by the house. Of course.This first shot was from last Saturday; just wanted to get you a pic of the jerry-rigged contraption I tried to describe to paint the ceiling above the stairs. Watch that last step on the way down - or "Mind the Gap" as they say in London.
This next pair of pics might strike you funny if you remember way back when in June when Sparky moved the panel to its new location, which was great, but in so doing he just cut through the existing siding and slammed on the unitstrut and conduit for the mast without much coordination with Steve. One of those sequencing things that didn't really happen. 
I guess Steve's just used to that, and what he's come up with to deal with it is just a big fat piece of wood (in this case a 2x12), carefully scribed and cut and routed out in back for the unistrut, to conceal all of Sparky's handiwork. If you look carefully at the closeup photo, Steve was pretty accurate with the cutting along the scribe - he even accounted for the metal bands and escutcheon plate. The left side 2x12 will go on tomorrow, and it'll all be caulked nice and neat when he's done. 
So at the end of the day, it'll look like it's embedded neatly in the exterior skin of the house. Maybe that was intentional and I should just hush!!
I guess Steve's just used to that, and what he's come up with to deal with it is just a big fat piece of wood (in this case a 2x12), carefully scribed and cut and routed out in back for the unistrut, to conceal all of Sparky's handiwork. If you look carefully at the closeup photo, Steve was pretty accurate with the cutting along the scribe - he even accounted for the metal bands and escutcheon plate. The left side 2x12 will go on tomorrow, and it'll all be caulked nice and neat when he's done. 
So at the end of the day, it'll look like it's embedded neatly in the exterior skin of the house. Maybe that was intentional and I should just hush!! And in the interior, Pete was working on the window sills, using - get this - the window sills from the old windows, run through the planer so they're bare wood again instead of paint. Clear fir. Looks great. (Less filling.) He got the windows where the countertop will be first, since they'll be so hard to get to later.
Another issue the Bros have been trying to deal with is that there's a big bump in the concrete floor where the old garage floor was sloped up for drainage and we took out the wall between the garage and the rest of the basement. It's right in front of Daniel's bedroom door and the basement bathroom door. The wood flooring just won't go on there well without maybe trying to bend it, but it'll either crack or flex all the time, and in general be a problem. Grinding it all down right now would be a real difficult and troublesome thing, take a long time (read $$$), and something the Bros don't want to do very much. So we have to do something else there than the bamboo floor. That's all there is to it. It is what it is, as they say. After the doctor appointment, I tried Seattle Tile to see if there's any good rectangular floor tile with a bamboo like color or texture that could work. That would be better than carpet or vinyl or marmoleum, that's for sure. Jury's still out.
Another issue the Bros have been trying to deal with is that there's a big bump in the concrete floor where the old garage floor was sloped up for drainage and we took out the wall between the garage and the rest of the basement. It's right in front of Daniel's bedroom door and the basement bathroom door. The wood flooring just won't go on there well without maybe trying to bend it, but it'll either crack or flex all the time, and in general be a problem. Grinding it all down right now would be a real difficult and troublesome thing, take a long time (read $$$), and something the Bros don't want to do very much. So we have to do something else there than the bamboo floor. That's all there is to it. It is what it is, as they say. After the doctor appointment, I tried Seattle Tile to see if there's any good rectangular floor tile with a bamboo like color or texture that could work. That would be better than carpet or vinyl or marmoleum, that's for sure. Jury's still out.On my way back home, I couldn't help but sneak by Home Depot again (I really AM sick!!!), just to browse for a couple things we still need to get. (Planter wall blocks - which to use; exterior lighting - gosh they've got nothing but uglystuff at HD; and bamboo flooring among other things). My eye caught glimpse of some rolls of what looked like red rubber with little bits of what looked like the leftover flecks of that cheap styrofoam packing material - the crap that gets all static-electrified and you can't seem to shake it off into the trash. 
The little white balls are attached permanently to a red rubber vapor barrier, and it's an underlayment for wood floors being placed over concrete. Hallelujah - I've been looking for something like this ever since the guy at the wood-floor-over-concrete-seminar I went to said you need this kind of thing if you're putting wood floor in a basement. I got 700 square feet of it. Yee ha. No light fixtures though. They hurt my eyes.
The little white balls are attached permanently to a red rubber vapor barrier, and it's an underlayment for wood floors being placed over concrete. Hallelujah - I've been looking for something like this ever since the guy at the wood-floor-over-concrete-seminar I went to said you need this kind of thing if you're putting wood floor in a basement. I got 700 square feet of it. Yee ha. No light fixtures though. They hurt my eyes.By then, I felt like last week's sausage sandwich left on the counter. But at least I don't seem to be sniffling as much. I wonder what that means....
And as I dropped off those rolls of red and white underlayment, I saw Richard (yes- "thumbs up Richard" doing a little home improvement himself across the street.
Looks like he's prepping for a paint job here pretty soon. I wonder if they'll ask us over to view brush-outs of the various colors they're thinking of using like we did with them last year. Move-in date is only a month away now. So many more little things to do, and only five more weeks to do them all. I can't wait.
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