Connected!

This entire project, I've never been able to post a blog entry from the project site; there's been no internet connection. Not so any longer. The neat little curly queue of cable is from Comcast, finally providing internet access, and that box on the left is Qwest- phone access. Back to civilization!

Which Would You Choose?

To mount a closet pole bracket in your wife's closet? (Hint; it's not the small one. )

Unfortunately:

A). I didn't get that hint before I started.

B). I forgot that my wife's closet's back wall was old plaster about 7/8" thick, shortening effective embedment.

C) my wife's closet is still not big enough to hold all those clothes!

So naturally, as soon as Heather finished squeezing the culled-through-but-still-significant wardrobe into her closet and let go a sigh of accomplishment as she closed the door, she heard the sound of a big "WHUMP".

So I used the big screws today. And, I'm switching to the big ones in the other closet for safe measure.

How's that go... Fool me once...?..-I know George Bush knows that saying....

Barrow Shuttle

Wheelbarrow load by wheelbarrow load, the concrete gets dumped into place.

Mobile Concrete Unit!

Check out this truck; it's a concrete batch plant on wheels.

The vertical tank in the back has cement, the long bins in the middle have sand and gravel, and right behind the cab is a tank of water. It all dumps into a big mixer at the back and gets poured down a chute, at the end of which Steve waits like an anxious soccer coach as the first load approaches his barrow.

Danny's Man Cave

This is likely the neatest room Daniel's ever had. Spent the past three days doing about 35 loads of laundry (no wonder he didn't have much to wear- it was all in his hamper!) And arranging stuff to settle in, finally finished today.

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Mancave Door Installed

Kian's bedroom door from before the remodel has been placed in its new location, the man cave entrance.

Passages 1

Steve framed up and covered the future concrete walkway with OSB today.... One of his last items to do. I just noticed it looks like a long unrelenting straight shot in this photo; you'll have to come see it in real life.

Passages 2

All good things must end- Steve's packing up tools, loading them into his pickup truck today. He might be back later in the week to finish the walkway, weather permitting.....

Spent the day moving lots and lots of little things from the rental house to our house today. Heather says it's time to do what Frank Lloyd Wright recommends and just lose a bunch of stuff. If it's been in a box for 6 months and you haven't needed it, and in a box for 3 years before that and you didn't need it then, you don't need it period. Value Village here we come.....

First Morning Musings

Wow!
Didn't freeze our buns off.
Daniel and Kian took showers simultaneously and got out of the house on time.
Wookie (our orange tabby) didn't sleep in our room; he was out on the green sofa all night.
The adhesive on the paper pleated shades didn't fail all night.
The hydronic pumps kept clicking on and off throughout the night; didn't really notice it until the morning as I lay in half-sleep.
I need to put in the plug strip in the south kitchen wall; too many appliances on the peninsula and sink area.

For the move yesterday, I had to put some plywood down over Steve's sidewalk excavation so that we wouldn't get our shoes all muddied up and track it into the house. I had to pile some dirt back in there so the plywood wouldn't cave in, messing up Steve's great work. So this morning, before Steve got there, I went out and reexcavated for him so he wouldn't be upset. Finished just in time. Whew.

This week will be largely about moving all the remaining stuff from the rental house back to our house somewhere, in the man-cave basement for the most part, until we can figure out where it all goes. It turns out that the closet space in Kian's room will go largely unused since he never hangs anything up, so that whole thing can be used as mass storage. I also have to finish sweeping out the Kayak Storage Facility and building the plastic storage shed in the back. Sooo much still to do, and only a week to do it.

I'll get off my buttoski now and go get it done.

Ciao!

Nice Truck, Great Help!

And Peter from my office (our first friend to have a Nanawall in his home, installed by Pete Rankin!) Helped out today too!

Nice Shelves, Great Helper!

Jonathan helped out today (he of new car post back in July).

We're in!

The ceremonial cutting of the plastic wrap on Heather's Hatbox occurred at 8:17 PM on Sunday, November 9, 2008, marking our official move in to HeatherMichael House! No internet connection until Thursday- this is from bberry!

Moving Day Eve!!!

So there you have it; it's Saturday evening, November 8, 2008. Heather and I spent all day cleaning the place up, moving tools to media room (no big TV yet anyway!) and garbage and recycles to where they go, and dusting and cleaning. Daniel helped out in the morning moving stuff around with me, Kian helped in the afternoon, clearing out the place where we'll be building the semi pre-fab storage shed in the back, including leveling out the grade so it'll be fairly flat.


This is our last night in the rental house, I have a couple friends lined up (Peter K and John H) to help us move the big furniture items tomorrow afternoon, and we'll be sleeping in the nice warm house tomorrow!

Pete finished all the shelves in the living room yesterday - here's what the Living Room looks like today, ready for more books! I have a hunch we'll actually not fill the shelves with books yet, but we'll see. It would be a shame to move in and have them full from Day 1, eh? We'll see, of course.


Steve installed all the miscellaneous "jewelry" in the main bathroom yesterday; looks pretty crowded in this cell phone photo, but it's pretty cool in real life.
and to the left, outside of the picture, is another "Billy" Ikea shelf, for towel storage. Funny thing about that sink - it's the second cheapest thing in the house, at $39. The faucet was about 4 - 5 times that. Oy! That' the part you touch and interact with, so we rationalized that was the critical thing to get right. And check out that Toto toilet (it's not in Kansas anymore.) Heather spent about three hours sealing all the grout in that room today - and the tile (as I'm sure you recall) goes all the way around, about 7 feet high. Whew! That was quite a job.

On Thursday, I was there for a momentous occasion, akin to the Promontory Utah event I'm sure you all know about. The very last piece of siding was installed at 11:27 AM by one Steve Rankin, above the outdoor light sconce just south of Nanawall. Small pic is Steve air-nailing it into place.

Larger pic is Steve cutting it to fit.

And today, Pete put in a full day along with us, finishing the closet door installations in Kian and Daniel's room, and putting down the baseboards in the closets (so we can pile them full of storage tomorrow and not have to worry about doing them later), and the bed walls (for similar reasons).

In a word, the place looks AWESOME, and neither of us can believe it's actually ready for us to move in tomorrow, but it is, come hell or high water.

Move In Day Is Here

It's Friday evening, November 7. I was at the house since 6:45 to finish installing closet shelves and rods. At 9:00, I had to hightail it in rainy weather traffic to Ikea to get some shelf units to replace the ones I bought a month ago because they were the wrong color. I don't know how that happened, but nonetheless, had to go. Then I painted the basement bathroom and installed the two sconces and sealed the grout and cleaned up. By then, Pete had finished installing the shelf units in the living room, so I inserted all the individual shelves, then installed the front cabinet panel at the cooktop and the sink we don't have. Ahhh...... So now I'm finally blogging after not giving ya'll an update for what five days now? Oy!

What a week! After the election Tuesday, I went into the office for an 8:00 meeting and then it's been work on the house almost constantly since then. Ray finished hooking up the rest of the plumbing on Wednesday, and I'll be darned if I wasn't real glad I was there to see it before he left. He had placed the overflow for the water heater on the back side, so that if there ever was a leak, it would go into the baseboard and start rotting out the drywall. Sheesh. "That's where the connection was aimed, so I just went that way" he said. I asked him nicely to put it in the front, lie next to the floor drain and away from the wall. My goodness, one really needs to be careful.

Did We Move in!?!?!?!?

This was the weekend targeted for starting our move-in if you recall, and I know you do. Did we make it? What do you think? Let's check out these photos:

For the first time in a really long while, I brought a decent camera to the remodel instead of just relying on the cell phone camera.

Here's a pop at the new entry; do you like all the wood? The walls on both sides of the front door will be clear T&G cedar too, so it'll be all woodsy warm when you come to the front door. (If you're an evironmentalist, it'll be all old growth too, but fortunately there's not much of it.) Can we move in like this? You betcha.

Here's the main floor bathroom now; I powered up the Tech Lighting fixtures today and popped in the GFI outlet and got the fan running, cleaned up the tub, and tested out the Hans Grohe shower. Awsome. Can we move in like that? Well, kind of - just need the shower curtain.

You've already seen the living room and the floors; the shelves aren't done yet, but they're almost there; are they good enough for a move-in if we have to? You betcha!

I powered up the water heater today too. That little snake from the ceiling to the heater is 10 gage armored cable, baby. I turned it on and could hear the water warming up and expanding the chamber. Can we move in like that? Well, not quite. If you look at the photo, the piping that gets the hot water to the tubs and sinks isn't there yet. So, no; can't move in until we have hot water.

And here's a shot at the most pesky circuit I'm trying to figure out. If you come to the open house on the 15th, hopefully it'll all be figured out by then and you won't accidentally electrocute yourself like I almost did. Just kidding!!!

Bottom line is, we start the move-in process next week. Until then, Ray needs to finish his plumbing stuff, and we really need to have Steve finish the walkway to the sidewalk so not so much dirt gets tracked in.

That's it for now; I just need to get some much needed sleep. More manana!

Ever have one of those days?

The kind where you're doing a small project and yo go to the store that you know has everything instead of Home Depot, but the store that has everything doesn't have what you need?

And then you go to the other store that has it all and you finally get what you need but you get home and you're still missing a critical part? So you go get the missing piece, and it's small so you just put it in your pocket and you get home and find that somewhere between the store and your house it fell through a hole you didn't know you had? So you have to go again to the store to get a replacement, so you're finally ready to get 'er done, but when you put the "industry standard" pieces together they don't fit right because another piece is missing? How about when you get that part and finally are just about to finish, and something really basic is missing because you never thought what you alreday had wouldn't work, like wire nuts being too small for instance?

Not me- I never have days like that. Not! Argh- I'm having a buffalo burger w/bacon and cheese at the ale house now. I'll get back to the project in a few minutes. :-)

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Bill Gates

Went to a big formal event yesterday at which Mr. Bill spoke. First time I've seen him in the flesh. Yee ha.

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Soooooo Close..........

Just a couple of lunchtime photos. Tom the Flooring Guy put the second coat down this morning about 8:30 - he's coming back after lunch to do the third and final coat. I hope it's nice and thick.

And Steve put more siding up - between the front patio door and the pilaster by the entry. (After moving a whole bunch of stuff so Tom the Flooring Guy could do his thing too.)

This afternoon, the Evan Conklin heating guys are coming by to put in the hydronic baseboards in the basement, so the kids will have nice warm rooms too.

Plastic Laminate Looks Great!!!

The plastic laminate is on the countertop and the drop-in sink and cooktop are - uh - dropped in. I need to get a better camera this weekend and take some decent shots that actually show something more than impressionist images, huh?

That's the diswasher on the left side there, Ray wasn't able to get anything done in the kitchen yet, just the main bathroom toilet, the sink is hung but not plumbed, and the shower fittings are started.

The pair of light fixtures in the bathroom are from Tech Lighting; they are the most solidly built well designed light fixtures I've ever installed. Lots of room for wiring, lots of screw holes for varied boxes, and solid metal componentry. They were pretty pricey though. The diffusers still aren't on there, but I'll do that this weekend.

Steve did siding on the rest of the bedroom wall today too, so he's working his way around. What's kind of funny is that when he started, the way he talked I thought he'd be done with siding in a couple of days. It's been weeks. There's always been something else to do, like the tile in the utility room, or the countertop, or the grouting.

Tomorrow, Tom the Flooring Guy shows up to put the final two coats of stinky smelly Swedish Finish on the oak on the main floor. It's really going to be smelly.

We won't be ready to move in much this weekend, but we'll be able to get a start. Good thing we have the house until November 15. That wasn't how we originally planned it - tried to get a half month rent back but landlord wouldn't let us - now it's a good thing we get to stay that long!

Should be some impressive looking floors in the pictures tomorrow.

Ciao for now!

What's That Column?

What the heck is that post? And why is it on the counter like that? Hmmm..... apparently the glued-on layer of plywood was warping a bit and curling upward, so Steve was pushing it back down and making sure it would stay down this time. Hope it stays!

As you can see, the holes are cut for the sink and the cooktop. And there's almost nothing on the countertop, which is rare for sure.
And because I wasn't able to get a picture of the siding progress yesterday, I shot it today while there during lunch.

Ray the plumber didn't make it today; he will be there all day tomorrow; I'm curious to see how far he'll be able to get in one day. On Thursday morning, Tom the Flooring Guy shows up before 8:30 to put on the second coat of Swedish finish, and the third coat goes on about 1:00. Then there won't be much in the way of walking around until Friday. So if the weather's good Steve will rock and roll on the siding.