Harder than Nails

 We had a great Thanksgiving.  We had a full dinner from Bob Evans.  Our only challenge was heating it in our very small microwave.  Getting things to luke warm took a long time.  Everything was tasty and it left lots of time to work on other things.

Kitchen from the family room.

Chris and Jackson installed the three garage door openers.  They look great, if only the power to them was hooked up.  We painted for 5 days straight and we got about 90% of the house painted.  It is starting to look like we could live there.

Early last week our bamboo flooring arrived,  all 9000lb of it.  Unfortunately it was dropped off in the garage and we had to move it box by box into the house to acclimate.  Our muscles are getting a work out and I think we would make a great husband and wife arm wrestling team.

We let the flooring installers work for an hour or so,  then our curiosity got the best of us and we had to go check on the progress.  "It is not going well sir.  The nails don't go in and the saw is smoking.  This wood is like steel."  So another truck of guys showed up with some stronger flooring nailers and the business owner came with a new saw blade.  Then 8 guys stood around to see if it would work.  Once they got the right tools,  the flooring went in like a dream and looks marvelous.

today the electrician is working on the outlets, switches and fixtures.  Hopefully we can get the tile done in the next week or two so the plumber can get his work done as well.  It looks like January we could have a place to live!

As things get completed it gets harder and harder to stay in the RV especially as we are expecting our first snow tonight.  Brrrrrrr.

No Chicken Little, the sky is not falling

The past two weeks have brought a lot of progress.  The house is completely insulated and the guys have just finished up the drywall.  We have been busy making some final purchases.  We finally bought some material to put a ceiling on the porch,  tile for the master bathroom and vanities for the kids bathrooms.  All big items to check off our list.

Looking into foyer from kitchen

The insulators were here on Monday blowing cellulose into the ceiling, when one of the guys came to tell me there was a big problem.  One guy was up in the ceiling and the other feeding hose up.  He said he heard a noise so he asked the guy if he was ok.  When the guy responded that he was ok,  he was on the ground.  He had fallen thru the drywall in the ceiling.  Luckily the drywallers were still here and I was able to explain in broken Spanish that a guy fell from the sky.  They figured it out a patched things right up.

Speaking of insulation...we had a guy here who featured our house on his blog.  He was very impressed at the level of insulation in the house and took lots of photos.  If you are interested, you can read it here:: http://jaymarkanich.activerain.com/post/3516669/best-practices-with-insulation-installation

We had been using our little trailer as sort of a mini dumpster.  They workers would fill it up,  then we would take it to the dump and empty it.  In this process I learned that unsecured drywall can stand straight up at 40MPH.  We also learned that to heap drywall over the walls of the trailer will cause the fenders to rub on the tires and burning rubber stinks!

In the Living Room Looking to the kitchen

The chickens have slowed down their egg production.  We did get some solar powered holiday lights for inside the coop and the number of eggs is increasing daily.  We are getting more and more regular egg customers calling for several dozen at a time.  We rarely have eggs to sell at the farm stand anymore.  We also had some calls for honey this week.  One woman had previously purchased some for her son with allergies and said it really helped him.  How could we not sell to her?  It was so nice to hear that someone was benefiting from our honey.

This past weekend we had drywallers here both days and Chris was having some back issues so we opted for a down weekend.  It was nice to not work on the house for a change.  We are looking forward to the Thanksgiving holiday and all that we can get done.  Hopefully some tile and some painting.
Happy Thanksgiving!

Everything happens at once

It seems like everyone is ready to work at the same time.  After a rather slow couple of weeks,  this week has been packed full!

Dominion hooked up the power to the house.  This is huge as the crews are scarce with many being sent up to NJ to help with hurricane Sandy.  The drywall is hung on the ceiling and some interior room.  The insulation for the main floor walls is complete.  The propane tank is in the ground and they are supposed to run the line today.  Our flooring is supposed to arrive next week and be installed the week of Thanksgiving.  That same week our cabinets and appliances are scheduled to arrive as well.  Whew,  it is enough to make your head spin.

Or drywall was delivered and stacked on a wall the insulators needed access to.  So....all by myself,  I restacked 50 4x8 sheets of drywall.  Unfortunately, I don't think my boss is going to give me a raise or even a bonus.  Whenever I as for a raise,  he says "Sure, 10% of nothing is nothing."  I guess I just have to be happy with room and board.

Siding Siding Siding

Yes,  all we have been doing is siding. It seems like the never ending job.  We did take a break and do structured wiring one day,  but then we were back to siding.

We have passed all of our mechanical inspections and our framing inspection.  All on the first try....we must have a really good general contractor!  We are in process to schedule the insulation, drywall and flooring.  Hopefully we will be ready for the cabinet delivery that is coming on Thanksgiving!

The house weathered hurricane Sandy just fine.  We had a little water in the basement but we believe that it will be corrected once final grading is complete.  We only had a few trees across the driveway to clean up after the storm,  unfortunately one of the had poison ivy on it and Julie is a little sensitive to PI. 

Side of house.  You can see the front porch on the left side of photo.

A couple of weeks ago,  I tried to move a rock pile.  Apparently,  when your lawn mower is trying to haul a really heavy trailer in wet grass, it is easy to get stuck.  It turns out it is also easy to slide backwards down hill.  If you are lucky a big pile of tree stumps will stop you before you roll over the hill.  If you are more lucky no one will ask you what happened,  they will just help you haul the rocks back up the hill.

As the weather gets colder it is hard to not get anxious about getting in the house.  We are all missing our stuff.  I am sure any clothing we stored will no longer fit the boys.  I was thinking, if we can work out the timeing, so that our stuff arrives from storage around the holidays,  maybe we can wrap it up for Christmas gifts and the kids won't recognize it.