Details, Details, Details

7/19/2013

People with anal retentive and/or OCD tendencies should not work on their own house.  I am constantly obsessing over little details that invariably cause any task to take twice as long as it should.  I've spent the last two days laying down the hardwood flooring, and each board has to be inspected and moved about until it looks just perfect.  If a tiny detail shows up on the next row, I'm just as likely to go back and pry up one or two to make it look the way I think it should.  This is all fine and dandy if you have all the time in the world, but we have deadlines to meet, and need to keep moving forward so we can actually live here some day.

First the vapor barrier paper must go down.

Next, several boxes of boards are opened and spread out to make sure patterns stay random and not too many of any size or color wind up in one spot.  We chose reclaimed hickory for our wood.

Next comes the layout.  Random spacing for the different size and color variance boards make or break a good looking wood floor.

Since there are no really "straight" walls on which to anchor our layout, we decided to use the fireplace as our focal point.  The whole house will follow this angle and pattern.

The floor will be continuous throughout, with no breaks between  rooms.

7/15/2013 Another milestone

7/15/2013

The electrician came in today to start his final hookups.  Outlets, lights, fans, etc. are moving along nicely.  It will be terrific now to work at night without dragging extension cords and portable lights around to get things done.  While the electrician was working in the house, I got to work on surfacing the first of the ten foot deck sections.  I did that for as long as I could tolerate the heat on the south side of the house, then I moved back in and finished the afternoon doing paint touch-up work.
Last week the fireplace installation crew came by and finished installing the chimney pipe and capped the top of the chimney race. They also dropped off the rest of the fireplace parts, so as soon as we finish the stone on the wall, we can install the fireplace front and the door.  It's pretty darned hot weather for a fire, but I don't care if it's 100 degrees when we get it all together.....I'm starting a fire in that thing!  Our mantle and hearth are sitting at the store waiting for us to take delivery of those big slabs, but I've been hoping to hold that off until our garage floor has been poured, so we can stage those heavy parts out there out of the way until we are ready to install them.
The hardwood flooring was dropped off Friday.  Now we're just trying our best to get the humidity down below 55% inside for at least 48 hours to acclimate it so we can start nailing it down.  Ah, visible progress.....Gotta love it!

This stack of flooring and two more just like it.

After my recent escapades with ladders, I was only too happy to let the experts climb up there and finish the chimney with no help from me.

Wiring up the Great Room

7/8/2013 Lots accomplished in a short time.

7/8/2013

Lots accomplished in a short time.  Now that we are in charge of what happens and when, we are able to coordinate tasks to keep moving ahead, and not wait for someone else to decide when we're important enough to have work done.
We finished painting the entire interior over the long weekend.  Two coats of vapor seal primer (20 gallons), two coats of flat ceiling paint (10 gallons), two coats of primary color (14 gallons), and three accent walls (4 gallons).  Had we not sprayed everything except the accent colors, I believe we would have been at it for another week!  We're very happy with the results, and except for some touch-up, we shouldn't have to do any more painting for a long time.  Fitted in amongst all the painting, we had to uninstall our front and back doors (that someone else had installed incomplete) and reinstall them correctly, and for the first time, fully functional.  The next big ticket item will be our hardwood flooring to be delivered the end of this week.  While we're waiting for that we are continuing to work on the deck when time and weather permit, and are about to finish up with the last of the concrete for the garage and front sidewalk.  The garage doors are waiting to be installed as soon as concrete is poured too.

Getting ready to apply the second coat of primer.

Half of the wall in the great room.

Spare bedroom accent color

Finally!  We have an actual WORKING front door.

7/4/2013 Painting at last.

7/4/2013

Happy 4th of July everyone.  The drywall finishers are done and did a beautiful job inside.  We will be spending most of our long weekend painting the house, fixing the exterior doors, and maybe a little shooting in the quarry.