9/2/2013 Plenty of stuff going on simultaneously now

9/2/2013

 

Plenty of stuff going on simultaneously now.  Debra and I have successfully mounted our first set of cabinets on our own.  The straight line set of five seemed like a good way to get our feet wet so to speak.  It went reasonably well, considering our amateur status as cabinet installers.  What really shocked us was how far out of straight and level our brand new walls were!  Our technology provided us with absolutely level and true cabinets, but we found to our dismay that the walls are actually out of square by a noticeable margin.  We will have to do a little trimming to mask the one spot that shows.  I'm including the link to the web site we used to learn our cabinet hanging skill.  http://www.ez-level.com/Videosb.html

 

In addition to the cabinets, we also stepped back outside to try and finish the last of the deck.  We want to move in as soon as possible, so we can prep our other house for sale.  Before we will be allowed to occupy though, all safety items have to be installed, i.e. deck railings, stair hand rails, etc.  I did finish most of the deck railings last week, and Debra helped me work on the last portion of the deck floor.  Because of some of the poor quality boards we rejected for use on the deck, we were going to come up short, so I went to our local big box lumber store for more.  To our dismay, we found that the local lumber was fully 1/4 inch thicker than what came with the house.  That may not seem like much, but actually was quite noticeable and did create a trip hazard.  Our solution was to go to the last section of deck on the far side of the house and pull up the last few boards and use them to finish all the transition portions of the deck.  We can then use the new, thicker boards way at the end, and all together.  It will be barely noticeable then, and after drying and shrinking to their final size, be much less obvious.

 

Other items finalized were, tile floor finished in the master bath, and the double vanities installed.  This week we will finish screwing the vanities down, and install the sink top.  The only remaining obstacle to having our plumber back for final hookups will be the sink base cabinet in the kitchen.  Hopefull we can get at that by next weekend.

 

 

 

 

 

Our first five cabinets installed. We fastened them all together on the floor to make sure they were true and square, then lifted and mounted them on the wall as a single unit.  A good self leveling laser is a must for this task.  If there is one major lesson to be learned from building our own house, it is that cheap tools make for cheap results.  Every step of the way thus far, whenever a specific tool was needed that I didn't already own, I purchased quality equipment.  The results have spoken for themselves thus far.  I will speak more to this when the house is done and I do my wrap-up to this blog.

This shows about 1/2 our deck so far.  Behind me in the picture is about another 35 feet that juts out to ten feet rather than the eight foot sections you see here.
 

Double bathroom vanities set into place after tile was complete.  Still have to fasten them down and install the one piece vanity top.