| Well, the range went for way more, and became less of a deal than we can get through Direct Buy. Oh well, we'll keep watching. There is another one that ends on the 5th that I'll keep my eye on. |
| Siders are continuing their work, they're doing a great job, it's just a long job. |
| The sprinklers are getting started next week. Because the fire truck can't get down our driveway, we were required to have a sprinkler system. A fire truck won't stay stationary at greater than a 20% angle, which our driveway has. The sprinkler covers are flat round discs that sit against the ceiling. At 135º the solder holding the disc to the housing melts and the disc falls off, and then once it reaches 165º the liquid inside the sprinkler triggers it. The good thing is that only the sprinkler that senses the heat is triggered, so the whole house doesn't go off. But, the one down side is they don't shut off by themselves. We'll hook the sprinkler system into the alarm monitoring system so that we and the police or fire department would be notified if it, heaven forbid, went off. |
| We just barely managed to avoid having to put in a fire hydrant down by our house. The house is 356' from the existing fire hydrant. Under the codes, if the house is 350' from the hydrant, you have to put another one in. Now, the house is less than 350' as the crow flies, but the fire department measures it by 'hose lay' which is defined as the hose running down the middle of the road, and since our driveway curves, it is longer. (Please, drag the hose across the shrubs & flowers!) Adding the fire hydrant to our already exorbitant water main would've been at least another 5K. But, because we were having the sprinklers, the fire marshal gave us a pass on that one rule. The codes also changed so that you can now have four exceptions to the building codes, but having the sprinklers also allows us to have additional passes on other rules, which we didn't need. I was pretty happy to follow fire codes in the house, but not having to put in the fire hydrant was a relief. |
| We're ordering our fireplace next week, and we're going to place our Kohler order, which I can't wait for!!!! They had a 'Tea Green' sink in their showroom, and I am so in love with that color, it's so beautifully subtle. Sigh..... |
| Found out that the local supplier we're using is a distributor for the sexy faucet! I don't think we're gonna pay retail on hardly anything! Maybe we'll be able to get the big one for the main sink and the smaller bathroom one for the bar sink. <fingers-crossed> |
| We found our FiveStar range on eBay. It's a better version than we were going to get, for less money! Plus we don't have pay sales tax or the Direct Buy handling fee of 8%, woo hoo! |
| Mark got the whole electrical hookup thing straitened out. |
| Siders have continued doing their thing this week. It's coming along quite nicely. |
| We still don't have power. The guy came out to hook it up, but it
didn't happen. Check out Mark's corner for more
info. "I can't run the wire this far by hand." "So is there a machine that will do it?" "Yeah." "So . . . do you have access to one?" "Yeah." . . . . . . . . "So can you go get it?" "I gotta talk to the office." |
| Worked at the house on Friday all day with Mark on building the knee-braces. I got to run the router and the chop saw! Power tools are way fun! |
| This week the siders have started, and the siding looks really good! We are very happy with how it's turning out. Of course, it'll be mucho better once it's painted, but it's a definite improvement over the OSB. |
| And the reason I say mucho is this. The siders only speak Spanish. Not a problem, except when there is a problem. We went to the house on Saturday and found that they were there working - now normally this is fantastic, working on Saturday - however, they'd already put the shingles up on the upper part of one of the house gables (peak part of the roof line). The house is going to have the craftsman style knee-braces, [those things that go in the eaves under the roof, that look like they are holding up the roof that sticks out from the edge of the house, but are generally purely decorative] but they need to go on first before the shingles. So, after much attempting to speak to the siders with little or no luck, Mark calls the owner, and leaves a message. So I get the idea to call a colleague at work that is bilingual and have him translate, and while we're speaking to him the owner calls back, who has the same name as my colleague, so we end up hanging up on my colleague (sorry!). Anyway, Mark gets it straitened out with the owner, and the workers decided to wrap it up for the day. One of their cars was in the driveway, and he couldn't get it started, but at least it was parked off to the side, so you can get by it. |
| So, Mark started working on making the knee braces. We made a workbench for the chop saw, and he made two samples, one for the top center braces, which are slightly deeper, and one for all the other braces. The man is loving his tools! |
| The electrical is all done. We should be getting power next week = no more generator! Yeah! The electrical panel is beautiful. Not only is each of the fuse box switches labeled, each wire is labeled too! Holy cow! |
| We picked up the kitchen sink on Friday. It's really, really nice. I'm very happy with it. The sink was the first thing I ordered on my own from Direct Buy. I ordered the 30' sink instead of the 36" sink, cuz I was thinking that the 48" Kohler Harborview as going to be major overkill. So, it seemed to me that 30" would be enough. However, the 36" sink makes Mark's life much easier for designing the kitchen cabinets. But he's gonna have to get over it. After all, I'm going to have to live with the light switches that I didn't want. |
| So, I did clean up at the site on Saturday while Mark was working on the knee braces. I filled three huge contractors' garbage bags with sawdust and wood chips. The dust was flying! But it looks like much less of a mess than it did! |
| Mark & Tony put in the other three exterior doors this week, so once we install the temporary locks we got, we'll actually be able to secure the house! Yahoo! Tony built my parents' house, so I think it's kinda cool that he's helping a bit with ours. |
| We have 17 lights in our kitchen. Whoa. |
| The house has really dried out quite a bit. I'm not as paranoid about it as I was. Plus, the power will get turned on soon, so we can start running the furnace. Plus, the delay from the sprinklers will give us more time for drying the house out even more. |
| So, we've got a bit of mold growing on some of the wood. Now, don't panic - I've already been doing that for you - it's really not that big of a deal. I've been doing a ton a research on this issue, and I've backed away from the ledge. We don't have any 'toxic-have-to-abandon-the-house' type mold, it's just what's called 'lumber yard mold.' Standard mold that is in every house, especially every house built in the rainy Northwest. We are however, hiring a mold-abatement company, what I like to term the 'mold busters'! They will clean out the mold that is there and they have a 7 year guarantee. They were 70% cheaper than the first company we had come out that wanted to do all kinds of fancy stuff. All houses have mold in them, mold is a constant presence in our daily lives. Mold needs a certain level of moisture to grow and if it doesn't have that, it won't grow, it will just stay there, dormant. Now, it's when you have a leak of some kind that it becomes a problem as the mold is then given the moisture that it needs to grow. The vast majority of the problems are in the basement, and since most of the basement where the pipes are and will not be dry walled, we'll be able to see most any problem that may develop. Plus, we'll know exactly where all the pipes are in the wall, so if we have problems 10 years down the road, we'll know exactly where to look. I'll be taking pictures of all of the walls before the drywall goes up so we'll know where all the pipes and wiring are. |
| The Fireplace we wanted to install is not 'certified' in the state of Washington. Apparently Washington State has stiffer requirements than the federal requirements. Durn it! Not sure what we're going to do about that. |
| The sprinklers are putting us behind. Plus, our 2-year old quotes aren't holding and it's more expensive now . =[ Ironic, since one of the first things we knew about the house is that we'll have to have sprinklers. |
| We love our electricians! They've been doing all this extra stuff. 'Sure, we can do that.' They love working on our house. When Mark suggested that if the wanted to use our house as a sample/reference of a high-end system for other customers, his response was, 'well then we need to do some more cool stuff!' |
| More electrical work this week. The gas piping got done yesterday (thanks Cody & John). |
| I spent the last two days at the site cleaning up the pile of debris. We hired a guy (whose name is Oscar, no, really, it is) to take away the trash. The only thing we had to do was move the two piles from the patio & backyard to the front, so most of that was my job. Fun, fun. I'm a little sore. |
| The two tankless water heaters got installed. Why two? Well, each will do 8.4 gallons per minute. The Waterhaven shower unit will take up to 13 gallons per minute if everything is on. Not that all the extra stuff will be on all the time. But we can shower while the dishwasher is running, we can run two appliances at once, we won't have to worry about running out of hot water. Ultimately the tankless water heaters are more energy efficient because you don't have to heat 50 gallons of water all the time. |
| The keys for the doors came, and they work! The only thing we don't like is that it's hard to tell when the door is locked or unlocked, it doesn't feel like a deadbolt is being thrown. |
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The electricians started this week. We ordered lights. I'll have a little command center that controls everything right by my computer desk off the kitchen. |
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I picked up the two tankless water heaters from Direct Buy. |
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Mark ordered the 3 remaining doors (front, garage, workshop). Hopefully we'll be able to lock up the house soon. Although, we still haven't gotten the keys for the doors from Euroline. |
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Still love the countertop. |
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On a personal, non-house, note, I spent the day today at the Sew Expo show and I'm heading back tomorrow, so inspiring, opens my creative mind to so many possibilities, so much cool stuff, beautiful fabrics...... But, man, all I have to say is that I am spry, beautiful, thin, and impeccably dressed. 'Wearable Art' is such a subjective term. |