Done!

Alright, that's a wrap. We just passed our final inspection. I will post up some final interior shots in the next couple of weeks. I will also be tracking the utility bills closely and I will report back when I have a decent amount of data collected. Beyond that I will be shifting my terrible writing to my other blog at onesojourner.org. I will be focusing on the happenings around the house, mostly cool little projects like charcoal making, wood gasification, electricity generation, small scale animal husbandry, gardening, permaculture and "stuff".

Almost Done (2)

My to-do list has dwindled. The list is finally a manageable weekend project. I finished getting all the counter tops in. The Sinks are all installed with the exception of the drain on one. I have to reset on toilet because the wax ring is leaking a bit. The work outside is pretty much done. The downspout drains are all in except one, the sidewalk is done. We had a new load of gravel brought out and the west steps are placed. I talked to the inspector today and he said we have to have a functional stove, so I am trying to find a propane company that will get a tank out there asap. We were going to use the primo and cook on that for a month or two.

Anyways here are the "final" pics from the outside of the house. 

Almost done (1)

Alright I finally feel like we are in the almost done stage. There are really no "big" projects left. We finished spreading out the dirt piles and ran a harley rake over the yard and got it in pretty good shape. We spread some grass seed and it has rained a good amount so the seed has been wet for 3 days straight now. If we have any chance of getting the grass growing in July it is this week. We got the front door hung and it fit just perfect. We bought the hand rails for the garage and basement. Those should go up in a day or two once the stain dries. We have a bit or trim to finish but that should go pretty quick. The concrete counter tops are coming along.

Countertops are setting up

We got the concrete in the forms. I am not super thrilled with how it all went. The fiber optics went terribly. That may be a complete failure. The "white" concrete was full of tan sand. The brown counter for the guest bath I got way to wet so I am pretty worried about the final strength. Hopefully it all turns out. I had to order a new secco polisher, my other one died after one job. If this one does not do better I will be done with this brand. Ok enough complaining. I will pull the forms tomorrow and start the finish work on them.

Trim, doors, well, tile, ect.

We are down to lots of small jobs at this point. The well is in and the pressure tank is set. Unfortunately the plumber didn't stub out a place for us to tie in at. I finished up the shower pan for the master bathroom and Calee got the tile laid on the floor of the shower. We finished up the heated floor in the master bath and laid the tile in both bathrooms. Now we just have to finish up the shower walls.

The cabinet guys got most of the cabinets set. The counter top guy came and got the kitchen measured. I am going to do concreted for both the bathrooms.

After 2 weekends with a paint sprayer we finally got all the trim painted. We finished trimming a couple windows yesterday. We also finished up the stairs.

Drywall is hung, stone vaneer is started

The hangers finished up the drywall now we just have to wait for the finishers. The inside of our house is a dusty mess. Hopefully they will get done this week. They were worried about it not being warm enough but I think they play to bring some heat in.

 

We got started on the stone vaneer this weekend. We are using a drystack so it takes a while to piece all this together and that means we are behind schedule again.  The weather is well below average this week for this time of year and that makes doing mason work suck. Our night time lows are hovering around the freezing mark so I will cover our work with plastic. The siding and soffit guys started on Friday and they expect it to take about a week or so to finish up so we have to have this rapped up by next weekend. 

Garage floor is done, HVAC started

We finished up getting the garage gravel leveled up and we had a few days in the 60's so we had the concrete guys come and get the garage floor poured.

I also spent a few hours on Friday getting the steps built for the garage. This was my first go at doing the math for the stringers but it turned out just fine.

The HVAC guys also started last week. They have the main trunk line in and most of the ducting in. They should finish up the return air and the HRV in the next day or so.

Whoops! chimney and plumbing before the metal rooof

My roofer called me last week and told me the metal would be in by Thursday and that they may want to start getting it put up. The weather has been unbelievably nice for December. It seems like just about every day has been rain free and in the 60s and 70s. It could easily be 20 degrees with snow on the ground. So the roofers were understandably ready to get this job started. Fortunately I talked to my framer and he reminded me that I would want to have all my roof penetrations in before the metal goes on... Whoops. So I called the roofers off. Fortunately I have a plumber who is pretty easy to work with and he got out and put in our 3 vents that we needed. My father-in-law and I spent Half the weekend getting the chimney stuff figured out. Part of the problem is I am not sure what stove we are going to go with. So we took the minimum clearances for single wall stove pipe and added a couple inches. Hopefully that will do the job.

We spent the rest of the weekend adding fill to the garage. They are building a new CVS in town and they needed a place to get rid of the chunks of concrete so our property was volunteered. It has been a lot of work hauling this into the garage but it will save as thousands in the end. We also got more concrete than we bargained for. It will all work out in the end but right now the pile looks like a monster. We have been using the old backhoe to bring in a couple of large peices at a time. It has been extremely time consuming, but I think we are almost there. One more full day and we should be ready to pour the garage floor. The weather may not hold though, and that will push it back to spring.

75,000 pounds of blocks... and we have a retaining wall

It was a busy weekend. Our redi-blocks got delivered on friday. We were responsible to unload them... They are impressively heavy. The old back hoe cried a bit but it got the job done. We are still waiting on the end peices but the walls are done for the most part. We also used an auger to drill through the fill for the front porch. We went down about 5 ft. Hopefully that will prevent it from settling to much.