Inspection passed, network wired and drywall delivered

Our ground has been pretty damp for the last couple weeks so it has pushed back the delivery of the sheet rock, but that gave us time to tie up all the loose ends. We finished getting great stuff in all the cracks around the windows and I ran Cat6 network cable to all the rooms in the upstairs and I ran some conduit in some of the areas ,like behind the TV and in the office and to run stuff between the attic and the basement.

The garage doors showed up yesterday but the garage door guy wanted some additional framing, it would have been nice if he had noticed that when he came out the first time I guess you get what you pay for with some of these guys... Hopefully we can get the framing finished up tonight in the dark so he can install them tomorrow.

The big news is that today the drywall is being dropped off. I am guessing that it will take 2-3 days to hang and 2-3 to mud.

I plan to take off on Friday this week to get some more dirt work done since we actually have a dry stretch. Rain is back in the forecast by Saturday night though. I plan to bury the majority of our massive pile of concrete under our drive way at the bottom. This will bring the level of the drive way up and generate some high quality black dirt for the garden. I am just not sure I can get it done in 2 days. If I can't we will have a big mud pit with no easy way to access the property.

My last post on wiring

Wow was this a time consuming project. Almost every free moment I have had over the past month (or longer) has been dedicated to wiring. We have ran over 4000 ft of wiring. We finished up our big 220 wiring this weekend and we just have a few loose ends to tie up tonight and we should be ready for rough in inspection by the end of the week. This is our big inspection so hopefully all goes well. Bob the inspector will be looking at framing, hvac, wiring and plumbing. Once we get past this the end will be in sight.

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.

And more wiring...

We got through another weekend. We made some real progress on the wiring front. We have most of the home runs back to the panel done now. We still have the run for the dishwasher and the run for the radiant heat in the master bath. That should do it for our 12/2 runs though. Then we just have to do the big wire to the hvac system and the dryer. We should be able to finish up the wiring in the house this week. We are really only lacking the runs from the lights back to the switches so it should take to long to get that wrapped up.

Down to the panel

Through the garage

Into the house through the 3 inch pipe

In other news a culvert pipe showed up in the parking lot at work a few weeks back. It is about 10ft long with a 1.5ft inside diameter. They have been doing road construction in the area so I figured it belonged to them. I finally found a guy working on our side of the road and he said it didn't belong to them so I hauled it out to the house. I plan to build the low area of the drive up so it wont get washed out by a heavy rain.

We also made a trip to the home show and talked to a few garage door companies. We really want to look of wood without the maintenance  We may go with something like this. It's not perfect but it fits the budget much better than the fiberglass doors. 

We also had some great weather for January. They finished getting the doors put in this week, but the weather was so decent we ended up just leaving them open most of the weekend. It was pretty breezy on Saturday and it did a pretty good job of getting the mud dried up. We got some dirt work done and we should get a bit more done later in the week.  

More Wiring

We are still working on getting the house wired. After our first weekend I thought we might be a 3rd of the way done, but man was I wrong. We did have a good chunk of the wiring done in the house, mostly just lacking some of the lighting. What I didn't realize was how long it takes to get the home runs back to the panel done. It seems to be taking about 30 minutes per run back to the panel. We have about 30 more runs to get done... Our garage ceiling came out very tall. I am going to guess it's somewhere in the 12-13 ft range, so crawling around on the rafters is a bit unnerving. I have laid some boards up there to crawl on but its still a little freaky. Our power pole is right at the limit on this house (150ft) so we had to mount the panel on the far end of the garage according to our power company. So we have some pretty long runs to get inside the house. According to The electrician we are working with it is not to code to "bundle" the wires. That means we have to tack each one up. Once we get through the garage I have put in 1 3" inch pvc pipe and 1 4" pvc pipe through to the main part of the house. The foam guys sprayed around these pipes so we have a nice easy path to get the runs into the house.

Spray Foam

They Finished up the Spray foam yesterday. It looks like they did a pretty good job to my untrained eye.

Lots of little things and wiring

Well we have been getting a bunch of little projects done. The soffit is almost up. The doors are still not here but they are saying the should be here Thursday. We worked on wiring all weekend. I found an electrician that works on the side for about $18 an hour. He has drawn up a plan and we are putting up all the boxes, drilling holes and pulling wire. So far things are going pretty good. I bet we are about half done.

We have also been getting prepared for spray foam. That is happening today. Most people wait until the electric is in before they foam but it should have minimal impact on the wiring. Hopefully we aren't jumping the gun. We have blocked off the roof between the porch and the deck from the rest of the house.

Once the foam is in and the doors are on we should have a relatively warm place to work. This week has been pretty nice considering it is January though. Today we got up to the low 50s. It was raining last night pretty good but not blowing so the house stayed pretty dry.