Moving right along...

More about renovations: Last week I took my daughter to PA for college auditions. While we were away the builders came and took down the internal walls. Wife was home with son so they were able to witness the event. They put in a temporary entrance door. Builders also poured the slab foundation. It snowed a bit so it was lucky that things were sealed up. Now the house has no power in the kids rooms and the living room but it is much wider. Son stayed with aunt for a couple of days. Wife stayed at home with the dogs and cats.

Today the builders came back to figure out the arrangement of the internal walls and to try to fix the electric. Turns out the closet we wanted in the foyer was not on the blueprints although we stressed that that was a very important thing. They figured out how to do it though so things are moving along. This is another lesson to learn: Get it all on the blueprint and go over the prints with the architect! Don’t let them tell you “we’ll do the outside first and worry about the inside when we get to it…” Nerve wracking, but soon it will get better…

p.s. Daughter did very well at her auditions. The college people were impressed with her voice which was news to her since she didn’t think she had a great voice. They also were very impressed with her drumming. I got some reading done and am almost through with Anansi Boys which continues to be a great book! I also brought along my Uke and practiced some songs in the hotel. We tried to do a cache one day but the snow has a layer of ice making things treacherously slippery so we gave up…

More Construction Stories

So here is what has transpired since last I wrote. Wife and I discussed the windows and the sliding doors and decided to leave them as-is because the cons of replacing them outweigh the pros. The roofers came and put on the roof. The electricians came and put in the wires, and the insulation guy came and insulated the walls. All this was done during the freezing cold past week or so, in which we also had an ice storm (reminiscent of the one in ’78). The dogs refused to go outside for a couple of days because the backyard was coated in ice. It began to thaw this weekend which was quiet and my son and I arranged his room so nothing was touching the walls. Yesterday the siding guy came and took off the outer layer of the house and put this slippery paper-like stuff up in preparation of installing the siding. Today the inspector from the town is supposed to come. We’ll see. More to follow!

Reading a really good book: Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman. It’s about time I found a work of fiction that I like. Been too long. Also, watched a good video last night: Robot Stories. Not your typical science-fiction.

Much Progress, Some Frustration, and COLD!

A lot has transpired since last I wrote. The inspector finally showed up last Wednesday and approved the footing. On Friday the workers came and filled in the hole and began doing the “framing” which consists of putting up the skeleton of the extension to the house. Work continued on the framing thru the weekend (including SuperBowl Sunday!) We watched the Superbowl in the cramped quarters of the living room. The Colts won in what some thought of as an upset…

Because of the bitter cold weather, the builders decided to go slightly out of sequence and so on Monday they put up the walls and part of the roof of the extension. Somehow in the process they knocked out the electricity to my daughter’s room, but she still has heat. Yesterday (Tuesday), was when the roofers were originally supposed to come. I took the day off to move stuff to the storage unit but when the workers showed up they told us they were going to put in the windows and doors! Wife and I had to scramble to move stuff out of the way to allow this to happen. It was really cold outside (like 10 degrees!) and the house quickly lost heat. We moved the stuff that needed to be moved (like perishable plants and pets) and also talked to the foreman who said we needed to pick out a front door! We took a ride to the door place and picked one out and then we went out to lunch. Later that day, we went back to the house and it was still freezing. We had the dogs and cats in the one room in the house that no windows were being installed, along with all the perishable plants. Finally all the doors and windows were in. Still no power in daughter’s room, though..

Today was the killer. We found out that some of the windows and the sliding glass doors were the wrong type. They had the kind of glass that filters out the light essential to our indoor plants. We had gone over what we wanted with the builder but with all the confusion and the fact that it was not the standard, something was lost in the translation. Moral: Get EVERYTHING in writing! Wife was not happy but we worked it out that they will install the right stuff in the coming days, hopefully! We’ll see what happens. Also today, the roofers came to begin to put the new roof on because the weather has warmed up slightly (high of 23 degrees today so far!). Shrubbery is suffering since the dumpster was full so the roofers were just flinging things off the roof onto the ground below. They replaced the full dumpster with a new empty one but the damage is done. Wow, what a couple of weeks. Will continue to report the progress of the coming days for posterity!