Fun With Wood!

Well, it's been close to a month, so it must be time for another update!

Our apologies here at Fun With Wood. Christmas is like, time consuming, or something. Not to mention, the winter slowdown I've been so patiently waiting for at work hasn't come to pass. Worky work, busy bee!

Anyway, enough about the excuses. Time for an update!

Well, this will be a duel update, really, since we went to the house twice since the last posting. So, let's start at the start.

Melissa and I went up to the house on the 15th of December to see what we could see. Pulling into the complex, we're greeted with...



Hmmm... Curious enough. It appears that Nicor still hasn't gotten around to connecting the gas service to the house. Not sure what the delay is on all of this, but the always resourceful builders appear to have a temporary fix in place.

Stepping inside, we immediately see why the tank is out there. We're greeted at the door by 90 degrees and a rather high humidity level. Oh yeah, the drywall was also up!



It would appear that this was the day they put the drywall up, as the drywall mud was still very wet. Oh, did I mention it was 90 degrees in there? Yeah, it was 115 upstairs. We couldn't stay in too long as we were starting to feel a little funky from the space heater in there.

So here's a parting shot of the living room. Oh, and the portable heater.



Fast forward to the 22nd of December and we're back. It appears there was a lot of work going on in our absence! We find that the sidewalk that ended about 10 feet short of our driveway has been completed to the end of our property. As we walk hopscotch our way from rock to rock trying not to sink in the quagmire of mud my driveway has become, we notice that there is scaffolding around the house, and to our surprise, a few rows of siding on the front of the house! We weren't expecting this at all. In our observation of other houses being built in the neighborhood, it appears the siding work is the last thing to be done. Apparently the siders are taking advantage of the good weather while it lasts!

We also notice that the propane tank is gone.

We step inside and find that we're not walking on drywall mud stained subflooring. Oh, and it's nice and comfortable inside. Gas is on, and the furnace is running. Good news!



This comes as a bit of a shock. Since closing is the 9th of February, we were expecting a little slower progress. Apparently not. Hard flooring is in, and the tile in the master bathroom is also started. Not sure why I didn't get a picture of that. Silly me. Anyway, the kitchen flooring was in also.



This remarkably real looking floor is actually a laminate. I was very impressed by the quality of the flooring. Laminates appear to have come a long way since I attempted to destroy my parents flooring with various edgy and destructive toys as a rugrat! But, our shock and awe wasn't finished yet. Someone else has been busy this week!



It appears the cabinet guy was there also! The kitchen cabinets are well on their way to being finished. The cabinets for the bathrooms are still in the garage, but I imagine that by the end of this week, those should all be in.

So, once the cabinets are in, there's not much left to do. The wood trim, doors, electric and plumbing fixtures and carpeting. At the rate they're going, this place is going to be done weeks before our closing date! Good times.

We're going back and forth on whether we want to paint right away or wait a little bit. We spoke with the builder about this and his suggestion is to not paint for a year so that any repairs to the walls can be done without needing to repaint the whole wall. I can see his point, but it's gonna be a challenge trying to live in a house with screamingly white walls. The jury is still out on this.

On the drive away from the house, we decided to go around the back, and we're surprised to find:



Looks like there was more progress then we thought! The siding on the rear and south side of the house were completly sided and the rear porch was poured, which was a surprise.

Stay tuned! We're getting close!

February 9th. That's the magic date of closing goodness we're all aiming at. Monday morning we'll lock in our loan rate. Since they've been heading in the correct direction for the last few months, we figure we'd better hedge our bets before the rates take their inevitable upward turn.

We went to the pre-drywall walkthrough on the 28th. Normally, all the rough-in work would be done by that point, but as stated previously, the electrician was running behind, so we were there while the Electrician was doing his thing. This actually turned out to be a good thing, as we managed to stop a problem before it really became a real issue.. More on that later.

We arrived at the jobsite around 9:00AM and went to the construction trailer, which is down the street and around the corner from where our house is. There we find a very under the weather John, who croaks out that he's feeling terrible and that the other supervisor, Paul, will be doing our walkthrough and he should be at the house already, now go away and let me die in peace. To his credit, he really did have the look of a man who by all rights shouldn't have been at work. What a trooper.

Anyway, we head over to the worksite where Paul is waiting for us. As expected, not much changed externally at the house. The approach walkway to the front door has been poured, so we no longer need to climb the front stoop to get in. The rear steps to the yet-to-be-poured patio are in also, and they've started on the sidewalks.



We step inside to find the two electricians busy at work. They apparently started work the day before and I'm impressed to find that all of the junction boxes are already in place and the first floor is about finished. These guys make quick work of this stuff. Anyway, the walkthrough was basically, well, basic. We pretty much already knew what was going on. One interesting point that I touched on earlier. We were in the kitchen, and he's pointing out stuff; "this is the plug for your microwave, this is the refrigerator".. kind of stuff. He points to the ceiling at the single junction box over what will be the island in the kitchen and states that there is where the light will be over the island.

He wanders off to continue the tour.

Melissa and I stand there and stare at the ceiling fixture. Melissa looks at me, I scratch my head and do some mental gymnastics trying to recall where in the 4 hour process of picking stuff at the design center we discussed island lighting.

Melissa: "Didn't we..."

Me: "Yeah, I could have sworn we got pendant lights... I mean, that was a huge thing"

Paul the Manager: "Looks like it's roughed out for one light..." To the electrician standing there: "What's up with that?"

Electrician (without looking up from his conduit cutter): "Order didn't specify pendant lights."

Hmmm... So all four of us (electrician wanted to make sure he didn't screw up) go to the order sheet which is now taped to the glass slider in the kitchen, and sure enough, under the electrical portion of the order there is no mention of pendant lights on it. Now my mind is really reeling. By now I'm absolutely POSITIVE we talked about pendant lighting over the island. I mean, it adds a lot and it's relatively cheap. Anyway, now the conversation drifts to who screwed up and what steps we need to take to try to fix this.

Anyway, after an otherwise unremarkable tour of the house where we saw lots of this:



It was off to talk with John about the pendant lights. This is probably just the kind of stuff John really wanted no part of on a day where he's feeling like he's feeling, but sure enough, here we come with problems for him to deal with. After a short conversation we determine that if indeed I ordered these lights someone at the design center dropped the ball, this kind of thing occasionally happens, and we'll make some calls and figure out what's going on here. It's also apparent from the look on John's face that none of this is actually gonna get accomplished today cuz it's hard enough for him to keep his head on top of his shoulders. Did I mention he was in bad shape? Meanwhile, I'm to the point in my memory mining where I can now remember with amazing clarity the conversation we had about the pendant lights. I *KNOW* we ordered these things. The Trouble is proving it.

We return to Elgin and the first thing I do is break out my copy of the order and start going over it line by line.. Sure enough, no mention of pendant lights on my copy either under the electrical area. Hmmm.. this is curious. I start combing over it line by line and in short order find that they had entered the pendant lights not under electrical where it was apparently supposed to be, but rather under miscellaneous, where stuff that doesn't go in from the database are manually entered. Why this is so is beyond me, but I don't care.. It's there, and I make a call to Paul and point it out to him. He grabs his copy and it's there on his too. He assures it's a done deal and it'll get taken care of.

We get busy with real life stuff, and don't get back to the place until the 6th. We arrive to find that, as expected, there's no change to the exterior of the house. There won't be pretty much until they start putting up the siding, which apparently is on of the last things they do. The sidewalks are making progress, though. The one along Sebastian is done, and about half of the sidewalk along Sweetwater is done. There's no evidence to suggest that they are about to do the rest of it. I'm not sure if they're going to until spring at this point, now that temperatures around here have been in the single digits for the last few days. They'll make a rebound into the 40's and remain above freezing for the next week, but the nights still see it go below freezing, and I would imagine that they're done pouring concrete for a while. The driveway is certainly out of the picture until spring at this point.

We also found that they replaced the door handle and lock with one that actually, you know, works. My complaints were probably interesting to them, but when the electrician noted that he couldn't get in either, the lock replacement went to the top of the list of things that needed to be done now.

Stepping inside, we notice three things right off the bat. One, it's really, really quiet. It appears the insulation is in. In fact it's so quiet that we quickly notice number two; right to my left as I walk into the door in what would be the front room, there's a significant puddle of water on the floor and a steady drip of water coming from the ceiling. My first thought is that I have a roof leak, and though that sucks, I'm glad it's doing it now, and not later. Never fear though, the reason for the water drip is point three; the drywall which apparently was sitting outside for the Great Blizzard of 2006 was drug inside, with little regard to knocking the snow off of it before bringing it in. One of the piles of snow ended up in the loft, which is above the front room, and it had begun melting.

drip drip drip...

Actually, the fact that the snow was melting was remarkable considering that it was colder inside the house then it was outside (and on the 6th it was about 24 degrees outside). Ya see, the gas company is apparently in no hurry to get the place hooked up with gas, so as of now, it's an icebox. No word on when that's gonna happen, but now that we're well and truly into winter here, that little fact is now very unpleasant when I make my visits.





That's about it for now. Next significant step that appears to be coming up rapidly is the installation of the drywall. No one has said anything about it, but I imagine that that will be going on in the next couple of days, and the next time I get out there next week it'll be done.