One Step, Two Step, Next step- Canoe Step?

This year we embarked on the task of trying to complete one of our big landscaping feats on the hillside... the stairs down to the pond. Our conservation requirements gave us three years from the time of the original permit -November 2010 - to complete our original mitigation and close it all out.  Early this year, with time flying by and first hand knowledge of the speed of procedures in our town, we realized that we needed to get going on it if we were going to do anything at all.

The first step was drawing up a plan, which Anthony did on top of our original site plan. He ran this by the conservation agent in February and then gave it to the site engineer, who submitted it to the conservation commission in May as an amendment to our original plan. Spring planting season looked like it was turning into summer planting season. 

Wouldn't you know, our meeting date fell in the middle of a week in June when Anthony was bouncing back and forth between conferences in Maine and Rhode Island, and me alone with my big pregnant belly and toddler on a school night was not going to be able to make it. Not that we needed to, after all, we were paying our engineer to do it. At 7:00 that night I sat back grading papers on the couch watching the conservation commission on tv. After some rather contentious cases interspersed with the cons com members checking in on the Bruins game, our case finally came up at 9:41. It was peacefully agreed to by 9:46. While I'm obviously pleased by the lack of drama, I wish it could have happened before my bedtime.

With builder John standing by, we awaited the official word from the committee. And waited. And waited. And waited.  Anthony finally checked in on the progress (or lack there of), only to find that apparently it had been stuck on the admins. desk for a while. Really though, we know what speeds things up for us construction-wise... it's having a baby, right?

Our second child was born (!) and with Anthony's nagging gentle reminders to conservation, we got the word we could build our stairs. Juggling our new life, here's where we're happy we hired someone to build them instead of attempting to do this ourselves. 

It took us a while to get everyone home from Boston, and now our summer planting season has turned into a fall planting season, or more likely, moved back to a spring planting season due to a new state-wide ruling - which we still don't really understand - that we could have an additional three years to complete any work from the original cons com permit.  

Stairs to pond: check. The neighborhood cat already likes to lie out on the upper landing. 

Next up: figuring out the planting (can we just finish this already?), and getting a canoe to hold our family of four. I'd include Zippy, but let's be honest. He would have more fun barking at us from the shore.

-J&A

Homeless, again

Once again, we have found ourselves pseudo-homeless. This seems to happen to us a lot when planning to move. The timing just never quite lines up exactly. Of course, this time we get to be "between homes" with a very active 11 month-old and an over-anxious dog. In the past, it always worked out...eventually, so I have faith that this one will too.

This time we had to be out of our rental by the end of June, so throughout the week, before and after work each day, we incrementally moved all of our belongings into the bedrooms of our own house - the parts the were fully complete. July 1st rolled around and our house was not finished and livable, so we headed to New York to visit the fam for a while and hopefully give the workers a bit more time to pull it all together.

The risky part about this is that without us there checking up on daily progress (ahem, micromanaging... and yes, we feel it helps), things just might not happen. Or, of course, they might happen, but in a not-the-way-we-intended way.

So what has happened and what remains? The stair guy has been working at pace that Anthony politely describes as 'quite un-feverish' for the past few weeks to complete was has become (according to the stair guy) a very unique set of steps. This has resulted in piles of debris, saws, tools, compressors, cords, and cups that have covered the entire main floor.

The large amount of tools, saws, etc. required to complete the stair trim.

The side entryway was also done. Of course, in typical construction fashion the decking material we used on the front porch four months ago is now no longer made and was not to be found anywhere so we had to settle for a slightly different product (sigh).

The new side/mudroom entry deck.

The rest of the electrical work was finished. The faucets and tub/shower trim were all connected, and the earlier water leak resolved without much issue.

The glitch that did occur was that the wrong bath/shower trim was still installed, despite our efforts back in March to correct our trim order from an earlier mistake! We're beginning to wonder if they're just trying to wear us down. While I realize this is a minor issue in the grand scheme of things, as we'd been here before with the builder, it made it all the more frustrating to have to ask once again to have the mistake fixed.

Towards the end of the week, the stair guy(s) finally wrapped up their work and cleaned up their mess, leaving a nice clean set of stairs and clear floor. It was great to see the 'almost' finished product.

The stairs to the basement, finally!

View of the stairs and kitchen from the living-room area.

We realized our refrigerator is pretty small. Plenty of room to grow...

Natalie enjoying the clean, clear main floor for the first time.

So, now we're ready for the floor guy to come back and finish up the connecting areas. All the doorknobs are in the house ready to be installed. Some trim work needs to be finished and a few things, like some uneven dry wall work in the upstairs bathroom, need to be fixed.

The big hold-up however seems to be that the plumber cannot get the boiler to work. The current plan is to have the company rep. come out on Wednesday to take a look at it. Hopefully then we can check that off.

The boiler, mixing valve, and indirect water heater complex, currently at rest as the boiler will not start. Who really needs hot water?

-J

The Good, the Bad, and the Crapper

Evidence of the plumber's work on Friday

A trip to the house on Friday revealed water in the toilets. Pretty exciting, I know. However, Friday night also revealed water coming through the kitchen ceiling (bathtub above). Not so joyous. We marked the spot and it doesn't seem to be spreading, so we hope it's not anything serious. I did stop packing things in the nearby cabinets in case they have to come down to fix the issue.

Stairs to basement- shelf along back wall finished

Other evidence of work showed that Rob and co. also worked on the stairs, balusters, railings, and the trim around the stairs, and John sealed part of the floor during the day. John was also over Saturday morning setting the footings for the side entryway. Plenty of happenings, but I kept feeling like it was all things that should've been happening last week, or perhaps Thursday at the very least.

No more worries about falling off the upstairs landing

side entry footings

I have to say, my master carpenter, Anthony, has been doing stellar work in the middle of the night. He cut a beautiful hole for our new sink and secured all the counter tops. I think he likes the fact that the new sink has such right angles- easier to cut the top for it!

Kitchen sink in and ready for the plumber

We've also started moving things over as much as possible. As I previously mentioned, we have to move out of our rental by the end of the month. We may not be ready, but at least our stuff can live in the new house in the rooms that are done (like the upstairs bedrooms).

Anthony and Kevin moving our stuff.

Kevin is a major trooper to help us move out in December and then back in again now.

He even brought his own beer this time.

After moving the washer/dryer out in December, Anthony and Kevin decided it was pretty heavy and called in a third helper, Dave.

It's a little extra work on both ends with this move because we have to be careful to keep our stuff at the new house out of the way of any workers, we have to restore the rental house to its exact previous glory, and we have to keep out a set of items for us to live off of wherever we end up until we can really move in. Fortunately this will be our final move!

Kevin has his own dolly.

I think that pretty much pegs you to help people move.

We're very grateful for this.

-J

The Kitchen Sink is Our Fat Lady

I think with house building it can't be over until the kitchen sink is in and plumbed, and ours is sure toying with us enough! Let's recap yesterday (Thursday 6/23):

This is where we left off two days ago.

The stairs are stained and ready for their railings and balusters.

Again the day started promising enough with a truck in the driveway. Rob, our contractor's "guy", was supposedly in the house doing his work on the stairs. Then *poof* he was gone by 9:30, although he did leave all the lights on. (Apparently he didn't have my parents growing up-always asking who pays the electric bills and reminding him to turn the lights off.)

So nothing happened for a while and then he came back an hour or so later, turned off the lights and left again. We later found out that he was taking himself to the ER because he hurt his ribs.

Since the house was empty I spent part of the day moving kitchen wares over to our new cabinets so that I could reset the rental kitchen to the way it was. That's the hard part about renting this "summer house". It came furnished and we had moved all of "their stuff" out of the way to use "our stuff". Resetting it involves studying the pictures I took when we moved in and trying to return it to its original state.

The DPW guys came back in the early afternoon and told me they'd pave their patch of torn up sidewalk/driveway near the street today or tomorrow. That would just leave another little patch that we would be responsible for repaving. I shared some brownies with them.

Anthony had some phone conversations and discovered that the kitchen sink and faucet had indeed not been ordered by anyone and that the upstairs bathroom faucet had been ordered with the wrong finish. Yes, we have tried to let other people take on tasks and do their own jobs, but really it comes down to if we want it our way we should just do it. Sooooo off I went to pick up the kitchen sink and faucet.

This picture was taken today (Friday 6/24/11).

Our new classy driveway.We are thankful for the whole thing being patched.

Yes, there are workers at our right now, including a plumber! Rob is also back to work.

Lots of activity over there, so although this post may be dismal, we can sill be hopeful.

We returned home to the entire hole in the driveway repaved and some pinkish floor stain around the edge of the utility room on the basement floor. It wasn't supposed to be pink. It was supposed to be tannish-gray. Also, concrete floor stain is nothing like wood stain apparently. It went on more like paint. It was not what we had intended at all. So we back-pedaled and went back to the idea of just sealing it and calling it done. Anyone need two cans of concrete floor stain?

Note the stain around the edge of the utility room. Even Natalie looks bewildered.

We spent the evening both moving things over and prepping the sinks and counter holes for the plumber. The first sink (a round one for the basement bathroom) went together so nice and easy. (That's why we were doomed...)

Round sink for downstairs bathroom/laundry area

Our just-purchased kitchen sink of course couldn't be simple. It was going to be really big in the space. Do-able? Probably. Ideal? Of course not. So we decided that a tomorrow morning run to Lowe's (they open at 6!) was in the works to try to find a more suitable fit, while still holding onto our criteria of me being able to hide dishes in a deep sink.

So with exactly one week before we have to move out of our rental house, I feel great strides were not made yesterday. Perhaps I should head to the basement of the rental house and see if I can find our tent so we'll have somewhere to live.

-J

Will Work for Lobstah

Too busy to blog these days, but at least that means that things are getting done. The stairs are being formed before our very eyes, and so far they look great. We're still in the town's work order queue to switch out our water valve, but we hear Wednesday could be our lucky day. The concrete basement floor staining and sealing is still a bit of a question mark, but we're hopeful that will be resolved this week as well. We're thinking Sandlot Gray for a color, but more importantly we're hoping it'll happen quickly.

Stairs being formed- note the picture printed out and taped up as a guide.

There are some tall places to paint in our house. Good thing Anthony is tall.

We brought in our personal labor force again this week. My parents arrived on Tuesday and the only times I've seen them put down their paintbrushes so far were to help me with school tasks (grading papers and packing up my classroom) and for Natalie's baptism and our Father's Day dinner. Anthony and the two of them have been working non-stop painting the walls, trim and interior doors.

My mom finishing painting the kitchen.

My dad: painting doors is back-breaking work.

The paint decision has been a bit scary, which it shouldn't be since it's probably the easiest thing in our house that we can change. I've been collecting and staring at paint chips for months now, and finally had to commit. Of course, just when you've made a decision someone (like the paint store guy, Ken) has to step in and tell you their dissenting opinion, like that your yellow is too bright. So far I'm really happy with most of the colors. However, I did end up back at the paint store on Saturday to let Ken know that he was right about my yellow and could he please help me lighten it? (He tried his best.) All in all though the paint is making the place feel more put-together.

Natalie in her first-try yellow room.

Anthony's family came in on Friday and his dad joined in the fun on Saturday while Mali, Jeanie, Natalie and I drove up to Ikea to pick up the final piece of countertop, which Anthony and my dad then cut and placed on Sunday.

Anthony's dad filling in nail holes. For the record I did offer him knee pads.

Full speed ahead!

-J

Who's Choreographing this Dance Anyway?

I was on the T last year when it was stopped for quite a while underground. I kept thinking I should've just gotten off at the last stop and walked a little farther (you gotta love hindsight- the only time I can claim perfect vision). The frustrating part was that I was in the front car and I could see the light at the end of the tunnel, but I couldn't do anything about the delay to help us get moving and on our way. Such are our feelings about our house right now. There are little things that are happening, but then there are things that we want to happen that aren't. We just need to get all our ducks in a row.

We'll start with the bright side for a run-down of the latest...

The view came into greater focus when the plastic came off the windows and the screens were put on.

Master Bedroom

The plumber has been in hooking up a jumble of pipes in the basement. I think Anthony's glad his part of the plumbing is over.

Stair parts are finally in and scheduled for the middle of this week. We've been told that part will go quickly, but we were told that about the trim which took FOR EV ER.

We've spent our time doing what we can to get things done. My favorite Anthony-project was crafting a stand for our vessel sink and faucet for the "Kamp bathroom". (Yes, if you give us things for our house we will name a room after you too.) I absolutely love how it turned out. The top is actually the old floorboards from the basement of the house we tore down.

View of mudroom entrance and "Kamp bathroom" with homemade vanity.

Our GE (plug for Jason) range and microwave arrived for the kitchen and Anthony is finishing the cabinet trim and toe kicks and getting things ready so that they can be installed. Apparently this will involve changing the plug on the microwave so it can go into Massachusetts' fancy outlets.

There is still one piece of missing temporary countertop. Remember about two weeks ago when I said the missing piece would be in stock in a week? Yeah, that didn't happen, and like a comedy show we have been running ourselves mad trying to figure out a temporary solution for our temporary top. We were set to go check out a craigslist option tomorrow when Ikea called and CONFIRMED (whatever that means) that it would definitely be in by next weekend. So we're taking our chances and waiting it out again. Which holds up the sink/faucet... But that's okay because it's already held up by the water issue.

Ahh, the water issue. The town won't let us have water until they change a valve. Apparently we're in the "queue" for this. I wonder when that will happen. Therefore we have toilets both in our dining room and our shed waiting to be installed as well.

Dining room with toilet parts and stair parts

It's okay, we can't really put the one in the shed in yet since the basement floor has not been etched or sealed yet anyway. That's why the vanity and washer/dryer for that bathroom are still in the rental house.

I'd be lying if I said we weren't getting anxious.

-J

The Beginning of the End

As both of our readers must surely know by now, we've had some issues with our floor. Over the past 4 months these issues have at times prevented us from knowing what types of wood floors could be installed over radiant heating, prevented us from planning the stairs and stair railings, and preventing us, our builder, the stair guy, the floor guy, the other floor guy, and the other floor guy's installer from having an enjoyable time talking about this process. I've not even mentioned the poor girl from Home Depot that we put through the ringer.

So, when a pallet of boxes containing 1400 square feet of lightly-stained, eco-core, engineered tongue and groove hickory arrived at the house yesterday morning and were quickly opened and utilized...it was very exciting.

Thankfully, the flooring installers did a great job: showing up early, leaving late, finishing a floor a day. Below are some pictures of the job in process and finished.

Something Under Our Feet

Our tile is in and finished: the mudroom floor, the wall around the tub, and the bathroom floor.

Mudroom tile- It's called "Ayers Rock Cobalto Blue", which I find funny. I've been to Ayers Rock (yes, I did just work that in) and nothing about it reminds me of this tile, nor do I think that the tile or Ayers Rock have much to do with "blue". Maybe that's why we got a sweet discount on it.

Upstairs bathroom: "Stoney Point Grigio" on the floor and white subway tile around the tub.

The floor in the rest of the house was scheduled to be installed Monday, but now that's pushed back until Wednesday. Why? It's complicated. It involves stair guys, floor guys, us, "experts" on the phone in Georgia and the whole-like. What it comes down to is that our people here have been doing things a certain way for thirty years and if we throw them even the smallest design curve ball they balk and spend their time and energy trying to get us to change our minds rather than spending their time and energy embracing the new challenge (even if we're trying to get them to do something that's actually pictured in their own catalog). You would also think stair guys and floor guys had worked with each other before. This does not seem to be the case. This is difficult for Anthony and I to deal with, and I think it's because we both work in professions where learning something new (and collaborating) is celebrated.

So I'm holding my breath until Wednesday now.

-J

Resolved

In a flurry we were able to metaphorically nail down our floor. It's going to float, of course, so by that I mean we picked it out, half-paid for it, and arranged for it to be delivered and installed.

After the Great Floor Fiasco of last week we re-explored a couple more of our options until they either fell apart or panned out. In the end there was one business in town left standing when we told them our budget and our wishes. Now our only wonder is if we had told them a lower budget, would they have met us at that price-point as well?

The important thing is that we got the floor we want at a price we're comfortable with (as comfortable as two cheapskates can be...) and in the timeline we need.

Meanwhile, kitchen cabinets are beginning to take shape in the living room of our rental house, the trim and doors are being hung over at our new house, and our minds have moved on to trying to figure out what we want the stair railings and balusters to look like (or how to get them to look the way we want and still meet code).

A busy place

- J

Let there be light!

Lights on in the stairway going into the basement

Yes, light- along with a kitchen in boxes, outside trim painted, insulation in the attic, and radiant panels in the floor.

It was certainly a busy day in and around our little house today. At one point my mom counted 12 people besides us working! So let's back up...

The house was spray primed inside by the painters yesterday.

It was also a marathon day for us at Ikea where the kitchen was finalized, purchased, and loaded into two vehicles (thanks to my parents for meeting us there). I'm so glad we did this on a Wednesday evening. I could not imagine trying to brave a giant purchase like that with the throngs of Boston weekenders.

Checking off our five carts of kitchen cabinets

Lumber delivery

Good old Falmouth Lumber delivered our plywood this morning. Our crew (Anthony and my parents) began cutting strips to create our radiant panels. Zippy also got his spring haircut by my mom in the morning.

An electrician and painter share the yard for prep work as Anthony and my parents cut the plywood strips that the pex tubing will run between for the radiant floor heating

The electricians came and busied themselves. By mid-afternoon the house was powered up, the lights on, and our temporary power supply pole was taken down. Zippy doesn't know this yet, but we now have a working doorbell.

The lights in the kitchen are on!

The insulation guys blew some more into the attic. I thought of our across-the-street neighbor when I saw their truck pull up. A couple of days ago she remarked that she had seem them come and insulate our house, and then it seems like they keep coming back and doing more insulation. Yup. That's the idea with this house. I only want to feel the breeze if I'm sitting on the porch!

Insulation being blown into the attic hatch from the upstairs bathroom

The painters came and worked on the trim. By this time, the sunshine, their radio, and the vast amounts of people around made it seem like a beach party. I guess it is spring break.

Painters working on the trim on the back of the house

By the afternoon our crew had joined the inside ranks. They worked hard laying out the pieces of the radiant floor puzzle upstairs. And to think that they'll work for Cape Cod Potato Chips and granddaughter giggles- we're pretty fortunate! Two rooms upstairs were laid out and secured by dinnertime.

Anthony and I went back and started a third room after dinner. The plan was to continue tomorrow, but the ocean called Anthony away so we'll be on our own without him to supervise. Yikes!

- J

Caffeinated Results

The Mountain Dew and Red Bull seemed to work. The blueboard is all hung (shown below) and plastered (not shown here). No more walking through walls- the real house has taken its form.

Looking down the upstairs hallway from the Master Bedroom

In the Master bedroom, looking toward the closet

Main Floor- the ladder is in the kitchen

Main Floor, looking toward the stairs, dining room and front door

Office in the basement

The shelves below the windowsills are a remnant of the thicker concrete walls along the bottom part of the walk-out basement.

Meanwhile the decisions are still flying at us fast and furious. We're keeping up and trying to stay slightly ahead of the game the best we can!

- J