Front Door Revisited

Obviously this little house project was a pretty big deal for us. I am blown away on a daily basis that we actually did it. Each piece of it holds a memory of something that went right or something that...

But wait- back to the positive- I marvel at the fact that, as I type this, it's 39 degrees outside, yet I am barefoot in my house and my toesies are toasty. I don't fear stepping out of bed in the morning, because I am now greeted with w-a-r-m-t-h. Yes, the floors are a big positive, and I am so thankful to Anthony (and our other floor elves- ahem, mom and dad) for doing that for me.

Part of the deal was that this house was and is our gift to each other for the next _ _ years forever. My interpretation of this means that on special occasions I can up my nagging and get something checked off the in-the-back-of-my-mind to do list. My birthday this year brought the doorknobs from the front door of the shack into our bathroom.

"Need help, Daddy?"

Place to hang my towel? Check.

See? I knew I saved them for a reason!

- J

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

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

The Night Job

Oceanographer by day, amateur homebuilder by night, and enough grace and stamina leftover to take a time-out and care for Natalie when she pulls her first fever (no worries- she's better now). The glow next door reflects the many nights spent working next door (and highlights the need for shades/curtains).

Sometime in the middle of the night

On Thursday most of our light fixtures were installed by the electricians. Apparently we had lost count of how many lights we actually had, as we ended up being short three fixtures...the master bedroom closet, the washer/dryer area, and the mudroom (after all the problems it's caused us, we just forgot all about it). A few others, like the ones over the island, were deferred until the island was actually secured in place with a countertop. Still, it was fun to see some of the rooms take shape with the trim work nearly complete and the lights up...some of the lights even have temporary bulbs.

Anthony and Natalie checking out the sconce in the bathroom.

We are striving for a Energy Star HERS rating that will require at least 80% of the lights to be something other than incandescent. As most electricians and 'lighting experts' abhor CF or similar energy efficient bulbs because of their un-incandescentness, most of our bulbs will be supplied by a energy rating company (the same people who will pressure test our whole house), and are yet to come in. So the electricians left a skeleton crew of bulbs in place, perhaps to show us that they all actually worked. Again, much of the house, really just the simple rooms, feels like it is almost there...and just waiting for the floor.

These little button lights are our go-to easy fix for many areas of the house.

Which brings me to the rest of the weekend - after another trip to our Swedish hardware/furniture/solution store - we came home with the three remaining lights as well as our temporary solution to a kitchen countertop. Sunday, Anthony finished putting together and securing the cabinets and placed the temporary countertop. There is still one piece of the temporary top that we'll have to pick up, but it was on back order until this coming week. We're using temporary tops in the kitchen and bathrooms so that we can complete the project enough to move in and then focus on making the real ones at our leisure.

Island with butcher block top

We also finalized our door hardware on Friday, which took a dramatic switcheroo right at the end. Many of our selection 'issues' seem to occur when we have some entrenched design preference or idea or concept fixed in our heads that, over time, becomes untenable. Of course once you've decided to go a certain direction, it takes so much longer and so much more effort to change to a direction you'd previously discounted for some, previously iron-clad reason. (Perhaps this is what our builder was going through with our stairs). We were originally heading in one direction with cool handlesets and deadbolts and fancy rectangular rosettes from Emtek, when it occurred to us we wouldn't be able to leave and lock our doors without a key (which in hindsight, everyone should be able to do). After a too-long struggle to find a workable option with Emtek, we ended up changing lock and lever style as well as manufacturers completely. Writing this, it sounds like trivial issue, which I totally agree with, but for 'frugal wafflers' this is a bad scene.

Finally, it's felt like we've been hemorrhaging monopoly money for the past few months, but we think we now have everything ordered, planned out, or waiting to be installed. Everything, that is, except the kitchen sink. We'll have to get on that.

-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

When Cheap People Try To Build Nice Houses

Despite our setbacks, and the growing number of people in the Cape Cod house-building industry that are probably cringing when they see us coming (being extremely budget-minded and involved in the decision-making seems to be a rarity on the Cape), we feel like a ton of stuff happened this week. It's a wonder we both have real full-time jobs. And a daughter. And a needy dog.

We are hoping to include our architect interfacing with the contractor more as we go forward, just to make sure inches don't get lost (again). In addition, the sheer amount of decisions is overwhelming at times, and we're hoping to have a little more help with them. Understand that we are people whose furniture comes from the streets of Boston on "big trash day". Now we have people telling us that the quality of something we picked out at Home Depot won't be as good. Really? Not as good as this dresser I carried home in the pouring rain and nailed back together? Our aim with building this house has always been to put our money into things we deemed important things and unchangeable, like insulation and the heating system. Of course, this is the part that you don't really see. The Cape Cod housing scene is more used to the opposite: putting on the glitz and glamour show within the paper-thin walls.

As far as our progress this week, we have moved things the five inches back to where they needed to be moved. This included moving a door and re-siding that side of the house.

Side door that was moved, house re-sided and electrical rough-ins in place

While we were on the subject of moving things we also asked to have our doors raised a tad so that after all the floors were laid we would still be able to put a little mat by the door and be able to open it without having to kick the mat out of the way (as was our experience in the previous "shack"). Apparently this then became an issue with the height of the stairs.

View of stairs from the main floor- going up and down

The exterior siding and all three doors are now in place. The basement was also poured this week, and then the stairs down to it were framed in. The electrical and plumbing rough-ins are also almost complete.

Finishing the basement floor

The debate over how to do the radiant floor heating on the upper two levels rages on. Part of the problem is obviously our own frugality. Anthony has likened it to how we buy ski coats: we absolutely have to know we're buying the best coat out there for the cheapest price, although there are probably ten or more coats that we would likely not be able to tell the difference between. (Of course this is coming from someone who is wearing his brother-in-law's ex-roommate's hand-me-down coat.) Apparently we've also learned that frugality and radiant floor heating don't really go together- but hey, cheap people want warm feet too, right?

-J

TWIC

That's our little acronym for "This Week In Construction". It's reminiscent of a series of emails Anthony once wrote during our Peace Corps service (this was the pre-blogging era). It was called TWIM for "This Week In Macedonia", and since we're currently celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps, it's only fitting that I steal and adapt the acronym. Plus now I can say we've been together through TWIC and TWIM- and that's just fun.

Yes, we sometimes get to do things besides shop for fixtures.

Peace Corps 50th Anniversary Event: JFK Library, Boston

(although we did spend time there admiring the architecture and discussing what it must cost to heat the pavillion)

So anyway- to the updates.

Here's where we were last Sunday:

The happy family on our pseudo front porch, 2/27/11

This week the original plumber was fired and our resident "motion of the ocean" water movement expert decided he could use his trusty MATLAB to plot out the tubing for the radiant heat in the basement.

Tubing plan executed

This week the porch floor and trim was completed.

This week the doors were installed.

This week a lot more stuff was framed in on the inside. The top two levels are completed.

This week (actually this weekend) the siding is being put on the house.

Isn't it starting to look like a real house now?

-J