12 May 2016
What a totally hectic
day!!!! Started, as usual, with the
painting crew arriving between 4 and 5 this morning. Tim and Brendin finished sanding and then
putting polyurethane varnish on all the rest of the doors except for two (more)
they found had been damaged in the Great Collapse last week. Jason started painting the upper hall with
Folly (a seasick light green most appropriate for an “institution”, if
you know what I mean; but more on that later).
Brett painted the inside and outside of the main entry and shop
doors. The Goodro’s truck showed up just
before the Granite Design truck, which necessitated some shuffling of the
lumbering beasts. The Granite Design
installers put in the kitchen, master bath, and guest bath countertops, which
are absolutely gorgeous. Even better
when seen a full slabs than they looked as samples! Brian Thomas (Black Diamond Builders) arrived
with the Goodro’s truck, which was bearing tons (literally) of cellulose
insulation in compacted bale form. The
bales were on four pallets. Fired up the
Kubota and tried to lift one of the pallets off the truck. No joy!
“How much does that stuff weigh?”, he wonders. “Thirty-five pounds a bale”, Brian
answers. “So, how many bales are on a
pallet?”, he asks. “Thirty-six.” “So each
pallet weighs over a thousand pound?”
“Yup, sounds about right.” “Well
I can only pick up 800 pounds with this tractor…” So we offloaded the truck by hand, thereby
ensuring that everybody had plenty of exercise to start off the day. After unloading the cellulose, Sonny and
Brandon worked the rest of the morning fabricating and installing closet
shelving, then Sonny finished that job in the afternoon while Brandon put the
handles on all of the kitchen drawers.
Sean arrived after the Goodro’s truck departed, with Kevin Haight
following soon thereafter. The three of
us discussed the details for the patio installation, the front walkway
construction, and Sean’s proposal for a hardscape area in front of the garage
(because, as everyone knows, Chree and I are made of money). Mid-morning, Jim and James Ploof pulled in
with their small excavator and bobcat loader.
They removed a fair amount of rocky fill from the patio area, then brought
in a load of road gravel to smooth over the remaining rough spots. That gravel was spread and compacted to form
a slight downhill grade (⅛″ per foot) so that
water on the patio will flow away from the house. Tom ran up to Williston in the morning to get
the bullnose tile needed for finishing the master bath shower. He got back late morning. Our plan had been for Tom and me to put the
rubber boot on the plumbing vent where it penetrated the roof. When Sean and Tom took a look at the vent
from the ground, they said it was only sticking through the roof by about 8″. (Good eyes! Measurement later showed that the actual
exposure was 7″.) I looked up the Residential
Building Code requirement: the plumbing vent is required to extend 6″ above the maximum expected snow accumulation on the roof, not to exceed
7 feet. So I cut off the much too short vent
pipe in the attic, cut a new piece of PVC pipe to length, and glued it back
on. Our plumbing vent now extends 30″ above the roof. By the time that
work was done and lunch consumed, the roof was too hot to work on. And, of course, it is supposed to rain
tomorrow! So I spray-foamed the bejesus
out of the underside of the vent roof penetration… and we’ll try to get the
rubber boot on before the rain starts.
Chree and the dogs left early afternoon for her monthly Devin fix. Tom did a little tile work in the master
bathroom while I was putting the fourth coat of varnish on the maple
thresholds, then he and I did some more electrical work, including running the
missing wire for the garage interior lights.
That required using some wire mold (an ugly, prefabricated, plastic
channel that hides a wire running on the surface of a wall) because there is no
way to snake a wire through the garage walls at this point without some major
deconstruction. Tom and I also installed
the spotlight on the northwest exterior corner of the house. After work, I found that Seagram’s 7, mixed
with just the right amount of Canada Dry ginger ale, really does slide down
very easily. This evening, left a note
over in the new house where Tim will find it upon arrival tomorrow
morning. It begins, “Even knowing that
you will hate me forever for this,…” and asks him to repaint the upper hall
with the Nice Cream that was used in the sun room, kitchen, and living / dining
room. Earthquake to follow…
