13 May 2016

Tim, Brendin, Brett, and Jason arrived sometime in the middle of the night, well before the sun or I got up.  I felt the gentle rocking of the earth as Tim read my note…  Tim and Brendin finished sanding and varnishing interior doors.  Brendin also put primer on all the closet / pantry shelves.  Jason spent his workday cutting in the upper hallway with the Nice Cream paint, which looks 1,000,000 percent better than its yucky predecessor, and finishing the pantry.  Brett put a second coat of sunshine yellow (actually named: full fat Vanilla Ice Cream) on the laundry walls; you will never be depressed in that room.  Brett also finished painting the front entry door.  Jackob Bilodeau and Justin McKeighan (Black Diamond Builders) were here all morning blowing two tons of cellulose insulation into the attic.  They put in a layer approximately 15″ deep, which by itself equates to an R‑value between 48 – 55.  That is on top of (literally) 3″ of closed cell spray foam, which provides an R-value of 18.  Plus, there is another 2″ of spray foam coating the underside of the roof sheathing.  Bottom line: the attic is insulated to somewhere around R-80, well above the minimum R-49 recommended for this region.  Sonny and Brandon installed all of the maple interior doorway thresholds.  They then fabricated the pseudo chair rail that will separate, at the height of the kitchen countertops, the Nice Cream on the upper walls from the dark red (Pompeian Red) on the lower walls in the sun room.  James Ploof and Burt Wedge spent the morning laying down and compacting a 4″ layer of stone fines (aka stone dust) onto which the patio pavers will be placed.  The first mission of the day for Tom and me was to install a rubber boot to seal the opening through which the plumbing vent pipe rises majestically on the north-facing roof.  The only problem is that the roof was covered with pollen (it being that time of the month), which made it slicker than you know what… and decidedly unsafe to walk upon.  Tom, being an old hand at roof work, quickly came up with a solution.  He securely clamped a 2x4 between two of the roof seams near the roof edge, then laid one of my 14 foot ladders on the roof with the bottom end resting against the 2x4.  Et voilá, we had a stairway to the sky.  Thereafter, installing the roof boot took but a few, very safe, minutes.  Brandon (at Chree’s behest) took pictures while Sonny bravely (and, perhaps, wisely) observed from the ground, ready to call 9∙1∙1 if disaster struck.  Then Tom and I tackled installing my weather station on the roof above the sun room.  For that foray, Tom built an 8 foot wooden ladder, kept from sliding off the roof by using the same 2x4 and clamps as before.  We also took a step ladder up to the roof ridge with us, so we could see the leveling bubble not-so-conveniently placed on top of the 8 foot tall weather station.  We got the weather station installed just as it started to rain.  Talk about perfect timing!  Tom and I spent the rest of the workday putting in more electrical switches and outlets, plus the under cabinet light in the study.  Just before dinner, I beat feet down to the Home Depot in Rutland to procure another two gallons of Nice Cream… plus another neat tool to add to my Chree’s Shlomo’s collection: a non-contact electric current detector, used to ensure that the wire you’re about to cut is not, in fact, about to bite you.