18 May 2016

Steve beat everyone here this morning and continued installing plumbing fixtures.  We now have four (count ‘em!) working toilets and hot water from some of the sink faucets.  So high class!  Sean came by mid-morning to talk about some simmering issues (actually, I think I was at a rolling boil at that point) and to prioritize the carpenter’s work list.  Sonny and Brandon finished installing the crown molding in the study, then hung the 12 interior doors that will be refinished later.  While Sonny was making another shelf for the panty and putting in a small door in the shop south wall that will allow access to the wine cellar compressor coils, Brandon installed the door handles on the re-hung interior doors and finished putting door / drawer handles on the study, master bath, and guest bath cabinetry.  After lunch, they installed the above-the-range microwave oven… and would have installed the stove, too, except that it took me an inordinate amount of time to affix a power cord (sold separately) to the stove because the idiot electrical engineer who designed the electrical connection interface on the stove was a certified first class bozo.  As Tom Morrissey keeps reminding me: if electrical engineers were required to actually install what they design, their designs would be a whole lot more user-friendly.  Roger and Joe (his son) Desabrais arrived late morning to install the glass half wall and glass door for the master bath shower.  They also hung the 27″H x 45″W mirror, with 1″ beveled edges, above the guest bath vanity.  After running errands in Middlebury for most of the morning, Chree mounted the Kubota and used the backhoe and front end loader attachments to move the mound of debris that has been building since last fall to the middle of our burn area.  In addition to leaning over everyone’s shoulder all day, doing some minor electrical work, and making a bazillion phone calls, I started refinishing some of the interior doors using Lenmar^® satin finish polyurethane.  Literally 5 minutes after Roger and Joe Desabrais departed, Dennis Senesac called to inform me that the Kohler neo-angle shower that we bought for the guest bath seems to have come without the two glass side walls and glass door that are sort of needed to keep the water in the shower.  And Kohler doesn’t provide those glass sides, even though the picture Chree and I saw when we ordered the shower clearly showed them.  Dennis suggested I contact Desabrais Glass to custom fabricate the missing pieces…  which I will be glad to do, just as soon as Chree and I come down from low-Earth orbit.