25 May 2016

I was at Goodro’s at 7 to clean them out of brushed nickel hand railing brackets… netting half of what I needed.  Sonny and Brandon spent the morning installing the two hand railings that will line either side of the staircase.  After they got the railings fitted, they disassembled everything and then Sonny coated the railings with a very dark Minwax Jacobean stain.  Ron Highter delivered the four absolutely gorgeous custom cabinets mid-morning.  Sonny (with a timeout for house destruction; see below) and Brandon spent the afternoon installing the cabinets that will house the Comcast router and DVR, the kitchen writing surface, and the hall knick knacks.  Steve installed the guest bath toilet and wired up the zone controllers for the radiant floor heating.  Jim Ploof dropped off his mini-excavator and skid-steer, which will be used to create Chree’s garden later this week.  Tom arrived late-morning and set to work finishing up the electrical work.  First item on his agenda was to get the doorbell working properly.  After triple-checking the wiring, he called the manufacturer, whose technical help-desk person suggested that maybe putting in a 24v transformer (vice the 16v transformer called for in the doorbell instructions) might get both chimes to work.  After that, he spent the rest of his workday installing electrical outlets.  Larry Stevens and Earl Taylor from Marshall’s alarm service arrived early afternoon and began installing the components for our alarm system.  After awhile, Earl went to Larry (who came to me) saying, “Weren’t there supposed to be both a klaxon and a motion sensor in the downstairs hall?  There is only one wire down there.”  “That’s funny,” I said, not laughing, “I thought there once was a security system wire in the corner of the wine cellar nook.  Oh, Sonny!  Please tear apart this brand new wall (fortunately made of screwed-on plywood in the shop) so we can find the missing wire.”  “Grumble, bitch, moan!”  Wall hacked apart, we found the missing wire in the ceiling over the wine cellar nook, wrapped around a drywall screw and tied in a knot.  Located and removed the screw (making only a small hole in the once-pristine wine cellar nook ceiling), only to find that the knot in the wire still was a show-stopper.  Nothing for it but to cut a hole in the ceiling big enough to extract the knot.  That operation was completely successful, but the ceiling will need some serious post-operative doctoring.  Kevin stopped by to give us his (choke!) price for building our patio.  Let’s just say that it will be a very nice patio… and Kevin will not be starving to death anytime soon.  After an early dinner, made a mad-dash to Lowe’s in South Burlington to not buy the 20 amp electrical outlets needed to complete the house wiring.  All of the local-area Lowe’s are out… and not expecting new stock for at least a few weeks!  Merde, alors, if you’ll pardon my French!  But, not wanting to leave empty-handed, I found $130 of other electrical stuff to fill my shopping cart.  Got back to Fern Lake at 8, ready for some serious slumber.