20 August 2016
Spent
most of the morning backfilling behind the outdoor fireplace. If any archeologists ever excavate that site,
they surely will be puzzled by the half dozen broken gravestones neatly stacked
therein. Also buried there are all the
leftover bricks from the house chimney, a few stray concrete blocks (not tied
to any bodies), and the stones that heretofore lined the campfire pit that
served us so very well these past seven years.
After lunch, added a few rocks to the retaining wall that connects the
patio to the driveway. Also moved the
residual firewood from the old campfire site to our new, covered, outdoor
woodbin, verifying that the tractor fits onto the patio just fine, thank you
very much! Shlomo was outside with me
most of the day and was being really good about staying close by but well clear
of the tractor. Was just thinking that,
as a reward, I should take him swimming when he reappeared from a short
sojourn… soaking wet. Then he went
absolutely crazy rolling in all the fresh dirt I’d stirred up behind the
fireplace, turning himself into a chocolate lab. Nothing for it but to take him back down to
the lake for another immersion. Got an
email from Alex saying that he and Chree were busy eating crawfish, drinking
schnapps, and singing Swedish drinking songs about raw horse meat. When Katy’s away, Grandma will play! Not to be outdone, I enjoyed another
wonderful salmon feast down at Marty and Merry’s.
19 August 2016
Kevin
spent most of the day building the walkway from the front entry steps over to
the driveway, using the 1″ thick irregularly-shaped slate we procured for that purpose some time
ago from Vermont Specialty Slate. Kevin
used less than half of our stockpile for the walkway, so… With this walkway complete, the house is OFFICIALLY done, i.e., all
of the items in our original contractor specifications have been
completed. Mind you, there are still
quite a few projects on the Honey Do list that will keep Chree and me busy for
the foreseeable future… While Kevin was
working outside, I carved two holes in the kitchen desk / bookshelves area so that
I could rip out the phone jack box on the west wall (that turned out to be
quite awkwardly placed) and run the wires over to the phone jack box on the
north wall. Easy job! Now I just have to hide the evidence before
Chree gets back… I also carved a hole in
the north pantry wall, thinking to install a light switch to control the pantry
light in lieu of the motion-sensing switch that we don’t like. Remembered, at the last second, to offset the
hole so that the switch box I was installing would miss the switch box on the
other side of the wall (that controls the light over the kitchen desk /
bookselves). Don’t ya know, some (epithet
deleted) plumber put a vent pipe right where I cut the hole. With a wall stud just north of the vent pipe
and another wall stud just south of the desk / bookshelves switch box, there
was nowhere to put the switch I wanted to install, without getting totally
bizarre with the switch height above the floor.
So some more evidence to hide from wifely eyes.
18 August 2016
17 August 2016
Matt
Sargent was here early afternoon to do the final Efficiency Vermont inspection. The 50 Pascal blower door test showed we were
leaking air at 580 cfm, which equates to 1.34 air exchanges per hour (ACH). Efficiency Vermont’s Silver standard, to
which we were building, is less than 3.0 ACH.
This result is just a tad worse than the ACH measured during the
preliminary test done in February, which Matt says is not unusual. Sean was here to witness the goings-on and to
sign the Vermont Residential Building Energy Standards (RBES) Certificate that
records as-built data about the house.
Kevin arrived as the weather was clearing shortly before noon and spent
the afternoon building the firebox in the outdoor fireplace, complete with two
horizontal grooves which will allow us to position the grill at either 6½″ or
11½″ above the firebox floor, depending on how hot the fire is burning. Chree and I went down to Marty and Merry’s
for another fantastic dinner.
16 August 2016
Returning
from morning errands in Middlebury and Brandon, Chree and I found the
Hardscapes truck here, unloading a pallet of stones that will cap the patio’s
circular raised flower bed. The truck
also took away a full pallet of not-needed stones whose brothers and sisters
were used to make the flower bed and the wall behind the outdoor fireplace and
wood storage bin. No Kevin today…
apparently the rain forecast scared him away.
The lake temperature is 78° and the water level is 19½″
below the top of the dock.
15 August 2016
Kevin
filled all of the patio paver joints with polymeric sand. That sand, when exposed to water, hardens,
locking the pavers together, yet remains semi-permeable. After that was done, Kevin, with some modest
help from me, built the front entry steps using 20 gravestones. All of the gravestones, except for the two
ends, were glued together with Locktite PL 500®
polyurethane construction adhesive.
14 August 2016
Went
up to Wildflower Iron Works in Addison to retrieve, at long last, the 32½″ x
21⅝″ x ⅜″ outdoor
fireplace grill that John Baker custom-built for us. Went from there to Moncton to procure a used
(but hopefully still good) refrigerator to put in the garage to hold cold
drinks. Stops in South Burlington /
Shelburne at Lowe’s and to visit Alverta were, of course, de rigueur. Steve and I saunaed in the evening.
12 August 2016
Arose
at crack of dawn to put a second coat of paint on the steel lintels for the
outdoor fireplace woodbin. Kevin was
here early once again. He finished
building the fireplace / woodbin rear wall, put the caps over the woodbin (once
the paint was mostly dry), and then started figuring out how the gravestones
will go together to make the sun room steps.
Sean stopped by mid-morning to see how things are going. Tasi and Rachel headed back south
mid-afternoon after visiting the Foley Brothers Brewery (colocated with the
Nesobe Winery). Their verdict: not worth
a second visit. Chree and I felt the
same way about the winery…
11 August 2016
Kevin
built most of the 8′ diameter raised flower bed that will be a centerpiece of the
patio. He glued the stone together with
Lumberlock® construction adhesive so that they look dry-layed but are solidly
attached to one another. He also started
work on the outdoor fireplace and wood storage bin, getting the three piers
built. After some discussion, we decided
to use two ½″ x 4″ x 55″ flat stock steel lintels to hold up the two caps that will cover the
woodbin, vice overlapping the caps on the adjoining piers and installing a vertical
concrete block divider. Called Nops
Metalworks at 10 o’clock to see if they could provide the steel pieces we
wanted. By 10:45 Chree (on her way back
from her workout at Middlebury Fitness) had the steel in the back of her
car. Now that’s what you call
service! Put a coat of primer on the
steel soon after Chree arrived back home.
Dennis Senesac and Bill Gabbiet arrived mid-morning to attend to various
plumbing punch list issues. They
installed a water meter so that we can measure domestic consumption and
determine when to change the water filter.
Dennis and I set up the hot water re-circulating pump timer, which
hopefully will save us some electricity.
For the same reason, Dennis also disconnected the HRV from the air
handler. Bill put insulation on several
more water lines to stanch, hopefully, the condensation problems we’ve been
experiencing in the mechanical room.
Bill also installed the mechanical room floor drain. Unfortunately, that installation required
grinding away some concrete, which created a LOT of dust, which set off the
fire alarms when the mechanical room door was opened. Was excitingly noisy for awhile there… Perry and Lynne came over for a dinner of
burnt offerings (steak cooked over a much-too-hot fire).
10 August 2016
Kevin
was here briefly first thing in the morning to go over the construction details
for the outdoor fireplace. We did some
designing on the fly to arrive at a compromise between what I had envisoned and
what is actually buildable. Used the
Kubota to move one retaining wall rock and some more dirt out of the way.
9 August 2016
Kevin
cut and fit pavers along the retaining wall on the east side of the patio. He also built the ramp from the patio up to
the garage people door. Then he started
laying out the outdoor fireplace structure.
Chree and I spent the entire day at the Addison County Agricultural Fair
and Field Days up t’ New Haven. We
hadn’t been to a county fair since the kids were very little (sometime last century). Was bloody hot, but fun nonetheless.
8 August 2016
Kevin
worked all day cutting and fitting the patio pavers that abut the house
foundation and the west and south retaining walls. Tasi and Rachel arrived late afternoon for a
multi-day stay and laundry marathon.
Marty and Merry joined us for the evening repast, featuring Julia Child’s
Daube de Boeuf á la Provençale, followed by Mississippi Mud topped with French (of course!) vanilla
ice cream. A fun evening during which
everyone ate far, far too much!
7 August 2016
Used
the Kubota to move further away from the house several of the rocks forming the
east side of the patio. Before, there
was just enough room to sneak the 57″ wide Kubota through the opening onto the patio…
with ¾″ to spare on either side. Doable,
but kind of a tight fit! Now, there is
room for the 63″ wide snowblower to get through the gap, with several inches left over
to accommodate driver error.
5 August 2016
Kevin
here again putting in more patio pavers, joined for part of the day by his son,
Cory, who we had previously met because he also happens to work at The Lighting
House. With Cory lugging and Kevin
laying, all of the central part of the patio was in place by day’s end. I mowed the lawn for the first time, moving
considerably slower than normal for some reason... Took an hour, with an interruption from
Perry, bringing us eight red raspberry plants from his horticultural
collection. I also started building a
shelving unit for underneath the stairs (made entirely from scrap material
cluttering the shop), on which to neatly organize all the left over paint.
4 August 2016
Kevin
was here continuing the patio installation.
He got all of the pavers cut for alongside the north side and also
installed the drain that (we hope) will catch the majority of the water coming
off the roof valley, sending said deluge down the perimeter drain and out into
the woods. While all that was ongoing,
Steve Osmer and I tackled Mount Mansfield (the highest peak in Vermont), trekking
the Sunset Ridge trail to the summit from Underhill State Park. Six and a half miles round trip, 5,000 feet
total elevation change, 5 hours of hiking.
No exercise to speak of since about forever, so you can color me pretty
much dead…
3 August 2016
No
Kevin today. Trailer in tow, I went down to RMG in
Castleton (Rutland Marble and Granite, where we got the soapstone for the
wood stove nook) and procured another pallet (2,800 pounds) of rejected military
gravestones. Those 1′ x
2′ x 4″ (100 pounds / each) chunks of granite will be used to create the
sun room and front entry steps.
2 August 2016
Having
figured out how the jigsaw puzzle goes together, Kevin began laying the patio
pavers in earnest. He got the first row
alongside the garage wall put down, all of which had to be cut since the pavers
are irregularly shaped and (we are pretty sure) the garage wall is straight. I fixed the electrical outlet problem in the
storage room, which turned out to not be as difficult as feared initially.
1 August 2016
Rain
– yes; Kevin – no. Larry Stevens from
Marshall’s Alarm Service came out this morning and found nothing wrong except
that somehow the date / time settings in the alarm system control panel had
become un-set. Installed the missing
patio outlet and then two additional electrical outlets in the storage
room. Found, after turning the storage
room circuit breaker back on, that one of the new outlets isn’t getting any
electrons. That misbehaving outlet is
fed from one that Perry and I partially obscured behind a storage shelf last
week, confident that I would never again have to get into that outlet’s
junction box. It’s a good thing we
stopped at the NH State Liquor Store yesterday…
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