6 May 2016

Jason and Brett arrived somewhat before 6, per their usual routine.  By the end of their workday they had finished repainting the trim in the sun room, kitchen, living room, and half bath… all areas where the walls have not been color coated yet.  (Obviously it’s a lot easier to paint the trim if you don’t have to worry about getting a little paint on the walls.)  The Chantilly Lace is the perfect trim color.  Whew!!!!  Speaking of color: first thing this morning I opened the cans for the half bath and study walls and painted on a medium-sized square.  The half bath color (Nature’s Gift… and, honestly, who comes up with these paint names????) looks fine… and it’s a good thing we decided to go two shades lighter than the original selection.  The study color (called Stunning Gold, which looks to me more like Stunned-by-a-Pumpkin) Chree loves and I can’t live with, so there’s going to be some more inter-spousal discussion about that choice.  Sonny and Brandon spent the morning putting casing around the radiant heat manifold inset and baseboards in the storage room.  In the afternoon they started making closet shelves out of ¾″ 2-sided MDO which, because it is a plywood, has to be faced with ¾″ x ¾″ poplar on what will be the exposed front edge.  They also cut the 1¼″ diameter pine closet hanging rods to approximate lengths, then turned them over to me for sanding and varnishing.  After much feet-dragging, I finally agreed with Sonny that the sentimental from-our-property maple boards are just too twisty to be used for the interior door thresholds, with maybe one exception.  Sonny ordered fresh, kiln-dried maple stock from Goodro’s.  Steve did some more plumbing for the under-stairs hot water heater and then started on connecting the de-super heater tank in the mechanical room to the geothermal heat pump.  He also put in the valves so that there now is water down at the sauna through the PEX tubing we ran the other day.  Steve put in a purge valve (actually just a hose spigot) in the shop, so that in the winter I can drain the sauna water line and (fingers crossed) keep any more freeze-ups from happening.  Chree left late morning to spend Mother’s Day weekend with her parents in Connecticut.  I put up all but one of the rest of the shop lights… and discovered upon throwing the switch that the last light in the string is not working.  Checked all the connections in the surrounding lights and replaced the miscreant, all to no avail.  I’m sure Tom will want an electrical challenge when he returns to work on Monday.  In addition to varnishing hanging rods, in the afternoon I installed about half of the living / dining room lights, all of which worked just fine.

 

5 May 2016

Brett and Jason arrived a few minutes before 6.  I boogied over to the house to find they were preparing to paint some more trim.  Put a stop to that and called Tim Ryan, who was, to put it mildly, not at all happy to hear that Chree and I wanted to change the trim paint color.  After some earnest negotiations with Tim, Brett, and Jason, and a promise from me that Tim’s 13 May scheduled finish to our job would not be delayed, Tim acquiesced to having all of the house trim repainted, recommending we use Benjamin Moore Satin Impervo White Dove. I crashed through the door at Countryside Carpet and Paint in Middlebury when they opened for business at 7:15.  “I need two gallons of Satin Impervo White Dove”, I tried not to shout.  While that was being mixed, I went over to the paint display and found the White Dove color sample.  “Oh, $#@!”, I said to myself outloud, “that color looks far too much like what we already have on the trim and Chree is NOT going to like it!”  Turning to Janice Denu (one of the store’s owners) I cried, “Help!!!!”  Janice and I pawed through the various “white” paints, trying to find one with a hint of blue, without success.  We did find something called Chantilly Lace that had some black mixed with the pure white base.  Crossing my fingers, toes, legs, and arms and holding my breath, I ordered two gallons of that color.  Got back to Fern Lake at 8 to find Sean already there for his mid-week inspection of work progress.  Gave the Chantilly Lace to Brett and Jason.  A few minutes later, Chree approved the new color!  Halleluiah and pass the Scotch!!!!  (Gave the two gallons of White Dove to Tim as a peace offering when he stopped by later to check on how Brett and Jason were doing.)  Sonny and Brandon worked on door thresholds most of the day.  Brandon also put a drywall backing strip on the underside of the Ifelele railing caps so that the gaps between the top of the drywall and the bottom of the wood can be sealed.  Steve was here part of the day and finished installing the guest bath shower control valves, then installed the cutoff valves under most of the sinks.  He also made all of the domestic cold water piping connections in the mechanical room… which will have to be redone because he forgot that a water filter needs to be included in that piping.  He also ripped out the drain line in the shop lavatory because he remembered that the water softener (which would have used that drain line) has to be situated in the mechanical room vice under the stairs with the hot water heater.  And, finally, he started to plumb the hot water heater.  Two steps forward, one step back…  Jeff Many stopped by mid-afternoon to discuss some additional items we want for the garage doors… and fixed our malfunctioning garage door remote control.  (All he did was retrain the remote, something I should have been able to do myself; how embarrassing!)  After we cleaned the shop, Chree and I moved all of the interior doors into that room, where Tim will be wet-sanding them.  As we were stacking the doors on the special drying rack we’ve been using, the rack collapsed.  This resulted in virtually every one of our formerly-pristine doors getting dented by the steel rack tubes.  The bad news is that, though the rack collapsed in my direction, the doors did not, in fact, put me out of my misery.  With Sean’s somewhat reluctant concurrence, Chree called our moving company in Virginia and asked them to schedule our household goods delivery for Friday, 3 June.

4 May 2016

Kaleb, Matt, Brendin, Jason, and Brett were here again painting away.  Tim stopped by mid-morning to check their progress.  They got all of the trim and ceilings done (with the exception of the storage room baseboards… that haven’t been installed yet), plus they painted the walls in the guest bath, master bedroom, and master bath.  The master bedroom color is quite vibrant (and that is probably a serious understatement).  Now that we see the wall paint going on, Chree and I have decided that we really don’t like the green overtones in the “Anderson white” trim paint.  More to follow…  Sonny finished putting on the stair nosings and installed the casings around the two garage windows.  He and Brandon also installed the Ifelele cap on the main level half wall railing… which looks absolutely gorgeous.  They planed the rest of my rough cut maple so that Chree and I could select which boards will be used for thresholds.  Steve and I ran PEX tubing through the conduit down to the sauna, then he started to install the water control valves for the guest bath shower.  The Granite Group brought all of the rest of our plumbing fixtures, which now take up every available out-of-the-way nook in the garage and elsewhere throughout the house.  Chree and I finished our part of the door varnishing saga, i.e., there now are two coats of polyurethane on all six sides of all 23 interior doors.

 

3 May 2016

Tim (for a couple of hours), Kaleb, Matt, Brendin, Jason, and Brett were here for another very productive day of painting.  Kaleb and Matt put two color coats on the walls of the first and second guest bedrooms, henceforth to be known as the Red and Blue rooms, respectively.  Brendin concentrated on priming the last of the baseboards.  Jason and Brett finished all of the lower level trim and made a big dent in getting the second coat on the upper level baseboards.  Sonny and Brandon spent most of the day crafting the Ifelele railing top caps, getting the lower one installed.  Sonny manufactured the stair tread 1″ nosings out of “scrap” poplar and installed as many as he could with the short supply of trim screws on-site.  The two carpenters also spent an hour at the end of the day planing maple boards so that Chree and I can pick the ones we want to use for thresholds.  Somehow, a red oak board ended up in the pile.  Now we just have to figure out (1) where it came from and (2) where to use it.  Steve Poplawski, plumber extraordinaire, stopped by for an hour mid-afternoon to scope out the remaining plumbing and HVAC work he needs to do… supposedly starting tomorrow.  I spent the morning putting the second coat of varnish on the first side of the second set of interior doors.  Chree and I “discussed” closet shelving with Sonny right after lunch, with no consensus reached about the material to be used.  Chree and I went down to Marty & Merry’s for another delightful evening of good fellowship, fine food, and great cheer.

 

2 May 2016

Tim, Kaleb, Matt, and Brendin were joined today by Jason Many (yes, of course he’s related to Uncles Mike, Pikey, and Jeffrey) and Brett Rubright, two independent painters who Tim brings on when he needs extra help.  The painting gang concentrated on getting a second coat on all the window trim, prepping baseboards, and “painting” the shop ceiling with drywall primer.  Sean came by for a couple of hours in the morning, doing a walk-through inspection with Sonny and Brandon, during which they put together a preliminary carpentry punch list, i.e., a list of items to be done before the house can be considered complete.  Sonny manufactured a wood finish piece from which the sun room chandelier will be suspended.  He also manufactured doors for the wine cellar rear access and the master bath / laundry clothes pass-through.  Brandon started to manufacture pieces for the railing top caps from the Ifelele (a tropical hardwood) that I brought back from American Samoa in 1981… and have been saving ever since for this very purpose.  Now that’s what you call staying ahead of the airplane!  I spent the morning putting varnish on the second set of interior doors.  After lunch Chree and I headed north for our weekly spending spree.  We retrieved all of our previously-ordered wall lights and floor lamps from The Lighting House in Shelburne, in return for a largish check.  We cleaned out the entire supplies of 20 amp white Decora electrical outlets at both of the Burlington-area Lowe’s… and still came up 10 short of what we need for the house.  We then met Kevin Haight over at Trowel Trades in Essex Junction to select the masonry products that will be used for the patio, an eight foot diameter flower planter Chree wants in the middle of the patio, and an outdoor fireplace I also want on the patio’s east side.  We made those selections in a bit of a hurry, as it was pouring rain at the time of our visit, and all of the displays were, of course, outdoors.  Hope we like what we picked when it gets installed!

1 May 2016

Another quiet Sunday morning cleaning Kate’s house and then the main level of the new house.  After lunch, Chree and I went down to the Home Depot in Rutland to procure all of the paint for the interior walls.  The look on the paint-person’s face was absolutely precious when informed that Chree needed 27 gallons of Behr Premium Plus in an eggshell finish and assorted colors, plus a few odd quarts thrown in for good measure.  This was at 1 o’clock.  The paint person responded, “And you want this by 8 o’clock, too, I bet?”  Amazingly, before I’d even finished special-ordering a Kohler medicine cabinet for the half bath, Chree came over to say that she had all the paint.  Apparently, three other store staff had been quickly summoned to the paint production process.  Now, hopefully, all those colors will look just as good on the walls as they did in the paint samples…

30 April 2016

Kaleb and Matt worked six hours of overtime this morning, putting more paint on the main level ceilings and then starting the first coat of paint on the two guest bedroom’s window trim.  Right after breakfast, I tried to take to the Salisbury recycling venue the load of cardboard that is completely filling (to overflowing) the Tacoma’s cargo bed.  The man in charge there refused the load unless it was cut up into 2 foot squares.  Get real!  Tim stopped by mid-morning to see how his guys were doing, arriving in time to referee further “discussions” by Chree and me about wall paint colors.  We released Tim after a few minutes to go enjoy his day off, as our “discussions” looked like they were going to continue for awhile… which they did.  Chree and I also cleaned all the slate tile areas and then covered those areas with a protective cardboard floor covering, which should prevent them from getting spotted by exuberant painters.  Chree and I spent most of the afternoon polyurethaning the first side of the rest of the second batch of interior doors.  Taking one for the team, Chree forewent a concert in Middlebury, that she really wanted to attend, in order to keep the varnishing project on track.  After the varnishing was done, I applied Durabond to an area just above the woodstove nook mantle that we decided (with Tim’s help) should just be painted plaster vice a strip of wood (as originally envisioned).  I also repaired a substantial rent in the drywall caused when the casing for the wine cellar cleaning access was forced into place, obviously somewhat reluctantly.