One year and three days, but who's counting?

One year and three days, but who's counting?

May 31st --  It is officially over one year since this project has started, but by early next week the rest of any new home improvements will officially be done outside of my home remodel contract.
  
There are four things left on the punch list that the finish carpenter will tackle tomorrow morning, plus he is going to do two things for me that were not on the list -- connect the gas cook top in the basement and build a small shelf for the master bathroom.

The painter promised to come on Monday to complete the interior and exterior painting.

The contractor will be here on Tuesday to pick put the remaining construction debris/left over materials, which I officially moved off the deck and piled up for him to take --- hint, hint!.  

The new refrigerator should be delivered on Tuesday and that blog post will be devoted to the resolution of the refrigerator debacle!

Most of the stuff that was on the deck wrapped in a blue tarp was extra interior trim and mill work, which I am storing on the rafters in the garage, as shown below.  Just when I thought that it would not be possible to get anything else in my garage, well..here you go.  I need to be taking things that have been stored in the garage out of the garage, and here I am literally filling the garage to the rafters!

However, once I got all that stuff off of the deck, I was able to hose it down and bring out my patio furniture.  

I am getting closer and closer to when I'll enjoy my morning cafe latte and newspaper on the deck while enjoying the warmth of the morning sun.

I also got my vegetable garden planted and this was a challenge since I had a new space to plant and new raised beds.  It look some time figuring out, and this year will no doubt be an experiment.,  

I decided to plant corn in the two 4 by 8' beds.

This bed will be used next year as a cold frame bed with  a few windows I saved so that I can have early salad greens and snap peas, but for now there are zukes, patty pan, and acorn squash in this bed.

One of the 8 by 8' raised bed has cukes (ready to climb up the trellis), basil, Japanese and Italian eggplant, 5 different types of bell peppers (green, yellow, orange, red), kale, Swiss chard, beets, three bean salad (yellow, green, and purple bush beans that I mix up and plant together), elephant garlic and shallots. 

The other 8 by 8' bed is devoted to 9 tomato plants (e.g., Better Boy, Early Girl, Mister Stripey Heirloom, Roma, Yellow Pear, Grape, Beefsteak, Sweet 100 cherry, and Juliet -- a roma-grape hybrid) and one tomatillo plant.  This is the bed with the tall stakes shown here.

And, here is the bird's eye view of the garden from the cover porch off the master bedroom!

I also rearranged the bed in the guest suite and it looks great.  I need to get the protective covering off the replaced translucent library door, but haven't had time yet.

I did get a few more pieces of furniture and boxes of clothes out of the garage.  This rocker will eventually go into the reading nook in the master bedroom, but It is looking pretty good these days as the only piece of furniture in the upper level sitting room.

No more lock box.....

No more lock box....

May 25th  --  The finish carpenter arrived at 8:30 am and started attacking the items on the punch list.  Many of these are small items (e.g., installing door stops; adjusting sticking doors) and not worthy of photos.  By the end of the day only three items remained that require tools that were not on site.

The second upstairs bathroom is now completed and clean with another piece of trim installed as well as small glass shelf under the medicine cabinet.  With time, I will need to do some work on the oak vanity and cabinet with some sanding and refinishing.

Much of his time was spent on installing new door locks -- no small feat since the original doors of the house, like the front door below (and the door to the garage), are much thinner than most wooden doors today.  As a result, some of the doors had to be "built up" so that the locking mechanisms would work.  The build up will be painted during the exterior touch ups.

and the rear-entry door and door to the greenhouse.

  

The best thing about having all of these door locks installed is that I very happily returned the lock box to the contractor!!!

And the greenhouse shelving standards have been installed on the south wall (see the shelves below).  A masonry drill is needed to install the shelving system on the north wall of the greenhouse, which is the brick wall of the house.  That will wait for another day this coming week.

While the finish carpenter was going through the punch list, I continued to work on small projects.  First, was to create a small platform with pavers for the lawn mower.  Before the afternoon showers, I was able to start the lawn mower for the first time of the season with only two pulls!  I ran the mower over the remaining lawn in the front of the house after spending over an hour raking up miscellaneous bits of construction scraps (e.g., nails, screws, bits of concrete wood, roofing materials, etc) that I did not want to go airborne after being run over by the mower.  It was amazing to see what I collected.  Fortunately, I was able to mow the lawn with no schrapnel incidents.

 

The contractor and fabricator repeatedly told me to save all the left over tile and grout.  So, a second little project was to finally move all the boxes of left over tile stuff and other left over materials (e.g., hardwood floor planks) to the crawl space beneath the gathering room addition. Boxes of tile are not light.

When the old refrigerator was moved to the basement for the future micro brewing center, the doors were in the wrong orientation.  Fortunately, this model was made with reversible doors, which I got around to reversing for a third project.  The refrigerator needs to be cleaned, and the saga of the refrigerator debacle should be over by June 3rd -- look for a blog post on the resolution of this issue then.

By the end of the day, the friends who gave me their old couches dropped by to see how they looked and brought a lovely bunch of sun flowers.  Although all the vases are somewhere in the garage waiting to be unpacked, I did find a glass jar that did the trick as a temporary vase.

Although the finish carpenter was going to drop by today -- Memorial Day -- to finish up, he just called and had to do something for his employer.  He will try to come by tomorrow to finish up.

At this point, what remains is:  

• installing the shelving standards on the north wall of the greenhouse
• installing a piece of flashing near the threshold of the rear-entry door
• clearing the floor drain in the basement
• connecting the gas cooktop in the basement
• installing a shelf in the master bathroom
• the contractor will repair two small leaks in the greenhouse before I can put down the liner floor and pea gravel
• final interior and exterior paint touch ups
• June 3rd refrigerator resolution
• order and install carpet runner on the main staircase and order and install carpet treads on the staircase that leads to the basement. 

And, of course, the moving back in process....

Up and over

Up and over....

May 25th  -- The main goal for today was to move the bed from the master bedroom downstairs to the guest suite, pick up a new bed and move it into the master bedroom and pick up some couches given to me by dear friends who recently purchased new ones.

Because of the 90 degree-turn in the stair case, there are things that just can't be moved. 

There was a good reason why the chest of drawers in the master bedroom was built in that room by the finish carpenters!

The old bed and box spring and the new one had to be hoisted with straps from the back of the house, up and over the covered deck, and into the master bedroom as shown in this sequence of photos.

The old mattress went down the stairs, but the box spring had to be lowered over the covered porch.

Then the new mattress and box spring had to be hoisted from the back of the house up and over the covered porch.

First the mattress

then the box spring

By the end of the day, the new bed in the master bedroom was put together:

The bed from the master bedroom was put together in the guest suite

And, the donated couches looked pretty good in the living room on my carpet that was stored in the garage.

Just moving these big items before the predicted afternoon rain, hail and thunder storms was a huge accomplishment!.  

Things are beginning to look less like a construction zone and more like a house!

Tomorrow, Scott the finish carpenter returns to attack the punch list.