Author: amber

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Cabinets! and other updates

We have cabinets!  Well, they are currently sitting in cardboard boxes in our dining area, but they are set to be installed on Monday.  By Wednesday evening, we should have cabinets in the kitchen and the two upstairs bathrooms.

We’ve also received almost all of our light fixtures and all of our ceiling fans.  So far Matt has installed three ceiling fans (including the one 16 ft or so off the ground) and one light fixture.

Approximately 75% of the house is painted now.  All we need to do corners and edges in the high places (although that will probably require the rental of a scissor lift – we will not be repainting anytime soon!) and some work in the bedrooms.

I also have been cleaning up a great deal, and mopping the floors.  The floors are amazingly dirty.  Between drywall dust and the acculumated dust, mud, and construction debris from the past almost year and a half, the floors are incredibly filthy.  I am consoling myself with the thought that at least the floors should never be quite this dirty again!

We’re also talking to some people about doing some tile work in all of the bathrooms.  We had thought about doing the tile ourselves, but given how long this project is taking it is time to sub this out.  We’re also somewhat concerned about our ability to create a good, water-tight pan for the two showers without tubs and we’ve received a very good recommendation for a local tile contractor.  Now we just have to figure out how to pay for it…

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Drywall update

The drywall, taping and mudding, and texturing are now complete!  The house looks great – so much brighter and more like a home than a construction site.

We’ve started painting the ceilings and some of the rooms, and today Matt installed our first light fixture.   It seems like such a little thing, but when I think of all it took to get to the point where we could install a finish light fixture, it seems like a very big thing indeed!

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Paint decision making

Here’s a couple pictures of our paint selection process.  We ended up going with the one on the corner of the house – the lighter one, not the one on the top painted board.  We’ll have a cream-ish trim color and a red-ish accent color and door.  They should start painting next week!

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A couple pictures

Progress is being made, although we haven’t had much time in front of the computer in order share what’s happened.  My mother-in-law was kind enough to send me a couple pictures she took yesterday and I thought they were good representations of what we’ve done.

First, here’s our start on the house.  We got delivery on the 7th as planned, and it was challenging getting all the panels up to the house pad and sorted.  They are now all sorted and thanks to some family who were visiting for Thanksgiving, we were able to get a few panels up.  This is the northwest corner of the house.  The panels in the background are the second story panels.  The wood on the very top is not part of the wall, it is there to protect the panels from moisture.

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And our other big project has been working with PG&E to get our power going.  They pulled power up the hill and down to our subpanel last week, and yesterday someone came by and installed our meter.  Check it out – you don’t often get to see a meter that reads this!

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And yes, we have power!  Matt is doing electrical work today so that we can plug the trailer in and have some outlets down near the house pad.  I think the well is already set to go, but I’m not sure.   It will be nice not to have to run the generator all the time!

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Lots of Progress!

After a feverish rush of work done largely by Matt over the last week or so, we now have completed our concrete forms and we’ve passed our first inspection. Matt and a crew of guys are pouring concrete into our perimeter foundation this morning, and in a week we’ll be pouring concrete for our slab. In the meantime we’ll have to strip the form boards, pour rock for fill, lay more rebar, and put in our vapor barrier. Yes, the fun never ends. I can’t post pictures because I’m currently visiting my parents in the Bay Area, but hopefully we’ll be able to post some in the next week or so.

The other big news is that we have a delivery date for our SIP panels — Wednesday, November 7th. After getting the panels we’ll have to do some work cutting and mounting wood to the panels so that we can attach them together, but we’ll probably be having the house-raising for the first floor either that weekend or the weekend following. After the first floor is up we’ll have to build out all the load bearing walls and the second story sub-floor before we can put the second story and roof on. Matt is taking November off so he can work full time on the house.

Busy, busy, busy!

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Busy Week

Well, finally, things are starting to happen! We got a septic permit this week, and we started working on that system. Our building permit should be coming any day now, and in anticipation we’ve started chalking the outline of the house and getting ready to do some foundation work.

Here’s Emma, helping with the chalk outline. The chalk comes in a big bag and you scoop it out with a cup then carefully pour it out to follow your line.

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Here’s the finished outline

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Here’s our septic tank being delivered

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And here’s Al moving the largest of the stumps. We had him move all the stumps that were too big for us to tackle and now we have lots of lovely clear space!

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And look, no stumps! Yes, I know, it is still a mess, but at least it is a mess we can deal with without large equipment.

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And we also got gravel spread on our driveway and parking pad, so that when it rains we hopefully won’t disappear into the mud and muck.

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Pictures!

Here’s some pictures of our camp, now that we’re nicely settled.  Looking at these pictures makes me think of a squatter’s camp (as my brother said) but in person I think it is a bit more attractive.

Here’s the kitchen:

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Here’s the “living room”:

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Here’s a shot of the garden and the camp beyond:

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And here’s Matt and his grandfather putting a roof on the workshed.

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And in other news we’ve submitted our corrections and we should (fingers crossed!) have our permit next week.  Yippee!   We also bought a used trailer which needs a little work (mainly in the bathroom, as far as we know right now) but the price was right and it is in good shape otherwise.  It is a 1988 23′ 5th wheel, and it will become home in another month or so.   It may sound small, but the amenities are certainly a lot better than a tent!

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We’re still here!

This blog has gotten awfully quiet, hasn’t it! We’re still here, camping on the property and waiting to get our permit. We’ve settled in quite nicely at our “campsite” and we’re enjoying the experience. At this point we’re pretty close to our permit (we think!). We’re waiting for one more set of corrections then we’ll submit those to the county and then we should either have our permit or further corrections in about a week to a week and a half. We’re really hoping to get those other corrections ASAP, but it is out of our hands. Right now we’re planning on starting on the foundation and septic system in the next couple weeks, then getting our SIP panels at the end of the month. Nothing is certain though at this point, but it does seem like we are still moving in the right direction. We’ve started looking for a trailer, but so far we haven’t found anything yet. We’d like to have one by the end of the month but since we’ve decided to get a used one it just depends on when the right one comes up and if we’re able to jump on it fast enough to get it.

I’m writing this on Matt’s laptop while I’m sitting on the property. It is completely dark and all I can hear are crickets and one lone airplane far up in the air. The stars are spectacular, especially since the moon isn’t up yet. We don’t have internet access here, but Matt should be able to post this tomorrow once he gets into the office. We’re trying to use MarsEdit to do remote blogging, so we’ll see how that works. I’m not sure I can do pictures this way though, unless my husband is kind enough to add them to the post once he is in the office.

Alright, I’m up far later than I usually am (it is 10:45, my goodness!) and it is time for me to walk the 150 steps to the porta-potty then scramble back to the tent and crawl into our sleeping bag. Yes, it is a different sort of life, but it is actually a pretty good one. 🙂

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We have submitted!

Wait, that sounds odd.

We have submitted our plans to the county building department and we have our permit number. Thanks the wonders of the modern world, we can now plug our number into a website and watch our plans go through the various steps required for getting our plans approved. Now we just wait and hope that everything goes smoothly!

Matt did find one potential snag though – our official plans have us using a perimeter foundation rather than a cement slab. Apparently the engineering folks did that part wrong. Matt has talked to our project manager and she’s going to figure out how to fix it. Matt doesn’t think it will be too big of a problem, and I hope he’s right.

In regards to that whole laundry list of things Matt needed to do yesterday, he managed to get it all done. He even squeezed in a couple additional stops for lunch, groceries and a couple other things. The ReStore didn’t have any windows or doors that would work for us, but they did have a lot of other neat stuff. Matt picked up a mailbox for us for $5 and said that it is definitely a place I need to check out.

Today Matt is going to start on his workshed. He still needs to finish leveling the site and he needs to move the lumber around, so he said he’ll be happy if he can at least get the floor in place. He does have the camera, so he should have some pictures when he gets back.