While I was working on the floor on Saturday, Amber finished the laminate flooring in the boy’s room (yes, she laid half about 40 square feet in less time than it took me to do 16). Amber’s also been working on bundling some of our leftover oak flooring so that we can get the master cleaned and get laminate flooring down there.

The move-in list has been updated and it really does look like we’re getting close!

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• I finished painting the sink area of the kids’ bath and finished the walls in the shower area
• I did lots of cleaning downstairs
• Matt installed the sinks, faucets and drains for the kids’ bath and master bath.  We now have four working sinks in the house.
• Matt did more trim work for the windows in the open area, then disassembled the scaffolding and got that loaded on his dad’s truck.  It is really nice not having that scaffolding there anymore – although it certainly was useful.

I updated the Move-In Checklist and as you can see we’re slowly making progress.  Emphasis on the slowly part!

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Since we’re currently having drywall hung and textured, I can’t really work on the house so I decided to finally do something about the pump house. The fact that we’re expecting temperatures to be in the high teens had something to do with it too.

I figured it would take me a few weekends to really get a good pump house up and didn’t really want to spend that much time on it right now (much less the cost of building materials) so I “made do”.

Before I could work on anything up there, I needed power. When we ran the wires for the well back in the summer of 2007, we ran four so that we could have two hot legs for the 220V pump, a ground and a neutral for a 110 circuit. I used one hot leg and the 110 to put in a duplex plug.

The basic frame is made up of three pallets that my Dad had. I bought three 4×8 sheets of 3/8 OSB for about $9 each and cut and stapled them up with my pneumatic stapler. It ends up being a surprisingly stable structure.

The backside of the pump house. I’ve since gone back and cleaned up the gaps some by stapling additional OSB over them and using leftover mastic from our SIP installation to “caulk” them.

The kids hung out and helped. Here they’re playing in the “snow”. I had Emma help me a as a counterweight when cutting the OSB. I put the sheet in the back of my truck hanging out over the tail gate and Emma sat on the end in the truck so that it would remain horizontal for me to cut.

I cut a final sheet and used screws to hold it in place over the 4th wall. Now I’ll be able to access the internals by simply taking a couple screws out. This will give me the access I need to turn the light on and off to be doubly sure nothing will freeze.

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Need to fix a stud and redo some vent piping to make the stud more vertical. Need to install vents for dryer and water heater.

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Recently completed:

• All ceiling fan boxes mounted and wired.
• Can lights on landing wired.
• Fixtures in kids bath mounted and wired.
• Master bedroom and master bath swept and vacuumed.
• Extra lumber moved outside (thanks, Jonathan)
• Wood flooring moved down from upstairs storage to kitchen area (thanks, Jonathan)
• Phone line pulled from phone box outside into house (thanks, Jonathan)
• Remaining electrical box in away room wired
• Telecom box in hearthroom nailed and wired

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• installed can lights in built-in on landing
• finished cutting block for ceiling fan in second dormer
• installed boxes for plugs under built-in on landing

Wednesday night

• Wired boxes for plugs under built in on landing
• Hung block for ceiling fan in second dormer with copious amounts of subfloor glue and some drywall screws

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Two plumbing vents went in (a 2 inch and a 3 inch) and I believe that the plumber finished his work. I need to put in a dryer vent and direct vent for the water heater but other than that the plumbing/propane should be done.

I finished wiring the boxes with the 220V futures in the bedrooms today while waiting for the stove installers at various points.

The third hole in the roof is for the wood stove chimney. The stove is in place, but the chimney wasn’t run because they didn’t have enough chimney pieces. Everything’s ready and they’ll come back out in a couple weeks to finish the installation.

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