Build your own home - why? why not?

Have you ever thought about building your own home? Maybe you are the do it yourself type and you've done various projects, remodels, you feel like you are capable enough to handle the whole thing. Maybe you don't have the hands-on but would like to think with some help you could subcontract the work and maybe do some odds and ends yourself.

Building your own home is like taking on a second full time job added to the work week you now already have. The rewards can be great but you need to be sure you want to take on the management of a project that will be a big investment in time and energy.

If you decide to do it yourself the saving can be big. Hiring a contractor means you are paying someone else to manage your money and provide you with a finished product. The advantages if you hire someone good is that you don't work on it you just pay for it. You come out of the deal with a home you love and find no flaws. The disadvantages are that you pay additionally beyond the real cost to build in exchange for that persons expertise, time, and connections. What they provide will add up to about 20% of the final total price on your new home. Do it yourself and do it right and that 20% is in your pocket either in the bank or in savings that produce instant equity. As the real estate market has hit the downturn wouldn't you rather have saved the 20%and not have a home that is now possibly worth less than you mortgaged.

Think about building your own home. You can do it believe or not. Research the options and there are alot of them. Determine if it would be worth saving $50,000 for 4-6 months of your time. If you have questions on how to get financing or how to get started deciding what you could build, we can help. As an independent representative for Eagles Nest Homes I can help you build ANY home design you would like to live in. Send me an email.

Flooring/Packing/Finished Tile

Here is a finished shot of the slate tiling we did in the master bathroom. With the natural stone surface it doesn't matter how many times you wipe it clean with a wet sponge the surface would still give off residue. After you are finished grouting you seal the tile one last time with a gloss seal and the color comes out really well.

We are now working on laying laminate wood flooring. It is a Birch which happened to work out well with our Golden Retriever and his shedding blond hair. Mark Brackney came out for a few hours Tuesday night and helped me make some progress. The living room and kitchen should be finished tomorrow night and then we will work on the kids' bedrooms and the guest bedroom. We are doing the entire house in this surface besides the rooms we laid tile.

Our final electrical inspection should be complete tomorrow once the A/C contractor finishes his work.

Tonight Delinda packed most of the kids bedroom stuff and we will begin moving things in this weekend.

Exterior - Brick and siding complete

The brick and siding have been finished this week. I do need to have a mailbox built from brick but it turned out I didn't have enough to complete that part of the job. We are happy to have front steps finally. Once we are moved in we will start thinking about; capping off the posts on the front porch, adding white railing on the porch and down the steps, and we will add black shutters and paint the front door black.

Inside the house, plumbing fixtures are being attached. I am adding a picture of the one in the kid's bathroom that has been completed. We are also working on laying wood laminate flooring (which is much harder than it looks on tv) and anticipating our kitchen counters being installed one week from tomorrow.

Next post I will have to get a picture of the completed slate flooring. It looks great after having been sealed.

Completing exterior, master bedroom paint

The exterior of the house is coming together and looking very good. Tomorrow the brick mason is going to work on finishing up the garage end of the house and will build the steps we need to the front porch and to the back door that enters the garage. We are also required to have a brick mailbox. If there is enough brick remaining I would like to also have him build steps inside the garage into the house. In the picture of the back of the house, the glass door enters at the kitchen/living room area. We are planning a deck at some point so we are not building steps there. The white door enters the garage.

The siding contractor is going to do a vinyl beadboard type porch ceiling tomorrow. We had thought of doing that ceiling of real wood beadboard but the long term would probably be best served with vinyl for holding up to weather. We will finish things off with black shutters and we are going to paint the front door black as well. We will also need to pressure wash the porch and then apply a stain.

The plumber and A/C contractor both may be working tomorrow as well. The plumber is connecting fixtures and the A/C contractor is adding some forgotten venting and connecting the equipment.

I am also attaching a picture of the master bedroom paint colors. We are going to do crown moulding around the ceilings of the first story rooms so as you can see we are not worrying about being too neat with the paint where the wall and ceiling meet.

Tile, Plumbing, Siding, Brick

Today Delinda painted in our master bedroom. Three of the walls are a gold that we have used in the dining room and the bathroom. The fourth wall where the head of the bed will be is a walnut (brown). The two look great together. Sorry no pictures, we forgot the camera today.

Tomorrow we will finish grouting and sealing the master bath slate. The slate has a good shine after the sealer is applied. On Thursday the plumber will install the fixtures and we will have running water available inside the house.

The remainder of the siding, soffit, and trim work is being done tomorrow and that work may go on into Wednesday.

In the morning I have a meeting with a garage door company to determine how much further the door opening has to be framed before a door can be installed. We currently have a 16 foot wide opening but the height is greater than 9 feet which calls for a custom ordered door.

Our brick will be finished either Friday or Saturday. We plan to begin laying flooring by Friday.

Continuing tile

The half bathroom, the laundry room, and the kids bathroom are all grouted and ready to seal. We have been working on the master bath slate and have all of the full size pieces laid. Tomorrow we are going to do all of the cuts and plan to seal and grout over the weekend. We have the plumber scheduled to install the fixtures on Wednesday. Tomorrow our flooring arrives for the rest of the house. We are laying a birch wood laminate which has a blond color. We bought the flooring from www.simplefloors.com and saved a lot of money. The flooring already has an underlayment pad attached.

Yesterday we had work done on the soffits. I had to hire a siding contractor to finish the job for me. I couldn't get the high reaching work done by myself and don't have the time either. They are going to finish the siding and do the trim and soffit work.

Tomorrow a garage door company is meeting me to look at our door opening and tell me what we need. A standard door is 16x7 but our opening will be closer to 9 feet high. I also have to do some additional framing around the opening to house the track system the door will ride on.

David is pulling the final electrical wiring tomorrow and said he will have us ready for our final inspection by Monday.

Those of you who live locally are welcome to come volunteer a work day in the next three weeks!

Tile & Kitchen Cabinets

The kitchen cabinets were installed today except for the details (crown moulding, kick plates, trim pieces). At noon tomorrow the countertop fabricator will measure for their template to build the Corian counter. It is really nice to see the cabinets hanging and they look good with the wall color.

The past few days we (primarily Delinda) have been laying tile. While I have worked Tuesday and Wednesday Delinda did most of the tile work in the kids bathroom and the utility room. All of the full size pieces are in place. Tomorrow we are going to work on the 1/2 bath laying all full size tiles and then we will go back and begin doing cuts. She has done a great job on the tile to this point. I thought for a split second this evening I was a surgical assistant handing the scalpel to the surgeon as I handed her tiles and spacers and she put down the mortar and positioned the tiles :)

Driveway, Walkway

The concrete was poured this week. Monday they will come back and put in the expansion joints. I am working on lining up the brick mason to come back and finish what he had been waiting to do until the concrete was finished. Once the concrete is complete I would also like to apply a coat of wet-look sealer to the drive and walkway. In the garage I plan to apply a colored sealer that will keep dirt and grease from sticking to the floor.

The past couple of days I had been out of town but Delinda continued to paint. Today we finished putting down the Hardibacker on the upstairs bathroom floor before laying tile. Tomorrow afternoon we will complete mudding and taping the joints and then we will be ready to tile.

Wednesday and Thursday the cabinet installer will do his part and we are hoping to have the countertop fabricator come do their measure on Friday.

I have decided to pay someone to do the trim and soffit work. I will finish up the remaining siding but it has turned out to be too time consuming a job for one person along with everything else we are doing in addition.

Conley's room, spare room

Delinda has been working on painting Conley's room and the spare bedroom. Conley has a blue and gray room and wants a pirate theme. The spare room is khaki, the same color we did in the living room and office.

We had rain today so the concrete was postponed. I have been getting quotes from garage door companies this week and am finding that I will need to do additional framing on the overhead. We need about 14 inches of overhead room to make the door and opener fit correctly and currently we have about 11 inches. The current height would be 9ft for the door and it would reduce the cost by about $250 to frame that down to 8ft. I am going to wait until all of the quotes are in before deciding if it is worth the work to make the changes. We intentionally used as low a grade as possible before pouring the garage floor so the driveway would not have a steep slant.

Preparing for tile/painting

The attached pictures are of Savannah's bedroom paint (shade your eyes!), she is going to have a beach theme.

Another photo is of the backerboard before tile.

We just had our appliances delivered Monday so they are sitting waiting for the cabinets to come hang out in the kitchen.

We have been working on preparing the bathrooms and utility room for tile flooring. Because we have wood subfloors we have to apply a cement backerboard to the floor before tiling. So far two bathrooms are ready for tile and in the third I have all of the board cut but need to apply the mortar. The backerboard has to be mortared to the subfloor and then screwed to hold it snug in place. We had planned to buy a ceramic tile we liked at Home Depot but the day we went to buy it they had a special order of Indian slate so we decided to go with that in the master bath.

Delinda has continued to paint between helping me with the bathroom floors. She has Savannah and Conley's rooms painted as of today just now leaving our bedroom, the entryway, stairway, and spare bedroom.

Dining room, Mbath, 2nd bath paint, concrete

The concrete work finally got started today. Yesterday the concrete contractor had a Bobcat at our house to grade the gravel but the guy who dropped it off didn't leave any keys. They finished leveling it this morning and got the garage poured. This weekend they will come back to form everything else that needs to be pured and complete the job at the beginning of the week. Paul Miller is doing the work and had intended to complete everything the same day but couldn't get things rounded up between equipment and guys to do the work.

The dining room and bathrooms are now painted. Delinda chose bathroom tile and we are going to begin working on those floors. As soon as that is complete the plumber will come connect our fixtures.

The kitchen cabinets are sitting in the living room and the installer's wife let us know today that he will be calling tomorrow to schedule.

Next color

Great weather today. Rain moved through yesterday but today was sunny, in the 70s and things look very green outside. I had been thinking the grass would need to be cut soon before I had to hire someone with better equipment. By today it was too late. Fortunately Matthew, the son of Ray (the contractor who helped us get through the dry-in on our house) has a landscaping business and was in the neighborhood. He cut, trimmed and used a blower and our grass actually looks pretty good. I don't think it will take too much work to have nice thick yard.

We got back to painting today. As I prime the rooms, Delinda paints. She has moved into the office and is using a khaki that also is in the hallway and living room. The office is to your left as you enter the front door. It is pictured with the ceiling fan. When we finish the room we are going to add french doors. To your right is the stairway and the entry to the dining room which has the hanging light with the shades. That view is from the dining room into the kitchen.

Delinda has done a great job with choosing colors and also with picking the hanging lights you see.

Painting

We have continued painting this week. It has rained since last night so we didn't do any painting today but plan to be back out again tomorrow afternoon. The downstairs and stairway have been primed and Delinda has painted the living room, kitchen, hallway, and the 1/2 bath.

We are going to use wainscoting on the lower half of the 1/2 bathroom walls.

Many of our lighting fixtures are now hanging so progress has been good. I am expecting the gravel I had delivered to level the garage floor to be spread on Monday.

Kitchen cabinets will be delivered on Tuesday.

Paint - kitchen & living room

Delinda started painting yesterday. We are using three main colors on the 1st story walls, a deep red, khaki, and a cream. The red will run the long wall of the living room into and around the kitchen. The khaki will come out of the kitchen and wrap around the half bath going into the hallway and over the other two living room walls.

The unpainted wall in the picture is where the khaki will begin and the red will end. As you can see we don't need to worry about painting behind where kitchen cabinets will be installed.

We are going to use white trim for the base and crown mouldings of the kitchen and living rooms. The trim will make it easier to transition the red wall to the white ceiling and provide more detail in the rooms. When you enter the house from the front door you will be able to see all three colors of walls. We will probably use the khaki and or cream in the dining room and office as well.

Painting

Friday we bought the paint we would need for all of the downstairs except our bedroom. We had intended to get things started but I had to do a lot of running around for a couple of customers so the day's time got ate up. We need to first go through the house and use a shop vac to make sure there isn't any dust or residue from the drywall finishing that could get stirred up and on the wet paint.

The drywall finishing turned out looking really good. Bill Thompson and Jimmy Walker did the job. I was happy with their work but it took much longer than we were quoted because they sub out the hanging, tape, and mudding. Bill and Jimmy then come in and do only the finishing. The entire job required 240 - 4x12 boards, 3 - 4x8 green boards, 41 buckets (60 lbs each) of mud, and 2 - 500 ft boxes of microbead for the corners. They preferred to use the paper backed corner bead because the paper blends into the mud and results in fewer chances of future cracks. Their work is guaranteed for 2 years.

I hope to have gravel poured early in the coming week and concrete poured by the middle or end of the week.

Drywall finishing up

The drywall will be finishing up this weekend. The guys doing the tape and mud are completing their part this evening and then the texture will be done this weekend. We are going to have a light orange peel type texture on the walls and what is called "knock down" on the ceiling. The finishers are going to do the paint on the ceilings while they are in the house. The hanging crew accidently covered up the socket for our washer so they are going to have to fix that before the job is complete. We also realized we have to cut a vent for the dryer to the outside.

Once the drywall finishers get out of our garage we can move forward with the concrete. We went to the house this afternoon but didn't accomplish much. I need to pick up more siding and am hesitant about the soffit and trim work on the exterior. The aluminum coil is coated in vinyl and is bent around the corners and requires a "metal break or bender".

Once the interior is ready for paint we need to get on the kitchen first. The cabinets arrive the 8th of May to be installed. Weather has been great and it looks like Spring has arrived finally for good.

Ground inspection, concrete, brick

Tomorrow we will call for the ground inspection on our electrical work. Once that is approved we can fill in the trenches in the yard and arrange for the concrete contractor to begin work.

The brick is as far as it can go while waiting on the concrete to be poured for the front steps. The drywall contractors are working slow. It has made me wonder about getting someone else out to finish the job but that might delay it more.

Brick

The brick masons started yesterday and finished about 80% of the job in one day. We will need a concrete base poured before the brick front steps and brick mailbox can be done. The masons have the wall on the front of the garage, the last row on the back of the house, the front steps, mailbox, and the walls on either side of the garage door opening left to complete the work. We had rain today and I don't think they worked because of the weather.

The drywall contractors called this morning and finally got back out on the job. We are at two weeks now since materials were delivered and the finishing just started today.

Once I can get the electrical ground inspection done we will have the excavator fill in the trenches in the yard and level things out. After that work is complete the concrete work will begin.

Paul Miller (Steelers fan - even has a tatoo!) is doing the garage, driveway, base for the steps, walkway, and base for the mailbox. He does detailed work with etching on the edges, uses expansion joints to prevent cracks, and is reasonably priced as well. He prefers to do the entire job in one day.

The new old front porch - HGTV pro article

By Marcia Jedd
As more porches sprout in front yards in neighborhoods across the country, the builders of the homes behind them meet the wants of today's homebuyers with a kind of architectural back to the future. Popping up in both renovations and new construction in many parts of the country, it seems to be all about the new old-fashioned porch.
"On one hand, there's a comeback in vintage or traditional-looking homes and front porches are inherent to those homes," says Paul Buum, AIA, associate with SALA Architects, Inc. architectural design firm in Minneapolis. "On the other, porches are very popular because of the resurgence of urban living that we see in many cities in which people want to reconnect to their neighborhoods and the social aspect is a big part of that."
In fact, some new master-planned communities are even requiring front porches, he adds.
Bigger is better Porches are also larger these days, Buum says, often spanning the full length of the front of the house. Depending on the style of home, many production builders also are making front porches standard and building them wider than a decade ago—eight to 10 feet wide instead of four to six feet.
"In both remodels and new construction, full lengths are nice for homes facing a street, and so are wider porches to accommodate tables, chairs or the old-fashioned porch swing," Buum says. He adds that wraparound porches with screened-in portions are popular in rural settings and on farmhouse-style homes.
Design considerations Ensuring continuity with the architectural style of the rest of the home is a key design consideration. A porch should be consistent in detail and character with the rest of the house. "This is particularly true with front porches," Buum notes, "since it's the first introduction a person has to the home."
Buum outlines these porch design trends:
More color. Design elements emphasize color. "You see a lot of multi-color palettes today. You can have one siding or cladding color, another trim color and an accent color on window sashes," Buum says.
Bolder columns. Architectural columns often are on a larger scale for design or aesthetic purposes while enclosing a smaller structural column (typically 4x4 or 6x6 posts), as long as the columns are scaled appropriately to the home. "Columns can be round, squared or tapered and sit on the deck of the porch or a pier."
Durable materials. A well-designed porch typically will encompass the same exterior material as the rest of the home, such as stucco or brick, or synthetics such as fiber cement siding products by James Hardie, Maxtile or CertainTeed's WeatherBoard siding.
Flooring. In addition to traditional pine or cedar floors on front porches, an increasingly popular choice is ipe, a Brazilian hardwood that is an incredibly strong wood, resistant to insects, rot and mold. "Ipe is moderately priced," Buum says. "Installation can be more expensive than other wood floors, because it's more time-consuming given the very dense wood, which requires pre-drilling."
Especially in remodels, Buum advises contractors to consider how views from the inside of the home will be altered from front windows and how an expanded porch could alter light flow inside the home.
Buum stresses that porches should be pitched to drain away from the home. He also recommends floor venting to prevent moisture build-up and the many accompanying problems that result. "It depends on the base of the porch, whether it's on piers or a continuous long low brick wall. In any case, we vent from underneath the porch, at the base or perimeter walls, to the sides or front so you allow air movement to keep the joist space ventilated and dry."
Marcia Jedd writes frequently on design and construction issues.

Hanging sheetrock

The sheetrock hanging is about 90% done now. The drywall contractors are way behind what we were told as far as a completion time but it is coming along. I had to have more sheetrock delivered this morning to cover the garage and a few areas of the interior.

We are having cold weather this week and that has pushed back plans for the brick until Monday. It will be better to have that job done when the temperature gets back into the 50s and 60s. I think tonight will be in the 20s.

attic access, door handles, siding

Hoyt hung around above the garage for awhile today finishing up a set of stairs into the attic space. We also completed putting in the door knobs and can now lock up the house. The front door handle required drilling into the door to set the bottom of the handle in place.

The siding on the front of the house is finished except at the top where we will be attaching the soffit. We also did more work on the back of the house. Soon we will need two tall ladders to reach the back heights but I plan to get out on the roof and do the sides and the dormers first.

As you can see there are some ditches dug in the front yard. On the right front corner of the front yard is the water hook up and a ditch had to be dug for laying the piping up to the house. Around the center of the front yard is the underground power and it was buried about five feet below ground. There is a ditch dug about three to four feet deep and about 60-70 feet long up to the location for where the meter will be located on the right side of the garage door facing.

David and Scott are working on the underground electric tonight. The sheetrock crew say they will be out tomorrow and could be done hanging by as soon as Saturday. I don't think that will happen but we'll see. Brick will be delivered tomorrow.

Installing siding

We got serious about installing siding on Saturday. We did a lot of measuring and leveling and made progress on the front porch. By the end of the day we covered most of the face of the porch. We also met the drywall contractor, Bill Thompson.

Sunday we didn't work at all but Delinda and I placed our order for kitchen cabinets (Kraftmaid - maple w/cognac glaze) and Corian countertops. We actually may be in the house before our countertops are delivered. That will be interesting...

Monday we finished up the more of the porch siding leaving the top level open before the soffit is in place. We only were able to work until about 4:30 today.

Tuesday we progressed much faster, finishing the front porch, covering the entire right end of the house and moving around the back about a 1/4 of the way. If you look at the pictures you will see where the siding begins about 4-5 feet up the house. The area below that will be brick along with the front of the porch where you see block and wood.

The sheetrock was ordered today and will be delivered tomorrow afternoon. I got 200 -4x12 boards, 30 buckets of mud, and 10 rolls of tape along with corner bead. Thursday the drywall crew will begin hanging. We are supposed to be ready to paint in 10 working days.

Tomorrow we are ordering brick and the masons will start Tuesday.

Drywall

We are ready for hanging drywall. All of the interior walls have been covered with plastic sheeting to create a vapor barrier.

After thinking it over and over we decided it was best to hire someone to hang and finish the drywall for us. I am beginning vacation this weekend so we will have a lot of time to get things done. While someone else does the hardest job we would have probably faced, we will work on siding the exterior. I had started the siding last weekend but we realized the garage opening had not been framed correctly so today I had to take down everything around the garage that we had cut and hung. We have to add a 2x4 on the left side of the garage opening and remove one on the right and cut back the base a little.

We have had several people in the neighborhood stop to see the house. A lady who lives up the street from us offered to make a trade with me on her home. Her son-in-law builds homes in the New Orleans area and she had moved up from there after Katrina. We see a lot of Florida families and other nearby states moving into the area.

Getting ready for the next step

We are about 99% complete with insulation. Delinda and I got several hours in today. We still need to insulate the roof interior of the three dormer windows and we will be ready to begin putting up plastic sheeting. We will probably move onto working more on the siding as we wait for cable and phone wiring to be done.

I need to have the gravel guy come out and tell me how much it will take to raise the garage floor to the correct level before pouring concrete. We have to decide whether to spend more on raising the floor level or having a taller garage door built. The problem is that we have a good slope up to the level of the lot before going into the garage and I don't want to raise the floor so much that my driveway isn't level at all.

insulation and siding

We have been working this week on insulating and got started today on siding. I had to go to Nashville to a sales meeting so I am sorry to say I didn't get to work with the insulation but Delinda and her Mom, Judy have done about 60-70% of the wall insulation. Everything on the 1st story is done and they started on the 2nd story today.

We bought a whirlpool tub for the master bath that has required a box to be framed around it. I wouldn't recommend buying a tub that does not already have the box built in. It took a couple of days to figure out how to get that thing level and build the frame so the tub would be centered.

Yesterday the temperature dropped back down to highs in the 40s after reaching the mid 70s earlier in the week. Ironically just as we planned to get the siding done we have to stand out in the wind and cold. Mark and Gary from church came out and helped today, Mark had worked with siding before so that was a big help. We are going to do about 70% siding and 30% brick on the exterior. Our upcoming plans are to be ready for sheetrock by mid week and probably get the garage floor poured and leveled before working on the garage walls.

Prepping for insulation/sheetrock

This weekend we worked on nailing in blocking in closets and the kitchen so shelving and cabinets will have something to better hang onto. We are ready to begin putting in insulation and sheetrock right away. The electrical work is ready for the rough-in inspection and the plumber should be done by Tues. At least we can get started on the areas where there is no plumbing if we need to. The A/C rough-in is complete except for a couple small items.

We will probably get our brick delivered this week and possibly the siding. We will do the siding first and then have the mason come in at least after we have put up the bottom levels of siding around the house. When we do the interior work we plan to do the house room by room putting in insulation, hanging sheetrock, and then mudding.

The weather has been great, high 60s to 70 lately. We are looking forward to getting some serious progress underway.

Rough-ins coming to completion

Everything got delivered yesterday but one item was broken and had to go back. We spent this evening put up insulation behind where the tubs and showers will go and building some boxes for the return air vents.

I talked to David today and they plan to finish up electrical, phone, and cable wiring by Saturday. The a/c will be done tomorrow and plumbing should be d0ne Friday or Saturday.

Delinda changed her mind on the brick color and knowing my issues with color blindness I am sure she is right. I got another quote from a brick mason today. We plan to get the siding complete before doing the brick.

kitchen redesign

Our plumbing rough-in begins this week so we decided to mix things up a little with the kitchen design:) We are lucky we thought of these things before it went too far. I met Mike from Home Depot a few days ago to get the kitchen measured for cabinets and realized that our eat-in bar was too short. Extending the bar would have cut into the walk through space into the kitchen too much, so off to the drawing board. We met with a kitchen designer who sells Merrillat cabinets and redesigned the layout with the bar in the kitchen and moved the refrigerator and pantry to where the bar had been. The result is more open space, better seating for quick meals or hanging out and the addition of a center island without spending any more money. We are going to go back to Home Depot and have them draw up the changes as well and see where we get the best price.

Today we finished up shopping for all remaining electrical, cable, and phone wiring supplies. We also bought our tub/shower for the second bath, and whirlpool and shower for the master bath. The bathroom supplies will be delivered for the rough-in.

Tomorrow we begin adding some dead wood to prepare ahead for sheet rock and working on getting some trash ready to burn.

Monday we place order for siding materials.

We had hoped to be working on insulation by this weekend but had to make other plans because rough-ins are running a little slow.

Hoyt and Judy came up this evening and are staying for several weeks to help us out and visit.

April 27th

I am going to give 60 day notice where we are living tomorrow. That means we have to finish the following items to get the house completed.

• rough-ins - A/C, Electrical, Plumbing

David is going to wire for telephone and cable while doing the electrical

A/C contractor is working very slowly.......

Plumber will be in and out in three days

• insulation - begin 3/2
• sheetrock - begin 3/9

Hoyt, Delinda's Dad, is going to help supervise the sheetrock

• siding - complete before end of March, probably right after sheetrock
• brick - need to place order, already have chosen color and mortar
• flooring - already chosen
• trim and paint

We are doing our own flooring, trim and paint

• kitchen cabinets

Measurements are being done by Home Depot, probably going to use a Maple, KraftMaid

• septic - toward end of project
• final electrical
• final a/c
• final plumbing
• lighting
• set fixtures and appliances
• install cabinets
• concrete

Rough-ins in progress

The HVAC contractor will be finishing up with rough-in by Friday.

The electricians are working on our job after their regular hours so that will take a little longer. David has a baby coming in about a week so I know he has probably more pressure on him than getting wiring done right now. I talked to him Monday and he said they would be done by the 1st of the month.

We need to get the plumber started by Monday and he will be working about three days on site.

Our roofer got the flu so his plans to be finishing this past Monday fell through.

Our plan is to be working on insulation by the 1st of March and be ready for sheetrock before the 8th.

We are having more Spring-like weather this week so it may be time to get the brick out to the site. We had a few weeks that were too cold for mortar and we have held off on the brick until consistent warmer weather holds up. This week is consistent temps in the 50s.

Roofing almost done

The roofer came back out yesterday. We had him hold off until everything was complete on the outside. He had done all but the front roof, the dormers, and the porch when he left. I told him I didn't expect him to work yesterday, the wind chill was in the 20s. We also cleaned up the lot and need our dumpster emptied.

Supposed to be snow throughout the day so we are going to look for a place the kids could sled or we will take them to ice skate at Ober Gatlinburg. They have ski slopes there but they don't allow sledding.