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.

The kids model the newly installed front door

The front door was put in yesterday. It will be nice to get all of them in soon.

I had an interesting day with the bank. When we started planning the house there was no requirement for a building permit in the county unless you were in city limits. We processed our loan on Nov 30th and as it turns out after September 1st you had to go to the planning commission and give them $100 to for a permit. Although they never come look at what you are building they found a way to raise some extra money. We went through the loan process telling the bank that no permit was needed. Everything was fine until this week when our loan funds quit being disbursed into the account. Although no one had called us we found out they need a copy of the permit within 30 days of your construction beginning. So I ran downtown to the planning commission to find out what I needed to do and had to go tonight to get measurements for the easements on front, back, and sides of the house. Tomorrow morning I go back downtown with the info, a sketch, the title, and $100 and we will be back in business.

All framing complete

The photos are of the master bath and master bedroom.

The front porch, interior stairs, and remaining interior framing was completed today. When we left this afternoon the crew planned to install our front door and the back door exiting the living room.

Savannah finally got to walk upstairs today. Until now we didn't have any stairway just a ladder. She had peeked above the floor standing on the ladder but wouldn't climb all the way. She was excited to walk into her bedroom and closet but was terrified to walk back down the stairs without a handrail or solid walls.

We are very happy to see how things look and are looking forward to seeing the front door, sidelights and transom in place.

Just about there....

I went out to see the house this afternoon. The porch roof is sheeted and half of the decking was done when I left. The wood decking looks great. The tongue-in-groove fits together really snug. The master bathroom and closet were being finished up and some beginning support for the stairs had been started. David had been out working last night and had most of the electrical single gang boxes hanging and was going to be back out this evening for all of the hanging light and fan boxes. The HVAC contractor had been forming duct work as well but I didn't run into him.

Tomorrow will be the last day of any crew being out at the house. We will be handling everything else from here on without a builder consultant. Ray brought our exterior doors out to the house today. He said he wanted to sit down with me to pass along a final list of subs he would recommend along with some pointers before we go off on our own. He has been very helpful in getting us to this point and has gone well beyond what I had asked from him when we decided to do this.

I will need to get with the plumber to make arrangements and once that all gets completed we will begin to get our own hands dirty.

Front porch, interior rooms update

Electrical work and HVAC
are to begin tomorrow

Conley's room

Here are some images from
what things look like now.

Savannah's room