Day 202 - A very pleasant surprise!

(click any picture for larger view)

The roof is coming along. A false dormer is now in place.

"Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow, nor gloom of night shall keep the postman from his appointed rounds."

That's what Freda and I thought about the crew when we found out that they had been working this week in the steady rain. Because of all the rain lately, we had expected to see little progress when we went out to the land. And most of the crew are also going to work on Saturday if the weather is good (it is forecast) to make up a bit for all the rain last week. What a pleasant surprise! We are glad we have such a dedicated team!

This is the truss structure above the great room. There are some 2x4s laid horizontally that provide structural rigidity to the roof. These trusses were manufactured in two pieces because they would have been too big to travel on the roads otherwise.

Bell Canada delivered the underground telephone cable so we popped out to the site to drop it off. I took these photos when we were out there.

We plunked down a deposit on the fireplace today - a 42" clean view from Kingsman Industries, who manufacture them in Winnipeg, MB.

Charles, Dave White, and Steve Berry marked out the septic field on Monday, with Steve Berry. Steve is going to move some of the excess material around for us.

Charles came over this evening to clarify something Dave said. Afterwards, we talked about what's coming up next...
Roof - complete truss installation and sheathing. Three trusses are missing so the roof may be complete except for that.
Hydro - Dave White will come on Friday and dig the hydro trench and place the conduit for the hydro, cable, and telephone cables. That will be inspected next week, and (once the roof is on) then the hydro service can be installed. After that...
Driveway - build up driveway and do some grading around the house with some of the excess material there in piles. Put a wheelbarrow load or two (haha!) of Granular A (crushed rock that passes through a 3/4" sieve) on the driveway. That will make it usable for cars, as the bumpy nature of it is really only useful for trucks. Charles actually got a flat on his truck because the rock punctured the tire.
Garage floor - Install drain in the garage floor, and install mesh, heating tubing, and pour concrete (maybe in two weeks).
Stone - Conrad has ordered the stone from Merkley Supply so he will get started on that when the stone comes in.
Stucco - waiting for quotes from the stucco installers. We need to select colours still.
Garage Doors - we have selected the installer, but need to wait until the floors are poured before he will install the doors.
Roof shingling - will be a go as soon as the roof is sheathed and it is not raining.

Once the roof is on and the windows in, we will be calling the bank for an appraisal and a draw on the mortgage, and sign the papers at the lawyers. Also, a bunch of the other trades can start coming in and doing their thing. We will be glad when all that starts to happen.

Plumbing fixtures ordered

Today we plunked down a 25% deposit and ordered our plumbing fixtures from Mondeau. This is a photo of the American Standard Town Square faucet and sink. We are using these products in the master bath.

From a budget perspective, we are slightly under budget for the plumbing fixtures. (Yippee!) I guess there's a first time for everything!

In other news - we have tentatively booked Wednesday January 25th as our moving day.

Day 201 - rain, rain, rain, rain!

Satellite image showing Hurricane Wilma from October 25, 2005 @ 0245

Rain rain rain! Will it ever stop?

There were only 4 working days over the last 2 weeks because of the rain, and it rained yesterday and is raining now, and is forecast to rain the rest of the week! Arrgh!

This is the fourth week (yes!) of working on the trusses, and we are nowhere near being ready for shingling. Yes, four weeks is a very long time, and all of this rain is part of the reason!

Charles was meeting Dave White, who is doing the septic today. As we're getting on for winter, this needs to get done pronto otherwise freeze-up will be here and we will have a problem.

We have selected our garage door supplier. Mark wanted to get the elongated panels but they aren't available in the size of our doors, although the doors are available in taupe (Garaga calls it "claystone"). The garage door guy won't install the doors until the floors have been poured.

Day 199 - a rainy Sunday...

(click any picture for larger view)

This photo shows a couple of things. First, sometime over the past few weeks, our municipal street number sign was installed. This is so the 911 emergency services (fire, ambulance, etc) can find your house. Secondly, the photo also shows that the garage windows were installed yesterday.

This is the view of our house from Howie Road, which is essentially the back boundary of our property. The roof framer said that they worked 4 days over the last two weeks because of all the rain.

Looking forward... the forecast for the next week is: rain, except for Friday.

Day 198 - more updates

Today we were very busy and didn't have time to go out to the land. It was a beautiful day, and the crew was working at the house. We hope that most of the crew was able to work today and make good progress. It is forecast to rain from now through to Wednesday (it's just started raining now).

Other updates from the meetings I posted about on Day 194:

• * We picked up the exterior locks from Preston Hardware. We actually only ended up having to buy one extra lock in order to do the split finish. So that was really good.
• * The California Closets lady came by on Tuesday and gave us a quote for the closets in the master bedroom. It was quite a bit higher than we had expected. Given the trend for some of the major expenses (i.e. over-budget), it seems unlikely that we will be able to get a fancy setup like that. Although California Closets started with a young guy and a truck in California, it is now a Canadian company. (surprise surprise!)
• * We didn't have a budget review as planned on Wednesday evening as Charles hadn't completed the expense computations, etc. I did a very rough calculation and guestimated that we have already used up our entire contingency allocation. We talked about the stone work. Conrad's labour estimate is 50% higher than our actual budgeted amount for the stonework, and that's without the material cost! So that quickly blew the lid off the contingency.
• * We have rebooked the fireplace appointment (I think the new appointment is next Wednesday).
• * Today our new snowblower was delivered. It's a Bolens, so that means it is green with a cream coloured auger. As far as I can tell, the colour is probably the only thing that distinguishes it from the other brands manufactured by MTD. The other MTD brands are Cub Cadet, Troy-bilt, Yard-Man, Yard Machines, Bolens, White Outdoor, McCulloch, and Cub Cadet Commercial. MTD doesn't make a snowblower in all of these brands.

When Charles was here on Wednesday, he gave us a list of homework:

• * Plumbing fixtures: as noted on Day 194, we have an appointment at Mondeau to review our fixture list before ordering. We wanted to do this anyway to make sure it is all correct, but the guy at Mondeau insisted on it. We will place the order on Monday.
• * Exterior door hardware: as noted above, we have picked this up. This means that the doors can be locked and the house can be secured once all the doors are installed.
• * Garage doors: we have narrowed the field down to two people, and have a couple more questions for one of the suppliers just to make sure we are comparing the same things.
• * Light fixtures: we have selected all of these products, and will order them in late November/early December.
• * Flooring: we have selected all the flooring, and will have a meeting with Mike Burley (of Burlco flooring) in a few weeks.
• * Cabinets: we have selected the cabinets. Once the interior partitions are in place (drywall doesn't have to be installed), Heinz will come out to the house and take accurate measurements so he can build the cabinets to the actual dimensions (which always differs from the planned dimensions).
• * Propane supplier: we need to find one!
• * Communications: need to call 310-Bell to get some cable delivered. Also need to get some coax to hook up the cable (although we may get a satellite dish).

So the only things we need to do (that we haven't done or are in progress) are select a propane supplier and get the communications cable.

We also need to do some research for a chain link fence installer, and Freda is thinking about the paint colours.

So many details.... we are sooo glad we made most of our selections a long time ago.

Day 197 - Start of roof sheathing

Friday Oct 21st.

The roof framer and his crew, as well as Charles' crew are relaxing for a few minutes at the end of a long day. It was a beautiful day (no rain!) so more of the trusses were placed, and the plywood sheathing on the roof was started. So far, two lifts of plywood have been placed. Each lift is 60 sheets of 4'x8', or 32 square feet. That means 3,840 square feet of plywood have been installed, and it's not quite half done!

This is the view from the garage doors.





I took this photo a bit later as the light was fading. You can see that part of the garage is sheathed as well. There is a lot of roof here. The 3rd lift of plywood is sitting here (covered in plastic in front right of the frame).


Tawny had a good run out at the land. I took this photo on the way home. She was panting here - see the blur at the end of her tongue, and just how red it is. That's bacause she os hot. When we were at the land, Tawny ran into the bottom corner of the open door of the roof framer's van (ouch!) and took out a chunk of fur about 3" around - she's going to have a bruise the size of Texas there!

Day 196 - truss progress

Oct 20/05

Fairly good progress today. The roof framer and his crew came today to help out with completing the truss installation and the roof sheathing. Unfortunately, a lumber yard was supposed to deliver three lifts of plywood for the roof but didn't because they "ran out". So the roof framer & crew did what they could and then left because the sheathing wasn't delivered.

What's a lift of plywood? 60 sheets, which covers 1,920 square feet 32 square feet at a time...

We had a meeting at 5:15pm with John Finlayson, of New Look Windows, to discuss the issues with the missing grills in the windows and the incorrect doors. John is undertaking to correct the issues with the missing grills and door glass.

When we were talking with John, Charles showed up with the first lift of plywood in the back of his truck. It must be very helpful to be unflappable like Charles when you're in construction, because something is bound to go wrong somewhere. Personally, I would have been very upset with someone who committed to deliver something that was needed for your critical path, and then didn't. If Charles was upset he sure didn't show it.

Day 194 - Updates

Freda has made lots of appointments for us this coming week...

• Tues Oct 18th - California Closets appointment
• Wed Oct 19th - Cost review with Charles, followed by budget and plan review
• Thur Oct 20th - Meeting with Charles and the window guy at the building site to review the numerous mistakes. (meeting not yet confirmed)
• Fri Oct 21st - Fireplace (meeting booked and then cancelled, trying to rebook)
• Sat Oct 22nd - Our new snowblower gets delivered
• Mon Oct 24th - Plumbing review and order @ Mondeau

So far, we have ordered the interior doors from Frank's. We have also reviewed the door hardware and are ready to order that from Preston Hardware.

It was another rainy day here in Ottawa and forecast for more of the same for most of this week. In order to make some real progress on the roof, Charles has arranged for a roof framer and a couple of his assistants to come on Wednesday and get the trusses properly in place and sheathed so the shinglers can take care of the roof. We need to get the roof on and windows/doors installed so we can make a bank draw.

Day 193 - Windy weekend

Day 193: 59 days to building completion, 90 days to Occupancy Permit.

This is the sight that greeted the crew on Monday morning. We had very high winds over the weekend, and the trusses over the garage were blown over. A few truss members were broken as a result.

This happened because the trusses were just tacked into place when the crane was here (in order to make best use of the crane time - which is about $2,000 per day). I guess there wasn't quite enough bracing to hold it all up.

You can't do that!!!

This is the lever set that we want use (Pembroke) on our doors. We want to get the lever in Venetian Bronze (VB) on the exterior (to match the finish on the light fixtures) but Satin Nickel (SN) on the interior.

However, as a cost-saving measure (or should I say profit-creating (for them) and inconvenience-creating (for us) measure), Kwikset (a Black & Decker company) no longer offers this "split finish" option. And they don't even offer this lever in the Venetian Bronze finish.

Freda and I were quite disappointed about this, and thought we would have to choose a different lever to something that was available in both VB and SN. We went to Home Depot on Friday (to see if they had any split finish options), where I encountered a person who must have been the most bitter man in the entire world (who ranted about everything!), and said nobody did split finish, except Preston Hardware who could only do that on handlesets (like you see on front doors). FYI... Preston was where we originally found the door hardware that we liked.

We went down to Preston Hardware on Saturday and discussed this dilemma with Armand, who told us "the Pembroke lever was available in the now discontinued Oil Rubbed Bronze finish - which is very similar to Venetian Bronze except it does not have highlights like VB. And I have a few inactive levers in ORB downstairs. I could switch the lever and the rose on the exterior so you can have that split finish with ORB outside and SN inside, but it will cost about $20 more per handle."

We looked at the plan and thought we would only need three handles like that, so we said okay. When Armand was switching the handles, we realized that we actually do need some inactive handles for the closets anyway, so we can use the newly liberated SN levers with the inactive fastenings from the ORB boxes. This means that it doesn't cost us any more at all! Fabulous. (I will save my rant about Kwilkset/Black&Decker "cost savings" for some other time.)

The only drawback is that we will need to buy two locks in order to create the split finish for the locks, otherwise the lever and the lock will have a different finish when looking at it from the inside. That will cost us a little extra and unfortunately there are not really any other options for that.

This was yet another example how the Orange Borg is not necessarily the best option for finding supplies...