Behind the Scenes

Lest you think we just sit at the picnic table watching everyone else work ... here's what's going on behind the scenes.

pouring over hundreds of paint samples and pictures looking for that perfect shade of blue or green

Preston is building some of the cabinets for the kitchen, mudroom, laundry room and living room.

this is the "cap" for the top of the wall oven cabinet he already built and the base cabinet for the wash tub in the laundry room.  The tub came from my grandfather.

staining unfinished doors.  we had some but needed a few more.

power washing one of the beams that came out of the old house.  It has been put up in the kitchen.

lots of other beams and floor joists that we hope to find a use for.

Rather than rent a big dumpster, Terry is collecting the construction trash and stock piling it behind the old barn.  We will sort thru and burn

This beam was hand-written with "June 1, 1849 Gone to Troy" ... how cool is that!?!  Troy, OH is about 45 miles by today's roads.

Preston spraying the beam for the house with tung oil.

Doors after a spray coat of polyurethane

Spraying the doors with poly

Staring endlessly at samples of cabinet doors, tile, counter top, paint.  Somehow it will all come together.

Roof Is On!

There hasn't been too much going on this week besides the roof.  The roofing crew was superb!  I would highly recommend them.  Skyline Roofing out of Greenfield, OH (937) 481-3258.  They did a beautiful job and had a great work ethic.  They arrived about 6am each day ... still dark.  They put on lighted hats, like a miner wears, and turned on the lights on their lift and got right to work.

There are some pieces missing to complete the ridge vent which is a little critical to keeping water out.  We were hoping they would come up with that today as we are expecting rain tonight and it would be nice to test the roof before proceeding with the insulation and drywall...but it didn't happen.

Yesterday, the framers were on-site.  They built the deck for the front porch and fixed some of the trim.  Did I mention we told the contractor last week we didn't ever want to see the lead trim guy working on our house again?  Probably a little late on that decision, but necessary none-the-less. 

I was sure the space between the caps and the trim was different on each pilaster.  The head framer (who subs out the trim guy) was insisting it was an optical allusion.  So over the weekend, Preston lifted me up on a pallet with the tractor forks and I measured all of them.  Four of them were 6" apart and five were 5" apart.  So he was a little grumpy yesterday when we encouraged him to measure them himself.  They are now all at 5". 

The window trim on the dormer has been another thorn ... the trim has been crooked after two attempts.  Good news ... they fixed it yesterday.  Bad news, they worked from inside the house so as to not step on the metal roof, and broke the window track and the window doesn't stay up.  Fortunately, the contractor was able to fix it.

We made a visit Saturday to the mill that is going to cut our wood floor and stair treads from old reclaimed barn lumber.  We took with us about 140 sq ft of flooring we took out of the old house.  It is a full inch thick, so they are going to re-mill it down to 3/4" to match the other and at the same time, cut a new tongue and groove on it.  We're going to have that installed in the entry, so we can say, 'this floor came out of the old house.'

On Sunday, Preston helped a guy bring over his saw mill and they cut the two pine trees that were in front of the old house into boards.  He also had brought home a huge hickory tree that his boss had taken down and milled that, too.  All together, they ended up with over 1000 board feet of wood.  I had him cut a few slabs of the pine about 2" thick.  Once it's dry, we'll glue up the boards and make it into the 8' bench for the mud room.

Shopped for carpet and tile today.  I picked a few things and they are going to ship samples to me so I can show Preston.  I also received an email that the kitchen cabinets will ship August 27th... woohoo!

view from the bridge

Remember this picture!!!

Porch framed.  Posts will be wrapped in white trim to match pilasters.

Finally! The Icing on the Cake!

Well, the trim STILL isn't done, but we've moved on to paint, stone, siding and roofing anyway.  We had a wonderful visit with my Mom and Dad for about 5 days.  It looked like a regular camp ground here with their RV, Terry's camper and our camper. 

Mom and I went to the tile shop to look at some tile for the back splash on the stove wall.  She was a big help in coordinating colors.  We also celebrated her 70th birthday which is later this month.  Happy Birthday, Mom!

The painters started last week and confirmed what we already knew... the trim guy's work was sub-par.  Disappointing.  But they will do what they can to cover up his mistakes. 

We watched the stone masons start the stone work last Thursday when I was home with my parents.  They are from Guatemala and do AMAZING work... very pleased!!  The chimney is stunning. 

The roofers and siding crews started today.  The siding guys need to side the dormer and the gable side of the house adjacent to the garage before the roofers do the roof ... that way they won't have to walk on the finished metal.  So today, they started the siding.  The roofers put the felt paper over the ice guard and continued to metal most of the back side of the garage and started on the front. 

I met yesterday morning with the interior trim carpenter finalizing the door & window trim design and the stair parts.

Here are some pictures that I just took today.

First bit of siding..ooooo, how pretty!

stone around front of house and pillars for the porch

Oh ya... the sliding glass doors finally showed up last Thursday when we were home.  So pretty!

Metal on the garage roof

side of garage

the garage doors no longer close because the trim guy put a piece of trim that was supposed to help them close better ...NOT.  To be fixed later.

pretty chimney!