Shaping the Site

Sunday Lynna & I finalized our plans for the East side of the property. There was quite a slope, but we had a landscape plan and saw a few changes that would improve things. Monday Logan returned and spent the morning moving the piles of dirt and carving out a pathway East of the daylight basement. Lynna kept scraping floors and I did some tractor work then smoothed & oiled cabinets. I went out early today with the dogs and saw our house glowing in the sunrise. It was quite a contrast to the pictures I took later this morning. Today was supposed to be cloudy with rain showers all day but we only received a few brief, drizzly periods which barely moistened our dry soil. I did some more tractor work, moving the big rocks Lynna wanted for landscaping and shaping the area around the catch basin. I brought some large rock down & spread it so the basin surround was back the way it looked before. I did cabinet finishing the rest of the morning and Lynna cleaned more plaster muck off the floors. The crew from Knez Construction arrived around 10:00 AM and blew insulation in the attic.

Scraping Floors & Finishing Cabinets

Yesterday and today we continued scraping excess joint compound, tape & paint off the floors. We are taking back the house room by room and so far have done the Family Room, Nook, Kitchen, Laundry room, Hallway, Dining Room, Living Room and Entry. I also put two coats of Danish Oil on the kitchen island cabinet and the bathroom cabinet for the bonus room above the garage. I still need to put finish on the toe kick platform on both cabinets though. Its crowded but the nook makes a good finishing area for now. I gathered up all the cabinet shelving, should be lots of storage.

We had decided to do the cabinet moldings later to save some $ now, but the crew at Deeter's made up some Cherry and Maple crown and trim moldings as part of their package. So that is another big plus.

Cabinets

We knew cabinets would be a big dollar item in our construction budget because Lynna needed an ergonomic work area with lots of extra drawers for storage and special features like appliance lifts, upward opening doors and some surface mounted uppers. The extra bathrooms also meant more cabinets. We went through the design process with 5 suppliers and looked at one other showroom. Three of them were unable to provide the drawer sizes & special features Lynna needed and their bids were coming in the $26,000 to $40,000 range. We found two small shops that only did custom cabinets and they could build anything we wanted in any size or configuration. We were surprised to find their prices lower than the two "Big Box" stores and the big "Custom Cabinet" shop. To get the best price, we chose cabinets in ready to finish condition. The final cost was $13,670. This was about what we spent on cabinets for our Olympia, WA home twelve years ago and less than half the cost of the higher bids. Don't be confused by these pictures, some of the upper units are stored upside down for stability.

Back Fill & Cabinets

Logan finished most of our back fill yesterday and brought a load of crushed rock for the base of our deck stairs. He will return next week and do some final shaping around the daylight basement area. The fellows from Deeter's delivered a load of cabinets at lunch time and returned with the second load late in the afternoon. Cherry for the kitchen and Maple for the Laundry and Bath rooms. We stored them in the Family Room and Nook with a few base units in the Kitchen. Even unfinished they are beautiful and I will oil up a couple today so Lynna can see how the final color looks.

Ready for Backfill

Tuesday we passed inspection on the rain drain system and got an OK to cover but I was required to add a clean out and put tracer wire on all the long runs away from the footings & foundation. I completed that yesterday & called Logan to schedule a date for backfill. He was just getting ready to leave town for a few weeks of vacation and had no work in progress. He can always use a few more $$, so he is coming by first thing today & expects to have most of the work we need before leaving town. Jose put the final touches on the interior trim last week & Lynna is pleased with the way her paint color selection turned out. Sherry & Paul: see my comment added below the previous post. :)

Rain Drains, Garage Door Hardware & Inside Paint

We made good progress on the drain system & completed the line down to the Catch Basin on the corner of John's property. I couldn't locate my 2" concrete chisel but made do with a 7/16" cold chisel to punch a hole into the concrete. Jose painted the yellow today. He had only bought 20 gallons, ran out & had to purchase more. I wasn't sure if it was 30 gallons total or 30 gallons more. Either way, that's a lot of paint. We like the way our garage doors turned out! I'm still going to paint the white trim around the windows green.

Progress

I haven't taken any new pictures because we have been very busy with multiple physical therapy appointments at Kaiser in Salem. Recovery from my "Tripartite Fracture of the Humerus" on Memorial Day has been good with a considerable increase in range of motion and strength. The downside is I can expect at least a year or more for full recovery. I still have a very weak left arm with not much of a grip but at least I can now do some work moving lumber and working on my rain drain system.

Monday, we drove into Salem early so I could shop at the Keith Brown(building supply & cabinets) outlet store. They had some good buys on hardwood scraps and cabinet doors but only a few base units that were cheap at $130 but they were poorly made & shabby looking. Not sturdy at all & put together with light duty staples. Didn't even appear to be glued together! I talked Lynna into stopping at Kelly's Interiors on the way to my PT appointment because we had seen a nice looking base unit on sale there about 8 weeks ago. Lynna thought it would be long gone but it was still there. They had first marked it down to $429 then $209 when we last visited. Now it was down to $149. We bought it & hauled it home. It appears to be Cherry with a light, "limed" finish, 39" wide, with double doors and dovetailed drawers. I am going to make it into a wide topped workbench with some 2" Jatoba (Brazilian Cherry) planks that I was given. This wood is twice as hard as oak so it should be perfect for a workbench top. It darkens over time to a deep red & is very pretty. I used some to accent our red oak floors & to make kitchen counter tops when we built our Olympia home.

Jose is supposed to paint the interior today and the Overhead Garage Door techs are coming to install our openers and put on the exterior hardware that will make our garage look like a carriage house. Lynna & I are going to try and finish the rain drain system today. I will get some pics up this evening.

More Pictures

Lynna helped me with the Storm drains this week and she also kept busy policing up the worksite and watching the progress. We are impatient to get the house completed to occupancy so we can move on to landscaping. We have a lot of potted plants just waiting to be placed. There are some beautiful yards in the neighborhood, especially the house next door to the South. She employs a full time gardener so the place looks like a park.

A Very Busy Week

We made great progress this week:

1. Logan hauled several loads of crushed rock in, re-graded our driveway and spread the new rock to create a good bed.

2. The folks from Panther Paving finished shaping the rock & compacted it. They topped it with asphalt and made a good looking driveway. The city required a paved driveway to approve occupancy or we would have left it in crushed rock for a year or two and then done a nicer looking one in cement, but this is a good solution for much less money.

3. Jose and his crew finished the exterior paint scheme that Lynna put together and I like the end result. It looks good and should be cheery during our long, gloomy Winters.

4. Jorge and his brother had a problem with their texture machine but got it repaired and were able to come up with a light knockdown size that Lynna liked. They sprayed & troweled the whole house interior on Friday.

5. I worked on the rain drain system and have it almost done except Logan has to dig the trench to connect downhill to the catch basin in the NorthWest Corner of John's lot. From there, it will drain through John's system to the street below. We had hoped to capture most of the runoff from our roof by directing the water to a rain garden in the lowest part of our lot at the NorthEast corner but the county/city rules wouldn't allow it. Runoff from our roof has to be directed into a piped system that delivers it to the street. Seems to be a poor solution to me as it forces even small towns to have an elaborate & expensive stormwater drainage system.

6. Today the installers from Triple D construction came back and repaired the skylight. The tube had come apart where the solid tube connected to the flexible one. Seems fine now but time will tell.