Did I mention our doorbell will play MP3s?

Eric has a pet peeve about loud, startling doorbells, but the iChime will play "La Cucaracha" when our friends arrive. Sweet!

Heat Wave and Cleveland Returns

Cleve is back, helping Eric for a few days cut holes in the masonry for our various dryer vents, bath fan vents, stove hood vents, etc. They rented this killer drill from Home Depot (please note size in relation to notebook), but it turns out that it's too heavy to actually hold, so each hole requires building a platform to rest it on. Meanwhile, Bruce continues to work at the pace of an ancient tortoise and I continue to research how on earth to fire and recover some money from him. I think he got wind of me calling the holder of his license this week, and all of the sudden found some money to buy more supplies... We're making a major push toward drywall. This weekend for me will entail a lot of scrubbing bricks and running speaker wire, which will be satisfying! Unfortunately no more 40 degree days like today, I think it's supposed to snow again!

Just received at 9pm from Eric: "The Hilti TE 76P-ATC with a 6" diam carbon tipped bit is my new best friend. Although it is a heavy friend. I'm really glad Cleve was around to help construct the temporary shelves / braces for the drill. Cutting through 2 courses of brick takes about 1.5hr or so; setting up the brace takes about 1hr or so as well. We got (3) 5" dia holes drilled and (1.75) 6" dia hole drilled today. Hoping to get the remaining 4" dia hole done and finish off the .25 of the 6" dia hole done early tomorrow. Maybe in time to return one of the drills or get charged only half days. Either way the drills and bits are working better then expected. Backing it up for the night."

To Do List

Every day we work toward knocking out this list of to-dos before drywall can go up. Eric is working on getting the drywall / finish scope & drawings out so we can get bids lined up, and then he can focus solely on the list. Here it is:
1. Patching the leak in the roof & waterproofing new vents - started last week, finished today
2. Install CAT5 and speaker wire (which sort of requires knowing what system we will go with) - Gill the Verizon guy is going to do this with us this weekend for a very reasonable price
3. Cutting holes through the brick for bath fan and appliance venting - this will take a couple days, rental of a heavy duty drill, and Eric needs a helper. Any volunteers?
4. Minor framing fixes - just a couple hours of fixes
5. Minor masonry repairs - we need to take out nailing boards and replace with brick along 2 walls. Eric also wants to brick up a chimney in the basement. It's definitely colder than ideal for this!
6. Electric rough-in inspection - This involves our ongoing saga with Bruce. God, I feel like this issue is consuming so many of my thoughts every day when I have such better things to spend my time on. Today I called the Industrial Trade Licensing Board to learn how to call his bond (the woman was out of the office) and researched small claims court in DC. I also called JW Electric (B- from the Better Business Bureau), who holds the electrician's license that Bruce works under and the $6,000 bond I would call, and left the owner a voicemail about my problems asking him to compel Bruce to finish ASAP. I am so sick of this guy's excuses.
7. Insulation - We already have a quote for this. Eric's going to call and make sure he still has time for us.
8. Alarm install - We're all lined up for this but the installers want to go after Bruce is done (see #6)
9. Seal exposed brick walls - We want to clean & seal our exposed brick walls now so that the red dust doesn't get on our drywall later. We're seeking a matte finish and my new favorite website, apartmenttherapy.com provided the secret recipe: 1/5 Elmer's glue, 4/5 warm water painted on with a brush and completely non-toxic. We tested this out on Saturday and I think it will work well!

When I write all of this out, it seems like a lot. Ugh, I'm so ready to be done.

Santa's little helpers

From Eric: "Got a call at 7am telling me that a roofing crew was available to install the new skylights and begin repair work on the roof [even though we weren't on the schedule for another 2 weeks]. After realizing i was not sleeping i said ok lets do this. By 8:30 there were 6 amigos on the roof cutting though 3-4 layers and 100 years of roofing material and bad patch jobs. The temp is apparently 20 degrees without the wind; and it's gets pretty wind 2.5 stories up on the roof. I think every type of roof has been on this sucker including gravel and tin. I decided to break in the new 1.4 qt Stanley [Stanley is his thermos], which can apparenly be used as a car jack and be run over by a bulldozer. Hopefully I will not need to use it as a roof rafter. I'm betting that 6 dudes jacked up on coffee can get the skylights installed before the snow starts to fall this evening. They seem to be on schedule and masters of cutting lumber off their leg with a circular saw......"

Exterior lights

Today the electrician is roughing in exterior lights (yay!) despite constantly complaining about the cold. Eric put together some exterior renderings with the lights and house numbers and they make me very excited!

Low voltage

Our electrician continues to drag while providing every excuse in the book. Here's a picture of some recessed lights he hung last Monday - he hasn't been back since then. He also hasn't done any of the big things such as set our meter outside or run the main line of power to the boxes. I can't stand him - I think today is his last chance to show up for work!

In the meantime we hired a security system installer (to start next week) and an interesting pair to do our low voltage work: Helen works full-time for Pepco and Gill works full-time for Verizon, and they, along with an assistant, ran a ton of wire yesterday for phone, internet & cable. Helen is also going to help me & Eric run our own CAT5 and speaker wire once we figure our what sound system to get - Eric is obsessed with being able to control it from his iphone. Here is a picture of the low voltage box near an outlet. It's important that low voltage wires are at least 6" apart from high voltage ones or there could be interference - see how the low voltage ones are coming from above into the box and the high voltage ones are coming from below?

Also, here's a picture of the distribution panel where all of the CAT5 comes into and out of. Our speakers will run through these panels too.

It still looks like there's a lot to do, but plumbing and mechanical are both done and passed close-in inspection. After electric & low voltage, we will need to insulate and then it's time for drywall!!

Circus of subcontractors

I've been delinquent in posting but we're making a lot of progress. The largest challenge has been dealing with our circus of unsophisticated, irrational contractors. For the longest time our plumber was MIA and slow but he is a truly honest guy and now he's coming through for us. Then recently our HVAC contractor tried to guilt us into paying him before he was done by bringing up a "trust" issue, which we've heard before and makes us furious. Now, our electrician who's hard up for cash just hit us with a completely bogus $1,300 change order and since we said 'no' has not returned to work. It's just never easy!

The picture here is of Joshua, our plumber from Nigeria, testing the drain pipes today for leaks. He's going to use air to test the supply pipes since it's getting cold now, we definitely don't want water that could freeze in there.

The faucet also shown here caused a lot of headache. Unfortunatley the hardware on this one didn't match the install manual , our experienced plumber was totally confused, and communication with the UK manufacturer was non-existant, but finally Eric realized he could just hook a hose up to it and figure out where the water came out, so now we are good to go. We have a shower head on both sides of the tub so we each have our own... awesome!