Odds and Ends

The work for the past month has been a little bit of this and a little bit of that. We finished planting all of our shade trees - two white birches, two London plane trees and a weeping cherry. I've mowed the lawn 4 times already. It's looking greener than it ever has, except for one area which did not receive the proper topsoil last fall. We added a bunch of ComPro and Leaf Grow and seeded it again so that area should be looking better soon, especially with all the rain we've had recently.

We ordered a new set of basement steps from the stairbuilding place. These will replace the screwed up steps that our former carpenters built last June. The downward slope was too gentle and it resulted in not enough headroom in one part. It wouldn't have passed the inspection. The new steps should arrive sometime this week and Doug will attach them, hopefully before he goes off to the trombone festival.

The electrician started working in the basement which caused Doug to realize that it was time to finish the framing work down there. It is also time for him to wrap up all of the final bits of framing so that we are ready for the inspection as soon as the electrician finishes. The electrical rough-ins are almost complete, but the electrician is on vacation this week.

I've been busy with a lot of miscellaneous gigs so I haven't been around to crack the whip as much. It seems like when I'm over there a lot more work happens. Unfortunately I have finally gotten used to how long this whole thing is taking, so I'm not pushing as hard as I had been previously. The sense of urgency and the energy that it inspired has dwindled quite a bit. It is certainly a lot easier and more fun and more profitable to play a gig than it is to work on the house.

I'm really looking forward to putting up the siding so the outside will look finished and we can take that scaffolding down and get rid of it. The yard looks great now. Except for the 20 foot high tree stump from last October that Doug still thinks looks really cool. He says he wants to carve it into a totem pole. Won't that look nice? I think I'll carve it into something else. Obviously he will not decide it's time to chop it down until I've already made arrangements for someone else to do it. Maybe I'll have it chopped down while he's at the trombone festival since I've decided to not repaint the front door. We'll see.....

On the other hand, maybe I'll just chill for now since I don't want to see any unpleasant surprises when I get back from the Glenn Miller Festival in June - ha ha ha!!!

Let's see - what else? Doug has purchased the materials for the outside steps and he decided to upgrade the porch flooring material to tongue and groove. It looks nice but is very expensive.

I have mostly been working outside in the yard and trying to organize the cleanup inside in preparation for the big framing and rough-in inspection. It is a challenge because "organize" and "cleanup" are foreign concepts to one half of this couple. Every load of construction trash that I take to the dump feels like a victory of some sort. I'm really looking forward to a few more trips in the next week or so. I guess that covers it for now.