Vicki and Eric's House Build

[eric]

We finally moved in.

Our PM got us over the finish line after a failed electrical inspection abd a failed gas inspection, just to discover the water heater which was supposed to be LP field was actually provisioned as a NG model, which won't work.

To the PM's credit, he was here the following day to install it himself.

As we did our punch list walk thru, we found damage to our floor, which we could have pushed as a show stopper, but honestly we are so sick of the delays we simply said we'd take it as-is. The next day we found a few new damage spots on the floor.... ah well.

Oh, we are still missing a door knob. And a ceiling register.... but at least we are out of the RV.

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[eric]

and more....

[eric]

Cleaners came today....

[eric]

We are close. Reeeeaaaaallllly close. Electrical is done, HVAC is due this week, and then the blue-tape punchlist.

Before our drywall and spray foam were done, I'd pulled a bunch of Cat6 cable so that we would have wired internet where we would likely want it. I'd installed a wall mounted recessed patch panel in the water heater closet, and from that, pulled a run to a box on the outside of the house to connect the main feed to the house, one pull to each of the bedrooms, three pulls to my wife's office/craft room, one to the living room plus one to the wall mounted TV in the living room as well as the master. That all sat for the last four months doing nothing.

Spent a couple hours tonight punching down Cat6 plugs and installing them into the wall outlets. The feed into the house to the central patch panel and four of the outlets to the rooms are finished and tested. Arguably it's the most important four -- the two TV's, the bedrooms for my adult disabled daughter and the guest bedroom. I have one remaining in the master bedroom and three in Vicki's craft room. Intentionally left those for the end, as negotiating power. When I want to wrap up the job, Vicki has a vested interest in letting me finish them.

Definitely didn't go as planned - both of the cables I started with from my tester and the dongle to the respective outlets tested good, but then I started getting the same error on three different outlets... wire 4 and 8. Swapped out the two cables and everything tested fine. Then as I installed them into the wall plates, two of the rooms started to test bad, due to wires coming loose from handling. Repunched those and they tested good again.

We also got permission to hang all of the window the blinds and bathroom mirrors. One bathroom is done, the other will get done this week.

[eric]

Plumber showed up today. Hopefully someone can explain how thus drain will work....

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[eric]

A good day. Rock day.

Crew showed up at 8am and the front porch and fireplace were both up by 2pm. They're brushing down the mortar and cleaning up by 4pm.

Electrician also showed up, we have lights and outlets installed. And one of the trim-out guys from Summertown came to install all the door hardware, so doors can actually be closed and latched after six months.

Feels like we're getting close to done.

[eric]

Today was an unpleasant surprise: a stop-work order from Summertown.

The reason? They believed we had shorted them some $14K in funds... So the electrician who had driven three hours from Nashville to do their thing... sent home. That was at 11:00 this morning.

By 5:00 pm with a couple phone calls to our bank and the title company, it was finally determined that no, we hadn't shorted STM anything. They'd suddenly found the $14K....

Somehow, the tile crew didn't get the memo. They showed up around 1:00 pm to do our shower and bathroom. And we weren't going to tell them.

Moral of the story... hold on to every draw request and keep your closing statement with the bank handy. We had everything in order, and none of our numbers matched what STM thought they were supposed to be. And it would have been a very interesting week if we had to suddenly come up with an additional $14K because of an accounting error.

Oh, still no porta-john. I'm pretty sure I saw one of the tile guys coming back from the woods.

That must have fallen under the stop-work order as well.

[eric]

Here we are just past the first week of February, which starts our eighth week without a porta-john for the contractors.

On December 13th, I told our PM that the company who had been servicing it came out and picked up the Little Blue House. It never came back.

Since then, we had contractors here for full days doing drywall, floor install, floor de-install, doors, trim, cabinets, countertops, and also tile installers...

I'm fine with someone peeing in the woods, but that's not all they're doing. The dogs found it.

Fortunately or not, our PM's boss called to check in and see how things were going. And I told him where the contractors had been going....

Screenshots last forever, and I had that one ready to go.

Let's see how long it takes to get that resolved. Maybe the build will be done by then. Or maybe I should just call the health department and see what happens....

[eric]

How could I forget our floors....

On December 23, our floors were delivered.... Three pallets of "Hermitage" althought we had ordered "Timberwood".... guessing that vendor names for a pattern might not match Summertown's, we let that slide.

On the 26th, it was installed and looked more like Sandlewood. Very light greyish tones, and subtle wood patterns. Not at all what we thought we were getting.

Turns out it wasn't what even the correct material. Over the next couple days, we had a couple different reasons given... Timberwood had been discontinued over the summer due to tariffs, natural variations in the colors might be different in person.... the last reason was that an entire container of material had been mis-labled by the supplier and distributed.

STM offered us three solutions... take a credit towards more upgrades and keep it... choose a different color that was available, or see if there was enough material in the three warehouses to actually install Timberwood. That's the option we took, knowing we were now looking at a 2-3 week delay.

January 18th, the installer showed up with one pallet of the correct floor, removed the old and got about 40% of the new floor down. They finally finished on the 24th.

The following week, doors and trim were done, finishing up on January 31st.

It's finally looking and feeling like a house.

[eric]

After the framers were done and the metal was up on the roof, we found a small pond in our living room.

Or, more correctly, the spray foam installers found it and brought it to our attention on November 20th.

We could see where it was running down the edge of the fireplace and dripping down onto the chimney supports and doorframe into our master bedroom.

And it continued. Each time it rained....

When the fireplace installer was out in early January, he noticed that some of the insulation in the attic near the chimney was damp to the touch. He also saw that a piece of the grey tape used to seal up the flashing was not actually attached to anything, and still had the backing paper on it. Fixed it on the spot.

A week later, our newest PM came out, and went up into the attic. Didn't find anything damp other than an insulation batt which had been removed by the fireplace installer, and presumably what he found as being wet.

So far, as of January 12th, it hasn't returned. Maybe it all came down to a piece of tape that wasn't installed correctly, which is a bit frightening on its own, but once the chimney gets faced, we'll know for sure.


Fingers crossed.

[eric]

The kitchen... that's been fun as well.

December 8th, the cabinets showed up, but drywall is still not finished...

December 15th, a week later, the cabinet installers show up, and we discover that the vent opening for the stove is exactly 12" in the wrong location.... so the vent hood doesn't get installed (and is still sitting on the floor two months later).

December 27th, countertops arrive... and they're the wrong color for the kitchen.

January 5th, the correct countertop arrives for the kitchen, but they didn't correct the pantry. We throw our hands up and take the wrong color for the pantry because we're sick of the delays...

[eric]

The fireplace.... we selected a wood burning fireplace. Unfortunately, it was nowhere in the paperwork that our PM was relying on.

On October 23rd, four weeks into the above ground build, our PM asked us to confirm that we were supposed to have a wood burning fireplace or if it was a change order, because it was nowhere to be found in the spec sheets...

So... we looked at the contract. Forwarded a screenshot of the contract page that says "wood burning fireplace" and the PM confirmed that, yes, indeed, that's in the contract.... Finally, things start moving. Or so we thought.

It wasn't until November 13th that the fireplace was finally ordered. On December 22nd, the installer arrives with it.

Only two months on this little adventure... but it didn't really delay anything because of all the other issues going on.

[eric]

The drywallers came on Thankgiving week.... November 25th to be exact.

Day one, they were short green board. Both bathroms and the laundry room were done with normal sheetrock because they only had enough to do the kitchen.

December 4th... yes, nine day later, they showed up to do the mud and taping.

December 8th.... they're still mudding and taping. And our kitchen cabinets arrived in the middle of that. The guys unloading place those in the main room as well as the bedroom. We frantically tried to cover everything with plastic, because with the mudding and sanding, there's drywall dust floating everywhere...

December 13th, they say they're done.

All in, they took 18 days to do what should have been a three or four day job.

[eric]

Time for spray foam.... crew arrived on the 19th, but ran into technical issues. Their sprayer was broken, and it took them about 12 hours to finally get it running.

By that time, they asked if it would be OK to sleep in the shell, which we couldn't really say no to. Brought some extra sleeping bags and blankets out for them, which they gladly accepted.

By the end of the day on the 20th, everything was pretty well coated.

Kids bathroom:



Water Heater:




Laundry:



Master Bath

[eric]

We now have electrical and plumbing roughed in.