Still going

Despite my lack of posts, a lot has happened at the site.

The basement floor got poured, and Framer came back and framed it in. The house looks almost finished down there. BIL (with a little help from MrDinks) did the gravel and under slab insulation. The cost of the concrete was getting out of control, so I elected to forgo the heating tubes under the slab. There's a good chance we'd never need it, with the insulation there. And we would have to know what the plans for future finishing of the basement would be, and hope that we picked the right zones. And then there's a chance that whoever puts in the walls might put them in the wrong spot and use nails instead of glue and pierce the pipes. A lot of ifs to spend the $2k+ on now. If we decide we want heated floors, we can always put in electric in the future.

Looking towards the cold storage/furnace room, after the gravel was put down, before the foam.

MrDinks taping the foam.

Looking through the furnace room into the cold storage. 

From the furnace room, towards the stairs. 

From the furnace room to the front west corner. 

The roofers are being a pain in the ass. They were supposed to be on site the first week on Nov, and be done in a couple of days. Well, it snowed in early Nov, and they said that put them behind. Um, well, you were supposed to be here BEFORE the snow, so you can't blame the weather. They finally showed up 2 weeks later. They've now been around for over a week, and aren't even half done. When they show up, they're around for a couple of hours and then take off again. I came to the site one day to see if they were there, and they'd left a torch on, inside the house, unattended. (They are doing the flat roofs, so they need the torch for melting on the rubber.) They also cut off  below the windows instead of wrapping it around on TOP of the window ledge. The whole reason for having this done before the windows go in? So they're going to fix that. MrDinks has pointed out that they are the first crack head crew we've had so far, so we're lucky there.

The other issue I've been dealing with is with one of the lumber suppliers, who is also a joist company. Back in August, they gave us a quote for joists and trusses. It was a lot lower than our original joist company. But they wanted a $500 deposit to drawn up the joist plans. It was enough of a savings to pay the deposit. But then they dragged their asses on getting the joist plans done. It took them twice as long as it was supposed to. Even when I called them and said "I need it today or I am ordering the joists elsewhere." They still took another couple of days. And then the floor joists were wrong. And then they wouldn't sell us the roof trusses unless we bought their wrong joist design, even though it was too late. Meanwhile, we've been buying a lot of material from them (studs, subfloor, etc.) and they've been pretty good in that respect. But I've been fighting with them over the deposit on the joists and trusses that they refuse to sell us. I finally told the salesman this week that I was going to take it up with Visa. He agreed to give us the deposit back, and basically said they won't be selling us anything anymore. Huh. Okay, I was going to not buy anything from them again if I had to go to Visa. Weird that they chose to give us back the deposit AND lose the rest of our business.

The exterior doors have also been a struggle over the last few weeks. A couple of days before they were supposed to be delivered, the door company called me and told me that the style of door I'd picked couldn't be fitted with the key pad lock I wanted. Buh. I struggled with the choice of doors in the first place. Most door companies have zero options that are suitable for a modern style house. The ones that do, have very few. And then since Ryan spec'd 7' doors, I'm even more limited. I had picked the only 7' door with modern styling they had. And now I can't even get a keypad lock on it? The problem with the majority of doors is the windows still have this curly trim on them that all doors have had since 1984. Even doors the manufacturer considers to be "modern" have trim on them that matches everything at Home Depot. In the end, I settled for the modern door with more glass than I wanted for the front door, without keyless entry. And for the back door, we're getting the keyless entry on a somewhat ugly door, with less glass. Both are 7' tall.

We decided to hire one of the siding companies to do the exterior insulation and house wrap so we can proceed with stuff on the inside. So I hired one of the companies. Then he said to just get them to do the siding, too. And the price has come down, so we booked it. They started on the insulation on Wednesday. They'd probably have been done already if they weren't working around the roofer.

We also had the temperature drop to -25C on Friday, and got about a foot of snow, so neither the roofer nor the siding guys have been back since Thursday. There was enough wind that we had big drifts of snow INSIDE the house, too. We shoveled that out yesterday. Windows are supposed to come on Thursday, pending the roofers actually finishing their part. So I am looking forward to that. And the plumber is supposed to start putting in pipe tomorrow.