DELAYS AND PROGRESS

Despite owning the house for almost 3 weeks, we still have no utilities and have been living in the trailer which is parked in the backyard.  The main issue revolves around a permit needed to allow the power company to connect service.  Initially we were looking for a simple “reconnection” permit however, after the city conducted their inspection, we needed to “rough in” all of the new electric for our eventual kitchen layout in addition to removing a bunch of old knob and tube style wiring.  We completed the work at the end of last week so we are crossing our fingers that the house will pass tomorrows inspection and we will have power by mid-week.  I foresaw some delays arising once the permit became more complicated so I rented a Honda Whisper 3500 generator to power the trailer and all of my tools in the meantime.  This generator is simply amazing- it gives us more power than we could possibly use and operates at a noise level that is slightly above a washing machine!  We have been able to live in the trailer with heat/AC, cable/internet, lights, water pump, etc. on about 2 gallons of gasoline a day!

In reality, while these “delays” have been a huge personal inconvenience, they haven’t stopped our progress on the house.  We had originally planned on completing the kitchen & bathroom first however, because of the utility situation, we shifted our focus to the other rooms.  I spent the last week gutting the kitchen and installing all of the eventual wiring- here are some pictures;

 I also built the closet for the guest room.  Here is a picture- keep in mind that this is a free standing closet because we covered the original narrow closet to make the space needed to recess the refrigerator in the kitchen.  As I mentioned in the first post, it may be tough to “get your bearings” but it will become easier to follow as the house progresses.  This new closet features 4’ of closet space and will reuse an original door & jamb from the house when we seal off the back foyer.  In addition, although it may be tough to follow right now, I offset this closet 12” to provide space for an extra deep built in cabinet in the eventual kitchen (same wall);

 

Moving to the master bedroom, I built the built in dresser for the room’s shallow closet.  While we will eventually build a free standing closet in this room also, I wanted to utilize the existing 16” of space so I built a 4 drawer dresser and 2 sided linen cabinet with shelves to fit in the space.  Here are some shots before it was installed;

 I spent some time patching and caulking the living room, dining room and hallway over the last week.  Today CC and I primed and painted these rooms and I will be installing the crown moulding tomorrow.  Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures to post however I hope to have something once the trim is up.

All in all, we have not really lost any time despite all of the obstacles.  We should have 3 of the 7 rooms completely finished by the end of the week in addition to a new roof & furnace regardless of the outcome of the utility inspection tomorrow.  Since the kitchen is now gutted, roughed in and the appliances/cabinets/counters are ordered, it should take less than a week to complete the room.  Figuring a week for the bathroom, a week for the exterior, a week for the basement and 2 weeks for touchups/misc., we remain on schedule for a finish date of 14 December.  Wish us luck!