Another Video Walkthru

Our power has been going out and then coming on again all day long, so I thought I'd do a quick video of the house. 

Landscaping

Ok... so all of my still cameras are dead, so this post will have to do without pictures... use your imagination.

Here we are, a full week after we moved all our stuff into the house from storage. There are a few lingering boxes on the first floor and a whole boat load in my office. I plan on getting to them... uh... sometime.

The big news is on the outside. Our water spigots were finally installed, so we started to plant our lawn. So far we have the front lawn done and this week I'll plant the rest. We also hit up the local Lowes with the in-laws and bought two car loads of trees and bushes for 75% off! What a bargain! We've laid them out where they're going to live out their lives, but I haven't started to plant them yet. I was going to do that today, but I decided to go rock climbing for the first time in 3 months. I deserve it so don't give me any grief. Yehearme?

Oh and a little tip: don't put lawn fertilizer into an open wound.

Unpacking

Unpacking
Originally uploaded by bredto

A quick note. We brought all of our stuff up from storage, where it lived for the past two years, this past Sunday. We had Friends and Family help us on both end loading and unloading the Uhaul. Once unloaded, we spent all Sunday unpacking and shuffling boxes around the house. Tonight after work we decided to tackle the kitchen. Here are some pictures of the process.

I'm still waiting on our plumbing guy to come back and install our outdoor water spigots so I can plant my lawn. I'm told it's still ok to plant it, but we're getting into the lower 30's during the nights. My fingers are crossed.

  

Nearly done

Front Deck framing
Originally uploaded by bredto

It's been a while since we've updated this blog thing. After many, many long days the flooring installation is complete. You can also see that we've started our front porch/deck. Robin, the guy who did our drywall and stairs is helping us build it. Actually, I'm helping him and he's building it. We had to dig three holes four feet deep by hand and that wasn't any fun at all. It took us literally all day. The deck is the last thing we need to get our certificate of occupancy so we're anxious to get it done.

 

Appliances delivered

appliances
Originally uploaded by bredto

Today our appliances were delivered which is one more step to making our house livable. Unfortunately, the stove and dryer won't be working until the propane people come back to hook them up. We did make a run to the get some food to put in our new fridge (you served us well bud light fridge, but it's time to go) and did a load of dishes in our dishwasher. Once I can cook again it'll feel like a real house!

So once the guys left, the flooring has slowed down considerably for multiple reasons. Reason One - The work week started. Reason Two - they left me with the hard stuff... for me at least. Lots of work on the saws and difficult nailing. Reason Three - pain. I've opened up a gnarly blister from swinging the hammer and it's nice and tender. I believe installing flooring is a good way to end up in a wheelchair. My back kills and my knees hurt. Cool. Now only another week or two and I'll be finished!

  
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Flooring going down

acclimation process 3000
Originally uploaded by bredto

Today my sister-in-laws brother, Matt, came up along with my brother and nephew to help me get started laying the flooring. I'm very glad they did since Matt has had experience do floors before. We worked about 6 hours and 200 sq/ft. in. They'll be here through tomorrow morning and Matt insists that the pace will pick up and we should be able to knock out quite a bit more.

I'm also beginning to see why guys geek out about tools. Yesterday I drove down to Binghamton to borrow various saws and sanders for the upcoming job. Those along with my absolute favorite new tool, the pneumatic nailer, I feel like to can do anything!

My camera is broken, so no pictures of the process yet, but I did shot a little video which I'll post eventually.

We're in!

into the kitchen
Originally uploaded by bredto

Yesterday we spent our first night in our house. You can see we still have work to do, but it feels great to be out of our musty old apartment. My brother came up with one of his daughters to help us out with the move which was great. We still have about 75% of our stuff in storage in my in-laws house in Binghamton which we'll get once the flooring is down. Speaking of which... We picked up 900 sq./ft. (in about 50 boxes) of straned bamboo yesterday as well. It was amazingly heavy with each box weighing in around 50-60 lbs. We're hoping to have a friend come up mid-week to help us get started installing it.

The painter finished painting the downstairs too. You can see we added an accent wall of "copper penny" in the kitchen and used 2 shades of grey for the rest. It looks awesome.

We won't have appliances for at least another week and a half which isn't too cool, but we do have a microwave and a micro fridge which will hold us over till then.

  

send in the pros

kevin the pro
Originally uploaded by bredto

My mother has been trying to convince me for a week to hire a professional painter to finish painting our home. I'm not spending my money on a painter when I can do it myself. No way. Well, she went ahead and hired a painter. He showed up around 10:30 am, looked around asked what colors go where and started to cut in the ceiling. By 1 pm he was finished with 2 coats on the ceiling and waiting for me when I got back from the paint store with the wall colors. Quitting by 4 or so he had completed the first coat on the walls. The dude is fast. He made me feel bad about myself for taking so long to paint the upstairs. You can see the color (silver fox by Ben Moore) in the small picts below.

Friday the carpet guy came and did his thing. We now have super smooshy carpet throughout the upper floor and it looks like a real house.

So Time Warner Cable... I called and expressed my displeasure with them by using lots of potty words and describing in detail what I've been going through for the past two months trying to get cable in our new house. The very nice lady on the other end said that she was going to send someone to install Friday between 8- noon. I was at the house Friday and when 1 pm rolled along I decided to call and use my potty words more to see where the installer was. I got a call back from a very high up and he assured me that they were going to make sure that I have cable by the promised September first if it killed him. Today around 4pm rich came out and installed our cable. The moral of the story is --- if you freak out on enough people you can accomplish anything!

 

staining isn't fun

half and half
Originally uploaded by bredto

For the past two nights we've been staining our bannister trying to get it done before the carpet guy comes. We got it done, sort of. While there is still some more to stain, everything that will touch carpet is done. The first night our screens weren't installed so we couldn't open the windows for fear of insect attack and I lost a few years of life by huffin' the fumes. Tonight I was all smart like and put the screens in for a little fresh air.

We're going to be moving into the incomplete house this weekend and continue to work on it. We're picking up our bamboo flooring this Sunday. If I can get enough flooring down by Wednesday morning, we can then have our appliances delivered. Can you lend me a chop saw?

Other bits... We have water (but not hot yet) and it tested negative for all bad germs and such. We can flush toilets, take cold showers and everything. We picked up and installed our cool glass shower door for the master bath. Time Warner Cable is run by clowns. I've called about 6-10 times in the past two months and each time I spoke with someone they assured me that service would be hooked up by September 1st. I got a call yesterday from them saying I was good to go and do I want to transfer service. I told them I'd call them back because I couldn't believe that they ran the cable to the house since I was there the previous night. After a quick trip to the house it turns out they didn't. Idiots.

  

Paint tour

Paint tour from Bret Olsen on Vimeo.

Too tired to write anything. Will update later.
 

2 weeks to finish?

plumbing going in
Originally uploaded by bredto

We told our GC that we need to be in the house September 1st and he insists that we'll be in by then. Looking at the state of things it's hard to believe. That said, this past week some big projects were started... the plumbing and heating systems. I'm hoping to have running water sometime this week. They also finally have installed the window and door in the basement so we now can lock the house without jamming a piece of wood against the basement door.

They are still working on installing the banister of the main stairs, but I think that the last main job inside the house (there are dozens of small jobs though). Once they get their equipment out of the house we need to paint the entire first floor, stain the banister and install 1000 sq. feet of wood floor. On the outside we need to have stairs to the front and side doors built to get a Certificate of Occupancy. The stairs that they want to build are lame and we're hoping that we can sneak around having to build them so we can have some time to design some stairs we won't be embarrassed by.

 

paint and more

front bedroom green
Originally uploaded by bredto

I've been on vacation for the past week, but work still got done in my absence. Chris painted the front bedroom and the second bath, the siding was completed and the main stair railing worked continued.

Our appliances were delivered this past Wednesday. Unfortunately, we didn't want them delivered since we haven't put the wood floor down. hrumph.

 

Painting continues

painting ceilings
Originally uploaded by bredto

We started painting again. We've completed the master bath and back bedroom. I've also been painting the ceilings for a few days now. I can only handle a few hours at a time, but I think I can get the entire second floor ceilings done before I leave for vacation this Friday. That'll give Chris the ability to finish some more walls while I'm gone.

 

Siding going up

siding
Originally uploaded by bredto

I've been away for work for a few days and many new things have happens in my absence. The most obvious as you pull up is that they have started to put up the siding. As you move into the house you'll see that they've also started to work on the stairs to the second floor as well. It's pretty detailed work, so it'll be slow going I assume. They also hung the wall cabinets in the kitchen making it look more and more like a kitchen. We're thinking about heading to IKEA to buy butcher block for the kitchen island this weekend which would nearly complete the kitchen work.

I can't recall if I've posted this already, but the basement stairs are up too. I plan on buying a window and french doors today so we can seal up the basement so the baddies can't get in.

  

Bad trim replaced

bad trim
Originally uploaded by bredto

We noticed that almost all of our trim work in the house was peeling the first time we stepped into the house. Our GC made some calls and Ritz Craft sent a couple guys out to replace all the trim, which they did just this week. The guys said that they had never seen this before (of course) and that Ritz Craft, the paint company and the supplier of the unfinished trim were all talking to see what went wrong. What's important to me is that we have new trim.

In other news... The electrician made all the connections and we now have power at the house. Grading the land is nearly complete. Plumber should be coming soon to give us water too.

We're talking with heating system companies to get our system installed. I wanted to do geothermal heating, but a quote of 22k scared me away. We'll see if the other quotes for a LP system are less expensive. Keep you fingers crossed for us.

  

Trench work

water line from well
Originally uploaded by bredto

In the past few days, they dug a trench in the back down to our well and one in the front to the electric pole. They ran the appropriate plumbing and wires and today they were filling the trenches in.

I also spoke with the electrician and he made the connections necessary for us to get some power flowin'. He said once it's inspected we should have electricity by mid next week. He'll also be installing some outlets in the basement, upgrading the basement lights and installing a outdoor fixture for us at the basement walkout.

 

Backfilled

Backfilled- front view
Originally uploaded by bredto

We were surprised when we went up to the house last night and found that they had backfilled the foundation. While this view of the house looks tall still, from the front as you pull in, it looks much more like a house and not so imposing. You can actually walk up and look into the windows! The ramp up to the front door isn't incredibly dangerous to walk up anymore either.

They also drywalled the basement. I was hoping to have electrical outlets installed first, but it's too late for that I guess.

 

Paint

A few minutes of our first two days of painting. Just so you know, we ended up using the paint we bought for the master bath in the master bath.