Painting Continues

Here's the living room (homestead resort pale olive), the entry way (twilight moon) and the half bath (baked squash). I don't have a good picture of the sun room - well, I have a picture but you can't really see just how bright it is. Consensus is to change it to a mix of white and the living room olive and make it darker. I kinda like the sea grass, but probably will go along with the lighter of the two lighter olives we tried. The sea grass is an island color, and might not go with the rest of the decor.

We got a formal quote for the flooring - $3.64/sq ft for the floor, $3 for installing it, and $3.95 to sand and finish with tongue oil. We have run out of money, so it looks like we will install it ourselves over Christmas break, but will have them finish it. Assuming that the bank will increase our loan amount. Part of the over-run came from missing some major expenses - (stucco for the foundation walls was expensive!), from subs being higher than expected (I still think we paid way to much for framing, and we are still fixing their mistakes. And the electrician finally gave us a bill yesterday - double his verbal estimate), and some is because we are building a bigger/nicer house than we can really afford. On the plus side, we have gotten a couple of grants and still have another $15K coming to offset the elevation costs.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Orange, yellow, green, and pink. And maybe blue. We are painting a rainbow house!

Claire's room is pink, of course. I still have to figure out how to do the purple polka dots. Emily's room has green walls with a yellow ceiling. A bit bright right now, but should be nice with pink curtains & bed spreads - she gets the two french beds that we inherited from Mike & Tom after Katrina. We're not sure what bed Claire gets. David wants to give her the chestnut half-teaster - but we'll have to make it more princessy since it is pretty masculine.

Claire helped to paint Emily's closet. In twenty minutes, she had worked harder and painted more than Mommy did, as she proudly informed me.

The half bath is "just-shy of pumpkin" orange. The name is actually baked squash. I don't have a picture here. The master closet/bath/and laundry room are all a darker orange - "faded clay". Today I will do another coat of pumpkin and start the yellow in the entry way. Hopefully we will get a coat of the "Homestead Classic Pale Olive" in the living room to see if we like it. Still haven't picked colors for the master bedroom and study. I think the clay would look nice in the study, but David thinks we have enough clay!

David is continuing on his project - the bead board ceiling is a tremendous amount of work. He sands each piece, sprays two coats of lacquer, hand sands, stains, then another coat of lacquer. So roughly 30 minutes per board. But it's looking nice.

Extra Hardie

So, what do you do with $900 worth of pre-painted hardie siding? Why, you use it to make louvers, of course. Most people use lattice to add a bit of privacy below elevated houses. Some use 1x6's to create louvers. That's what we planned on doing, probably painted dark green. But since we have so much extra hardie siding, David decided to try using the siding for the louvers. This is the first one set in place, filling in the lower left opening. I am trying to convince David that the heathered moss looks great - truth is, I don't want to paint all of them dark green. We'll drive by it for the next week and see how we like it lighter.

Sheetrock started a couple of weeks ago. The first coat of mud is on - I am guessing they will be done sometime this week. There are several crews and they work multiple houses. They let the mud dry for several days, so it is taking a couple of weeks. The big decision for sheetrock was the finish that we wanted. So we talked orange peel, knockdown, and smooth for a week, but after looking at a couple of houses, we both decided that we like the smooth finish for both the walls and the ceilings. Of course that costs more! We are going to have the same crews paint the primer, and probably do the finish paint as well.

We purchased real beadboard for the sunroom ceiling. The beadboard sheets are 8'x4', and our ceiling is 10' and 12' wide, so we purchased the "sticks" in 10' and 12' lengths. More work for David! That will go up after the sheetrock is primed.

We are also picking out tile - lots of choices, but we found one porcelaine tile that we both like, so will be using that for the floors and/or the shower walls. It's hard to look at tile without knowing the prices - the fandy border tiles that they suggest to use with one of the tiles we looked at cost $40/ft. That's for a 3" wide strip, so that's $160/ft². We're not that in love with that border! But the border can really make the shower surround look really nice, so we'll probably do something. Maybe something in the $10-$20 per foot range!

Gustav Gone, Ike heading to Texas

The biggest casualty from Gustav was the computer, which didn't take well to evacuating. 12" of water in the shed which did little damage.

More to come when (if?) I get the computer back.

Gustav

I was hoping to have time this weekend to post an update - we passed the rough-in inspection and have insulation. Things are moving well.

The latest storm surge predictions are 15'-18'. The house is at 20' so should be ok. But anything over 10' will probably flood the shop, shed, and FEMA trailer. We're probably riding the storm out in Biloxi; not the ideal situation but we need tomorrow to keep moving things into the house. I'll post after the storm when I can.

Air Condioning Started

The first stage of the siding is done - they will need to come back to do the underside of the porches after the insulation is in. Everyone agrees that the porch columns would have looked nicer white. I chose the dark green because of how the center post is off-center. I was thinking that with the white column, the off-center column would be the first thing you would notice. I'm hoping that the dark green shutters and stair risers, and dark railings will tie it all together.

We picked the air conditioner installer who bought our house on Hwy 49. We are getting two 2-stage compressors with variable speed fans manufactured by Maytag. Well, branded by Maytag, made by Nordyne. They come with a really good Maytag warranty - ten years parts and labor, full replacement if the compressor fails. We are getting a 3 ton for downstairs and a 2 ton upstairs - more than the 3.5 tons that was calculated, but the 2 stage runs at 2/3 capacity 18.5 seers or full capacity 16 seers. So the majority of time they will run at 3.33 tons.

We are not going to make David's 4th of July goal for the rough-in inspection. The inspector wants the upstairs electrical done before they issue a certificate of occupancy, so David has spent the last couple of weeks finishing the framing upstairs and running electrical. The new goal is July 22.

It's green!

First Inspection Post-"Lawsuit"

David asked the inspector to inspect the hurricane straps since they will be covered by the siding. As we expected (and hoped), the inspector did not give us a hard time "just because". David will need to add some straps around the door and window framing upstairs, and there needs to be brackets on the back porch pilings. The inspector did not comment on the fact that the those pilings (4x4) are way undersized for how long they are!

The siding guy's 1.5 to 2 weeks are up on Monday. My guess is that he is still another week or two out. I'll probably wait until next Friday to call him.

David has been working electrical - all the boxes for the under-house lights are in. We are still getting quotes on AC. We have two more to get and then we'll make our decision. David is aiming for the 4th of July to get the rough-in inspection. Once that's done, we can start sheetrock.

Help! I need intervention!

David asked me tonight if we were building the space shuttle. Apparently I've bought too many lights. But he's the one that thinks we need three lights in the kitchen, each with 3 bulbs! Here are two of the three lights (without the glass). They are hanging from the trusses with bungie chords while we argue over whether they should be over the walking space as general light (me) or bunched over the island as task lights (David).

Having no idea what we wanted when we started looking at the lights, and the difficulty of looking at the lights in boxes, has resulted in numerous trips to Hudsons (Gulfport, Gautier, and a wild goose chase to Mobile). And just when I think I am done, I think of a place I can put that "xyz" light. The selection is somewhat limited, but there are only 6 or so brands, so we have been able to find some "families" of lights. It's probably costing 50% more to get lights 4x nicer than what we would have! (Well, except for the ten $13 lights I bought for under the house on sale for $5.)

Here is one impulse buy - Minka Lavery Aston Court. We have 4 matching wall sconces for the 1/2 bath and stairs. We will probably order 1 more on-line.



















We didn't plan the carriage lights in time - they really should go to the side of the parking openings (can't have garage doors, part of our "enclosure" battle). It would mess up the stucco, so they'll be mounted centered over the openings. These were an impulse buy during lunch a couple of weeks ago. And will cost a bit since we decided to get matching lights for the front door. But wait, on another impulse trip to the Gautier Hudsons today, I found a smaller version of the light, so now we only need to buy 1!


This is the light I went for - Susan (my sister-in-law) gave us the good advice to match the glass color throughout. But we ended up with beige in the front entry and white alabaster in the kitchen. So what to put over the dining room table? Why, stained glass, of course! My thinking is that it is different enough from the beige and the white to not clash with either. Ok, so it will be an eclectic house, but that suits us.

As for the rest of the house - David is finally working on electrical. I think most of the framing mistakes have been fixed. And our decking arrived yesterday - gotta love the high tech delivery. Luckily none of the boards broke.

I'm not sure how the pictures will look in this post - they look one way when I compose & preview, and totally different when it's posted. Oh well, you get the picture! :)

Gotta go - I just remembered that there's a Hudson's in Picayune. Maybe they'll have that other carriage light, or the funky vanity light that will match the master bath lights...........

Dumbwaiter, 1/2 price lights

The dumbwaiter is in and wired. There's still a little work to do on the switches, but it goes up and down! It's a nice set-up, and went in smoothly. I don't want to know how David got the shaft sheetrocked - it would probably give me nightmares!

We picked out the soffit - we had gone to Mobile to order the underside of the porches; we want to use a baby blue vinyl beadboard. The blue beadboard still hasn't entered production, but we also looked at the T3 and T4 soffit. The T3 (3") looks a little better than the T4 (4"), and will only cost an extra $100. Unfortunately, nobody carries it locally, so we are trying to be accurate on the quantity. We don't want to order more than we'll use, but we don't want to run out. The installer had given us the quantity for the T4 soffit, which comes in 12" widths, so we were trying to convert it to the T3, which comes in 10" widths. The numbers did not work out until I realized that the installer must have figured on 10' lengths, where they actually come in 12' lengths. That's been par for the course with this guy - everything he says comes in 10' lengths comes in 12', and everything he says are 12' turn out to be 10'!

Ordering screws for the siding turned out to be much more of a challenge than I ever expected. The installer specified wafer head screws, w/nibs on the heads, 1 1/4" long. They actually need to be 1 1/2" to 2" long to catch the plastic webs in the ICF blocks. Joe's website (the Nudura ICF supplier) listed a particular screw that supposedly works well. But when Joe priced them, they came out to $70/1000, which would have cost almost $500. I called a local bolt and screw supply store, and they had a 1 5/8" screw specifically for hardie siding, but they were countersunk, not wafer heads. The installer said that he has better luck with the flat heads over the countersunk. So back to the supply store, who located two boxes of 5000 screws that should match the ones that Joe found, for $55/1000. I ordered 1 box, and they said they would hold the other box in case 5000 screws aren't enough.

The siding installer is still a week out, but we should have it done by the end of the month.

Dana told us about a sale at Hudson's Salvage Store - they had inventory from a lighting supply store that had gone out of business. All lights were half off, but all the lights were in their boxes, or in some cases out of their boxes! We spent many hours (which was fun with the girls, not!) and ended up spending $800. Probably none of it was what we would have chosen if we were in a lighting store, but we're not super picky about lights so they should work out fine. For example - we bought the ceiling fans for the back porch. They are 3-blade, satin nickle, and a modern design. I think they'll look nice, but I think David would have preferred a 4 or 5 blade, more conventional, bronze fan. But at $280 per fan retail, getting them for $140 each was a good deal.

Blacked In!

We were hoping to be blacked-in last June or July, so we're only a couple of months late! David and Bobby installed the last of the french doors yesterday (they still need a little work, but they're in). David has finished the rough-in plumbing and is correcting some of the "minor" framing errors before he gets into the electrical. When he tried to fix the top step on the interior stairs, he found out that the whole flight was installed out-of-square, so he needs to bust it loose and re-install it. Not a small task.

The HVAC sizing is done and we got the drawings for the duct work. Unfortunately the hard drive on our computer crashed a couple of weeks ago, and we lost our copy of autocad so it'll take a bit of work to get the ducts into a form that we can get quotes on.

Slow Progress

We finally got the roof on - stripes & polka dots were not fired - they apparently just quit without letting anyone know. The new crew that was supposed to start Monday never showed up. Best we can tell, they also quit. So the roofing contractor had no workers and pretty much stopped answering his phone. David called another roofer out to get a revised quote, and that roofer showed up with workers. Even though we still had a contract with the first roofer, we went ahead with the new roofer. They fixed stripes and polka dots mistakes and roofed the house in 3 days. We never did pay the first roofer for what little work his crew did.

One thing with building your own house is that you have to make a lot of decisions. Like what size water heater to go with. The on-line sizing charts say we need 65-80 gallons. So, we could go with two 40 gallon heaters zoned, two in series, or buy a single, larger water heater. We decided on the single heater. Well, Home Depot doesn't sell heaters over 50 gallons (or maybe they just don't have them in stock). Lowes has a 50 gallon heater, and the next size is 80 gallons. 80 gallons is probably overkill, but 50 is probably too small. So, we decided to go with the Lowes Whirlpool 80 gallon heater with lifetime warranty. Until I read that the control boards on the heaters are junk and the "lifetime warranty" only covers one replacement. People on line were on their third replacement with a 5 year-old water heater!

So a little more research, and I found that Sears Kenmore brand has water heater - 66 gallons and 80 gallons. We'll probably go with the 12 year heater. The 80 gallon heater costs $70 more than the 66 gallon heater, and the operating cost is the same. So we'll probably go with the 80 gallon, unless they only have the 66 in stock when we go to buy it.

David continues to spend every free moment working on plumbing. The drain side is done, as is the cold water. Now he's working on the hot water. Then comes the electrical. We also have our preliminary HVAC sizing - 3.5 tons, which is way better than the 6 ton quote we got last year!

We're still waiting on the french doors. Joe said that they needed to be out of his warehouse last month, but Dwain didn't have the fork lift. We haven't heard from either of them in a couple of weeks, but hopefully they are communicating. They'll probably give us 2 hours notice when they're ready for us to get/install the doors!

We're also waiting for the third labor quote to install the hardi siding. The first was for $6400, and the guy didn't seem to know what he was talking about. The second seemed very knowledgeable and quoted $9500. The third mostly supplies hardi, but also installs it. Once we've heard from him, we'll make the decision. I've conveniently lost the first quoter's phone number, but that is no loss!

Perfect Roofing Weather

Perfect weather - bright sunny skies, highs in the mid-sixties, and still no roof. Monday was superbowl hangover recovery, Tuesday was Mardi Gras partying, Wednesday was another hangover recovery day, Thursday was good fishing weather?, and Friday was come get your stuff and go find another job. The contractor's phone went out at some point during the week and he had to have a replacement sent. David talked to him on Wednesday, and the two guys showed up for a couple of hours, very hung-over. We couldn't get hold of the contractor on Thursday, but a couple of hours after David talked to him on Friday morning, the guys pulled into the driveway, packed up, and left without a word.

There should be a new crew starting tomorrow.

Stripes and Polka Dots

We never learned all of the names of the crews that have worked here - two of the framers/ICF guys were "fish tank guy" and "tattoo guy". Yesterday we had "stripes" and "polka dots". I hear all the debate about kids wearing their pants around their knees, and honestly, as long as there's no skin showing, it really doesn't bother me. It's a bit silly, really. But when you are on top of a roof, 30' in the air, it seems like having to pull up your pants every 2 minutes might be a bit on the dangerous side.

But the roof is finally going on - slower than we would have liked, and with fewer nails than there are supposed to be. I guess you get what you pay for, but with every step of this project costing $3K more than we thought it would, we have to start cutting somewhere. Here's a picture of one of the two solatubes that the roofers are installing - it puts out a lot of light. This one is at the top of the stairs, the other one will be in the half bath.



David has been working for weeks on the drain side plumbing. He still has the master bath/shower drain to do, plus the girls' shower unit, then he gets to start the supply side.






Here is the tub platform. The shower bench will be adjacent to the tub, but we are still trying to work out the details.









David has also finished the platform for the washer/dryer (those front loaders are a pain on your back when they are on the floor), and today he is installing the pocket door hardware.







Here is the pocket doorway into the laundry room. There is a transom above the door that will have an antique stained glass window in it, depending on how well the window survived Katrina.

Speaking of things going over budget, I heard that GE is increasing their prices by 6%-7% this month. So I went ahead and ordered our appliances this weekend. They'll be delivered sometime around the 28th of this month, so we will have to store them for a while. Still, with the fridge, wall oven, cooktop, dishwasher, and microwave, 6% adds up to a lot of money. SBA is supposed to be sending us $40K this week - the next big ticket items are the HVAC and the siding. Hopefully the HVAC will be sized this week - I need to call the consultant and find out where he is on it.

Pat & Luanne Arrested, Roofing Update

From the Clarion Ledger (Jackson, MS) Law Enforcement Briefs:

harrison County

Police arrest 3 in Katrina fraud
In the last week, three people were arrested in fraudulent Hurricane Katrina-related home repair cases, according to the state attorney general's office.

William Guy Revel, 38, of Tennessee, arrested Thursday, faces charges of felony home repair fraud and contracting without a license. Revel has been in custody in Tennessee since September 2007 on unrelated charges, according to a statement from the attorney general's office.

Upon his release, Revel was taken to the Harrison County Adult Detention Center, where he is being held on $26,000 bond.

U.S. marshals arrested Patrick Michael Serge, 47, and his wife, Luanne Edwards Serge, 40, of Flat Rock, Ala., on Jan. 18 and charged them each with four counts of felony home repair fraud. According to the statement, the charges are a result of "numerous complaints" from early September 2007 of a contractor doing business as Central Development Group collecting money to start jobs and then leaving town.

Patrick Serge also faces grand larceny charges from the Harrison County Sheriff's Department and the Long Beach Police Department.

I have heard that the Attorney General's office is going to recommend a $150K bond for Pat, and a $100K bond for Luanne.

Roofing Update: It's still raining in the house - getting a roof on is a huge priority. And typical for our project, it is taking us forever. Part of the problem is that we saw some new shingles in a display at Lowes while we were in Texas for Christmas - these shingles are rated for 130 mph winds and are warrantied for 40 years. Well, Lowes had these shingles for $100/square (a square is 100 sq ft), but it would take up to 6 weeks to get them in. Our first quote was for $200/square installed, and they would provide the shingles (4 to 6 weeks). Then we had installation quotes for $30-$50/square. The only roofer to actually go on the roof advised us that the tar paper installation was terrible (gee, guess that's why it rains inside the house) - actually, we knew that the valleys needed to be redone, but this guy said that the rest of it was bad too. We are still waiting on his quote.

I called all around town, and even to Louisiana, and nobody had these new shingles in stock. You would think they'd be the preferred shingle in a hurricane prone region. Finally, one of the $35/square roofers found a local supplier who had the shingles in stock for $65/square. So we bought the shingles on Friday, and we went ahead and bought new "tar paper" to reroof the house. This tar paper is a woven fabric in some sort of plastic - it's very thin and is much lighter than tar paper, but it is untearable. So that'll be another $800 materials and labor to re-paper the roof.

With all of the rain we have been getting, we are concerned that the valleys will not be dried out enough to put the new roof on. We have a short break in the rain - no rain until Tuesday. Hopefully that'll give the roof enough time to dry out since the roofer is coming out on Tuesday. It would be great if they can get the tar paper installed on Tuesday, before Wednesday's big rain, which is to be followed by more rain through Sunday.

Here's the roof color - it's Owens Corning Driftwood. We wanted Estate Gray, but the Driftwood will match the siding green and the browns in the stucco better. The Estate Gray is below the Driftwood (this is a project house on the Owens Corning website):

Stucco done, some sad news, and more no news

The stucco is done - still "pink" on the inside, cafe on the outside, and a third color (brown) on the chain wall.

The sad news is that one of the crooks crew was killed in a motorcycle accident recently. There are some people in this world who should not be allowed to own a motorcycle. But he was very nice, worked hard, and did a good job.

Speaking of the crook - still no news, just rumors. Like that he was using a false SSN and enough time has passed that he probably has a new identity.

The Coast Guard and their subs were back today. They have decided to take out all of the trees in the canal - it's a huge mess in there. Now we'll have to decide how much (if any) we want to have dredged out. Not sure if it had anything to do with all the mud that was churned up today, but there are about a million finger mullet in the bayou tonight, continuously hitting the top of the water as larger fish are feeding on them. It's a neat sight and sound.

Oh, and I almost forgot - one of the stucco guys saw a fox in our yard. Cool!

Café Au Lait

The solution was to paint over the pink exterior walls with Café Au Lait (which is french for 'milk with coffee'). Actually, 'café au lait' means coffee with milk, but with a one-year old yelling "Eat! Eat!", 'milk with coffee' is close enough! :)

Yesterday's Big Waste of Time

Our french doors were supposed to be in yesterday so we took the trailer to the warehouse hoping that they could unload the doors directly onto the trailer. The truck was supposed to be there somewhere between 10 and 12. 12:30 and the window supplier had no idea what had happened to the truck and couldn't contact the driver. At 1:30, I gave up and went home. The guy working at the warehouse left at 3, and David left at 3:20. At 3:30, I got a call that the doors won't be ready to ship until next week. Sounds like a real organized business, not even realizing that they were trying to find out what happened to a non-existent shipment.