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.