Progress update

Big developments. Framing is done, except for a small set of stairs connecting the garage to the rest of the house. I’m sure we’ll hardly miss that.

Work on the roof has started, with an amazingly thick, rubbery material that is supposed to be impermeable to water, ice, rain, snow and liquid kryptonite falling from the sky.

The bath tub is in.

We finally ordered our windows, after changing the order about six jillion times. The window guy was great but I’m guessing he secretly wanted to kill us.

We have our front door (though it’s unfinished and sitting in an only partially water-proof space so we’re a bit worried about it).

We’ve chosen the plumbing fixtures and I only changed my mind once. Well, that’s not strictly true. I changed my mind about seven times but I only had them redo the order once. That’s pretty miraculous.

We have, I think, settled on the siding we want. It’s quite specialized and we weren’t thinking we’d be able to swing it. The first bid for materials only came in around $35k – about three times as high as the fiber cement panels (siding Plan B). Then suddenly we got a bid for less than half of that. Don’t know what changed, but suddenly it was back in the realm of possibilities.

Then we got a long-awaited bid on the labor to install this specialized siding. $40k. Just for installing it. Are you kidding me? I pretty much lost it at that point. Then, after leaving a very disappointed message for the guy who reps the siding material, we heard from another siding guy who said he would do it for under $14k. Where do these price differences come from? Baffling.

At any rate, we are now doing due diligence on siding companies and HVAC folks, and the plumbers are hard at work roughing in the pipes.

We have a clear sense of what the windows look out on, and the spaces are good. I keep picturing where I will want to hang out and how we can furnish the rooms. We have glorious amounts of storage, which I’m particularly drawn to for some reason. Perhaps it’s living in a trailer that makes an actual pantry seem luxurious.

Oh, yeah. We got a smokin’ deal on a wood stove at Lowe’s last weekend. If you’re ever in the market, it turns out late January is when they get marked down. And don’t be fooled by all the folks at Lowes who tell you they don’t have wood stoves. Three different people looked at us like we were crazy for asking, then we found them in the Seasonal section.

That’s all the news for now. I’m off to New Jersey for a week to meet with clients. Hopefully the trailer won’t explode or develop some strange malady while I’m gone. And maybe, dare I hope, the windows will come…