May Progress from May 15th

The problem with the roof and solar panels hasn’t been fixed yet, so I’m still unhappy with that. I’ve been assured this is going to be fixed, so stay tuned.

I’ve been away for the past two weeks on business, but was home for last weekend. My brother Cliff and his wife Rosa came over to the house for a few hours to help me with some landscaping. I have Cliff’s bobcat there temporarily. He moved some pallets and equipment around which were in the way, and finished filling in the place where the driveway had been. When my lot was adjoined to the Quinces’ lot next door, the owner put in a large horseshoe driveway which went around the perimeter of the property. I took out the part of the driveway which cut through my backyard, and will use what’s left of the driveway along the north side of the property. Part of the driveway was taken out when we dug the hole for the basement, and the asphalt driveway as a whole is not in that good of shape. It was old anyway, and all the heavy equipment on it didn’t help. But it is still a useable driveway, and eventually I’ll replace the asphalt with permeable pavers.

I’m told that Innovative Power Systems (IPS) is busy installing the solar apparatus in the basement mechanical room. The schedule for now is that Concrete Treatment, Inc. is polishing the basement cement floor. This will give it a finished look and make it much easier to keep clean. I’ll put area rugs on top in some places, I’m sure. But I won’t have the problem of stepping out of bed onto a cold cement floor, because the floor will always be warm in the winter, due to the radiant in-floor heating.

Once the basement floor is done (hopefully Monday or Tuesday), we will begin hanging the sheetrock. I originally was going to use magnesium oxide (MgO) board, which will not mold. There were a couple things that made me forgo the MgO board in favor of paperless sheetrock. The cost was the big item: MgO board costs about 4 times as much as conventional sheetrock. Although the U.S. has plenty of gypsum mines (that’s what sheetrock is made of), it has no magnesium oxide mines; they are all in Asia, mostly China. It’s not very “green” to use materials shipped halfway around the world. Instead, I’m using DensArmor, a paperless sheetrock. It’s the glue and cardboard that make conventional sheet rock undesirable, because the paper burns, grows mold, and it and the glue are food for bugs. DensArmor has a fiberglass mesh to hold it together instead of cardboard. It’s more expensive than conventional sheetrock, but I’d rather not have the VOCs from the glue, and the potential for mold.

Last weekend I finished filling in the north side of the house, where new window wells had been put in. One of the things that were left out of the building plans were the window wells. RockSolid Concrete put three cement window wells on the south side, but since they weren’t properly set on footings, they sank when the ground thawed (they were poured in the winter) and have pulled away from the house. Two of them aren’t too bad, but the third one has pulled away from the house quite a bit. RockSolid Concrete won’t fix them, and I won’t pay for them, so I guess I’m stuck with trying to fix the problem. The metal window wells on the north side, next to the driveway, look really good. Jeffrey Swainhart ordered them and installed them. They are close enough to the house to leave enough driveway there to use for my car. I built the house as far to the north as I could, to take advantage of the sun on the south side.

I’m still hoping to be able to get the house finished by the end of the summer. There are some big projects which still need to be done. I will be applying the clay plaster to the walls, and need to take a couple weeks vacation time to do that. The radiant in floor heating has yet to be installed on the first floor, mostly because the sheetrock hasn’t been hung yet. Once the sheetrock and floor are completed, we can start doing things like hanging doors, installing kitchen and bathroom cabinets, and doing the finishing work around the house. Although the house is wired and has plumbing installed, all the fixtures will need to be put in, and that can’t be done until the sheetrock and first floor are done. Nothing on the outside of the house is finished except the roof. The outside has to have stucco put on and I’m not sure how I’m going to finish the gables yet.

I’m hoping to accomplish a lot of landscaping this weekend. My sister Cathy, the landscape architect, is in town, staying with our mom while I’m away. I’ll have a full day with her to lay out the landscaping plan. I already bought quite a few plants, perennials, because the nursery’s stop selling things by the end of May. So I wanted to get my asparagus, fruit trees, raspberry canes, etc. before they disappeared, not to be seen until next spring. I have containers all over my mom’s yard and porch, full of plants. I’m hoping to get some of my plastic lumber soon and start laying out some raised beds. I still have a big pile of dirt in the back, but I think I can start putting some things in on the south side and work around the pile. Another thing to do that I have forgotten: I need to put a retaining wall along the south side, since I had to lower the elevation there. It’s about a two and a half foot drop from my neighbor’s yard. I lowered the elevation because the basement windows, which were supposed to be at ground level, are two feet below the ground.

More updating later…