Tuesday, December 1, 2009

We Are Moved In!

A couple pictures first:

The kitchen countertops installed. It's Ceasarstone. Space for where the butcherblock countertop will go.
The sink and stovetop installed.
Better view of the sink.
A working sink!
My mom and I didn't get moved in until November 17th, a week later than planned. The house just wasn't ready. The interior woodwork took way longer to install than planned, and then had to be stained and finished after installation (my job). We didn't even come close to finishing the woodwork, even though I had taken a whole week off work. Most of the main level has stain and one coat of finish, but that's it. The basement woodwork is complete, but no stain or finish. I'll do that over the winter, I hope.

Right now, I'm just working on unpacking. Because I had so much to do at the new house, I did nothing to prepare for the move. Now I've moved many times in my adult life, having been in the Army and working for the Army as a civilian. I counted them up, and this is my 16th move. It was the worst one, just because I didn't have time to prepare. Also, we had two complete households in one house, and we moved both into a slightly smaller house with no garage. But enough complaining about the move. I couldn't have done it without the help of my family. My sister Cathy and husband Ned came for five days to start packing up the house. They would have stayed longer, but they had sold their house and were moving the week after I was. My brother Cliff and wife Rosa were real troupers. They worked on the house helping me stain for 7 straight days, and then helped pack things up and get moved for another two days. I couldn't have done it without them. My sister Pat took care of my mom in the hotel while we got the house stuff moved.

I had hoped to put in the front sidewalk before winter. The only way I could do that now is to put it in temporarily. Use the permeable VAST pavers, but not put in a full bed underneath. Just put in a few inches of gravel, put the pavers on top, and redo them in the summer. I have a contractor who will do it for $1000, but that's way too much money when I could do it myself for the cost of the aggregate. I really need to put in a sidewalk in the rear, so my mom can get in and out of the house/porch easily. Really, if I don't do something this weekend, the ground will freeze too hard to do anything.

The solar thermal is up and running as of yesterday. It was supposed to be operational a week ago, after weeks of IPS messing around with minor problems causing major delays. One of their technicians came out last Tuesday, did some work, and declared it operation. Unfortunately, she didn't turn on the switch that activated the entire system. So as the sun shone and the panels got hot and the tanks warmed up, the house got colder and colder over Thanksgiving weekend because the water in the tubes in the floor wasn't moving through the nice, hot storage tanks. On Sunday morning, when the house was 62 degrees, I called IPS, who said there was nothing they could do, it was an HVAC problem. That kind of pissed me off, since the HVAC (the boiler back-up system) worked FINE for three weeks until IPS activated the solar. Steve Carlyle of O.C. Mechanical came out and disconnected the solar on Sunday so I could have some heat and not let my poor mom freeze to death. More on IPS and the solar later.

The PV solar (the electric part) isn't active yet, though everything is in place. It takes ExcelEnergy a while to get going, and since I don't have battery storage and am connected to the grid, I have to wait for them to do their thing.

True Blue Electric, who did the electric for the house as well as the solar PV, has done a great job. I would recommend them to anyone who needs electric or solar PV. Same with O.C. Mechanical. Steve Carlyle has been a true professional and very competent. The guy who installed my bamboo flooring, Rob Haas, was also awesome. He said he did tile, too, and I had him do the bathrooms and kitchen (all but the floors). Now I think I did one heck of a job myself picking out the tile and making up the pattern I wanted, but Rob executed the plan in an outstanding manner. I'll post his contact info on the next blog. I don't have it handy, but he was really great.

Jeffrey Swainhart has been my project manager throught this project, and I couldn't have done it without him. I'll talk more about his contributions later. He's still working on some projects to complete everything I want done, like the rainwater cistern, the back porch, the pergola, and the garage.