July 11 - Sign of progress inside

Today I was busy online picking out bathroom ventiliation for each of three bathrooms. Tom Lenig needs them in a few days as he continues rough-in work. Fans are now ordered via Amazon and will be delivered next week.....along with another cell phone repeater. I ordered a repeater to be installed at the new house so the builder can make and receive phone calls without either standing only in the front entry or walking half way up the hill for the remainder of the project. This will also be for our own use once we move in later this year.

So, what has happened inside?

Since we have selected our direct vent fireplace last week, Tom's assistant Randy was able to frame up the fireplace today. It will be 6 feet wide with a 15-inch high hearth wrapped around the bottom.

They have also installed extra bracing in the ceiling to install beams (ladder looking area) on either side of the fireplace.

They started framing the screened porch.....

Inspected by Trapper.

We plan to install 6 foot tall vinyl glazed windows in these openings. The windows come with 4 sections and collapse all the way up or all the way down to allow for 4 1/2 feet of open screen area.

The vinyl windows should allow us to use this room 10 months out of the year (or so the distributor says). Their web site is ezporch.com.

Oh, and we have the start of a tray ceiling in our master bedroom.....

And the pocket door frames have been installed on both levels. Here is the passage into the master bath.

We also met with 2 people from Lockridge today on site to discuss the design and pricing of the railing and balusters for our stairwell. After discussion with Brenda by phone today, we agreed on the look we were after and gave Lockridge enough information to put something together.

The shakes (siding) arrived earlier in the week. Tom Lenig has not started to install them yet, however, since the manufacturer specifies that the shakes be nailed every 16 inches. We have 24-inches between 2x4s on our truss gable ends. He wants them to sign off on this before he proceeds. He doesn't want any problems for us or for him later down the road.

Last evening, I had visitors. Dave Huffman and his wife Marty stopped over. They moved here from Des Moines after they built a home north of Lake Sundown last year. We met this spring and I went turkey hunting in April on their 40 acres. (Shot a wild turkey there, too!)

Dave had called earlier in the day to give me an update on the performance of his geothermal system. He has the same Hydron Module system that we will have installed. He reported that his geo is performing so well that it isn't running enough to give them hot enough hot water to suit their needs this summer. The geo system can provide you with virtually free hot water (through something called a desuperheater). But it has to run to add heat to the water heater. So, Dave is considering an additional on-demand heater to only run when their demand for hot water exceeds what the geo system is providing. We may have to consider the same. Some folks also put in 2 hot water heaters with their geothermal system. I gave them a tour of our house and had a good time catching up with them. They are in the middle of building a deck/porch on their house.

In the coming days we hope that:

1) our long awaited window order shows up and that it's right!

2) the concrete boys will be back to fix some of the below-grade asphalt based sheeting on the ICF foundation that drooped and slid off the south side of the foundation in this heat.

3) the concrete stampers will return to finish our front porch steps.

4) the heating/cooling folks will swing into action and drill the 4 wells for our geothermal system.

5) July 16 we'll get a visit from the Rollie with Centurion Stone to measure for our final stone order

6) July 18 the gas fireplace will be installed