July 16 - Disappointing news on the windows

I finally talked directly with the Andersen/Eagle Windows regional representative this afternoon. Mike is a good man and really helped us to clean up and finalize our window order back in May. Mike was apologetic, of course. He called it a glitch in Andersen's automated ordering process that caused our order to be lost before it could get scheduled into production. Once the error was discovered around June 28, we had already lost a month's time. The windows are now scheduled to ship from Dubuque (to Lockridge Lumber in Centerville) on Wednesday, July 25.

We didn't learn of the new ship date until my conversation with Mike today. And, apparently, Lockridge has known the ship date for the past 10 days or so and didn't tell me or Tom. We've been standing by thinking they should have shown up last Thursday and then maybe this Thursday.

This is really holding everything up and Tom Lenig and his 2 guys are trying to stay busy in the mean time doing whatever they can. They'll put up the lower courses of siding below the windows and install the shakes on the gables.

Ah, yes. The gables and siding issue. Tom resolved the with Lockridge today. After several phone calls from Tom, Lockridge agreed to pay his labor and materials to add the needed 2x4's to make 16 inch centers on all the gable ends.  I'm not paying for it. Tom is not paying for it. But Lockridge is paying the tab and rightfully so.

I can't give Lockridge any kudos for their performance to date. They haven't made it easy to do business with them the past two months. I've already begun ordering materials from Menards. Not everything, but they are fulfilling some of our upcoming material needs. Car siding and interior doors will be ordered from Menards.

Today, Rollie from Centurion Stone drove down from Des Moines to measure our place for the stone work that will be done....the front porch entry area, some on the front of the house, the fireplace, touches in the kitchen, etc. He will have a final figure for me tomorrow. Rollie and Tom talked a lot about how the stone will be installed where it meets the siding. We also talked about the rough-in for the fireplace hearth.

The man that Tom is recommending to do our tile work stopped by around lunch time. He is working on another job close to Sundown and will be working with us this week to give us his bid.

The fireplace is scheduled to be installed on Wednesday this week.

Garage doors are scheduled to be shipped from Des Moines to Centerville one week from today - the 23rd.

This week must finalize and place our kitchen order. We've been waiting for an Amish man to come through with some stained wood samples.

And, over this past weekend, we think we found some hardwood flooring that we both like. Turns out that we need to be making that decision soon since they quoted us 6-8 weeks from the time of order before they can install.

No wonderful pics to show you. Here's what I can offer....

Here's the first few courses of siding on the back side of the garage.

Late last week OSB was installed over the Insulating Concrete Forms (ICF) foundation in the mechanical/storage room and then painted white. The geothermal system will be installed along this long wall where the pipes come out of the floor.

On Saturday, the concrete crew came back to repair the asphalt sheeting that needs to cover the foundation below grade. The line of sheeting shows level where we will backfill along the southwest side of the house.

Sadly, it looks pretty much the same as it did 2 weeks ago.