August 16 - Sadly, Brenda's dad passed away Aug. 15

Since that phone call late Monday afternoon Brenda spent some sleepless hours at the hospital in Ames. Her dad, Tom Hartman, passed away shortly after midnight on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning about 4 hours after the nurses turned off the temporary pacemaker at his request. He had had enough of the pain and was ready. His memorial service is Saturday morning in Boone, IA where he was raised.

We are staying in Ankeny for the remainder of this week. Some good news out of all of this is that the Red Cross is flying my son Frank back to Des Moines from Korea. He arrives at the Des Moines airport at 9:45 tonight for a 10-day leave for his grandfather's funeral. He has been in Korea since the latter part of April and is not scheduled to return to his family/home in Hahira, GA until sometime in October. It will be good to have him in Iowa for a few days.....not only to be with family but to see what is happening at Lake Sundown. He's never been to Sundown.

So, I don't have too much to report about the house. Tom Lenig continues working on the siding and electrical work. I'll have to get back there soon to make sure that the wiring for our network and video gets installed properly before we insulate next week. While we are here in Des Moines this week we will continue to shop for carpet and tile.

Aug. 13 - Didn't have this in my garage in Long Grove

They installed the French slider on the back wall of the garage today.
No sir, didn't have anything like this on my garage in Long Grove.

Not a bad view from a garage.

Brenda and I spent most of the day in Ottumwa. We ordered our Cambria quartz kitchen countertop(s).  And, we picked out granite remnants and sinks for our master bath vanities and the lower level bathroom vanity.

On the drive home, Brenda got a call from her mom. Her dad was taken to the hospital with a very slow pulse and trouble breathing. Brenda is on her way to Ames.

August 9 - A Chinese fire drill at Menards today

Took a bunch of car siding back to Menards this morning. What a paperwork nightmare! If they hadn't tried to pawn off some crap material on us, we wouldn't have been wasting time doing a Chinese fire drill inside their store and then again out in the yard. After we left the yard we still had to park, walk back inside and take one more pink copy of our return to the service desk. We picked up a few other things while we were there but never expected all this to take three hours.

We had planned to stop at two other places In Ottumwa but there was no time left. We had a 1 pm appointment back at the lake with a man from Philips Floors in Indianola to measure for our flooring installation. All the measuring is done for carpet and hardwood. We expect a new quote from him tomorrow.

Tomorrow...we are back in Ottumwa to finalize our countertop decision and pay them some money. Then to Sherwin Williams to get some paint for the garage doors and some stain for the exterior cedar trim. We're going to try to match the color of both with the color of the front door or exterior window trim. Tom Lenig found a small bottle of touch up paint that came from the entry door manufacturer. This might be just the ticket to tie the exterior color combination together.

We are thinking now that we will be short on siding and will have to order some more shakes. They got more shakes installed today. Here are some pics.

We ran into the heating & cooling contractor at Menards. It seems we always run into someone we know when we walk in that store. He had been to the house this morning and met briefly with Tom. They plan to be on site now to start some of their installation of the Geo system on Monday, August 20 before the insulation work starts.

AND......they plan to install our Eagle French slider on the back of the garage soon. I bought two 10 foot 2x12's for the door header at Menards this morning.

Aug 7 - Turns out I'm not crazy. Whew.

Looks like we'll be putting the French slider on the back of the garage. The voting has been positive from anyone that cares - most importantly Brenda.

Here's another shot of where the door will go.

The first shakes went up on the cover of the master bedroom deck.

Lots of plumbing work going on inside the house these past couple of days. Water lines. Shower valves. 

By the end of the week of August 13, the electrical rough in should be done and we'll be ready to insulate the house the week of August 20. We will have all the walls sprayed with open cell foam. The ceilings will get a layer of blown in cellulose. 

We are working on the hardwood flooring purchase. Wood flooring installation is about 8 weeks away before the kitchen cabinets are installed early in October. We are inviting a company from the Indianola/Des Moines area to come and do a final measure.

The kitchen countertop purchase should be finalized on Thursday.

I'm returning a bunch of car siding back to Menards in Ottumwa. I've been staining what I can since last Friday but too many of them either cannot be stained, have damage, shoe marks or nasty knots in the wrong places. I can't believe the condition of some of these boards they tried to pawn off on me. All the rejects are heading back to their yard and I'll be hand picking the replacements.

It was 99 here today. I walked down the hill and back up at least 5 times.

Aug. 6 - I might be crazy

We had a great weekend with Connor. Tyler and Emily came on Sunday. Connor caught a crappie all by himself off the dock.

The Geostem guys drilled our 4th and last geothermal well today and added to their mess in front of the house.

Today they installed the white-washed car siding on the ceiling of the front entry. It really looks great. We'll be installing the same material in the great room ceiling, on the ceiling of the covered deck and on the tray ceiling of the master bedroom.

The posts and header will be skirted with cedar boards.

They installed the smaller garage door to allow us to make up our minds about the color. We don't like the color and are considering options to paint both garage doors. This color is supposed to be "walnut". It is too red for our taste and doesn't work for us.

Here's the point where I am wondering if I'm crazy. While we wait another month for a new French sliding door for our dining room, I have one beautiful 8 ft tall French slider to sell on Craigslist, right? But I haven't posted it for sale just yet. So I'm looking at the north side of the house and the beautiful view looking out Brenda's "Do Room" window and wondering what it would be like to have that same lake view from inside the garage through the aforementioned surplus slider. Eventually, there could be a little balcony deck outside off the back of the garage. Hmmmmm. Swap the French slider for the puny little double hung?

If an 8 foot sliding glass door like this.....

Was installed here on the big back wall of our garage centered under the gable (in place of the small double hung)......

With this view.......

It could work. No? 

What do you think?

90 days ago here's where we started with the first bucket load of dirt......

Here's where we are today.....

Friday, Aug. 3 - Feelin' the heat & moving forward

The workers knocked off early today at about 2:30. That included me.

The drillers were drilling. Tom Lenig's guys were hanging siding. I was staining pine car siding. And it was hot.

The Geostem boys are drilling 4 wells right next to the front porch. They have 3 of them done and one more to do tomorrow. At least I think they are working tomorrow. They'll finish up early next week by digging down to the foundation and joining the pipes to a manifold outside of the foundation. Each loop is about 200 ft straight down. They have only been drilling through clay as they drill that deep. No rock. No aquifers.  Some geothermal fields are laid horizontally but ours are vertical.

There's a little more siding on the house.....

Yesterday, Brenda and I found the right place (in Ottumwa) to order our kitchen countertops. Got a number from them today and will likely place the order tomorrow. $800 less than the lumberyard for the exact same countertop.  

More staining for me tomorrow and Tom Lenig is working tomorrow. He has a lot of the plumbing rough-in done but electrical has not started. We really wanted the house completely closed up before starting the electrical. We still hear reports about wire being stolen from farms and building sites. It will be at least another week before the front door gets here. Another month before the reordered French slider arrives.

And today, Brenda spent the day in Des Moines to finalize our order for all the exterior and interior lighting with Lights & More in Urbandale. Nice job getting that wrapped up, Brenda! And under the budgeted number, too.

Next week we will have been at this for three months. We started on May 8. Three more months to go? Not sure.

Connor is on the way to our place with his Grandma for the weekend. Yah!!!!

Aug 1 - Tough'n it through

Our issue yesterday and today was with our three 8 ft. French sliders. I choose not to air this dirty laundry on my blog.  I'm done talking about it for now. The issue came to a resolution today. We were close to closing out our business relationship with the lumber yard. Real close.

Hal D. showed up a little after 8:30 this morning and drew our kitchen plan on the floor and stud walls with Tom Lenig. Tom is now ready to install the electrical and plumbing rough-in for the kitchen and master bath. It was nice to meet Hal and get him engaged with our cabinet needs. We also discussed plans for our master bath vanities and the lower bar area with Hal. We're looking forward to seeing his ideas and craftsmanship come to life in our home.

The geo drillers arrived shortly after noon and set up their drilling rig. They start drilling in the front yard tomorrow morning and will be here for about a week.

Here's some pics of the windows and doors that have been installed so far.

The vinyl windows and screens on the lower level screened porch

Here they stood up the frame for the four doors in the great room.

I'm glad that I had a good right shoulder when I assisted to hoist the transom window into place above the great room sliders. Here they just got it level and plumb and tacked into place.

The white interior of the doors is already brightening the room.

The 2 middle doors slide apart.

Sadly, since the lower level is now enclosed I had to evict the 2 barn swallows in a nest in the basement.

Tomorrow, they'll get cracking on the siding.

Right now, it's after 5 o'clock and I'm really ready for a Sam Adams Boston Lager.