Soon to be June

It seems like summer is slipping away, even though we are not completely sure it is here yet!  May was a busy month for us and is pretty much history now.  We were happy to obtain occupancy a couple weeks earlier than we predicted, so that was good.  Funny thing is, we still haven't moved over there yet.  Hahaha!  We are thinking that we will move around or before the middle of June.  Sure will be different after 10 years living in 325 sqft.  We are expecting Lowe's to send in their countertop contractor later this week to address our punch list of issues with the countertop.  We will see how that goes...

The shot below is not our problem this time!  However, we did do some trenching of our own, but our equipment was not nearly as substantial as theirs.  The county replaced the culvert that runs underneath our road.  The crew said that there was some holes in the existing pipe.  They upgraded from an 18" pipe to a 24" pipe.   You can see the old broken down pipe at frame right.

From the front yard...

After obtaining occupancy, our urgency factor went down and we took an afternoon off.  We sat behind the Shop where we had recently sorted through and cleaned up our keeper lumber pile.  A lot of it ended up on the burn pile in the background.  We even burned a few scraps that afternoon as our first campfire of the year.  Sitting behind the Shop protected us from the wind, and we had a little picnic right there.  Gari fixed us a nice snack, mine was smoked Herring and a beer.  I was happy.

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Two steps forward, one big step backward.  The dishwasher drain leaked.  We got the R.O. installed with zero leaks and plugged the microwave in without problems.  Not so lucky with the dishwasher.  Note to self.  It would have been very smart to run a cycle before installing it under the counter.  Sure is easy to look back and know just what to do.

This is our trenching job for this past month.  The electrical inspector wanted us to install a ground wire from the Shop over to the house, even though we had a Ufer ground and a second ground rod buried at the house.  We didn't argue, but digging that 60 ft of trench just about killed us.  We had to dig to get the fiber optic comm line over to the house anyway, so we figured we would just throw the ground wire in the same trench.  It worked out and we lived.  Just a little bit more to go right in the middle in the shot below.

We sleeved the fiber optic conduit in additional electrical and ABS conduit and pipe.  The ground wire is just a bare #4 copper wire.  You can see the copper veering off to frame right in the shot below.

Once we finished the trenching job, we went back into the house and Gari built a wall for the Laundry/Guest Bathroom.  The wall will, to some extent, separate the two spaces.  Gari applies the finishing coat of polyurethane below.

We also installed the water softener without any leaks.  Installing the drain was the most difficult part, the rest of the install was much easier.

Laundry area prepped for washer shelf and wall install.   Studs and component locations marked with blue masking tape.

Guest side of the bathroom wall installed.  Pretty well hides the laundry business upon entering.

 Laundry business side of the wall.

After running several wash and rinse cycles out in the kitchen floor, we reinstalled the dishwasher back under the countertop.  We ran a cycle installed and all still appears well and dry.  When the HVAC Inspector came to review our final HVAC work he said to us that we had the best crawlspace in Idaho.  We thought what a great honor.  We now realize that we also have the leakiest house in Idaho as well!

We now turn our attention to manufacturing and installing shelves.  We cut all the shelf ledgers at one time and labeled each one so we would know where they go.  You can see the labels on the ends of the boards below.

Gari quietly goes about finishing each of the numerous ledger boards.  You can see more labels below.

Shelf ledgers installed in the utility closet (that's where the electric water heater is installed).

Pantry shelf ledgers installed.

Master bath linen shelves installed.  We have a dark curtain panel that we will hang from a small spring rod in front of the shelves.

Utility shelves installed.  We don't have much of anything to put on them, but they are installed.  Tape marks the studs to hang a broom and tool hanger board.  There are still many details to accomplish even though occupancy is behind us.

Gari has the first coat of polyurethane on the back row of Pantry shelves.

Below is the rest of the Pantry shelves.  The linen closets required just over one sheet of plywood.  The Pantry required over seven sheets of plywood.  Gari puts one coat of poly on the bottoms and two coats on the tops of the shelves.  By calculation she has 30 coats to go on just the shelves below, plus another 10 coats on the back row she has started.  I have seen how she does it.... one shelf at a time.

We are dreaming of sitting.... soon, very soon.

Occupancy at Last!

It has certainly been a long, cold, hard and lonely winter for us.  Working on the house 6 days a week was mostly a grind.  Tonight we celebrate having received the Certificate of Occupancy earlier this afternoon.  It does feel strange to think about moving out of the trailer after 10 years in there, but I think we will adjust.  

Another new chapter in retirement adventures!

We still have lots of landscaping to do this summer.  We did finish spreading the manure, but still have the top soil to spread. 

Mt Baldy view.

The front of the house with our view windows.  Another material pile there...  Our plan is to trench in some sprinklers around the perimeter of the porch and then cover a foot or two at the house with a fine crush and run product.  That's what that pile is, a test pile of sorts.  We have already installed some at the back left corner of the house there. We don't have gutters because of the heavy snow here, and the soil is so rocky we don't want to encourage too much grass to grow. 

Sheep Mountain view.  Manure spread, pile gone :-)

Electricity.  We passed our final electrical state inspection a week or so ago.  We first changed the Shop, where we are living, over to 100A service from the 200A that it has been on all winter.  The 200A will service the new house now.  We tore open the Shop service panel...

And put it back together on the 100A service and you can't even tell we were there!

We prepared the house service panel  to receive the 200A service cable... that we had to pull 50 ft through the 2-1/2" conduit we installed last year.  You can see the yellow pulling rope coming out the junction box at the bottom.

This is where the cable will come from, the 200A disconnect on the left.  You can see the other end of the yellow pulling rope coming out of the conduit stub there.  The 3 wire 4/0 service cable is coiled at he left.

We laid the service cable out to prepare for the big pull.  We tried to keep it as clean as possible to avoid added friction going through the conduit.  We weren't sure we were going to be able to pull that big cable through ourselves.  Fortunately our good friend Scott came over and gave us two more pulling hands.  I don't believe we could have done it without Scott.  Thank you Scott!

We fastened a makeshift cover to prevent us from touching the live top lugs in the 200A disconnect panel.  All ready on the right for the pull...

That's the LB joint at the house where the service cable will come out then enter the house.  The square gray junction box is directly on the other side of the garage wall.  All ready on the left...

And there is the cable all the way through the conduit.  Only have to terminate the ends now.

Successfully through the LB joint and into the garage.

There's the service cable coming into the square junction box.  Same on this end, just terminate the lines and that will do it.

And just like that all finished!

The State electrical inspector came the very next day and put our sticker on the service panel door in the garage.  Hooray!

A couple of days later, Jacob our HVAC installer came out and started up the system now that we have permanent power to all HVAC devices.  Right behind him came the State HVAC inspector and put his sticker on the air handler in the crawlspace.  Hip Hip Hooray!  Now just the final city inspection remains...

...but there was a hitch... we forgot to place this condensation overflow tube into the clothes washer stand pipe drain.  Oh my what a mess after three or four days before we noticed it.  We had the drain capped off because there was no water in the trap to stop the sewer gasses from coming into the house.  We didn't realize how much condensation would be pumped out by the HVAC.  Truly amazing!

We noticed water on the bath/laundry room floor as we were constructing the little cabinet for the laundry sink tub.  Once we figured out what was going on, we realized that the water was running down the inside of the wall as it left the washer hook up box.  The dry wall there was pretty wet.  We had a gallon or more of water in the encapsulated crawlspace.  All in all a bit of a mess, but we cleaned it up right away.  We decided to open up the wall and blow a fan in there for a few days.  That dried everything up real good.

There's the fan set up.  We patched up the wall just before the city inspector came out for final review.

We received the shades we ordered from Home Depot and put them up this month.  Gari works on the triple window.

Some of the shade results in the front room.  These are the top up bottom down shade variety.  We had similar shades at Cloverland, but these shades are now cordless.  Pretty slick.

Now we have moved on to constructing shelves.  Gari applies the beautiful finish.

We finished four rod & shelves last week, the master closet, the guest closet. the coat closet and the laundry room rod & shelf.  The belt sander died today so, we may have a few days off before we finish the linen shelves and pantry.

Master bedroom closet shelves.

Laundry rod & shelf

Coat closet.  Hangers hang.  Same design used on all the rod & shelf.

We finally got the stove to go into its spot by removing the small countertop section to the left.  We are still in discussion with Lowe's on this debacle.  It took them a month to engage.  We have a quartz backsplash that we will install behind the stove, but first Lowe's has to get the countertop fitted properly back into place.

We hung the first picture this month, a gift from our great friends Scott and Cindi.  It is a photo of the Teton Mountain Range that sits about 50 miles from here.  It won't be long now before we are living in a house again.

We sat and enjoyed the view on Mother's Day and accidentally finished off a bottle of white wine and snacks.  I woke up the next morning with a touch of the flu  ;-)