Airtight and insultated (Day 325)

The Wooden Boat Festival was great; Bill Hart and Steve Cooley should have been here. Steve, I know you have an affinity for plastic boats, but there were some pretty wooden ones here, especially some former racing boats that had been restored to Bristol conditions. However, I digress from the business at hand. We're airtight (not uptight) and insulated—hurray!

At the last minute I realized we hadn't plumbed in a water line to the refrigerator for ice making. However, with Pex tubing this is a cinch. I got an outlet box from my plumber, nailed and screwed it to the wall behind the refrigerator alcove, then cut the waterline in the crawl space, below. Put in a T fitting, ran 5 ft of 1/2" Pex through the joists and up through the sill plate. Used the Pex tool and voilà, we had water to the fridge. If city and county building codes (like Colorado) don't allow this type of water piping, someone is trying to protect plumbers and their unions.

Still putting major time in on the exterior of the house. Nancy has been painting the garage doors (two coats, two colors) on days its not too hot, and I'm up on the roof doing some final detailing. I bolted on the remaining Corbels gabled dormers on the upstairs) and have been painting them and the facia in preparation for gutters. The gutters are formed on site (rolled out through a form) from prepainted aluminium, and the downspouts come in 10 ft long sections. I have one estimate from Giraffe Gutters (good name) for $875. This is for 180 ft of gutter, 50 ft of downspouts and some offsets. This works out to about $5 a foot installed, which seems reasonable since I paid about the same in Colorado six years ago. I need another estimate to be sure, but two of the three companies I called haven't responded (people need work now, right?).

The drywall guys are next, so there won't be much to write about for a while. Franks Feltes daughter should be in the house on Wednesday putting paper on the floors to shield the Warmboard from drywall mud. When they finish hanging the rock the rooms next week, they'll finally have their final form, which should be interesting since we've been looking at the skeleton since March.