Exterior Complete (Day 374)

The Architectural Committee met today and reviewed our case. We've been on their minds for a year now and I'm sure they want to clear our case from the docket. Our representative (aka task master) on the committee dropped by at 9:58 am to review our progress so they could make a decision on our case at the 10 am meeting. You can see that the house got a lot of scrutiny. He walked around the front yard asked few questions and said it looked good and he'd recommend that we be considered complete and get our refund (half of the $1000 deposit). The other half goes for cocktail parties I presume. Anyway, all that work and a two-minute review. Case closed.

Even though we're done, we not really finished. I started to put up the exterior lights and learned a lesson about Chinese lighting fixtures. Their mounting brackets don't go onto an American style recessed box, so some drilling and mods have to be made. This is the sort of thing that would add a day to the electrican's bill and $500 to the cost of the lights. So off to the hardware store for a abrasive bit, some washers, and different screws. Should have them all up tomorrow if the rain holds off.

Frank the drywaller finished shooting the topcoat on the main house today. Actually, his daughter Jessica did the painting and Frank did the back rolling. 2 hours to paint about 12,000 square feet of wall and ceiling with 25 gals of latex (Home Depot Premium Plus). It looks pretty good, but now we need to strip all masked windows, skylights and doors, and remove the paper from the floor. That should go pretty fast, then some cleaning up and the house will look sort of finished inside.

Craig Wallin, our former neighbor in KP and my building mentor, will be happy to know that we bought a slug of cabinets from Discount Cabinets of Washington (Sequim, WA) for the butlers pantry and mudroom. Steve and Jere are quite a pair: they sort of remind me of the Bob and Ray show on PBS. Jere is the color guy and Steve is the measure, design, and price guy. We'd had a first estimate from them about 2 weeks ago, but it was a bit rich for our rapidly diminishing budget. So we called them back and made some simplifications. Eliminated 4 cabinets and a large bookshelf, which I'll build myself. The pantry cabinets are Omega (brand) all plywood with stained Cherry frames and doors (Shaker style). The mudroom cabinets are the same but with a burgundy stain to match the kitchen cabinets±. They should be ready and delivered about mid December in exchange for the second half of the invoice. Looks like I need to find another consulting gig and Nancy needs to double up on her hours for the Xmas season.