Everything's Underground

The utility ditches are closed! Lee the excavator guy filled in the trenches, coved the septic tank, and smoothed out everything, including the pile of dirt that came out of the foundation hole. Now it's all smooth and level, and ready for the fall rains and some seed. Well, actually we'll probably have to do a bit more work before we get to the seed... but it's a lot closer now than it was before.
Needless to say, before the utility ditch was filled in the water line was laid in it, and connected up at both ends. That's right, we've got water in the house! The loop of blue hose in the picture below connects what will be the washing machine supply to one of the drain pipes. I turned the valve on (just for a minute, to see what would happen), and sure enough there was water running through it! Weeee!

The propane, cable and phone aren't actually connected up yet, but it'll just take a technician a few minutes to do. No hurry for that anyway. In other progress, Steve started putting the shingles up on the front wall, around the door. I'll get some more pictures of that in the next day or so. It's starting to get dark a lot earlier these days, and last night it was dark enough by the time I got over the closing of the ditch that my picture of the shingles didn't come out. :)

Clawfoot Tub Primed

Yesterday I finally finished grinding rust off of the old clawfoot tub, and got a coat of primer on it. I was a little surprised to see that the Anti-Rust enamel primer is fire engine red. I expected more of a dull brick red. This isn't the final color (we haven't decided yet what color it will be) but it will seal and protect the cast iron from further moisture damage. And it doesn't look half bad! Cary climbed up in the rafters to take this picture:
Here's a close up of me touching up the edges. The primer went on easily and formed a nice even finish. It was thick enough to cover over and smooth out some of the smaller dings and imperfections in the metal, but didn't cover up too much of the detail on the feet.
Note the discoloration of the porcelin - once the outside of the bathtub is finished I'll have to turn it over and start restoring the enamel on the inside. That will be a big job too, but for now I'm just happy that the grinding is done. :)

Friday - Doors!

Last Friday the front door and the sunroom door were installed. They are still in their protective cardboard and plastic wrappers, and there are no knobs yet, but it's still neat to see them in place. Here's the front door: You can just make out the design of the window, it has three panes. All three exterior doors (front, sunroom & mechanical room) are Codel Smooth Fiberglass.

Here's a veiw from the kitchen, you can see that the sunroom door is in place. It has one large window in it, nearly the whole upper half of the door, but you can't see it yet.
Also, the sliding glass door between the kitchen has been flipped around so that the opening is on the correct side. I don't know if I mentioned it here on the blog before, but the framers had inadvertantly installed the two sliders in the wrong spots. One opens to the right, and one opens to the left, so with them switched both openings were on the wrong side. We've been aware of it for a while, but it hadn't really been a priority to switch them, yet. It's nice to have it done now though. :)

The other thing that was done on Friday is the phone, cable and propane tubing were laid in the utility ditch. It's a good thing too, because it rained Friday night and Saturday morning, re-filling the ditch with water. The water pipe still has to be laid in the ditch, and everything still needs to be connected up. It's starting to feel like we better get these ditches closed up soon, before the weather really changes for the season. Hopefully later this week that will happen.

We had visitors again this weekend, Cary's cousin Andre and his wife Trudel came down from North Vancouver on Saturday and checked out the house. Andre was interested in seeing the pond, so he and Cary bush-whacked through the swamp while Trudel and I looked around the house. We also picked and ate blackberries from our resident blackberry tangle. Yum. Then on Sunday Cary's parents and Grandma Marjorie came out and met us at the site, so we could do the guided tour this time. I sure do love showing off the place. :)

Electrical Inspection Passed

See that? It's the happy sticker that the inspector left on the inside of the electrical panel to show that we passed. There will be additional inspections, of course, but this is still a milestone. Now we can cover over the walls and fill in the ditch (well, once the other ditch dries out - more on that below).

Below is the whole fuse box, you can see the little green sticker in the middle of the door. You can also see the nice neat labeling of each circut on the door. Maybe it's just me, but I don't think I've ever seen a fuse box that was clearly labeled like this before. It's a thing of rare beauty... In my experience, there's usually a bunch of indecipherable chicken scratch and crossed out bits - and that's when you're lucky enough to find labels at all. Most of the time, you just have to flip the switches one at a time and then go see if the lights are still on or not. :)
And here's the outside of the fuse box, with another official inspection/permit document taped to it. The cardboard sign reads "Caution, panel is HOT!!"
'nuff said.

Steve has nearly finished shingling the eastern porch wall. Just one more course along the top will do it, but that will probably need to wait until the soffits have been sheeted. The stain really does give them the appearance of naturally aged cedar. It really looks great with the trim around the windows and everything.
The utility ditch for everything other than the electricity is still holding a lot of water, so nothing has been layed in it yet. Even after a week of dry weather in the 80's, there's still 6-8" of murkey water in the bottom of the trench. Maybe by next week it will have dried out enough - if not, we're going to have to bring in a pump or somebody's going to have to get really muddy. My soil is so clay-ey... it literally holds water like a bucket. Brian Bird, the potter, actually made me some flower pots with our clay. I see many, many years of soil amendments in my gardening future.

D'oh! Almost forgot the cat door!

That's right, we nearly overlooked the single most important new house feature: cat access. Luckily, Cary realized our folly in time, before we went too far with the siding or got into the sheetrock. Whew! Otherwise, we'd be pathetic door-opening slaves (and not particularly well-trained ones) for the rest of our lives, and nobody, human or feline, wants that.

Instead of putting a cat door in the human door, we're going to put it through the wall of the mudroom/front entryway. It will look nicer, cut down on the cat-darting-underfoot factor, and allow for better insulation than a door-mount. We haven't completely decided what brand we'll use, but we're leaning towards using the small Hale brand one. It seems to have the best insulation and general sturdiness of all the ones I've looked at so far.

Currently, two of our three cats enjoy free access to the outdoors via a ramp that Cary built for them which runs from the balcony of our apartment out into a maple tree. From there they can climb down a leaning tree to another board which takes them to the ground. Here's Sprout enjoying the view:
Unfortunatly Iggy can't use this ramp, since he only has three legs. So he has to ask us to open the door when he wants to go outside, and then back inside, and then outside again... We're all pretty excited about having a house with a cat door directly to the outside that ALL our cats will be able to use.

Shingles Started

...and electrical rough-in finished! Here's a picture of the electric, phone, cable and ground wires coming into/out of the mechanical room. The fuse box is on the inside of the wall, just waiting for the inspector to come sign off on it.
And here are the first few shingles going up on the front porch wall.
My mom came through town today (she bought me lunch - thanks mom!) and stopped by the house site on her way to grandma Joy's house. She called to tell me that Steve was working on putting up more of the shingles today, and she really liked the way they looked. I'm really looking forward to getting out there today and seeing for myself what he acomplished.

Aaaahhh - Long Weekend

We stayed in town and played host all weekend - lots of fun, even in our tiny apartment. Of course, no visit with us is complete without a tour of the house site. Here's Baby Moira, her Auntie Charlotte and Mom Tombi checking out the upper floor...
Moira's Dad Nick and our friends Janet and Gabe also came out and took the tour over the weekend, but somehow managed to evade my camera. Cary's Mom and Grandma also visited, although they took the self-guided tour this time. :) Next time we'll have to coordinate in advance...

In progress-related news, on Friday the fuse box was installed
Also on Friday, Steve put up the first little patch of siding, and blocking for the exterior light fixtures (that's what he's working on in the shadow). Today or tomorrow the electrical will be finished...

I also got a really nice still-in-the-box Baldwin entry doorknob & lock set from my uncle Fred's wife Debbie's son-in-law's yard sale. Not that I actually went to the yard sale, but Fred called me at 8 am on Saturday to see if I was interested in it. (He said, "So, has anyone ever called you at 8 am on a Saturday to talk about doorknobs before?" - I had to admit it was the first time.) It's really nice. I'm not sure if we can use it or not, we had already looked at and picked out a doorknob but I'm not sure if it's been ordered. Still, for $25 it seemed like too good a deal to pass up, so I took it. If I can't use it, I can resell it for at least what I paid for it, no harm done.

UPDATE - We probably can't use the doorknob. The doorknob itself hasn't been ordered, but the door HAS - and it was bored to fit the one we'd picked from the catalogue. The Baldwin one probably has a 5+" distance between the lock and the knob, and the door was made to fit one with a 3+" distance. I'll double check the Baldwin when I get home, but it's doubtful. Oh well. Like I said before, I bet I can resell the Baldwin without any trouble...