The Big Folding Door is In!

This week I called NStar to try to change the billing info on our temporary electric service (which they couldn't do). Along the way, I learned that they had scheduled our regular service to be connected on March 23 - the service request had been placed sometime around January 23. Maybe this was retaliation for getting help last fall to disconnect power for teardown. Anyway, a nice customer service rep gave me the name and phone number of the guy who covers our town. Magically, after a phone call from our builder, service was connected the next day. So, now there are outlets that actually work inside the house!

Insulation is almost fully up, and water barrier nailed over it on the exterior walls. Even without wallboard, the shape and feel of rooms becomes more real at this point. And the wallboard is going up. They started in the utility room, also got the pantry and part of the mudroom, and a bit of the kitchen. It's going to take close to 3 weeks to complete the wallboarding. There's all kinds of narrow spaces, particularly between windows, that will require a lot of time to fit pieces. We thought about leaving the beams surrounding the living room exposed, but decided today to stick with the original design to wallboard over them; it'll provide a better line, since at least one of the beams was going to have to be covered anyway.

The big news is the installation of the big folding door from the living room to the deck. It is a thing of beauty - and not just by comparison to the blue tarp that had been hanging there for so long. The door is solid, smooth of movement, and seals tightly. Yesterday was my first view of it - you stand in the living room and look out at the deer, which are looking back in from their spot in the woods. (too bright of a day to shoot a picture straight out the door, but this angle shows 3 of the door panels and how it corners off with the kitchen.) When you open the door, it settles quite nicely into an alcove and the transition to the outside is complete. Also, with the upstairs deck off the master bedroom close to finished, the feeling of continuity to the outside really works. We'll just have to figure out how to keep the cats in and the wildlife out.

The sauna is getting built out, too, with the cedar boards going up on the walls and ceiling. We were so right to enlarge the sauna - it'll still be a bit small. Can't wait to get in there.

The fireplace is in its slot. While it doesn't have the aesthetic of the Rais, it isn't bad, and it will really heat the house, and in a pretty efficient manner. We're still figuring out what sort of surround to put around it - granite, tile, whatever. I think we'll have a few weeks to figure that out - maybe tie it in to what we do for kitchen counters.

And one other thing...we're actually talking about completion dates! It's nice to think about the reality of winding down the project in the next 3 months, and I won't miss being in a temporary living situation, where you can't always find what you want, and it's an hour drive to visit the house, go to our dry cleaners, or pick up our mail at the post office. Yea! No, we just have to manage our expectations since delays could still hit us.