Humpin' the Hardwood

WOW!  It's been a long time since our last post.  May has been a very slow month for progress on the house.  The GC has had some problems getting his subs to the site to do their work.  For example we had great summer-like weather in early May ands everything was ready for the painters but for whatever reason they could not be on-site.   So they did not get started the on the outside until mid-May.   As of today, May 29, they are just about done.  Today they
stained the exterior front columns and beams.  Now they just have the exterior deck columns and beams and then they will be done except for the final touch-up that will be needed after all the trades are done.

Not sure if you have had a whole house painted lately but it's hard to find any painters who use a brush anymore.  They paint houses like cars, just mask everything and spray paint away.  Here is the west side of the house.  The side to the right has been masked and painted.  The side to the left is still the bare siding.

So with the painting being almost complete and the heat in the house working, both the tile and hardwood flooring guys can get to work.  The Tile Man has been in to install backer board and should start tiling the utility room, foyer, guest bath this week before he moves on to the master bath and the LR woodstove hearth.

Below we have about 1,700 square feet of 3.25" wide white oak random length planks being unloaded and brought into the house in order to acclimate the wood to the rest of the house for moisture and temperature.  This is so when it is put down everything is about the same and will expand and contract at similar rates.  If you don't do this you could get cupping or warping of the planks

Contractors are not doing all the work.  I had to dig a trench and lay a 1" conduit for power cable from the house to a new junction box that will be installed (by a real electrician) in the middle of the property.  I currently have a temporary meter pole there which I had put up when I first bought the property.  I used this power source for the RV I had set up and I laid a cable to the barn.  I need to get rid of the temporary pole and meter so had to run 30 amps from the house out there.  Saved some $$ by doing the trench and conduit work myself.  Electrician will pull the cable and make the connections so everything is up to code and safe.

So I used my cool little Kubota Tractor (her name is Mary) with the Chinese backhoe I bought used on Craig's List a few years ago to dig myself a 130' trench 18" deep.  Worked great.

Promise it won't be so long till next update.  GC has promised we would have our Certificate of Occupancy by July 15th, about 11 days from the original commit date of July 4th which was made last November.  Not bad.