What a week!

Much to report, or so it seems.

The biggest accomplishment was electricity! This was huge, up there with sheetrock in terms of major accomplishments. After nearly three weeks of waiting and a week after the scheduled date, as evidenced by the attached picture we got power.

And the exterior painters started ("warm stone" with "agreeable gray"
trim). And we got shower walls ("biscuit" with "mexican sand" highlights, I think). And we started on the porch handrails (1x2, 1x4 and 1x6 pre primed spruce and some 5/4 southern yellow pine).

The porch and step handrails have been an item of great discussion. I finally built a mock up of a section of railing which helped the trim man see what I was talking about which answered some questions about the handrail sections but not the step columns. Finally he had a dream (I didn't ask him if it was a good dream or a bad dream) about the step columns and came and built and installed them (the picture was taken before the step columns were built). The porch columns are going to take more work (the black steel porch columns will eventually be covered with some bigger wooden ones) but we'll worry about that once we are in the house.

You may notice some plastic covering where the driveway goes in the picture. We've been needing rain in a big way and we got a lot of rain this last week. Actually, we got rain every day, which has turned the red clay into a big gooey mess. The concrete guys came after the picture was taken and removed the plastic and spread the dirt a little in an attempt to get it to dry out. With no rain predicted until Monday night (but rain predicted every day after that for the next week) we are scheduled to pour the driveway Monday at 7:00 AM. Hopefully the weather will cooperate and not only will it not rain until the concrete sets up but also the dirt will be dry enough for the truck to get up the hill.

In addition, to the driveway on Monday, supposedly a gas meter will be set, which should allow us to have hot water and eventually cook once the cooktop arrives. In addition, a HVAC crew is scheduled to come on Monday to start up the units. This is also very significant in that the flooring crew cannot start finishing the hardwood floor until the air has been on for a week. So, a lot is happening.