My new reality

Oops!  Lost an entire blog having failed to upload.  Here’s a newer, hopefully better, blog:

Allow me to recount the schedule of a ‘typical’ weekend of work building a house with our son Dan and daughter-in-law Anna in Pennsylvania.  Some of the details may be out of order since I am rewriting this 2 weeks later.  In any case, our last visit began in Boston where we spent a few days moving Christina into her new apartment and also enjoyed several reunions with friends from when we lived there before retirement.  It was so nice to see everyone and to be remembered!   Hopefully we’ll be returning more frequently and will catch up with friends we missed this visit.  Onward to PA…

We arrived around 3:00 pm, our usual time from any starting point, and Greg began work immediately.  I took a few minutes to get settled, changed, and check out whatever Dan and Anna had accomplished since our last visit.  They had installed maple hardwood flooring on most of the second floor: 3 bedrooms, closets, and hallway, leaving a bit of finish work near the stairs for Greg to finesse.   Flooring work requires selection of a board for maximal use of length (boards are tongue and groove on all sides for tight seams) and avoiding adjacent joints, cutting as necessary to fit near walls, choosing widths for best approach in tight spaces, tapping in solidly and nailing in place or using screws when tight to walls at the end of room.  Typically, Anna and I work on selection, cutting, and placement while trying to keep ahead of Dan and Greg who are nailing and ‘futzing’.  Some final electric work was also started including siting ceiling lights, aka cutting holes in the ceiling.  

Greg began working on electric, mostly trying to figure out the circuits he had wired a few months earlier.  I began hauling leftover flooring up to the attic which will be open and habitable so basically third floor living space.  As careful as I tried to be, it was difficult maneuvering 100 or so 10 to 16 foot long boards to the next floor without dinging walls or corners.  For the most part, I was successful and got a bit of functional training in: dead lifts, squats, and stair-climbing.  Anna and Dan arrived after work and joined in on electric work, installing ceiling lights.   I then started working on some ceiling repair from some not-so-accurate hole cutting.  We quit at 7 and headed over to a local pub we hadn’t yet tried.  Greg and I retired to the palatial (not) Quality Inn in nearby Quakertown and D+A went back to the in-laws.

Saturday morning was bright and sunny.  The weather hadn’t yet turned brutally humid or hot as it was last August.  In fact, we’ve enjoyed an extended spring since our weather back north is about 2 weeks and 5-10 degrees behind.  We began work around 8:00am.  Back to flooring:  unfortunately, some flooring had to be ripped out and replaced due to faulty nailing resulting in bowing and squeaking.  Anna and I ripped out the bent staples and Dan and Greg replaced the boards.  It’s never fun having to rip out and repeat work.  We all understand the sense in doing things right and usually between the 4 of us someone’s calmness and maturity prevails despite the frustration.  I tell Dan and Anna “if you hear the floor squeak, think of me”.  They might be thinking of me a lot, I’m afraid. 

Greg and I worked on finishing the flooring near the stairs and in the laundry room.  Dan put the scaffolding up (2 levels) so he could wire and install the ceiling lights and smoke detector in the master bedroom with its 14 foot high cathedral ceiling.  Of course, he had to retrieve scaffolding sections that were all over the place since we’ve been moving things around to clear the area for floor installation and finishing.  Clearing the rooms also meant a considerable amount of time was spent wandering about looking for tools someone swore they had just seen somewhere it wasn’t.  Anna kept wiring other ceiling lights requiring only a ladder.  She and I also tag-teamed feathering joint compound (me) into the ceiling holes being repaired and sanding (Anna) in-between coats.  Sufficiently satisfied that the holes were covered and somewhat invisible with multiple layers of joint compound, Anna primed and painted those repaired areas.  Greg moved onto electric, wiring switches and outlets, having figured out what’s on which circuit.  He also started ‘cleaning up’ the panel boxes (one in the laundry room, one in the basement) and installing Arc-fault breakers.  Dan, having rented floor sanders (rotary and belt) from Home Depot that morning, began belt sanding the second floor.  I started rotary sanding.

Sanding hardwood floors takes hours.  Dan spent about 4 hours with the belt sander on Saturday, sanding with the grain to smooth seams and joints.  I followed with the rotary sander, mostly working in the areas that he couldn’t reach (near walls and in doorways and areas that didn’t have extensive length as in the hallway).  I started with 36 grit (quite rough), then 60, and finished with 80 grit (least rough).   I spent about 4 hours sanding on Saturday mostly with 36 grit.  It’s fairly mindless work, slowly guiding the sander into the areas that needed smoothing and hanging there for minutes on end.  We both had ear protection on, though Dan had music through his earbuds whereas I just let my mind wander (or worry).  Anna took some time at the rotary sander as well, spending an hour or two and giving me a reprieve (ie. time to feather ceiling holes).  I made a mid-day trip to Home Depot sometime that day.  Someone had spilled a gallon of paint near the register and the cashier was having quite a time trying to clean that up!  We had pizza delivered for lunch sometime earlier, finished around 7pm, and went to Anna’s parents’ house for a little BBQ and swim.

Sunday morning Greg and I made a stop at Home Depot for some supplies including a sheet of drywall, arriving at the house around 8:30.  The front door that we had installed a few weeks ago was smaller than the space we had allotted, so some drywall repair was required to fill in.   How nice to have a door and not plywood blocking the view!  Greg, Anna, and Dan went back to wiring and electric.  I then returned to rotary sanding, using first 60 grit and going back over the entirety of all the floors we had sanded yesterday.  This took about 2 hours.  Then Dan took over with 80 grit and did all the floors, again, another 2 hours.  I put up and taped the drywall around the front door.  Some small jobs were accomplished:  Dan installed the shut-off valve on the gas line in the laundry room.  I removed the remaining flooring (short pieces) to the attic.  Lunch was deli sandwiches.  Dan ran to Sherwin Williams for some wall paint for the bathroom and more floor polyurethane finish.  I then painted that bathroom.  Greg and Dan moved the large vanity upstairs they had purchased for that bathroom.  I also sealed the grout on the floor of that bathroom.  At 3:00 pm Anna and Dan began cleaning: walls were wiped down, windowsills cleaned, and the floors were vacuumed, swiffer-dusted, and hand wiped with sticky Tack cloth.  Shoes came off and polyurethane application was begun.  Greg and Dan applied polyurethane to the floor using lambswool applicators, swiping finish along the grain, back and forth and avoiding bubbles, which took about 2 hours.  It was a gorgeous day, so Anna and I went outside to mow and rake the field-turned-lawn.  We all finished around 6:30 pm.  Exhausted, D+A returned to their temporary residence at Anna’s parents to prep for work the next day and Greg and I went back to the not-so-Quality Inn and had a pizza from the joint across the road. 

Greg and I returned Monday morning.  Greg needed measurements for future stair work, worked a bit more on the panel box cleanup, and I worked on the front door drywall installation (some sanding (sponging) and feathering).  After a bit, Greg began applying a second coat of poly to the floors (no sanding required if the timing’s right!)  I ran a few errands (made some Home Depot returns and a visit to my friend Teelu in the HD plumbing section), then went back to mowing which I find relaxing yet productive, watching barn swallows dive-bomb the insects that are disturbed by the mower while looking for fawns that may be nestled in the tall grass.  Greg finished around 11:30, we vacated the house and headed north.  Six hours later we met our good friends Bob and Bonnie for dinner at our favorite brewery in Lake Placid, Big Slide, and got home around 8pm.  Another productive weekend in the books!

(Later that Monday, Dan returned after work and applied a third coat of finish to the floors).

Greg returned the following weekend on his own.  I went to my Mom’s who had been in hospital for a week.  She’s suffering from COPD, among other things, so I was happy to be there for her for a few days when she got home.  I’m also glad that I was able to arrange for some home health aides to come in daily to assist her and thus help my local siblings (Terry, David, and Ed) who bear the majority of responsibility and care for Mom and her house.  God bless them, and her!  Anyway, back to housebuilding:  Greg has spent the last couple of months at home (in his ‘spare’ time) building the kitchen cabinets for D+A’s house: Mission style maple cabinets with a teal colored island.  It was now time to install them.  He rented a U-Haul, had a couple of friends help move cabinets into it, and drove down to PA to install them.  With our friend Christopher and D+A the cabinets were installed and are now ready for countertop templating.  With the rental truck available, D+A took advantage and moved some of their larger belongings from Anna’s parents to the new house (mattresses, book cases, etc).  I drove down on Sunday and worked on the front door drywall repair that afternoon while Anna painted the front door.  Greg was staying at D+A’s inlaws;  we had a tasty Taco takeout meal with Anna’s family before bed.  On Monday, Greg worked on the cabinets and I got another coat of joint compound on the front door drywall.  Before leaving, I got some more mowing in.  I guess I like mowing!  We left around noon, made our usual stop in Albany at BJ’s for gas, and met Bob and Bonnie for dinner again at Big Slide, a repeat of the week before.

We are working in earnest to try and get Dan and Anna moved in ASAP. There will be some unfinished work (window and floor trim, a couple of bathrooms, outside deck finishing), but hopefully they can move in soon. Then we can take our time to finish the remainder, stop driving down every two weeks, and stay home and enjoy summer on our lake. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel! What’s left? Greg will be installing the treads and risers on the stairs and hopefully D+A will be contracting someone to install the railings (not in Greg’s wheelhouse, he says). When the kitchen counter is installed with sinks and working appliances, with one bathroom finished, and all final electric completed and inspected, we hope they will be given a Certificate of Occupancy. Fingers crossed the town inspector feels the same. You will be the first to know!

Here’s a home construction/remodeling or general homeowner tip: get a Home Depot PRO account. The convenience of returning items without a receipt since everything is on-line, even from multiple purchasers with credit cards on file, is by far the biggest draw. Having the ability to quickly check items in stock or order for pickup, having access to extra discounts (random discounts offered monthly), and getting points which can be applied as credit towards purchases or rentals all make for a somewhat better shopping experience. Lowe’s doesn’t have the same service. This is separate from having a Home Depot Credit Card. I have returned more plumbing parts than you can imagine (they ‘love’ me at the service desk). Not having to sort receipts and getting $$ credited back to several different cards or applied to a gift card (which would likely be re-spent on the same trip) is priceless.

P.S. I found my original post and this one is far better.