Slowly But Surely

It's been a while since the last update.  The house is coming along, but more slowly than we would like.  The builder's initial estimate was 6 weeks to finish it after it was set.  6 weeks was today, and my estimate is there's at least another two weeks of work left yet.  The downstairs has all been trimmed out and painted.  The only remaining item is the floor, but the builder will install that when all the upstairs work is finished.   The well was drilled last week, the well pump was installed and the pressure tank connected this week.  The garage floor was poured last week.  This was holding up final trim and siding on the garage, that is supposed to be completed this week.  

The upstairs rooms are framed in. The electrical and plumbing still needs to be roughed in and the HVAC needs to be installed.  Once that is done, drywall can be hung and taped out.  The septic also needs to be installed, but that at least can happen in parallel with the upstairs.  The septic also should only take a day to do. 

Some recent pictures.  I held this blog post from last week.  I hoped to have pictures of the completed outside  but there is still a bit more work to do trimming the porch and garage.  

Here's the upstairs before any framing.  The wall straight  ahead goes down the stairs.  I will eventually be finishing all the space on the other side of the stairs.

Here is a shot standing in the same spot  early last week.  The builder is finishing out about half the space.  There will be two rooms and a bathroom.  The bathroom will be closest to the stairs.  

 Standing in the middle room.  The bathroom is on the other side of the wall looking straight ahead. 

Here's the garage floor.  This was holding up the trim-out and siding because they can't install the doors until the floor is poured and they can't trim and side until the doors are in.  The floor was delayed 4 days after the inspector decided the strings they set the elevation (thickness) on the concrete were 1/2" too low. One of many delays by the inspectors.

The fake rock over the well.  Eventually I will replace it with an actual well house. 

And the well pump is installed.  My county requires galvanized well casing to bedrock.  Other counties in the area allow PVC.  I've got 156' of well casing and an overall depth of 262'.   that's not as deep as I expected.  They trenched and installed the line back to the pressure tank today.  They tried last week, apparently there are too many rocks for the trencher and they had to bring back a min-excavator.

The Shed

I built a shed this summer at my dad's farm.  It is about a mile from the new house. It was easier to build it there than try to build onsite.  I had power so didn't have to haul a generator and tools up to the house site every weekend.   I also could just walk outside and work weeknights on it if I wanted to.   Of course when I got done building it we had to move it up the road.    It is a 12x12 shed and I should have taken more pictures during construction.

Anyway, here it is on the trailer ready to move. We picked it up with two tractors, one on each side and backed the trailer under it.  We did this on Saturday, just so we'd have time to engineer a new solution if it didn't work.  On the first lift I didn't have it perfectly balanced and it tipped some and one of the front wheels on the tractor came off the ground.  Do you know how hard it is to get a tractor wheel off the ground?

Here it is from the other side.

Moving day was early Monday morning, this was about 7:00 AM.  We figured there wouldn't be any other traffic that early on Labor Day.   You can't see the straps running over the roof but they are there.

Here it is at the new house.  It made the trip up ok.  

Here it is delivered.   We got it off the trailer in reverse of how we put it on.  Get the tractors to lift it up, then drove the trailer out from underneath.  My dad and I were on the tractors and couldn't see each other.  My wife acted as a load master and did a wonderful job  co-ordinating us both on lifting at the same rate and moving the tractors back and forth to get the shed set on the blocks.

A side view.  Once we are in the new house I will jack up the corners and set them on proper poured concrete footings.