Buster’s Blog

The earth moving contractor is apparantly finished because the paving contractor is putting down gravel and grading and packing it.  They were here Wed or Thursday powerwashing our current driveway where they are going to refinish.  There was a slight rain on Thursday afternoon which stopped them.  They said that they would finish with the gravel on Monday and start the paving of our driveway on Tue and then on Wed and Thur they would pave the new road.

Sorry this post has nothing about Rob’s dog, Buster.

Here are some pictures of the new driveway taken back when they first started.

This is taken from where the new corner of the driveway will be toward the old corner.  You can just make out the old corner if you know where it is already.  It is the light spot about halfway to the end.  At the end is the new road they are putting in from Kirkman road.

 

This next picture is from the same point but toward the little triangle. That is the current driveway just beyond the trees.

 

These next pictures are taken from the old corner of the driveway showing how the new driveway goes relative to the old. The first is looking toward Bonny Oaks Drive.

 

This one is looking away from Bonny Oaks Drive. The new corner is at the end of the clearing.  All of this looks much different now. These pictures were taken on 7/30/07.

When Mary was visiting we decided to install a cork floor in the den and kitchen, but the day before she left (or perhaps even the day she left) she pulled up some of the stuff that was under the vinyl floor covering and found that the floor beneath that was pine and she convinced us to go back to the pine floor.  This is what it looks like after being refinished.  It set back the moving in date a week because the rest of the house was ready for the 3^rd coat of polyurethane but the floor finisher wanted to do the 3^rd coat on everything at once so he had to put two coats on the kitchen and let it harden enough to sand between coats before he could do the rest of the house.  That made it so the 3^rd coat only had one day to harden before we moved the furniture in.  Nothing bad happened, but we were worried just the same.

They put the slate on the front porch day before yesterday and it looks great.  Today they poured the footing for a sitting wall around a patio that will go in front of the front porch.  I don’t have any idea what this is going to look like.  They also poured the pad for the steps to come off of the kitchen porch.  They will put the slate on the kitchen porch next week.

They have finished putting the rock over the front and North end of the foundation. The front faces East and doesn’t have nearly as much foundation above ground.

Today they started puting the rock venier on the foundation.  Hooray.

They also put in the water heater and may have finished the inside plumbing.  They still have to connect to the water meter and to the sewer.

They also finished the furnace and air handler and duct work for the HVAC.  They won’t connect up the condenser unit until the deck is in place so that dropped hammers and boards won’t destroy the unit.

The electrician that Chip recommended came out Monday and looked over the house and gave us a price yesterday and today he started. 

The carpenters installed the French door in the room off of the kitchen earlier this week and are working on repairing the roof in the front of the house where it had severe water damage and also where the house ran into a tree while being moved.

They started putting stone on the outside of the chimney today.  The fireplace is better than half done now.  They haven’t started on the hearth yet though.

Thought you might like to see that there is some progress being made on getting the log cabin ready.

The waterproofers came today and sprayed some black gunk on the concrete blocks and put some foam boards over it I guess to keep rocks from scratching through the tar.  They put a new kind of drain at the bottom that replaces a preferated pipe and gravel.  This stuff is only about an inch thick but is about a foot or so high and collects any water that makes it down to it.

Some carpenters started working on the family room to connect the two halves.  Also they are going to swap where the outside door is with the windows so that the steps in the back (there were two and now there will be a lot more than two) will go toward the garage. A picture would save a lot of words here except there isn’t anything to take a picture of yet.