The Bad, The Good and FINALLY, The Move In

It's Monday August 13th and it's official, the Zeller House is now a Home! Well, sort of, more like a construction site that we eat and sleep in, but it's a far cry from what it was just eleven months ago and one can actually visualize the finished product coming together. My parents and my brother came to help us clean and move from Friday through Sunday and we wouldn't be in the house if it wasn't for the time they put in. Let's take a few steps back to my last entry, before we recount the most recent glory of appliances and finished plumbing.

Ryan shopped around for an insulation contractor. As I have explained before, the insulation we are using is blown-in medium density open and closed cell expanding polyurethane phone. It is high efficiency cannot be installed "do it yourself" style. Installers wear Tyvek suits and ventilation masks. The products is sort of a liquid foam when it first hits the air, so it can get very messy if you don't know precisely how to aim your gun. After estimates from two companies, Ryan chose the larger one, with the more professional business practices, or so he thought. They said their schedule would be tight at the end of July, but we stressed the need for adherence to our timeline, since we had the drywallers scheduled directly to follow. When the crew arrived to start the insulation on Monday July 16th after they had said they would be able to start either Monday or Tuesday, we took that as a good sign. They said it would take two to three days, so we scheduled drywall to begin on Thursday.

Well, their start date was the first and last good thing they did. By the end of the day on Monday, they had made such a mess on our exposed brick walls, in our outlet boxes, etc. that I really just wanted to grab the gun and take a crack at it myself. That seemed like a big deal until the end of the day Monday when we said, "See you tomorrow." The head guy looked at us like we were crazy and explained that there was no way they would be back the next day. He said the company had run out of the product and was waiting on a new shipment. He didn't know when they might be back... After that, communication with the owner of the company started to speak volumes about the company's problems. This guy was impossible to get a hold of and never returned phone calls. He finally said they would be back Wednesday to start up again, but Wednesday came and went and so did Thursday and Friday. The drywallers were great about it and let us keep pushing them back. We had planned our only weekend away this summer for that Saturday and Sunday and as we drove out of town, they insulators finally confirmed that they would do whatever it took to get it done by Monday and bring in extra guys over the weekend. Ryan asked our friend Matt, whose house he is also doing right now, to open and close our house for us while we were away. Thinking that this would finally be the last of the problems and figuring there was nothing we were doing from home that we couldn't do on the road, we left town. After a lovely weekend, Ryan got a call from Matt on Sunday night. (We weren't due back until Monday evening). He informed us that no one had shown up all weekend! The whole sequence of events dumbfounded me. Ryan is always saying that in this business, there are many more bad eggs than good, but it's just mind boggling how anyone can operate this way. After another series of calls on Monday morning, they said they would be done Wednesday.

We toyed with the option of just firing them, but at this point, hiring another contractor would have set our timeline even further back and we had already given a deposit of half the cost, which wouldn't be worth losing. I would have been ready to fire them and take legal action to get the deposit back, but Ryan is a small business and it would be more of a hassle than it would probably be worth. Well, finally they did show and finished the job. It was messier than we would have liked, but it got done and the drywallers were able to load their materials into the house on Wednesday and start Thursday. This whole process put us back a week, which was our only cushion and as the Drywall started on July 26th, our move-in date of August 12th was fast approaching.

Thank goodness the drywallers were the complete opposites of the insulators, because I'm not sure our nerves could have handled anything else. They were professional, friendly, neat, fast and best of all, they did an excellent job. If you've ever been around drywall installation, you know how dusty it can be. If not, trust me, there's dust everywhere and sweeping and vacuuming don't really help. Because of the dust and the fact that there were about seven guys working in the house each day, Ryan put in some time at his other project and we worked some serious nights.

The big projects were electrical and getting the tub/shower tiled and ready for use in the second full bath, since it is a smaller project than the master bath. Ryan and I decided to go with glass mosaic tile. We like the look of small tiles. After lots of deliberation over color, we decided to go with a neutral opaque frosty white colored tile in a 3/4 inch size with a one inch border in a transparent dark gray. Ryan had never tiled a bathroom before and I certainly never had. We had heard about the difficulty of glass, but decided to go for it, since it was the look we wanted. I actually ordered the tile online, but it turned out that it was coming from a company out of Vestal, NY, just about two and a half hours north of us, so I made the trip up to pick it up, which saved us a ton in shipping. The owner, an artist, who specializes in custom glass mosaic designs gave me a tour of her warehouse and studio and let me take a look at samples of some 100 percent recycled glass tile made from old windshields that they will soon have for sale. Glass tile is expensive to begin with and the recycled is even pricier, so unfortunately we were not able to go with this or a similar product.

The tile was a ton of work, but the outcome is beautiful! The glass tile comes in sheets of about one cubic foot. Before tiling we laid cement backer board, basically the equivalent of drywall for wet areas. Once it was time for tile we laidd a base of thinset mortar, and placed the tile on sheet by sheet. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, there are very few locations where you can actually get full sheets in, so you have to cut the 3/4" tiles one at a time with special nippers made for glass. We decided to put in recessed shelves, since I really hate to have those hangers over the shower head with shampoo etc. in them. Again, the finished product is great, but the shelves were a huge pain, with tons of half and quarter-sized tiles needed to keep the corners and edges clean. Once the thinset had dried, we grouted the whole thing, basically a wipe on, wipe off process that takes place over and over again to insure no grout is left to dry and harden on the tile. The last step is a sealer, which I applied two coats of. We caulked the places where the tile meets the tub and installed our fixtures. It was a really exciting moment to see it all done, since it is sort of the first glimpse of a finished product in the house. We were also able to put in the sink and and ready the counters for tile by putting down the cement board. The counters and back splash will also be tiled. In the last few days before we moved in we were also able to get the floors done in that bathroom and the attached laundry room. We went through the same process with backer board, thinset mortar, grout and sealer with large slate tiles. The color variation looks beautiful and Ryan is in the process of putting in the toilet as I write. We are hoping to tile that sink area this week and then that bathroom will be done besides paint and trim.

At the eleventh hour, we were also able to pop in a one of the many ceiling fans we are planning into the master bedroom, which made a big difference and made our first night's sleep in the house very comfortable. Still remains to be seen if a combination between the fans and the ventilation system (once it's hooked up) will do the trick or if the hottest summer nights will still be tough upstairs. After the initial work getting the boxes in before insulation, the recessed trims and bulbs popped in easily and are exactly what we had hoped for as far as general light throughout the house. Ryan was able to finish the electrical box downstairs and finish the wiring for most outlets and switches. We have a ton of dimmer switches and some complicated lighting, so that this point we only have the essentials actually switched.

The big excitement on Friday was the appliance delivery, another glimmer of our eventual finished product. Everything arrived in one piece. The only problem was the dryer, it's electric and we ordered gas, so alas our rush to finish the laundry room was in vain. Through Saturday, Sunday and today, Ryan has worked to get a temporary kitchen installed. The fridge is on, the range-top is beautiful and I boiled water on it tonight, while the hot air was whisked away and my cooking was lit by the bright lights of the new hood. The sink is large and undivided, just what we wanted. Ryan got the faucet on today and the plumbing hooked up, so we can stop brushing our teeth in the bathtub:) Last night's shower was really amazing. Tiling the tub was one thing, but actually taking a shower in something that you made is pretty cool and after a brutal weekend of working at the house and moving, it felt great. The dishwasher looks great, but for now we are going to wait on hooking it up. We figured we might as well get all the "move-in" logistics out of the way and of course I knew I needed to get blogging, so we had the cable company here today to hook up our Internet.

It's an exciting point to be at- moved-in to a functioning house. We're trying to take it day by day. Some days you run the list of what's left to do: kitchen, floors, indoor and outdoor trim, siding on the addition, exterior paint, decks, interior paint, baseboard installation, ventilation hook-up, beam-sanding and refinishing, doors, built-ins, front door, master bath, etc. Other days, you look around and realize how far we've come, how far the Zeller house has come in the last eleven months. Now that we are actually living in the space, it is amazing to really feel that while the square footage has not ballooned all that much, the flow and feel within has changed so drastically for the better at the same time that the house has maintained its original integrity.

I am back to work in full force this week and Ryan goes back to full-time work on his other project, so efficiency becomes the key. Evenings and weekends will be essential to keeping the house moving towards done. Next on the list is the Siding on the addition, all exterior trim, and the decking, both the back deck and the master bedroom deck. Next we are hoping to move to the kitchen and the finished interior stairs. We continue to wrestle with banks, we're in the process of closing out our loan with an incompetent local bank that will remain nameless and transferring over to a larger bank. As I mentioned in the last post, Photosite is discontinuing its service and has transferred our pictures to Snapfish. Unfortunately, the sites don't have the same capabilities, so we are working on figuring out how to allow you to continue to view our galleries. We'll have updated pics as soon as possible! Finally, I have to recognize our neighbors Bonnie and Art for their continued support. Bonnie has invited us over, tired, hungry and dirty on more than a few occasions and she really outdid herself with a bottle champagne the other night after the move-in. She is always delivering her delicious leftovers to us and we can't thank her enough.