Here is a picture of the house. You can now see that we have windows on both floors on the side and front, except for the second floor front bedroom. They are leaving that window until last because that’s how they get supplies onto the second floor.

The windows on the first floor are recent. Here is the east wall of the living room.

And here is the dining room plus the kitchen windows.

There was a snag in ordering. The two french doors (one for the deck and one for the porch) will take 5-6 more weeks to arrive. Until then, they will block the deck french door opening with plywood to avoid rain getting in.

Pretty soon now, the builder will install temporary doors with locks. Yes, we will start locking the house next month so we can start to store tools and things inside. For the actual doors, the pantry door should show up in approximately 5 weeks. I am not sure about the front door.

Meanwhile, the garage foundation is now insulated. Later this week they will back fill the outside and fill up the interior with dirt.

The surveyor came this morning to double check placements. The garage placement is fine. However, the roof over the front stoop is so close to the setback line that the gutter may extend over the line. We are going to talk to the building inspector about this.

We also had a visit from the consultant who handles the lightning rods. He looked over the house and will make recommendations soon. It turns out that there was a recent barn fire caused by lightning which has resulted in a large increase in demand for the lightning rod consultant.

Soon they will run the radon exhaust tube into the attic. Normally they would run it out through the roof, but we would like to avoid another hole in the roof if it is not necessary, so we will leave the tube in the attic and measure the radon levels later in the build process. We do not expect any radon problems.

In other news, we have decided to expand the utility room in the basement to fit all the planned equipment. The walls have not been placed yet, since the basement slab has not been poured yet, but we have changed the plans. You can see the new dimensions of the utility room in this picture. The stairs make the the image confusing. The stairs do not go into the utility room; they come from above the utility room and terminate next to the utility room.

Unfortunately, this change counts — Days since we moved a wall: 1.

So, what is coming up? Well, here is an approximate list.

  • The window installation will finish up this week.
  • The garage will be back filled this week.
  • The garage stab will be poured next week, followed by framing.
  • Next week they start installing attic insulation.
  • The basement slab will be poured in another month, after that they can install the stairs from the first floor into the basement.

August will be a busy month. We will start interior installation of heating ducts, plumbing, electrical wiring and internet cables. It turns out that they can all work at the same time, so it will get busy inside the house.

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