We went to the house this weekend to plan two sections of geraniums. Here is a picture of Daphne doing some of the planting.
Whenever we plant things, we tend to discover all sorts of interesting items buried in the back yard. Last week we found a milk bottle.
Today, we found a bathmat buried in the ground. I have no idea why there was a bathmat buried in the back yard. There is no evidence that there was a bathtub in the yard.
Inside the house, they have finished plastering everywhere except the game room. The game room is waiting for the beams to be milled before it can be finished. Here is the now cleaned-up living room. Next week, there will be no work inside while the plaster dries.
Meanwhile, outside the house they are starting to put the deck surface down. They can not finish until the landscape crew shapes the ground under the deck to facilitate water flow.
We were going to pick up some trees from the neighbors, but it turns out that a lot of the neighbors are away for school vacation week, so we will swap plants in a few weeks,
Inside the house, plastering continues. It is expected to be finished on Friday. Here is the master bedroom, which has been plastered.
And here is the living room, which is still in progress (and has not been cleaned up yet).
Inside the house they have also turned on the water. This is important since we need the exterior facets to work so we can water the new plants we are installing.
Outside the house, I have three things to report. First the gutters are now all installed, although they are still working on some of the downspouts. Here is the front corner near the pantry. The downspout will eventually go into that white pipe which funnels water to a dry well in the southeast corner (past the porch).
It is not clear in that picture, but there is also a screen over the gutters to keep leaves and pine needles from clogging up the pipes. You can see a little of the screen hanging over the edge of the gutter in this close up.
Also today the A/V team was installing the exterior doorbells and cameras. Here is the doorbell near the pantry door.
We inspected and approved the view from the doorbell and from the camera that watches the backyard for wildlife.
Here is the view from this doorbell camera. There are two pictures, one shows the view of a person at the doorbell and one is the view of packages left on the ground by the door.
For the backyard camera we had two choices of views, based on the angle that the camera was mounted. We decided on the first view, which gives us a better view close to the house, but I included the other view for comparison.
We also inspected the awning. Here is the awning when it is retracted. The power cord will be shortened and colored black (and plugged in just under the awning).
Here is the awning when deployed. We adjusted the angle from the last video that was posted. The team on the cherry picker in the background are adjusting the backyard camera.
You may notice that the awning cassette is brown, which is “chocolate” color. We had wanted “espresso”, which is a near black color, but somehow in the ordering process the color got switched and no one noticed. The brown goes better with the deck color, but black will go better with the trim. We have not decided whether to fix this or not.
Things remain on the new schedule for now, but past behavior is no guarantee of future performance.
Current estimated occupancy date: July 31, 2026 (no change).
I have added a new page with selected pictures from 2025 and the first quarter of 2026. This is a mix of pictures from around town and a few personal trips.
We went to the house this weekend to plant four Arrowwood Viburnum bushes. Here is a picture of Daphne measuring the hole we dug for one of the bushes.
And here is Daphne preparing the root ball for planting. You have to cut the roots which have been forced to wrap themselves around the inside of the pot, to ensure that they will spread out when planted.
While we were there, we also installed the new cover on the new rowboat, so we no longer need to keep it upside down on logs.
Inside the house this past week they have been plastering. Here is the family room (2nd floor), all plastered.
And here is the guest bedroom (2nd floor).
They are still working on the first floor. Here is the living room. The wood sections on the ceiling and wall will not be plastered but will have wood slats.
And here is the kitchen.
Outside the house they have been installing the gutters. Here is a section of the front of the house where you can see the gutter on the first floor and the brackets on the second floor.
And here is the porch where you can see the gutter installed.
Over the last week a couple of my orders from the forestry services have arrived. The plants arrive small and bareroot, so they are easy to plant. But I have a lot of them. So I asked some friends for help. Louisa helped me with the 7 grey dogwood and the 5 elderberry.
Then today Cathy and Louisa (above) helped me with maybe 10ish red osier dogwood. I forget how many were actually planted. I had 20 delivered to me, but that was way too many for the space. I gave a few to Louisa and I’ll give the rest away to the Arlington Gardeners.
After the planting, I had my typical Wednesday progress report with my architect and builder. The plastering has started on the second floor.
And we had to make a decision about the screening for the heat pump fans. If I just had one fan it wouldn’t be a big deal. But we have a bank with four and they are large and imposing.
I wasn’t really sure I liked our original screening plan. The fans where very visible from the deck. But with an L-shaped screen (above) it blocked the view very well. Now that is not the screen we are using. That is just a mock up to show the location. We will be using 1/4″ black aluminum cut out with abstract flowers. I might end up growing some coral honeysuckle up the front if I can keep it from getting too close to the fans. And keep it from getting too thick. I still need some airflow.
Right now, inside the house, a crew is putting up blue board on the walls and ceilings. They have finished the second floor and are partway though the first floor. Once the blue board has been installed, they will start plastering.
The crew uses stilts, especially when working on the ceiling installation. Here is a picture of two workers in the living room.
Here are workers in the first floor hallway.
The second floor has all the panels installed. Here is the guest bedroom (2nd floor).
And here is the family room (2nd floor).
In the living room, they have installed wood where the decorative slats will go.
Plastering should start tomorrow or the next day, once all the blue board has been installed.
We went to the house on Thursday to go rowing (more later). Outside they are working on the gutters. In the last post, I showed you a picture of the mounting blocks used for the gutters. Then crew then adds brackets to those blocks as you can see below.
And then the crew mounts the gutter in those brackets as you can see here.
Inside insulation is proceeding at a rapid pace. They appear to be done with the second floor. Here are some progress pictures from the first floor. First the living room wall.
Next the master bedroom ceiling (which is under the roof). The white board is added as an extra layer of insulation since the rafters did not support enough foam.
And here is the ceiling of the kitchen area (which is under the second floor so rockwool is used).
Insulation should be finished tomorrow except for the ceiling of the basement, which will be done later. The builder said that they will start hanging wall board inside the house this Saturday.
Meanwhile, the electricians are continuing to work in the garage wiring up the garage doors.
As far as rowing is concerned, we went out for two and a half hours, following the same path upstream as our last trip. It was quite windy which made the first half challenging as we rowed into the wind, and the second half challenging since the wind made it hard to keep the boat straight as it pushed us downstream.
In my previous posts, I had pictures and talked about how the insulation under the roof and in the exterior walls was closed cell spray foam. Well, they have finished with all that work and now the team is adding rockwool insulation to the interior walls, where we want sound isolation, and under the floors. Here is all the rockwool waiting to be installed (Daphne for scale).
And here is rockwool installed in the wall between the guest bedroom and the family room (second floor).
And here is the backside of that same wall, where you can also see the closed cell spray foam in the exterior wall.
Here is the team installing the rockwool in the front bedroom (second floor).
The basement walls are insulated with a rigid panel product (Thermax), and that work has now finished. The ceiling of the basement will be insulated with rockwool after the rest of the house is done. We decided to leave the walls shiny and not paint them since it reflects light and makes the basement brighter.
On the outside, they have been putting up small pieces of wood product on which the gutters will be mounted. Here is a section from the garage roof.
This week, we discussed the product that will be used for the deck railing, and also the railing in the porch. Here is a sample modeled by our architect. That little wire sticking out halfway down is a sample of the wire that goes between the posts and comprises the majority of the railing.
We also talked about installing screens to hide the condensers that make up the HVAC system. Next week Daphne, the architect and builder will use plywood panels to decide where to put screens.
Things remain on the new schedule for now, but past behavior is no guarantee of future performance.
Current estimated occupancy date: July 31, 2026 (no change).
