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We have electricians!
We have plumbers!
We have…okay, we only have electricians and plumbers.
Actually, we only have electrician. And plumber.
But Electrician! and Plumber! are Working!
And that is more than enough right now.
We had every intention of getting lots and lots done on Saturday, but instead of working we were forced to travel to a ridiculously beautiful Maine island and watch Shey and Josh get married and then party down with lots of fun people while drinking wine. We felt very badly for us too.
This is Shey, who looks every inch the lovely and graceful bride. We suspect she had an iron grip on her dad in order to keep from sliding down the hill on wet grass at this particular moment.
Shey and Josh built their house last year. We took ourselves on a little tour during the reception, because, yes, we are that kind of people. We looked in the medicine cabinet, too. (Just kidding, Shey!) It was so nice to see the house and to know that they, too, suffered like we are suffering and yet somehow survived to see the other side. The side where they actually get to live in the house. We dream about that side.
The giant head in the photo is Ben, which is not to say that he has a giant head in real life. He and his wife Bridget (hi Bridget! She also has a normal-sized head, for the record) are building their house as well. (It’s an epidemic! Compulsive housebuilding in Maine! More at 11!)
While we are the type of people who will sneak into your house while you are off getting married, we are not the type of people who brag. Which is a shame, because if we were, we would totally rub in how very, very far ahead of Ben and Bridget we are. Weeks ahead. Months ahead even. But we are totally not that kind of people. Ahem.
We’d like to tell you that all of the house talk at the wedding motivated us to come back on Sunday and work like mad. Yes, we would like to tell you that indeed. But, sadly, the weather was still iffy and someone–not Cherie! She will deny it!–had a wee bit too much wine at the wedding and was moving slower than normal. So we built upstairs closets and cleaned up all the trash and sawdust and scrap wood that has collected over the last several weeks and called it good.
See? Sparkling clean!
Yes, this would be more effective if we had thought to take an actual before photo. Picky, picky.
Things have been fairly quiet here as we engage in a strenuous bout of waiting. What are we waiting for? Answering that will require a list:
1) The Electrician. Michael drilled some of the holes for wiring, but we need the electrician to rough in all of the wiring, place all boxes, and install the recessed lighting. At our electrician’s suggestion, we went and purchased all of the wire and other supplies at Home Depot. Currently, they have the best prices for these sorts of things, prices that are changing daily due to the wacky copper market. Ever wondered what $2,000 of electrical supplies looks like?
*gulp*
2) The Plumber. All the sinks and toilets are ready to be placed, the boiler and water heater are in their boxes in the basement, and the tub is sitting on the front porch (yet another way we let the neighbors know how Classy we are). All we need is a plumber. Hello? Mr. Plumber? Are you there? Not that it really matters, because we also need…
3) The Well Driller. ‘Tis true. We are not on town water. We have consulted with the driller, dowsed (mostly for entertainment), and picked our spot. We’ve been assured that all the neighbors have found water within 200 feet. Now all we need is the guy with the big drill. Of course, if we had water and pipes to put it through, there’s nowhere for it all to go because we are also waiting for…
4) The Septic System. Nope. No town sewer either. We’ll have a tank and septic field system going in someday soon. It’s designed and the field is mostly cleared. We’ve got a few more trees to chop down and then we’ve got to get the contractor in. But that isn’t the biggest wait. The biggest wait is…
5) The Electricity. Not to be confused with The Electrician of #1, this is the actual delivery of electricity to our lot. Because of a ridiculous lack of foresight on the part of the electric company (“You mean that people are actually going to build houses on those lots? Houses that require electricity? That’s just crazy talk!”) , getting power requires replacing two full-size poles, installing two half poles, and burying the wire to our house. We are a month into this process and they’ve gotten as far as sending us the paperwork and asking for money. Let’s hope the rest of it moves a little bit faster. Because, really, without number 5, numbers 1-4 are unlikely to be very helpful.
A conversation from last night:
M: (sinks last screw and steps back, satisfied) Now we can have people over.
C: What do you mean? Why couldn’t we have people over before?
M: (shakes head woefully) You didn’t see Leisa trying to climb the ladder in her dress the other day.
C: Ooooh. Yeah. Let’s have a welcome the stairs party.
We don’t like to think of this rainy, rainy weekend as time wasted. We like to think of it The Weekend the Roof Got Tested. And, we’re happy to announce, that roof done worked good. When we went to check on things Sunday afternoon everything was drydrydry. Good job roof!
While we were there, we did a walk through for the electrical, thinking through where we would put light switches, recessed lighting, overheads, everything that needs to be wired in. With luck we will meet with electrician this week to get things rolling. We don’t have power to the house yet, but someday (someday!). Unless we become Amish in the next few weeks which seems, frankly, unlikely.
The plumber might be ready to start this week too, so we also made some final decisions on placements for the sinks and toilets. Michael thoughtfully demonstrated for you all:
Perfect!
It’s raining here today, pretty severely. We don’t mind so much. It’s been at least a month since we’ve had a day off from the house, and we aren’t exactly weeping at not having a chance to spend yet another Saturday in clothes so caked in sawdust that they could stand on their own.
But don’t worry. We aren’t sitting around eating bon-bons whilst being fanned by our houseboy (read: eating nachos while being panted on by the dog). We both picked up some side gigs for the weekend; not a bad thing considering the way building a house causes your bank account to hemorrhage money. But these jobs–installing kitchen cabinets (Michael) and some grant writing work (Cherie)–aren’t exactly photogenic.
So it’s time show you the stealth work that’s been going on while we’ve been distracting you with endless whining about housewrap and windows.
This is the upstairs. It insists on looking like a bunch of two-by-fours, no matter how many fancy angles we try to take the picture from. So we’ve added labels to make it clearer. Out of the frame are the third bedroom, behind and on the left, and the laundry room, behind and on the right. We couldn’t fit them in since there is still just a big hole in the floor where the stairs should go, and Cherie opted to not snap the picture while hurtling down through said hole. Hope you understand.
Like the decor?
Next comes the very exciting closet doors, installed in the master bedroom (as you look at the picture above, the closet is on the right side of the bedroom, taking up that whole end).
Yes, we see the humor of having closet doors before any actual doors on the house, let alone walls.
And, last but, oh my no, not least, comes the most exciting bit: the bay window. This thing is huge. Huge enough that Cherie (who is not a short woman) could sleep in it if she wanted to. Michael mocked up the sink so we could really appreciate our new dishwashing view.
Tomorrow it’s back to work. Or maybe not. We could get used to this life of semi-leisure.
