Week 31 and 32: Siding! and the end of Erosion

This was a exciting week as the first of the sidings have gone up. Summer like weather helped aid this process.
Also noteworthy is the end of the town erosion summons. We had to hire a landscape company to finish off the rest of the slope to free up Matt and Adam to work on the house.
Luckily the owner of the company were friends with the town inspector and the summons is off the table...hopefully for ever. Glad to put this costly episode behind us.

Week 30: A very long trench Indeed

Our trench was over 500 feet long from the road. This made it a challenge to get the utilities companies to come out with the right equipment. Time Warner only provides 250 feet of cable and the rest has to be paid for. Luckily Verizon didn't charge extra, however it did take them coming up twice to get the wire length right.
The ground water above the well seems to be coming out non-stop, strange how there is so much ground water, but when we do the drill down, it's only at 1.5 gallons at minute.

Week 29: Trench and 2nd polishing of floors

This week was the inspection of the erosion control measures we were supposed to put in place. On friday 3/19, the town inspector came along with the main sub division owner. We got the March 23rd court appearance canceled, however, we are still lacking some additional work that needs to be done. I'm not sure what else, but we are supposed to get a letter detailing additional work to be done.
The trench was dug to put in the well water, tel, cable and electrical lines. it's a massive trench about 500 feet long. Bit unbelievable when you think about it.
The floor polisher returned to sand down the floor bit more, now it looks more uniform and you see the veins of the concrete which is quite nice.

Week 27 & 28: Exterior Insulation

Weather has finally started to turn for the better. We enjoyed a week in the 40's and 50's for a change. Matt and Adam had a chance to put in the exterior insulation and get the house wrapped.
The concrete floors are sealed and prepared for final polishing.
We're about to put in the deposit for the windows. Arcadia is having issues with the spec of our front door. We've decided to do an expansive front door running the entire width of the front entrance, which is about 5 feet wide by 7 feet high (we wanted 9 feet originally, but I don't think the engineers are going to go for that). Arcadia refuses to make the front door since they can't guarantee it due to the weight of wide door. Checking with 1 more supplier before we give up.

Week: 21 to 26 zzzzz.....

Unfortunately mother nature had decided to prolong winter. Not many things were done during these freezing weeks.
We received a court summons for the storm water management problem coupled with the erosion problem. The problem is two fold. We have to work with the local court and also the DEC for erosion. Part of the erosion was taken care of when our builder was able catch a few days of warm weather. We'll see how the rest works out depending on weather.

Week: 20 Roof Baby!

The roof materials was finally delivered on 1/14/2010. Work promptly began and progress was smooth thanks to some badly needed pleasant weather. It was in the 40's, pretty good for January weather. Weather proofing materials EPDM membrane was all laid on Saturday. Very lucky since Sunday had some rain in the forecast.
Some bad news: Matt broke his ankle and needs some pins and a cast. Sounds very serious and we all hope for a smooth recovery. Adam has been putting in extra hours and got some of their child hood friends to help while Matt is out.
Other bad news: Due to the issue with the rundown on the slope, we decided to delay the swimming pool and jacuzzi to years down the line. We may just put in a above ground hot tub instead for now and disguise it somehow since we hate the look of the regular hot tubs. Found a good idea in Dwell, we'll see how it works out. The DEC is now fully involved and it seems to be an issue with our entire sub division, not just our lot.

Weeks 15, 16, 17, 18, 19: Cold Cold Weather

Cold weather and the holiday season has slowed things quite a bit.
Week 16 : Initial stages of floor polish was done. We decided that we needed a more consistent look and polish down the floors a bit more than Matt's previous jobs. The floor polish guy was nice enough to stop in the middle of it to let us decide. However, we lost the window to finish up the job and now we need to wait for warmer weather to continue.

Week 17: Found out that someone in town had complained about our land. That someone turns out to be the head of the building department. The rubble that was pushed over the edge of the cliff during excavation apparently is now a major problem and they want to get the Dept of Environmental Conservation (DEC) involved. What a headache, we received a letter from the building department on Dec 29th that we need to do another plot plan and resolve the erosion with some kind of silt fence. Can't people mind their own business? the property in front of our cliff is also ours, I'm not really sure what they are complaining about. Any erosion is still on our property.

Week 18 and 19: Not much happened. Some window frames with plastic is built to keep snow and rain out. However it's too cold to get roofers to do the roof which we badly need if we are to keep the house dry.