Well I finished my first week where I was working at the local Lumber yard for 3days. It really cuts back in the amount of work you can do on the house. So from now on my write ups might be a little bit smaller due to the lack of work. On the flipside I will be earning a bit of money to help offset the money being spent on the house. Now if anybody has the winning lottery numbers feel free to pass them on to me so I can quit the day job and work strictly on the house. Essentially from now on all the work will be done on Tuesday, Wednesday and most Saturday's. I might also start doing some more work on Sunday as well just to get things done.
So on Tuesday we had the Electrical inspector in. Turns out this was the same fellow who had just inspected Mom's house due Insurance issues, however that's another story. When he was finished he stated I needed three more GFCI plugs due to distance from plugs to sinks, I needed to turn my Stove plug 90degrees, I had to remove the plug in the master closet because it was not on the Bedroom AFCI cct and there were two temporary light bulbs installed that had to be replaced due headroom issues. All the issues were easily fixed and I will have an inspector in on Tuesday again to approve the repairs and give me my final inspection paperwork. I also had a company on site installing Eaves-trough on the house and garage. This eaves-trough is black in colour which I think worked out well. While I was waiting for the Electrical Inspector I started work on putting up cedar tongue and groove boards as soffiting in the back porch roof. Here's a picture showing the front of the house with the eaves-trough installed and a down spout as well. I arranged for down spouts at all four corners of the house. As well the second picture shows the cedar soffits.
On Wednesday I proceeded to fix the deficiencies the inspector found. Once that was done I spent some time installing the grout in the Master bath tile floor. After the initial grout was installed it took three wipe downs till all the haze was of the tiles. I think the tiles look great and the grout I chose worked out quite well. I also spent a hour moving dirt from the back of the property to the rear porch area to start filling in the depressions from the settling of the dirt. Here is a picture of the finished job. The actual tiles look a lot bluer than the picture shows.
That brings us to today Saturday where I spent the majority of the day working outside in the beautiful weather. However the first job was inside putting a coat of Thompsons water seal on 4 3by6in posts I bought that will go up against the house at the four corners under the roof beams. I'll have a picture of them once they are installed. I then spent the rest of the day outside. I basically was scraping away the dug up dirt that was laying on top of the original topsoil. This dirt came from digging the foundations for the house and garage. when they backfilled there was still a few inches of this stuff laying over the original topsoil. I wanted to scrape enough away so that if any topsoil is left from working around the house I can place it on the scraped area. If I don't have enough this soil is still good enough or grass growth behind the garage. The soil was moved by wheelbarrow to the rear porch area where I spread it out and then tamped it down. In the photo below you can see the finished work in the rear porch area. I still need to decide the final height requirements and then will need to bring more dirt in I expect. However for now it is flat enough. In the picture in front of the wheelbarrow you can see the tamper I used. Essentially it is a 8by8in cast iron plate attached to a handle. The weight is sufficient to tamp down the 2-3in of soil that I spread around. In the second picture you can see the area beside and behind the garage that I scraped the soil from. The area beside the garage will have a gravel side walk out to the rear storage shed.
Once this was done I went over to the side porch and removed the temporary decking. I then proceeded to dig out an area where the Air Conditioner will sit and spread this dirt around under the deck area. This area was then tamped down as well as the dug out pit area. Once the tamping was done I placed the deck back on and layered in two wheel barrow loads of gravel in the pit for the A/C pad. Once the second lift was layered and tamped I sprayed some water on it as well to help settle this area. I plan to water and tamp it again before I build a 4ft square wood frame and fill it full of gravel. This gravel area will then be ready to accept the A/C when it gets installed later next month. Here are two photos showing this work. First shows the area under the deck and the dug out pit, the second shows the gravel in the pit.
Well that's all we physically got done this week. We also picked up some trim material that I will paint and then use to trim out the bathroom. I also have arranged for the stone and brick work for the house. Unfortunately the mason will not be available until the middle of May so the exterior will not be done until the end of May. Once the work is done I can have the AC installed and then we can really go to town on the final grading.
Well that's all for this week. Tomorrow I head out to buy a medium size portable table saw so that I can start working on the trim. As well I will also probably buy the tile that I plan to use around the top of the shower so that I can start installing that as well. And once the electrical inspection is complete I can work in the house at night since I'll have some decent lighting as well.
Anyway till then enjoy the sunshine because in 9 months it will be cold again.
Harold
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