The last week in Pennsylvania is upon us and we are packing furiously. I have been doing some serious task planning for over a year and we are actually in decent shape given all that we have going on. I suspect that everything should be either packed or close to it by the end of the weekend and we can spend the remaining four days just cleaning, tidying up and making sure we don’t burn down the house (which officially settles on June 1).

In Vermont, the builders installed snow guards on the roof to prevent massive snow piles crushing anyone below during the winter. They also completed some other exterior work like the garage door install and the shou sugi ban wood cladding under the porch. Once that was completed, they started installing the black metal cladding and that will comprise the bulk of the work next week.

Inside the house, the drywall subcontractors have completed the second floor rooms and are almost completed installing drywall on the first floor/main room walls. They still have some of the higher-up drywall to attach and then a lot of taping and sanding to do. I think that is slated to be done by Thursday of the coming week.

Our builder has also found a good plasterer. They sent us some samples based on color swatches we had provided and we think we have a good choice. The fireplace surround and the walls around it are going to have the plaster applied – a waxed plaster look with a serene gray meant to bridge the color gap between the ash ceiling and the concrete floor.