This week was a strange one. Highs and lows and all that.

First, we had drywall taping continuing into infinity. I think we are in week three of drywall but I could be wrong at this point. It could be week four. Or six. Who knows at this point. The problem is that it is pushed back some key milestones like painting and plaster. While the Shelterwood boys finished up the summer porch and the Walker team added $5000 worth of topsoil and grass seed, the taping continued unabated. It wasn’t that the taper was doing a bad job – to the contrary, the finished product that I’ve seen so far is near-perfect which is ultimately what you want – and it also wasn’t that he wasn’t putting in full days. We saw him there on weekends, holidays and evenings in an attempt to drive his part of the project to completion. There was just a lot of taping to do; more taping that we really figured on. The estimate was two weeks and, with a bigger team, that was a viable timeline. We just had one guy – sometimes two.

The plastering team showed up mid-week and they struck a deal with the taper – finish the main room and sand it first. Then the plasterers can do their part and get three streams of work going. The plan worked out and the plastering team did their plasterboard to start the week, then added one coat of plaster on Thursday and Friday and added the final coats today (Saturday). It should be dry on Monday and ready for a sealant to be applied. Meanwhile the taping, mudding, sanding and cleanup proceeded in the other rooms of the house. Today we showed up in the morning (again… on Saturday?!) and the house was buzzing. Drywall sanding is almost done and, as the sanding completes, a clean-up process is ongoing. I think the sanding and cleanup should be done this weekend. Then the final sealing goes on the plaster on Monday and the painting crew starts painting. The house will be very much transformed by the end of the week.

But there remains a large problem and itis going to delay our move into the house until at least September. That’s what the current project plan says anyway. The cabinet makers told our builder that they are going to be delayed by (at least) two weeks. The cascade of events that happen because of this is huge. It means that the Shelterwood workers won’t have work to do when planned, it means that we can’t measure for countertops which needs to happen as soon as possible because they take quite a bit of time to produce too. I know our builder is pushing them to finish the floor pieces first so we can take those measurements and get things moving but it looks like he’s not confident in that happening.

The bathroom tile part of this project lacks drama and seems to be drawing to a conclusion fairly soon. The craftsfolks are doing an awesome job on this.

One thing that goes unsaid through all of this is that we really don’t want to rush this stuff. We want it all to be “right” when its done. The closer we get to seeing the final elements, the more particular we are about how we want things to be. For instance, the door into the summer porch feels wrong to us now that things are almost done there. We didn’t really give feedback on that door and I am sure it was chosen by our builder because we were cost constrained at the time (we still kind of are but…) and we were in Pennsylvania at the time. But there are a lot of aesthetic reasons to change the door so, unless the price is exhorbitant, we are going to ask for a different one – one that is all wood (ideally white cedar to match everything else) and has a better match for hardware.

We groused that the drywall took too long but if it is rushed to the point of mistakes, those are mistakes that we’ll see every day and will drive us nuts. It seems to me that the drywall guy is a perfectionist and ultimately that’s what I want. We just really want to get into the house at this point. It’s hard to balance those two feelings at times.

So my hopes for this week is that we get better news on the cabinetry front, the drywall finishes, the painting starts and makes big headway and the plaster completes. If there is good weather for a few days, we may even get our porch and patio concrete poured.

Also this is the stream that runs just down the road from our house. I did some trout fishing there last week.