pboehmer.com

2012.05.18

Its been a couple of weeks since my last update and a lot has happened as far as the addition is concerned. Builder is actually wrapping up the siding, doors, and gutters today. They have been working the better part of the week. If all goes smooth, all that's left is the driveway and the installation of the decorative exterior door which turned out to be a special order. Builder was nice enough to put in a temporary door in its place until it comes. How cool is that. The dirt in the back is slowly drying up. As of today, the next potential rain event looks like next Wednesday. Since I re-graded and tamped the ground, the water has been draining pretty nicely into two spots, which are then pumped out to the street. I have the electric rough in about 85% complete. All that's left is the upstairs craft room lights/outlets and some minor cleanup of the existing work.

I won't have any pictures for a couple more days. I left my camera on top of my service truck and then proceeded to drive for about an hour before realizing my mistake. Backtracked a couple of times, but no dice. One of the guys I work at lives in that area and knows the people pretty good, so I put a BOLO on my camera. Not the end of the world, as I offload pictures pretty regularly, but I still had a couple of pictures on it that I wanted.

I am celebrating my 40th birthday this weekend. We are having a fairly small party with close friends, but that still means that I'll be spending tonight and tomorrow helping my wonderful wife (who coordinated everything) get ready for the party.

2012.05.09

The builder showed up on Monday and put in the windows and delivered the siding. At least we are getting some forward progress. Builder was a no-show yesterday due to early showers, but came in full force today and started working on the south side of the house. I'm hoping to have the house fully sided by Friday. It will be interesting to see how much they get done today. Bonus is that Duke Energy changed my pole to house lines out yesterday, so the 200amp upgrade is officially done.

I took some time on Sunday to use my small rototiller in an attempt to mix up and aerate the mud without much luck. Even after using the tamper to pack the dirt, I still have what I like to call the waterbed shimmy. Walking on the tamped dirt actually feels like walking on a waterbed. I talked to a couple of people and one possible solution seems to be using AG Lime. The plan I'm thinking about would be that the the builder loads up the dump truck with his tractor which in turn stirs up the mud turning unto muck. Dump truck driver drops off the dirt and picks up a load of AG lime which is dumped back into my yard. The process is repeated until the mud/clay is dried up. Pricing for the AG lime sounds pretty cheap (under $50/ton), so this may be the likely solution. I'll talk to the builder about it and see what he thinks.

Over the weekend, I roughed in the garage electric and cleaned up the wiring that I've already done to comply with electrical codes. I still need to wire up lights and outlets for the second floor and outlets for the basement. The biggest hurdle now is figuring out how to light the second floor due to the sloped ceilings.

2012.05.04

I finally broke down and called IBI about the invoice on Wednesday. Turns out that the charge was for the meter release, which oddly enough was not even mentioned on the invoice (even in the IBI code ). I voiced my frustration that it would be nice if people knew what they were actually being billed for, which I felt mostly fell on deaf ears. I also confirmed that my rough-in and final inspections are still paid for, so as of now, it looks like I'm back on track. Now I'm waiting on Duke energy to get the new pole to house wire re-ran. Still have some wiring to do and some clean up on the work that I have already done.

My builder called me on Tuesday to say he was coming out on Thursday to start siding the house and putting in the doors and windows. The HVAC guys called about roughing in the duct work, so naturally I scheduled them for Thursday and took a vacation day to be home. The HVAC guys showed up on time, but ended up working for only four hours before telling me that they needed to get some materials and that they may or may not be back. On top of that, I had to take down a wall in the basement and move the sump line to make room for the duct work. I think I got more done on my own than the two HVAC guys did the whole time they had been there.

The builder called around 8:30 and told me that his construction truck had broken down and that he had lost the siding measurements for the house. He came down to measure the house and proceeded to tell me that the place he is getting the siding from does not have the color that we picked out. He dropped off the samples, so the wife had to come home for lunch to pick out a new color for the house. This actually turned out for the best, as the color we originally wanted was not available before, but it was now. The downside is that our daughter is not a big fan for the color. We currently have light (faded/weathered) blue vinyl siding, we had picked out a darker blue/gray back in January, and now we are getting a Graphite Gray. I called the builder back with the new color choice and he said that his gutter truck had also took a dump (he was having a very bad day). At this point, I'm not sure if I even want to know when he is coming out anymore, because when he does, we all get excited to see progress getting down only to be disappointed when he doesn't. Also, I'm starting to run out of vacation days.

2012.05.01

Got a bill from IBI this past Friday saying that I owe them $30.30. I prepaid for three inspections ($30.00/ea) when I got the permit and my service upgrade somehow ended up taking four inspections (or $120.00), though he only showed up twice. I'm at my boiling point at this time. The wife managed to figure out what was going on over the weekend before calling IBI Monday morning. IBI has this wonderful (sarcasm) fees page that apparently explains it all, though there is no correlation between line items/descriptions on the invoice and the items on the web page. For example, try finding inspection item "9005, COMM, No Description" on the page. Basically, they buried me in fees. So my expected $60.00 inspection fee (since he did make two trips) turned into $145.55 after all of the additional fees. Now I'm wondering how much the rough-in inspection is going to really cost?

The builder is supposed to come back this Thursday to hopefully start finishing things up. I also have HVAC guys coming in that day to rough-in the duct work. Needless to say, I'll be taking that day off work to see how things go and possibly try to get some work done myself. The biggest hurdle right now is the lack of drainage and soupy mud in the back yard preventing any work on the driveway to proceed. The builder is working with an excavating company to work up a game plan. I may also try to get Duke Energy out that day to re-run the new service line to the house.

One of our outdoor cats has been missing for three days now. She (Mama Cat) is around 17 years old, which is pretty incredible for a cat that has never been indoors longer than a couple of minutes year round. We fear that she has passed, something that we have been expecting for the past year or so, but we are hoping that she still turns up.

2012.04.26

Inspector showed up Tuesday for the follow up inspection and we were passed. According to my wife, he showed up shortly after they got back from the dentist. He simply knocked on the door, told her we passed, gave her the temp sticker, and left. He was there no more than a couple of minutes total. There was some confusion if this was the same inspector that I had dealt with last week, but after closer examination of the release sticker, it was the same guy. Now that the service upgrade has passed, its time to clean up the wiring that I have already done in the addition and get it ready for the rough-in inspection. I emailed IBI to figure out what exactly I need to be ready for the rough-in inspection and I was told that I have everything I need. Seeing that I will most likely have the same inspector, I definitely need to dot my Is and cross my Ts. The more I think (or dwell) about it, I have no problems with a "picky" inspector (just not an angry one), as I absolutely don't want the house to burn down and risk my family over a stupid wiring issue. In the words of my favorite TV builder, Mike Holmes, I'll make it right!

Contracts for the HVAC work and insulation have been signed and sent. Still waiting on my builder to come back to finish up his work before I can have them in to do their work. This at least buys me time to finish up the electric.

Work has been pretty hectic over the past couple of days as well. I have had two tower issues the past two nights, one due to a direct lightning strike and the other due to who knows why. Overall, this spring has been pretty easy on the wireless so far (knocking on wood), so I can't complain too much. We have also been tasked to migrate one of our edge core routers to a new unit. Normally not a huge deal, but the configuration between the two routers is different enough that this could turn into a huge headache. Added bonus is that there is no easy way to test the new router without essentially throwing it at the wolves and see what happens.

2012.04.23

After my traumatic experience last week with the electrical inspection, my wonderful wife made me take the weekend off working on the addition to relax and pretty much do nothing. Last week I scheduled the next inspection for tomorrow, which happens to be the same day my daughter is getting her braces put on. Since my wife was taking the day off work for that, she offered to deal with the inspector as long as he showed up when they got back from the dentist. My mother-in-law offered to cover the time during the dentist appointment. For some reason, both of them agreed it was not a good idea for me to be around for the next. inspection. Tomorrow will be interesting to say the least.