Rain, Rain, Rain and the Halloween House

Last week, Marlys and I spent the week at Pinon Rock to paint the outside of the house and attend the annual ACPOA meeting on Saturday 7/8. As with most plans they started to change when they saw the light of day.

We picked up the 12 gallons of paint from the local Sherwin Williams store on Thursday night. The folks at the store mixed the paint to match the color sheets we had brought with us, Essex Green and Cinnamon. So we were set with everything we need to paint the week of 7/3.

When we arrived on Saturday afternoon we noticed that the siding was still in a bunk with the materials for the deck in the lower parking area. This did not bode well for the work of the week. There also were only about 90 pieces of siding not near enough for the house.

Well, we are flexible. We also needed to go into the Springs sometime during the week to select the granite slabs for the kitchen, so we would do that on Monday and plan on starting the painting later in the week.

We went over the house to see what had been done during the last week and it looked like the interior framing was just about done. All of the exterior and roof sheathing was up and the snow and ice shield had been applied to about half the house. The windows and doors still need to be installed along with the shingles and siding. David has about 2 more weeks to finish and it seems like a lot to do. Oh, I forgot the deck also needs to be built.

Sunday I looked through the materials that were on site and a couple of things became pretty obvious, we didn’t have all of the doors, interior or exterior needed and listed on the plan schedules.

Monday, I brought this up to David along with the siding stack observation. He mentioned that he had already brought the siding issue up to Larry and Neal and the supplies were to be delivered on Wednesday. As we also looked through the exterior doors we realized that we only had one correct door. All of the others were either the wrong jamb size or opened the wrong way.

We headed into the Springs with Carol to select the granite counter tops at CAPCO. We looked at a lot of slabs. I would like to someday find a way to use Labadorite which is a translucent black/blue stone which is amazingly depth in its look. We selected an Italian stone called Viara. It goes great with the Chestnut finished Maple Cabinets and the Maple plank floor. We also selected the tile that will be used with it in the Master Bathroom. We still need to select the tile for the other two bedrooms and the laundry room, but we are waiting for the combination sink/vanities before making a decision. The granite is identified by grade. Our current estimate was based on granite in the medium range, e.g. 3, 4, 5. The Labadorite was a 7. The Viara is a 3. For context we budgeted $5000 for countertops for the entire house. We reserved three slabs of Viara and our estimate from the countertop fabricator was right around $9000. This item is in red on my budget.


Understand that Neal was out of town on vacation during the last week, so he wasn’t there to check up on the suppliers. Needless to say he, David and I talked many times that day getting the situation corrected. This is not a situation that is out of the ordinary when building a house, but along with the siding that had been delivered being the wrong size was putting the plans for the week very much up in the air.

Tuesday I spent most of the day cleaning up the construction site. This was good because it had rained the night before and as it would turn out it would rain every evening and all day on Saturday.

Wednesday and Thursday we spent most of the time cleaning up the barn for Saturdays ACPOA meeting. Friday we ran into town to change out the Satellite, which off course spilled in the back of the truck, but luckily it was after we picked up the clean one.

We really need the rain, but the timing could not have been worse. It put the siding way behind schedule. We had a little time on Friday afternoon to paint a section around a window with our colors and another surprise appeared before our eye. The Cinnamon color looked very pumpkin orange like. The house if painted these colors was going to look like a great big Halloween Pumpkin.

The amount of rain we received over the six days ending today is in excess of two inches. This is A LOT for this area. Everything is green up and the place is a giant mosh pit. I hope it dries out in the next couple of days so that David can get back to work.

The heating and plumbing rough will start tomorrow and we have selected Pyle Insulation to insulate the house. Jim Crusty looks like he will be doing the rock veneer, which leaves only the sheetrock contractor as the last to be selected.

So this week we will be attempting to get the paint color right. We have also decided to spray the house, because David covers all of the windows in plastic when he is siding.