The Process Continued page 10
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We finally have our house in Boothbay Harbor under contract. The only contingency is the buyer selling
their house which also is under contract currently. These are the same people who had a contract on our
house before but could not find a buyer for their home and pulled their offer. However now they are back
and this time with a buyer for their home so this means it is time to get things rolling. We can not do much
until we actually sell the house though because......WE need the money! Besides there is no guarantee that
their house sale will go through. So right now it has been a flurry of meetings and scheduling work times.
Sunday I met with the Electrician (Alex) and he will be starting in March. I also met with the
Sheetrocker(John) and he will be starting the second week of April. The insulation company (Warm-Tech)
is schedule to start April 2nd and today I met with the kitchen guy (Walter) to refresh his memory and get
him on alert. The floor guy is scheduled to refinish our floors the first week of June.
So what is our time frame you ask?
We should know by March 1st if everything is a go on the sale of our house. So we will start the electrican
and plumber in March using some of our emergency funds. The house closing is scheduled for March 30th
at which point we will rent our house back from them until June 15th. This will give us money and two
and a half months to get enough done so that we can move in there on the 15th.
This ought to be fun!
As luck would have it my boss is on vacation starting Wednesday and will not return until March so I will
not have my Mondays off until then. Due to this most of my work will be inside during the evening.
Especially since it is still very cold out (single digits at night if not below plus a wind chill factor) even
being inside is not real warm since we have no heat or insulation.
Today I was able to get some more siding work done on the north side until I ran out of siding. After that I
moved inside and work on tearing down the dining room ceiling. YES, the ceiling had to come down the
sheetrocker felt it would be better to take it down and work the new sheetrock up to the mural as we are
doing in the living room. So once again I was in Demo mode and this is and I mean it the last time I am
taking down any more plaster! I am so sick of that job besides I do not believe there is any left in the house
except the murals.
Now that I am back in work mode I will once again continue with the web updates. This should be the fun
and exciting part as we start to finish the project after almost one and a half years. FINALLY!!!!!!!!
We have gotten word that all the contingencies have been met and now it is just a waiting game until
March 30th. It is a weird feeling seeing a sale pending sign outside our house after a year and a half and it
will be even a weirder feeling when we actually move out after 11 years.
I have been spending my time at "The Farm" installing strapping on the ceilings for the sheetrocker and
going over each room to make sure it is ready to go. The plumber and the electrician will begin work in
about a week and Pattie has been busy meeting with tile and kitchen people trying to pull all the colors and
materials together. We have gone from thinking we will never move in to having only 36 days to have
everything ready to go (of which I only have 9 days off). I am hoping that the projects I have left will not
take a lot of time to finish or I will be having some very late nights as April approaches. Still left on the list
is strapping for the kitchen ceiling and the attic, subflooring in the kitchen and kids bath, framing out the
shower and extending the closet wall, reversing a door way, installing the central vacumn and finishing the
siding on the north side of the house. I also will be helping the plumber install the rough plumbing and I am
hoping the electrician will accomplish his work on his own. Hang on!
As the closing date inches closer, the urgency to finish the "to do" list increases. I have been working
every evening and of course Mother Nature has been fighting back with temps below zero at night and
only single digits during the day. Hey what happened to global warming? This is March right?
The plumber has been running the lines for the heating system. I have been strapping and framing in prep
for the sheetrockers and Pattie has been making design decissions.
On Sunday Pattie took the tiles that we saved from the surround of the original fireplace and cleaned them
and tried to come up with a design she liked to use as a back splash in the kitchen. Upon cleaning them
she discovered that the tiles were made by Minton's China works of Stokes of Trenton. It turns out that
this guy made china and tiles in the 1870's and was very famous. In fact the whole area "Stokes of
Trenton" is located in England and now a days they have tourist tours of the factories etc. I think that is
just so cool!
Speaking of tiles we have been pricing the tile floors and one guy quoted us a price of $6000 to install the
kitchen floor. This is not materials mind you just the labor to install. I do not believe we will be using him
for this job. Actually it turns out that the plumber (Allan Smith) brother Clint installs flooring and he
charges $40 an hour. Even if it takes him two weeks to install the floor we will still save thousands.
The electrician starts up again on Thursday and the plumbers will be back on Friday.
The last seven days have been very productive. I was able to put in 10 hours on Sunday and 11 hours
on Monday plus evenings. During this time I have been busy installing bathroom fans, framing closets,
fixing floors and other miscellaneous stuff. While I was accomplishing these tasks the Electrician was
able to completely wire the third floor and the plumbers finished all the rough plumbing which needs to
be done prior to the sheet rockers arrival. The plumbers also were able to install the piping for the
central vacuum system.
As I walk through the house I can actually see my to do list getting smaller. I am still waiting for the
arrival of the siding that I order a week ago but I have plenty of work to do prior to it's arrival.I am
finding it harder and harder to hide my excitement as we close in on March 30th when the dream will
finally start to become a reality.