The Albatrusses

Curt thought this truss issue might be the death of us, but we passed our inspections last Thursday and now he can breathe a sigh of relief. After losing a month on our schedule, having to pay a structural engineer to examine the trusses and then doing some reinforcements to them per his recommendations, the inspector didn’t even go upstairs to look at them! The nerve! It turns out that our friendly inspector Don is friends with the structural engineer, who also happens to live near us. So he just took the engineer’s word for it, I guess. Too bad we couldn’t have done that a month ago. We also passed the re-inspection of the fireplaces after Curt redid some piping, and we also passed the mechanical inspection. We can now officially run the fireplace in our bedroom AND the big brand new one in our living room.

But most importantly, that means our insulation started on Monday! First step was spray foam. We subcontracted this out but prepped for this step by clearing everything away from the exterior walls. We also put in rolls of metallic bubble wrap in the ceiling of our garages last weekend to improve heat retention there. We had a guy helping us that day - Sam, who has done a bunch of odd jobs when he's not working at a ski shop in Breck - and he stapled through our PEX twice. It was painful to hear the air hissing out of our precious plumbing after working with the PEX for what now seems like months to get our system to hold air. Luckily Curt repaired it quickly, but more patches equals more chances of problems in the future. We’d already jackhammered through the PEX in the basement bathroom, and cut out a few spots that were crimped, so it’s not perfect by any means.

Curt and Martin also finished the last of the soffits around all the basement plumbing so the drywallers can work around it.

Last Thursday, Curt also poured another layer of concrete in our master bathroom shower. There is a layer of water shield under that, plus another layer of concrete underneath to give enough slope for drainage. Now it’s ready to be tiled! We’ve been scoping out tile and have quite a bit to purchase – for our entryway, pantry, wine room, mudroom, all five bathrooms floors, four tub walls, a shower surround and two fireplace surrounds – so we haven’t picked anything out yet. I used water from our well to fill jugs to mix the concrete and it was exciting to have water come out at all, though the water was orange from rust because we haven’t really used it yet. 

I was hoping to connect a hose to it to wash our deck so it could be restained, but the hose was frozen. We only stained half the deck last fall before running out of stain, and you can see the line where it ended.

The last piece of good news we received last week was that our electrical permits that we thought would expire in July actually follow the schedule of our other permits that don’t expire until December. I wish that meant Curt would relax a bit, but it’s not likely. We are anticipating about a week to get insulated, followed by an inspection (ideally both would be completed this week), probably two weeks for drywall, followed by an inspection for that, and then we are done with inspections until those required for certificate of occupancy and final completion. Once drywall is completed, we have someone lined up to get our plumbing and pipes running which will take three days to a week. We bought our boiler which now sits in the boiler room. We even have a pedestal sink and toilet sitting in the basement just waiting to be connected in our basement bathroom. All four tubs are in place, just waiting. Our master tub has actually been cemented in. We just bought the faucet for this tub too. I've always wanted a faucet with the H and the C on the handles.

In May, we will start putting mortar and backerboard all throughout the main floor and loft. Then we can start putting in our kitchen cabinets. And lay our pine beetle kill wood floors. And paint the walls!