The Devil's In The Details

August 16th to September 16th, 2009

Fit the parts together, one into the other, and build your figure like a carpenter builds a house. Everything must be constructed, composed of parts that make a whole. ~ Henri Matisse

The tile guy was very talented, but he took off a whole day for his birthday and put the already behind schedule even more so. We had to have the tile to do the quarter round and put in the sink and get the rest of the air conditioning/heater in. Stephen left the day that a lot of that happened.... the sink, electric for the hot tub... etc. Just before he left, he had a bit of a melt down. The electricians came while he was running a last minute errand and they attached a very large breaker box right in the middle of one of the decorative brick inserts.... "it was code".... "there is no other way to do it". Of course this really means.... "We don't have time or energy to think about another way to proceed." After Stephen threw a fit... (I was so glad he was here to do that), they changed it and came up with a more complex but discrete two box system for the air conditioning and the hot tub that was pleasing to see and still came up to code. See... I knew you could if you put your minds to it.

I was sad that the delay resulted in Stephen not getting his hot tub experience in. Don't feel too bad though... he did get some great hot tub time in over Christmas. Anyway, my little sink was in and the electric was ready on the hot tub and they were trying to put in the air conditioning. But, at testing, the copper tubing inside the wall wouldn't hold the coolant charge. OH! NO! My heart sank as they took down the beadboard and some of the trim and opened up the wall. Come to find out it was a problem when they put up the outside trim. The tubing was in a very small confined space up the wall and the nail guns managed to puncture the tubing in four places... now who could have done that... even on purpose. Anyway, a few extra days and extra time and more work and the air conditioner unit finally worked. So far, it works well.

Now we are in the home stretch.... small things. So the lights are finally all in the patio and bench and on a wonderful timer... on at 5pm and off at 11pm. The new railings are in for the steps at the side door and the back door from the house. Then we had to wait a little for the railing for the deck. We had thought that David and Rick would actually build this with composite, but they ran out of time and the material was not available in the right sizes and thickness. The PVC version of the chippendale pattern wasn't what Stephen wanted so we went on a major internet search and found a company in Richmond that made it exactly as he liked, in powdered aluminum. The men came and took specific measurements and marked the posts for the post lights as well as where to cut the wood posts off. It took three weeks but the first week in September they arrived and had them installed in forty-five minutes. It was truly amazing... each piece came in a segment with the fencing and the post coverings in one. It is sturdy and beautiful and you don't have to paint it!

The light wiring was perfect and our little post lights were attached. Now it was time to get the hot tub going and sit for a rest with mood lighting on the deck and around the tub and with our resident horned owl screaming in the forest beyond. Mid-September brought the sod.... and now we are almost done..... almost!

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