WHAT’S THE LATEST?

All of the wiring is completed.  It works in all of the rooms.  We did have one issue in Andrew’s room.  An outlet wasn’t working, but they traced the problem and got that fixed.  But we’ve got live electricity in the house, but we’re not plugging anything in the outlets yet, because we’re waiting for the electrical inspection.  We’re also going to be putting in some lighting on the outside of the house.

HOW’S THE SEPTIC SYSTEM COMING ALONG?

The last time we talked, John was going to be digging out the septic system, but as it turned out, he didn’t start that because were supposed to get rain later that day.  At this point, we still have not dug for the septic system, because it has been raining every day.   We’ll have to wait for the ground to dry out.   John is going back-and-forth between using either a metal or a plastic septic tank.  So we need to do more research to see what the better decision would be.  Since we haven’t started digging yet, we will have some time to think about it.

HOW ABOUT THE REST OF THE PLUMBING?

The well is hooked up to the house and we have water, but the only place the water can come out into is buckets, because we don’t have the septic system in yet.  We can turn it on, it just can’t go anywhere.

Also, today we are insulating the walls in Andrew’s and Sarah’s rooms.  On Friday of last week, John and I went and picked out the soffit and fascia.  I wanted to pick a darker color than the siding, so I picked out a dark bronze.   We won’t be able to put that on until the weather gets better.  Everything is muddy again.

We also have heat.   We can turn on our geothermal system.   It’s funny, because it blows out air that, at first is a little bit cooler.  We spent a little extra money on a staged-speed fan, so when it first starts out, it blows just a little bit.  But as the system warms up, the fan blows harder.

WHAT’S THE NEXT STAGE?

I’m kind of going crazy on the kitchen.  Because we’re so close to drywall time, we need the final measurement for the kitchen.  Once they make the final measurements for the cabinets, I have to make my final decisions for what actually want inside my cabinets - as far as what kind of drawers I’ll want.  There are too many choices already, and they gave me this huge list of options.  John and I sat down and he redrew the kitchen on the computer.  So, now I think we know where everything is going, but now I need to go over to the house to stand in the kitchen to see if I can visualize it.

Another thing we’re dealing with is outlets in the living room.  I want to put two outlets in the floor in the living room - for lamps - but we’ll be getting a new sofa and I don’t know exactly where the outlets should go.  So we’re going to go to the house and draw out some chalk lines where the furniture will go, and we’ll try our best to decide where to put the outlets.

The other thing we did was, we put in the wiring for the alarm system and Ethernet and phone system.  None of it is live yet, but it’s in.  It will be nice to have the security - more for me than for John.

The other thing that we need to do is pick out what the material that we’ll put on the exposed walls of the basement.  I’m thinking maybe a fake stone façade.   As soon as the weather cooperates, we’ll be able to get more of that outside work done.   We have a lot of work that needs to me moved for the driveway.

I’m going to check later this week, on what we need for our certificate of occupancy.  Once that’s done, we’ll know checklist-wise, what we’ll need to do before moving in.  I don’t care if we don’t have carpet in.  I’m just anxious to get in.

IS THAT ABOUT IT?

Yes, that’s it for this week.