Two steps forward, one step back?

Today they did some more electrical work, as well as installing the wiring for our alarm and smoke and carbon monoxide detector systems (take 1 step forward). Here is what the alarm panel will look like in the closet for the master bedroom (is it just me, or is the alarm for our house going to look like those alarms you see in restaurants with all of the blinking lights?).


They also managed to get the shower and tub for the master bathroom into place (take another step forward).


Unfortunately, in putting up some more light sockets, it appears that they had to move around some of the HVAC ductwork that had already been put into place (take one step back). (Yes, that is a duct hanging down into the middle of the breakfast nook -- I guess with that hanging right over head, our breakfast area will be toasty warm in winter and nice and cool in the summer!)


By the way, while I don't claim to understand much of the construction process, I did learn today why it is so important to get those walls up on the house once it is framed... Otherwise, there would be no place for the poor construction workers to do their long division!

Electrical rough-in

Boy, things are really along flying now! Today they did most of the electrical installation, including our circuit box.


They also installed a whole lot of outlets around the house (and some even include very helpful notations -- presumably for the electrician, not for us -- about which switch will turn on each light).


Finally, they roughed-in the spotlights over the fireplace (which looks pretty junky right now, but I'm sure that will all be cleared up before too long!).

HVAC installation

So yesterday they installed the bulk of the HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) system. We have a furnace (shown by our lovely model, "Vanna")...

Ductwork and vents are now spread throughout the house (these are the two over the breakfast nook/living room).

We have single vents in the two smaller bedrooms, each bathroom, the breakfast nook, and over the front door; we have two vents each in the living room and the master bedroom. We also have this nice jumble of ductwork over the front door (I sure hope nothing is too kinked up in there, because the bulk of our air is flowing through this intersection)!

Plumbing (and a little history, too)

Today a plumber's van was parked in front of our house. After they left, the plumbing materials were no longer in the middle of the living room floor. We now have all sorts of pipes running everywhere. One even goes over the ceiling. I have no idea why. Maybe that gives it enough water pressure to flow downhill and flush the toilet? Actually, I don't think that's how water pressure works. I really hope this pipe never bursts, because it runs right over the closet to the master bedroom. Can you imagine coming home and finding every single thing in your closet WET? The pipe is white so you can see it going up through the roof.


And we have these neat little drains for our future toilets. Don't they look like you just set the toilet down and turn it to lock in place? I wonder if it is that easy. At least with a concrete slab house we don't have to worry about a leaking toilet damaging the wooden floor and then falling through into the basement. (No, this didn't actually happen to my parents, but the floor repairman said it could have! Scary. And I thought the way Elvis died would have been the most embarrassing possible way to go!) If you look closely, you can see that there is a little trap door closing off the toilet drain. This is part of a trap that keeps sewer gas from seeping back into your house. It uses a little dip in the pipe that stays full of water to keep the gas from rising into your house. Not something you want to happen. This innovation was very important to making it possible to have toilets INSIDE houses without dangerous gases or germs. I learned that from a cool book called Inside the Victorian Home, by Judith Flanders. It had lots and lots of details about things like toilets, underwear, and cooking. Just the sorts of things you might wonder about that are never talked about in history books. It was very informative. Perfect for a Charles Dickens fan. It made me really, really appreciate modern living, with things like microwaves, vacuums, and toilet paper!


The bathtub is still sitting in the garage. I am not exactly sure it will fit through a door, so I hope they have some way to get it into the bathroom. I refrained from climbing in to test the size of the tub, but only because it was a little dirty. I do hope it is cleaner when the house is finished!


I think it is funny that all the pipes in modern houses are plastic. The word plumbing comes from the Latin word for lead, plumbum. (Classicists: plumbum or plumbium? My dictionary has both.) This is for one of two reasons: the ancient Romans used lead to make the pipes for their running water. Maybe the effects of excess lead explain some of the behavior of the Roman emperors? OR the lead refers to a chunk of lead used to weight down a plumb line, a string that would hang straight down because of gravity. You could then use the plumb line to make sure your pipes and walls were perfectly straight. Having seen how far from plumb most houses are, I favor the first explanation. Maybe we should call it plasticking instead of plumbing, today. Or PVCing? Should that be spelled peeveeceeing?

Sitting around in the dirt by our house, I found these neat little things:


One is a strip of nails for a nail gun. I sooo want my own nail gun, after watching the guys work on our house. It makes this cool noise. And you can actually shoot nails several feet. I wonder if you need a license to buy one? The nails come in strips, just like they would for a machine gun. Maybe you could wear them on a bandolier? (You can see what a bandolier is at this link. In fact, they will even sell you one of your very own. So you can look just like Chewbacca!)

The other object I am holding is a nail with a little orange plastic collar around it. These are used to hold the plastic sheets in place. I don't know if the sheets are moisture barriers or insulation, or both. They do tear pretty easily, and I think the collars keep the nails from tearing right through. So, the end result looks a little like the tufted back of a chair with buttons on it.

As you can see from the footprints, Spider Man is helping to build our house. I guess there aren't any criminal masterminds to fight.


This Typar company not only makes the sheets of stuff, they also make special tape for mending it when it tears. That is a good thing, since ours got a couple of holes. But it's all good. (Takes deep yoga breath!) I just keep reminding myself that all the tears and rough edges will be hidden when the house is all done. And so will the cool bi-lingual graffiti. Any Spanish speakers want to weigh in on my translation?

Any new guesses on our total number of boxes? We are currently at 68 boxes. And that is after three car loads of stuff went to Goodwill. Not to mention the old papers that were recycled. At least old, shredded papers make excellent packing material. If I'm not so good at reducing, at least I will reuse and recycle. Donations of boxes will be gratefully accepted!

Construction update

Besides our little Spanish lesson complements of Emilie, we also got some pictures of actual progress on our house. We now have a front door, as well as the two doors in the garage (the one into the house and the other one out the side of the garage)...


Of course, we don't actually have a garage door, but I guess that will come soon enough (our neighbors already have theirs).

We also have a fireplace (as opposed to just a place for a fireplace!) and a whole lot of plumbing supplies (why they're in the middle of the living room floor, I have no idea!)...


We did find it quite ironic that (if you look close enough), the warnings on the fireplace cover actually say "Keep combustibles away" and that there is a "Risk of Fire." I guess our fireplace is just supposed to be decorative? Darn lawyers!

Spanish lesson

After I saw this note, I had to go home and pull out my Spanish dictionary. "Apretar tuerco" means tighten. Apparently the red arrow tells you what to tighten, but I didn't see anything that looked like it could be tightened. Then I think that "blokes" means pad or block. I'm not sure. My small dictionary says "bloc" means pad (the noun) and bloquear means to block. You don't think a Brit is working there and is saying "Hey, blokes, tighen this thing up," do you? Hmmm, I'm still not sure. Catidro, I think, is a combination of the English "cathedral" (as in cathedral ceiling) and the Spanish "catedral," also meaning cathedral. So I think that catidro is a compromise between the two languages. This is what my Spanish teacher used to call "Spanglish," a bad combination of English and Spanish. Also the name of a cool movie.

We found out what the little black plastic things in the concrete were. (See below.) They were little place holders in the concrete, so when you remove them, there is a nice square hole in the concrete. Then you can run the water pipes up through the hole and into the bathroom. Clever!


In between the Spanish and the plumbing lesson, today has been a very educational day.

I'm baaack!

Our faithful readers might have noticed that most of the recent posts were written by Derek. But Emilie is back! After a visit from her parents (with the necessary house-cleaning frenzy), a weekend trip, a new semester, and a show with her belly dance troupe, she is back to blogging! It is kind of nice to sit down long enough to type something on the computer. Derek has been going by our home site every day, taking pictures. And, lately, it seems like something new is happening every single day.

About a week ago they were putting up the wood frames for the walls. It was a really hot day. We were sweating like crazy just watching them work! And these guys were fast, too. It looked like the old movies where everyone walks a little too fast. I have read that is because the camera had to be hand-cranked while filming. Eventually, your arm got tired and you cranked slower, meaning the film moved too slowly. When it was played back at regular speed in a movie theater, the people all looked like they were in a big hurry. Sort of like New Yorkers today.

Most of the construction workers spoke Spanish, and I got to hear every bad word I know in Spanish. Including something along the lines of "Hurry the #$%@ up! They're watching us. Let's move it!" It was very educational. :-) We were so excited to see so much work on our house that we went and bought cold drinks (soda, not beer!) for all the guys working on our house in the heat. You can see the bottles strewn around on the ground in later pictures. The lady at the grocery store looked at me very strangely for buying an armload of cold pop. Maybe she thought I didn't know they sold 12-packs?

For me, the moment our lot started to feel like a house was when the frames for the walls were up and the ceiling beams were up. Even though the house was open to the air, it still felt like it had rooms. So you could go in the hole where the front door will be and stand in each of the rooms. It was exciting. It also reminded me of one of my favorite books, Little House on the Prairie, by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Laura's father and a neighbor are building the house:

In one day he and Pa built those walls as high as Pa wanted them. They joked and sang while they worked, and their axes made the chips fly. On top of the walls they set up a skeleton roof of slender poles. Then in the south wall they cut a tall hole for a door, and in the west wall and the east wall they cut square holes for windows.
Laura couldn't wait to see the inside of the house. As soon as the tall hole was cut, she ran inside. Everything was striped there. Stripes of sunshine came in through the cracks in the west wall, and stripes of shadow came down from the poles overhead. The stripes of shade and sunshine were all across Laura's hands and her arms and her bare feet. And through the cracks between the logs she could see stripes of prairie. The sweet smell of the prairie mixed with the sweet smell of cut wood.

Wednesday, we saw that there were beautiful golden curls of wood shavings on the floor and the house smelled like fresh cut wood. I wonder if there is a Yankee Candle scented like fresh cut wood? The holes had been drilled in some of the wood to let the plumbing through. Our house hadn't smelled like wood before because most of the wood was pre-cut to the proper length before it was shipped to our lot. I guess it is more efficient that way.

The front porch also really makes it look like a house. I was standing on our new porch when we got to meet our next door neighbors. Two cute little kids and their mom. To the kids the half-built house seems like a big playhouse. They will each have their own room in the new house. Right now, they are living with family elsewhere in the same development. Seven people in one house. They must really like each other! I think it is a good sign that someone whose brother owns a house in this development would want to buy a house here, too. It suggests to me that her brother must be pretty happy with his house. I know, it is far too late to change our mind about buying a house, but I am still nervous.

It doesn't help my nerves to read the Wall Street Journal, lately, either. (We used some frequent flyer miles to get a free subscription. We will never work up to getting a free flight, anyway.) Every day there is more about foreclosures, tightening loan markets, and how it is going to be really, really hard to get a mortage. Eeek! I wish our mortage were all nailed down and signed. We wanted to go ahead and do that, but we would have had to pay the down payment, plus accept an interest rate over half a per cent higher than the current rate in order to lock in the terms in advance. Not a very good deal. I keep telling myself that, whatever the financial world does, it will be okay. If interest rates go down, then our mortage will be at a lower rate. If they go up, that will also help the stock market go up, so our mutual fund will be worth more when we cash it in to make the down payment. And if inflation increases, then we will be paying off our mortage with dollars that are easier to get and worth less than the dollars we are borrowing. This finance lesson has been brought to you by Emilie's 30-Second Over-Simplified Economics Lessons. Now available for only $19.95. Act now and we will also send you an old economics textbook that we don't want to move to the new place! Limited time offer.

I may not know much about economics, but I do know more than some people. One day in class, I said something about supply and demand. And one of my students said "Yeah, my Dad always says that. What does it mean?" So we had a short explanation, totally off-topic. Sigh. Do you realize that these students are old enough to vote to choose the next President, but don't know things like that? I think Dogbert is right: we should have an IQ test for voters. Cute, fuzzy, little dogs like Dogbert will be given bonus points. Hey, it couldn't be much worse than the current system. Just try explaining why we still have the Electoral College to a bunch of skeptical, computer-savvy eighteen year olds. The original reason was partially because it would have taken too much time for horses to deliver the ballots from each state, so the Electors needed to be all in one place. I don't think that really applies any more, do you? Okay, the Founding Fathers were also a little nervous about letting ordinary people without college educations and large plantations vote. If they had had IQ tests back then, they might have required one...

Okay, I better stop goofing off on the computer and go grade papers. Yes, I gave them homework on the very first day. Yes, I am the meanest teacher in the whole world, thank you very much.

Shingles (and a cryptic message!)

They put the shingles on our house today -- now we won't have to worry so much if it starts raining!


I also found this very cryptic message on some of the insulation stuff in the garage -- perhaps years from now some archeologist will be digging through the ruins of our house and find the message and wonder (just like me) what exactly it all means.

Our front porch!

They continue making progress... Slowly but surely it is starting to look like a real house! Today they added the railing for the front porch and put the shingles up on the roof in bundles, hopefully to be laid down in the next couple of days.

And windows to look out (or in)

Today they added all of the windows to our house (of course, we still don't have a front or side door), but the windows do go a long way to making it look more like a home!

A roof to cover our heads

Before we left town Friday morning, we drove by our homesite. All that had happened since Wednesday evening was that they had added a little bit above our back door and done some additional framing for the chimney.


But by the time we got home Sunday afternoon, we had a roof! As you can see, Emilie was pretty excited!


While we were there, we got to see our neighbor and her two young children, who were walking around their new home next door. We also were able to walk about and look around our house, too...

Emilie waving from our window by the fireplace

Derek standing in our front door

Emilie under our cathedral ceiling in the living room (with front door to left, master bedroom to right)

Major progress!!!

We drove by the homesite today (after taking Emilie's parents to the airport in Indy) and lo and behold! They started framing our house! It is amazing how fast they can put a house together...

Here is a shot when I first arrived -- there is nothing on the inside, just the outer walls.

Less than 45 minutes later, they had added most of the interior framing, including the kitchen, the master bedroom and bathroom, etc. By our count, there were 10 guys working on the house all at the same time!

By this evening, they were pretty much done with the framing (we are hoping tomorrow they will be putting up the trusses). Here's a couple of shots of the interior of the house: the first one looking through the window in our office (2nd bedroom) towards the back of the house; the second shot is looking through the window of the master bedroom back towards the front of the house (yes, those our our showers in the middle there).

Patio

I drove by the homesite today. Nothing exciting to report (although the homes all around us are going up fast, so maybe ours will be framed soon -- of course, we are planning on being out of town this weekend, which may mean we miss the framing), but here is another shot of the patio -- it sure looks smaller than I was expecting, but I think it is the right size (14x16).

Ready to frame!

We previously got our showers and tub. They've poured our slab. And now, today, we got the wood for our house!


The concrete company that is doing the finishing work even stopped by and polished off the slab. They also poured and were finishing off the patio at the back of the house.

We have a foundation!!!

I drove by the homesite today, not expecting to see any progress because it has been so hot. But, surprise!!!


We have moved from being the owners of a piece of dirt, to being the proud owners of a slab! Unfortunately, our excitement over this recent development is somewhat tempered by our neighbors -- overnight they've gone from slab to a nearly-framed house. But give us a week, and maybe we'll be there, too?

Seriously, where's our concrete?

Several more days have passed, still with no further progress on laying our foundation. Other than some rain Saturday evening, it has been nice and hot. Of course, those high temperatures may also be the problem (we've had temperatures lately well into the 90s with heat indices in the 105+ range). I didn't realize it until doing a little internet research, but there is such a thing as being too hot to pour concrete -- at high temperatures, the water can evaporate too quickly, which makes the concrete hard to work with. I think that can be corrected with certain additives, but those additives can also be pretty pricey.

All is not lost, however -- we now have two showers and tub sitting on our lot.


Of course, there's no place to put them, so there they sit, also waiting for the slab to be poured so they can have a home of their own.

Where's our concrete?

They've now added two layers of gravel (the second was somewhat finer than the first), and they also added some additional waterproofing material along the edges. We got an e-mail message from Steve today indicating that the plumbing had passed inspection and we were ready to get our slab poured. Hopefully, if the weather holds (which it is supposed to all this weekend and well into next week), I would think we would have a foundation in place very soon!

Under slab plumbing is in place...

We got the update from Steve today: "Update. Under slab plumbing is scheduled for today. Inspection by the Building Department tomorrow morning." So, for those curious souls out there, here is what the plumbing looks like under your slab:


We're not quite sure what everything does (especially those black boxes), but we're pretty sure that the red and and blue tubes are for hot and cold water. Beyond that, we'll just trust that they know what they are doing. The pink stuff around the edge is the water-proofing material.

By the way, whenever we think about the plumbing under the slab, both Emilie and I are reminded of the scene in True Lies (which is a great movie, by the way!) where Jamie Lee Curtis tells Arnold Schwarzenegger--

JLC: Listen, the plumber called. He says he has to dig under the slab or something that's going to cost $600.

AS: Mmm, that's okay.

JLC: Well, it's not okay. It's extortion.

AS: So what did you tell him?

JLC: I slept with him and he said he would knock off $100.

AS: That's good thinking. Bye honey!

Firm Foundations, and a recipe

Our house is finally above ground level! They are going to lay the plumbing, then pour the concrete that will actually be the floor of the house, then it will be inspected by the city (county?) inspectors. We also plan to hire our own inspector, just like you would if you were buying a "used" house.

So, why are we spending hundreds of dollars to have someone inspect a brand new home? One reason is because neither Derek nor I know diddly-squat (that's a technical term) about houses, so if something is missed or done wrong, we wouldn't know until the house blew down. Another reason is because we are both very risk-adverse personalities. We are the LAST people in the world to go to Vegas to gamble, and we don't like to do that with any other part of our lives, either. We feel that having the home inspected is a way of reducing the risks of buying a home, because we will know if something is wrong. Using an inspector is not a criticism of our builder. We wouldn't buy a house from them if we didn't trust them. But building a house is amazingly complex, involving dozens of people, and they are building multiple houses at the same time. It would be easy to miss a little something, like hooking up a wire.

Another advantage to hiring a home inspector is that he (sorry, but every single one we have found is a man) will also educate us about our house: where things are, how they work, how to maintain them, and problems to watch out for in the future. Why isn't it enough that the county inspectors look at our house? Won't they make sure it is all up to code? Yes, but that is a MINIMUM requirement for safety. They are not looking for quality or to make sure that we get everything we ordered (and paid for!) Their job is not to look out for us, it is to make sure the house meets codes established for safe occupation. We have been told, repeatedly, that Bloomington has the strictest building codes in the area. I guess those crazy liberals in college towns just like to try to fix everything by passing laws.

Now that the foundation is all laid out, the house seems awfully small. I keep reminding myself that it will be twice as big as where we live now. I think it is a good thing we will have more space, we were really outgrowing our apartment. We have gotten rid of a lot of things in preparation for the move, too. We have taken two carloads of stuff to Goodwill, and I have a stack of things to donate to other places. It is much easier for me to get rid of stuff if I know it will go to a good cause. For example, we have a new charity here in Bloomington called My Sisters Closet. It helps provide interview and starting work clothes to unemployed women, along with advice and other help with getting and keeping a job. They also sell clothes in a small store to help fund their activities. Despite getting rid of a lot of things, we are still up to 46 boxes! Mostly books, holiday decorations, and out of season clothes.

I think we will plan to eat out for Thanksgiving this year, so I can pack some of the fancy dishes and big pans I only use two or three times a year. There are several area restaurants that offer an all you can eat buffet on Thanksgiving Day. If we move in November, as I anticipate, we probably won't be up to doing the full Thanksgiving feast at our house. And it always seems silly to cook a mountain of food for just two people. Loyal friends, do not despair: this does NOT mean that we won't have our traditional day-after Thanksgiving pie party. I still hope to have it and then you can come and see our new house (and, probably, see the piles of boxes left to unpack!) Maybe we will even figure out how to use the fireplace by then! For those of you who are not local, the Pie Party is becoming an annual tradition. The day after Thanksgiving we get together to spend the evening eating pie and talking. After all, everyone loves pie, but is always too full to really enjoy it on Thursday.

My mother's pie crust recipe is wonderful and easy, too. It is surely to her credit that a man once asked me to marry him after eating a piece of my cherry pie at a pot luck. I'm entirely sure he was kidding! Since it is almost cherry season, here is the recipe:

Never Fail Pie Crust, from Nancy Patterson (Emilie's Mommy)

1 heaping cup Crisco (a bit less than one and a quarter cups)
1 teaspoon salt
3 cups flour
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 Tablespoon vinegar
5 Tablespoons water

Mix Crisco, salt, and flour with a pastry cutter or cut with 2 knives until only small lumps remain. Stir in egg, vinegar, and water. May need an extra Tablespoon or two of water. Mix all into a soft ball of dough. This makes enough for three pie crusts (the cherry pie will take two of the three.) Divide into three balls and roll out or pat one into a pie pan with your fingers. Don't worry about over working the dough, it will not become tough.

*Will refrigerate for several days or freeze for several months. Just allow to come to room temperature before rolling out.

*If desired, you can use half butter flavor Crisco, which gives a nice golden color. Do not use all butter flavor Crisco, it will be too salty.

*Don't worry, this will not taste like vinegar when you are done. The vinegar helps to prevent the formation of gluten strands in the crust, so the crust stays tender and never tough. It also makes it much easier to roll out the dough.

*To make a top crust look pretty, you can brush it with beaten egg white to make it look shiny, or beaten whole egg to help it turn a nice golden brown. I like to brush the top with egg and then sprinkle Demerara sugar on top (this is the fancy sugar they have in brown packets at some coffee shops, it is in big shiny crystals with a golden color.) Add any of these toppings BEFORE baking.

Lazy Cherry Pie Filling, Emilie Johnson

1 can cherry pie filling (not light), 15 or 16 oz.
1 can or jar sour cherries (often next to the pie fillings in the store), 16 or 18 oz.
1 teaspoon almond extract
1 Tablespoon lemon juice
1 Tablespoon sugar, optional

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Drain sour cherries. The juice is nice for homemade popsicles, but you don't need it for this recipe. Mix all ingredients in large bowl, stirring gently so as not to break up the cherries. Dump into a raw pie crust in a 9 inch or deep dish pie plate. (The cheap foil ones from the Dollar Store are too small. But you could just eat the extra cherries on top of ice cream if that's all you have.) Cover with a top crust, crimp edges. Bake until top is golden brown, about 40 minutes at 400 degrees.

*The pie pan will be quite full. To avoid bubbling over in the oven (and, then, having to clean the bottom of the oven) cut small holes in the top crust. I like little hearts, you can use a tiny cookie cutter if you have one. Slashes with a knife or pricks with a fork are not adequate. For extra insurance, put a cookie sheet under the pie plate to catch any drips. A cookie sheet can also provide extra support to a flimsy foil pain. Actually, just go ahead buy a real pie pan. Baker's Joy or Wilton, $5.99 at Target! Pyrex is also nice, $9.99.

*Why do you add almond extract? Cherries are botanically related to almonds (look at the cherry pits sometime, but don't eat them.) Much of the flavor and smell of cherries is similar to that of almonds, so this just boosts the cherry flavor.

*Why do you use sour cherries? They haven't been bred for sweetness, color, or sturdiness for shipping. They are just bred for taste. They have a stronger cherry taste but less sugar. And you can get them in a can and avoid pitting any cherries!

*Why lemon juice? Many fruit pies call for lemon juice, to add tartness to a very sweet dessert. Tartness is an important part of the flavor of fruit, even if we don't notice it while eating.

I have already veered off topic into history, you knew I would eventually start talking about food. Now, I will have to decide on a recipe to use that third pie crust . . . Stay tuned.