Week 16 - 0 to 100MPH again

Week of 9/15/08 Things are finally beginning to flow once again! The past week we have gone from having one to three crews (10 guys) working on the site.

*Our pictures depict the start of our fireplace and our house with stone veneer and completed decks and porches.

* Our new bid for the fireplace came in at well over $4,000 less than our old bid and they are doing a beautiful job. We have made friends with the owner of A-1 Building, Carl, who is personally supervising the fireplace construction and was even at the site all day last Saturday! Norman discovered his place accidentally as no one had told us about him and he doesn't advertise. He sells mainly to contractors, but is giving us the same prices! Carl is fascinated by our fireplace as it is new to him (you can't buy Acucraft fireplaces in TN). He also loves coming to the bluff and seeing how the house is going - says there are no comparable views except in Gatlinburg. Carl also gave us a great deal on the manufactured stone siding, which we decided to extend all the way around the house (forget that latticework on the prow side - stone will be zero maintenance!) Thanks to Carl, we are now back in great shape budget-wise.

*Other accomplishments: Our decks & porches, including handrails and spindles, are all done, our tubs and showers are framed in, and our interior log siding has begun. The plumbing is almost complete and the HVAC guy has done a walk-through with us and the plumber to decide on where our vents & returns will go. Our window trim has been redone and looks good. We have made arrangements to have all of our site trash hauled off next weekend.

*Norman and I once again spend much of the weekend doing clean-up. Actually, I picked up and raked up debris, and he sanded all of our interior log walls. We had made a decision to extend the interior walls from the great room area into the kitchen/dining area and are very happy with this.

Weeks 14 & 15 GLITCHES

Weeks of 9/1/08 & 9/8/08 - Highlights:

****Almost nothing was done the week of Labor Day weekend as our subs weren't ready. We did meet with Steve Feeley, a landscaping consultant, who is going to give us some good, basic start-up ideas. We also put in about 15 hours picking up trash and wood scraps. The weekend after Labor Day weekend we spent most of the weekend sanding our interior logs in preparation for cleaning and sealing them ourselves. We decided not to stain them because they are just too gorgeous the way they are!

****This past week (9/8/08) our main interior and finishing sub, Sam Thornley and his crew (buddy Skip & brother Joe), did get our stairs and spindles installed as well as a small 5x4 deck for our mud room. They also put up most of our interior log siding in the great room. It all looks good. I never thought I would get excited about round wooden spindles, but they are so much prettier than the "ripped" ones simply nailed to the railing (and, of course, about 3X more expensive!).

****We purchased all of our staining supplies and finally decided on a beautiful dark honey color.

****We are going to be cleaning and applying Shell-Guard RTU (insecticide guaranteed for life)to our logs inside and out and staining the interior of our home with a clear coat adding UV protection to it - because finances are getting tighter and the bids for those jobs are higher than we think they should be.

****The posts holding up our porches and decks are not set and bolted in concrete per code, and have to be fixed before we can pass the rough-in inspection (J.R. Neal dry-in crew).

****The building crew headed by J.R. Neal also failed to drill all of the holes needed for electrical wire.

****After some initial resistance, Battle Creek agreed to make good on the above, but we don't know yet when, as the crew works out of KY and will have to come back to TN to fix things. (Will find out on 9/14/08).

****Finishing nails were not used on our trim so we will have to figure out how to cover up large nail heads when we stain.

****The trim for the fixed windows that we thought we got such a good deal on were done backwards, the window sill on the outside. Also, when our window guy came out to measure for our fixed windows, he refused to do so, saying he would guarantee they would leak. One estimate for replacing and correcting the trim is $600 labor, not including materials. We will discuss this with J.R. Neal when he returns to correct the other above errors, but don't have any confidence that he knows how to do the sills correctly (maybe we'll get a refund, at least?!)

****Our fireplace guys, who told us two weeks ago that they were running 2-3 weeks behind, now tell us that it will be about 3 more weeks. We are getting another bid next week from some folks who can start next week if we accept their bid.

****We are installing a gate as people coming down our country road think our driveway is now the main road.

****We are still in fairly good spirits, but are realizing that almost everyone in this business is fallible (except for Freddie, our world-famous log home salesman, who is simply a wonderful guy) and that we really must be more on the ball in terms of inspecting people's work.

Weeks 12 & 13 - Dry In

Week of 8/18/08 and 8/25/08 - The dry-in went amazing fast and the J.R Neal construction crew and Battle Creek construction manager, Lee Cardin, were very friendly and professional. We treated the crew to brownies, fruit and other goodies each week and they went out of their way to patiently answer our questions. We did experiences some "glitches," however: 1) We learned during the dry-in period that our log home company does not frame out those windows or the doorways for the front and mudroom doors that we are buying ourselves. My husband had to make a trip to the window company to find out the specifics. The dry-in crew graciously agreed to handle this, for a fee of $25 per window which sounded reasonable to us; 2) We realized that our bathroom windows were too high and needed to be cut lower, our error. We had an emergency conference call with Battle Creek on the increased size of the windows. Once again, the dry-in crew & the construction manager came to the rescue. This time we used the barter system: three cases of beer and two chain saw blades! 3) Our fireplace foundation was finally capped off after a consult with our fireplace guys and our fireplace insert was ordered and received. However, we could not, at first, figure out how to easily get a two-pallet fireplace insert weighing a total of 950+250 lbs inside the house. (This was not something our dry-in crew was excited about handling.) My SMART hubby finally came up with a plan: He offered Collins' Building Supply, who is to deliver our wood floors, $100 to stop by our house, pick up the pallets, and use their truck's lift to lift it onto the porch. He will then use a pallet lifter he is borrowing from a local veggie merchant to scoop it up, into the house and (hopefully) onto the fireplace foundation; 4) We have water leaks. It rained ferociously for 2-3 days on the 25th & 26th and water leaked through the valleys where the middle roof and two lower-pitched roofs meat. The log home company said it was normal for that much rain, that the roofing felt couldn't hold it. We consulted with our roofer (who has 40 years' experience, but was in Alabama) & he told us that the felt was probably not laid correctly. He also said it was a bad idea for him to go ahead and lay down flashing and shingles until the fireplace was completed. (Our fireplace roof goes through the middle of the house.) Another friend said the same thing. Norman and I spent hours sucking up water with a wet-dry vac; 5) The fifth glitch is related to the fireplace. When we called our fireplace subs to let them know that we would be ready for them the first week of September (which is what we had been telling them for at least 6 weeks), they told us that they would be tied up on another job for at least 2-3 more weeks. This was rather upsetting, as due to the aforementioned leaks, we can not have any interior work done (such as dry-wall, electric, HVAC or plumbing) until the fireplace is done and the roof is shingled. I was told that they would try to find a mason to get things started for us and that they would call us back soon; 6) Trash: We didn't realize how exhausting picking up trash and stacking waste lumber would be. We have spent the entire last three weekends doing this and have the aches and pains to show for it. We are going to have to spend a few hundred dollars to have it all hauled off, but it will be well worth it. NOW FOR SOME GOOD NEWS: 1) My husband realized that I had allowed nearly $5,000 for flooring the attic with tongue and groove (dummy that I am - who knew that OSB would work fine?), so we will be using OSB and he will be flooring it himself with his handy dandy staple gun; 2)We have so much lumber and OSB board left that we should easily be able to floor our attic with it; 3) We may also be able to "panel" our hallways with extra tongue and groove, which will be very pretty; 4) We negotiated a better deal for stone veneer for our house by using a local building supply company to furnish the materials and labor, saving us several hundred dollars; 5) Despite all of the glitches, we are thrilled with the way our home is evolving, are quite proud of the fact that we designed it ourselves and; 6) We are actually under budget, which means we can include a few nice extras, such as great room ceiling beams. The dry-in crew, who has built over 300 log homes, said it was one of the prettiest homes they had ever built. Our construction manager, Lee Cardin, said he thought it was the pretties home ever built by Battle Creek Log Homes. Maybe they were both just sucking up, but we loved it, oh yes, we did. To celebrate, we chipped in for another two cases of beer and pizza and waxed sentimental about how people's paths cross and they enjoy each other for such brief moments. (That's my husband, the shrink, waxing, in case you wondered. He is really such a sweet, sweet man!) Have a good Labor Day weekend. Go VOLS and OBAMA and enjoy the following pictures of the dry-in!