This was a crazy week with the house.

It started with a letter showing up in the mail on Tuesday from the power company.  When we had power run to the house, it started with us writing a check to the power company to even give us an estimate of how much they were going to gouge us to run the lines.  They came back with an estimate of around $11,000 which we had to pay for before they would even begin work.  They ran the power several months ago (as I detailed here) and we never thought anything more about it.  This week, a check for $3,100 showed up in the mail from the power company.  They over-estimated and wanted to give some of our money back!  Who ever heard of a utility company actually being honest about the difference between their actual costs vs their estimated costs when it favors them?!?

God bless Arizona!

By the photos, it does not look like we accomplished much this week although we were working as hard as we have ever worked on the house.

We hung the 9 interior doors that were in good enough shape to hang.  (But how many photos of doors do you really want to see?)

We had to fix a few jambs that got damaged in shipping, but those turned okay.  The one that was a real bugger was the door from the laundry room into the main hall.  The stud on the hinged side was twisted in a bunch of different directions.  We had to cut out several nails before we finally got it right.  Even so, it is only partially right.  Still, it will work fine and very likely, will rarely, if ever, be closed.

Our original plan was to hang doors Saturday and Sunday, then start the floor tile in the hallway and living room on Monday.  Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it), the HVAC guys had showed up last week and left our furnace and A/C in the garage.  Since I did not want them trooping around on half-laid tile (without grout), I decided to postpone starting the floor tile until next weekend.  Thus, we spent the rest of this weekend painting the outside doors and cleaning up our work area in the garage.

This was also the first weekend that we slept at the house.  It makes a world of difference not having to drive almost an hour each way between the house and the rental house.

The dogs really seem to enjoy exploring the big yard.

We do have a toilet temporarily set up in the master bathroom and it even has a door now.  But we are using the room that will be my office as a kitchen.

And we brought our camp stove over so Tina can do any cooking that cannot be done with a microwave outside the front door.

We even celebrated our first home-cooked meal at the house with a “red neck candle lit dinner”.  (We did not bring any candles, so a door shim held with a Vice-Grip worked well enough.)

The only challenge part is bathing.  We do not have any working bathtubs or a shower yet.  So bathing consisted of standing on the back porch in our underpants and showering with the garden hose.  Even though the house it pretty much out in the middle of nowhere, we did not go “full commando” because we occasionally get a horseman or four-wheeler that goes by.  It sounds worse than it really was because the water in the hose is really warm due to the sun and it is good enough to get the salt and the dust off so we do not get a rash.

We do have a solar shower in our camping stuff so I may have to figure out where I can rig that up next weekend for more proper shower.

Last weekend when we were out working on the house, we had all of the living room and dining room windows open.  It is surprisingly comfortable in the house, even when it is 90+ degrees outside with the windows open.  However, when we went to leave we discovered the big window in the living room would not lock.  We called the builder about it since the windows are his responsibility and after inspecting it, he informed us the window is “defective”.  He ordered the replacement which will hopefully be in within the next week or two.

Our mail-order interior doors from Menard’s arrived last week while I was out of town on business.  One of those was also “defective”.

I will say Menard’s was really good about the whole thing though.  I e-mailed them a few photos of the door and the SKU sticker on the door and they agreed to ship a new one the next day.  I expect that will arrive either late this week or early next.

The other 9 doors look pretty good.  Except 3 of them had damage to the door jambs from shipping.  I do not think any of those are beyond repair.  Worst case, I might have to make a few new door jambs, but that is not the end of the world, just a little more time consuming.

The major accomplishments this week were to get the second coat of paint on Tina’s big orange “accent wall” in the living room and to get most of the electrical topped out.

I have decided to call the living room “accent Wall” the “Trump Wall”.  First off, it is a wall.  Secondly, it is big and orange just like our president.  A couple times I found myself walking into the room and saying: “Well hello Mr President.  We both voted for you but never expected you would show up in our living room.”  Then I realized I was just talking to a wall.  But never let it be said that Tina and Mike did not do everything in our power to make “Living Rooms Great Again”!

It is really nice to finally have electric outlets and fans and lights inside the house.  Just running an extension cord from the outside circuit breaker box to wherever we are working (and having to pull around construction lights) is a time consuming process.  It is much better now.

The outside fixtures are also in.

And the security lights.  We have security lights on all four corners of the house, controlled by two switches inside the house, and they light up the area around the house like a prison yard!

Finally, one of our biggest problems has been finding the tools we need to work on the house.

When we moved from Minnesota, we intentionally did not unpack anything that we did not immediately need to live in the rental house.  That means, the garage of the rental house is literally packed floor-to-ceiling with stuff, and my workshop stuff is squarely in the middle of it all.

So we decided to move a couple of my workbenches and my tall shop cabinet to the build house along with most of my small power tools.

That freed up a fair bit of space at the rental house as well as giving me access to most of the tools I will need to complete the build.  Until now, we have been working from whatever hand tools we could carry in plastic bins.  This finally gives us some organization on the build site and some tools that we will need moving forward.

We did leave all of my woodworking machines at the rental house as we still have to epoxy the garage floor.  But the stuff we brought out is all on wheels so it will be easy enough to roll into the living room to do the floors in the garage.  Once that is done, we will bring out the big guns!

I had to go back to my normal work week this week, so our progress was slowed by that.  But, I did get the locks installed on the doors. So now we can secure the house.

We are still waiting on some backordered parts for the garage door.  But until those come in, a couple screwdrivers, strategically placed, lock it up well enough.

We had to get the house secured so we could unload the tools from my cargo trailer as the interior doors are due to arrive this week at the rental house.  I am hoping the trucker delivering them can just unload them from his truck right into my trailer.

We wanted red oak raised panel doors.  Unfortunately, red oak anything (doors, moldings, etc.) are really hard to find and really expensive here.  The cheapest I could find prehung red oak doors locally was about $430 each!  So, I went online and was able to order them through Menards for $130 each.  Even with shipping it was well less than half of what I can get them here.

We got the propane tank this week and I ordered an attachment for it so I can fill the small propane tanks for my smoker and the patio heater from it.

Tina has been “Accent Walling” again as well.  This time it is the living room wall that faces our best view of the mountains.  She said she wanted to draw peoples’ attention to the windows facing the Cochise Stronghold; I think this will do it.

It still looks a little ragged along the corners but that is because the corners are still masked.  I hope we will not need to put a second coat on it, but I am thinking we probably will have to.  Painting the peak was a nightmare.

Note to self: Forbid Tina from going to the paint store!  If this keeps up I am going to wake every morning in our nice new home with a migraine.

Tina and I must be getting old because through this whole process we have not gotten in a single fight or even said a cross word to each other.  Tomorrow we are going to pick out ceiling fans and lights so we’ll see if our luck holds!

The builders are winding down their responsibilities for the build as our responsibilities ramp up.  I took the week away from work to spend time getting a good start on the house.  We spent most of the week priming and painting.

We set a deadline for ourselves to have all of the spraying done by today.  That is because the sooner we were done with spraying the house, the sooner the electrician can come back and outlets and switches installed.  Presently we have to run a 100 foot extension cord from the breaker box (outside) into the house.  Then we plug in a power strip and plug tools, extension cords, etc. into the power strip.  Thank God no inspectors showed up while we were working because they would have a heart attack.

But I was able to get the entire house sprayed with a coat of primer and all of the parts that we are not doing by hand with a roller, sprayed with 2 coats of paint.

The days that I sprayed the living room, dining room and kitchen were exceptionally hot for this time of year, maybe the mid 90’s.  Standing down on the floor (at human level) it was extremely comfortable with the high ceilings.  But up on top of a ladder painting them was absolutely miserable.  Not only was it well in excess of 100 degrees up there, with the respirator and all the other painting crap I had to wear, it was brutal.  I could only work for about 20 minutes at a crack before having to come down and rehydrate.  That made for a slow couple of days.

Tina did the bathrooms and laundry room by hand with a roller because it is just too confined of a space to work well with the sprayer.

They both came out exceptionally well.

Tina told me a week or so ago that she wanted to do some “accent walls” in the house.  I had never heard the term before, but when we started this whole project we decided the ground rules for it were that she could do anything she wants to the house as long as she leaves MY garage alone.

Saturday, she “accent walled” a wall in the master bedroom.  So now we are the proud owners of a big damn purple wall.

And two smaller purple walls (also in the master bedroom).

When she explained “accent wall” to me, I was hoping for a southern drawl or maybe a charming Irish lilt.  When she showed it to me, the first thought that popped into my head was: This is a hair-lip Pakistani accent screaming “Yanquii go home!!!”  But I have to admit, it did kind of grow on me after a few hours.

She has plans for another “accent wall” in the living room:

This one is going to be Burnt Orange.

We also got a toilet set temporarily because the outhouses are going away this week.

Outside, they got the slab poured in front of the garage and for the propane tank and also got the gas line run.

Finally, Smiley got the fence done.  It looks great!  I do not know if the picture does it justice, but that fence is absolutely perfectly straight.  You can only see it if you look corner to corner on the gate side, but he set the gate about 3 feet back from the corners to make it easier for me to pull a trailer in.  We could not be happier with it.

Except for a few minor clean-up details like pouring a concrete slab for the propane tank and another slab in front of the garage, the outside of the house is basically done.

Our part of the build technically started last Friday.  But Friday was basically a lost day.  All we accomplished was to go to Home Depot (a 30 mile drive one way) and get some of the painting supplies, primer and caulk.

So Friday we got supplies, loaded up in the War Wagon with all of the tools and equipment that we will need immediately and drove it to the house.  We also started our plan for our work for the next few days.

We also included all of the camping equipment that we will need once the fence gets done, so we can start spending nights at the house.  (We need the fence done so the dogs do not wander off.)

We spent the first couple days caulking every single inside corner and every window.  We also got almost everything masked off well (hopefully).

I also broke down and bought a Graco paint sprayer.

What a difference a proper sprayer makes!  When we lived in Minnesota I had one of those stupid Wagner Power Sprayers.  I bought it specifically to spray our brick fireplace in our livingroom.  It was awful!  We had to constantly come along behind it and brush out the drips.  This Graco sprayer is still not a professional model, but works very well.  Once we had everything taped off, I was able to spray each of the bedrooms in less than an hour each, and that is with no experience with it and using a ladder rather than a scaffold.

Of course, using a sprayer the primer goes EVERYWHERE!  So I had to don protective gear to cover my face.

Here is my Jihadi-Suit version 1.0:

That did not work out well AT ALL!!!

The paper mask fills up with primer in a very short time.  When it does, my breath immediately starts fogging glasses.  But worse than that, I started sucking primer down the mask and completely covered my face!  My entire face that was not covered with the Jihadi hat was completely white.  And primer does not wash off with soap and water.  It is designed to stick to things and it serves its purpose well.

I found Dawn dish washing soap works pretty well with it, but you really have to scrub.  My face was already a little sunburned and scrubbing on it for an hour with dish soap left me in more than a bit of pain.

Jihadi-Suit version 2.0 worked much better:

Although, it still did not work great with my glasses.  It pushed them up so the bifocal line was right in my work area.  If I took my glasses off it worked great.  The problem was, then I could not see.  So I went along spraying 5 or 6 feet, then taking the goggles off and putting my glasses on to see what I missed.  But it still worked far better than a roller and I call it “painting by brail”.

Today, I got most of the living room, dining room and kitchen primed, but I will save those pictures for next week.

Smiley also got about half the fence up.

Smiley does great work as the fences are absolutely stick straight and tight as a guitar string.  The problem is getting him to actually show up and do his great work.  I cannot get mad at him because he is just too nice of a guy.  But it will be really nice to have the fence done so we can bring the dogs to the house when we come to work.  The problem is, the dogs can only go about 7 hours without going outside.  Since it is almost an hour each way to get from the rental house to the build site, Tina can only put in about 5 hours of work per day.

Last but not least, we met some of the neighbors.

It is good because I like most cows more than I like most people.