Sorry I missed posting an entry last week.  My travel schedule for work has been brutal the last 3 weeks with last weekend being the worst.  I got home from Seattle about midnight on Friday and had to leave the rental house at 3:30 AM Sunday morning to catch a flight to Augusta, GA.  So we did not even go out to the build house last weekend.

Tina did go out for a few days while I was in Augusta and got started finishing the doors.  They are really coming out nice.

She is doing these a little different than the way she did the doors in our Minnesota house.  Instead of putting on a coat of sanding sealer, she sanded them down well with 220 grit sandpaper, then varnished them with a mix of 2/3 varnish and 1/3 mineral spirits.  Then she sanded them with 320 grit sandpaper and put on 2 more coats of varnish (without the mineral spirits).  The result makes the grain really stand out.  And with the high gloss, they look like you can put your hand right through them.

Unfortunately, we only have 2 sets of sawhorses, so she is limited to doing 2 doors at a time.  I think we are going to go to Home Depot this week and get 2 more sets of saw horses.

But we were pleasantly surprised to learn how quickly the varnish dries in the desert.  In Minnesota, a coat of oil based varnish took 10-12 hours to dry.  Here, they are dry enough to add another coat in about 90 minutes.

When Tina was at the build house by herself, she did catch one of the most beautiful sunsets.  Of course, she had to rub my nose in it by texting me while I was stuck in the heat and absolutely miserable humidity of Augusta.

For my part, I did finally get started on the floor tile.  It has been 7 or 8 years since I have done ceramic floor tile and I found my skills are a little rusty.  Of course, I had to start with the most time consuming part of the tiling as well – the hallway and the guest bathroom.

I don’t know what the hell I was thinking when I did this doorway.  You will notice the tile comes right to the door jamb on the right side of the photo and left is about 1/2 inch beyond the door jamb.

Oh well, that is why God made angle grinders.

But I think the transition pieces we got for the doorways will look really sharp once I get the tile straightened.

Also, we had to pick up the wood burning stove this week.  We bought it back in March because they were due to increase the price and they agreed to hold it for us for 2 months.  After 3 months, I guess they wanted their warehouse space back because they were going to start charging us to keep it.  So I picked that up on Saturday too.

Unfortunately, with the pallet and the attached shipping stuff, the thing weighs about 350 pounds.  So it is still stuck in the back of my truck.  Since I am taking the week of July 4th off from work to work on the house.  I am hoping I can impose on our friend Danny and our friend Eve to help us scare up a couple strong backs to help me lift it from my truck onto a dolly.

This week was crazy schedule-wise anyway.  I spent the whole week in Seattle on business and have to fly back to Seattle tomorrow.  So we only planned on working on the house one day this week.  But an early monsoon last Wednesday even cut that short.

Last Wednesday afternoon, an early storm rolled through and lightning strikes started two wildfires about 10 miles north of M.T. Acres.  The Forest Service called them the Dragoon Fire and the Lizard Fire.  The fires grew on Thursday and merged on Friday morning, so now they just call it the Lizard Fire.  As of writing this (Saturday evening), the Forest Service is saying the fire is 5% contained and has burned about 10,500 acres so far.

https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/5217/

As we turned off the paved road onto the gravel road near M.T. Acres.

At the house:

When we left M.T. Acres, the fire was about a mile from us  and the wind was blowing from the south.  I hope it stays that way.

My plan was to start laying floor tile today, but we had some prep work to do first for the floor and the fire really sapped our motivation.  If a fire is going to burn our house down, I want it to happen before I cripple myself up laying tile.  So we spent the day scrubbing concrete for tileing and getting the doors ready for Tina to varnish this coming week while I am gone.

On a positive note, the doper HVAC guys did get the furnace and A/C installed.  But the furnace is not yet connected to the gas and the whole job looks like it was done by a blind 3 year old.  GRRR!!!

Nothing is straight and many of the exhaust joints are not even completely covered with the sealing tape.

The A/C at least works, sort of.  But the whole HVAC job has me absolutely furious.

They did not even ask us what components we wanted installed, so they installed the cheapest, crappiest ones they could get past inspector.

The furnace:

The A/C:

The builder and I are going to be having a very uncomfortable conversation this week because I am pissed!

As I mentioned in last week’s blog, the HVAC people had dropped off a big fancy furnace and a big fancy air conditioner as well as a huge pile of their tools last week.  So we decided to wait to start the tiling in the main hallway, living room, dining room and kitchen until after they were done.  We had some busy-work to do anyway, so it was not a huge setback.

Last Thursday, we went to the house with the first of 4 loads of tile and associated supplies expecting the HVAC would be installed and working, or at least the register vents in our work area would be installed.

The HVAC guys had obviously been there because all of their tools were gone.  But absolutely nothing had been accomplished.  I called our builder to find out what was going on with them and he told me they would be by on Friday.

Since we bought the tile in Tucson, which is about a 3 hour round trip, plus loading and unloading time, I spend the day Friday picking up loads of tile and driving them to the house.  (I only have a Ford F150 so I really do not want to carry more than about 1300 pounds at a time on it.)

By noon on Friday, the HVAC guys still had not arrived so Tina called the builder to ask the status.  At about 2:30PM Friday, I was on my way back to Tucson to pick up the next load of tile and Tina called me to tell me the HVAC guys finally showed up.  But all they did was pick up the furnace and air conditioner they had left the previous week and drop off a smaller crappier unit.  They informed her they would be back today (Saturday) between 7:30 and 8:00AM to work on it.

They finally showed up about 9:30AM.  The first thing I noticed is they both looked and acted like a couple of strung out, dope-smokin’ hippies.  The skinny one, who I think is the son of the owner of the HVAC company, had every excuse in the book why they had not accomplished anything, from his father being in hospital, to somehow having 4 kids that were not his suddenly living with him, to being sick…  The fat one was just hired help, I think.  His purpose in life seemed to be just taking up space that could otherwise be used for more productive purposes.

After about 30 minutes of observing these two morons at work, Tina could tell I was pretty much at my breaking point and she sent me back to rental house to pick up the replacement interior door that Menards had shipped which had also arrived Friday.  By installing the door, we could at least claim we accomplished something useful this weekend.  I was gone about 2 hours and when I got back, the HVAC guys had left already, promising to come back and finish this week.  In the hour or so they were actually stumbling around working, they managed to install only the register vents that were in the way of our tiling.

I will be having a “Come to Jesus” talk with our builder Sunday night about these morons.

But here are a few of the vents they did manage to get installed:

Beyond that noise, we did get the final interior door installed and I think it looks pretty sharp with the other doors.

Tina visited the paint store again and got the final coat of paint on the exterior doors.

I have been a Minnesota Vikings fan my whole life and Tina has been for the Pittsburgh Steelers as long as I have known her.  But I guess now we are “Go Broncos”!

Finally, I moved a boatload of tile.  Each box is roughly 60 pounds.  That does not sound like much, but at my advanced age (50 last week), I am definitely feeling it.

Work has me traveling for the next 3 weeks, so progress will be slow.  But I have 4th of July week off so I am hoping we can get the gain share of the tile done in the main part of the house by then.