House Update....almost finished

The house is mostly finished, though it needs a good scrubbing and some misc. finish work. Some parts are missing for the glass block wall in the bathroom. I just ordered the drawer pulls this afternoon, hopefully they'll arrive next week. And the metal counter top for the island should arrive next week too.

The window seat needs cushion, but I haven't picked out a fabric yet.

Here are some pics I took this afternoon.

This is my mixer shelf.

The fridge looks a little small but it should be just fine.

Coast Guard Gulfstream V, CA-37

We had another group of visitors arrive this morning. And another pretty plane to watch. As the summer sea ice melts, the Coast Guard is going to have set up a base to support their activities up north. I don't know where it will be built yet, but I know they've been visiting in Nome and in Barrow. They're making a quick stop here in Prudhoe today, before heading to Anchorage for public meetings tomorrow.

Fishing in Bagdad

I got these photos from Mark, he's been fishing in the pond whenever he gets a chance. These fish are almost as big as the lure I sent him :-) I think I need to send him some grayling lures instead of salmon lures.

More planes

And we had another priviate jet today. This one is a Falcon XP. AT&T VIP's on it. I wonder if they're coming up to get our crappy cell phone service fixed? Or maybe the internet connection will speed up.

Nah, I that's just wishful thinking.....but it is a pretty plane. It has a 6000

mile range. Look at those long wings.

Fall Morning

Yes, it really is fall already, here at work. Actually it's been a beautiful fall morning.

You can see that the tundra has really turned an orange/brown color. The sunrise really made the color stand out. These were taken at 6 am.

And this one was taken at 9 am.

Especially after the rain we had all week. It really was gloomy for a while.

And here is a picture of a pretty private jet that landed when I was taking my 9 am picture. It's a Gulfstream and takes 22 pax, but not that may got off. Actually, they looked like tourists to me. I wish I could afford to charter a Gulfstream to go touring around :-)

A few more photos

Here are a few more photos to share, before I head north in the morning.

This one I call Oops! We picked on Tim about it, but it was an easy fix :-)

The under cabinet puck lighting is installed, but I still need to add the light valance and the doors. The doors are being finished right now. They look really nice.

This one is Fiona. Mom's not home to give her a bad time about sleeping on the kitchen table. Besides, she likes the table runner :-)

And this one I took on Saturday morning, when I went garage sale'ing. I was up on East Hill Road looking out over the Homer Spit. Sure was a pretty morning.

More interior finishing...

The guys are all still hard at work inside. The ovens were installed when I got up to the house this morning. That was exciting.























And the wood base for the island countertop is done. Now I need to get the metal overlay built and clear coated.

Tim was still working on sinks. I really like the way the kitchen faucet looks. Let's hope it works well too :-)

Paul thinks there is a good chance he can have all the subcontractors done and out of the house by the end of this week. Then next week the inspector can do his thing and we'll be ready to get the construction loan closed!. Who thought I'd ever be looking forward to a mortgage....AND all the cleaning I'm going to need to do. There is a LOT of construction dust, etc. to be scrubbed, that's for sure :-)

And even more progess...

Today was another good day. It poured rain all morning, but cleared up this afternoon.

Tim got the water filter and the UV filters installed and tested. In fact we pumped 300 gallons of water from the settling tank, into the cistern tank. The settling tank was full, so now we can collect some more water.

And the electricians are still hard at work. I heard Spike down in the crawl space when I was leaving, so that means lights are going up down there. He got the ceiling lights up in the basement too. Don worked in the kitchen. Since the windows are so close to the counter top, we're putting an outlet strip in just below the windows. I'll have plenty of outlets, which is great. Shari - see that tiny space between the counter top and the outlet strip? We need to come up with a tile 'backsplash' for it. Start thinking :-)

And the fan is done, seems to work pretty well. I like how it looks. I still need to decide on a back splash for this area, but that's not on the priority list right now.

And when Tim finished the water filters, he got started on the bathroom sinks. Here is the faucet for the master bathroom sink.

Finish Work In Progress

I finally got home last night, so spent most of today up at the house site. Lots of work is getting done inside. It's really starting to look like a house.

Don is getting the lights installed.
These are the small lights I found for the hallway.























And here are the pendants in the living room.























And here are the exterior lights. These square cans go outside every exterior door.










































Paul put up the kitchen fan. This is a picture from this morning, tomorrow I'll take some more that show the finished product.

HEA

I have power. HEA came out and hooked up my meter yesterday. No more working off extention cords run from the temp meter up by the road. Yay!!!

More Kitchen Cabinets

Valda sent me some photos of the kitchen cabinets she took yesterday. They're looking nice!

Cooktop Area

Island

Pantry Cabinets

Coast Guard 2009

Well, the Coast Guard showed up today and dropped off one of their little boats. Now they've been sitting outside my window with all 4 engines running for 22 minutes and counting. I really wish they'd either taxi away, or shut down.

Upper Cabinets being installed.

Here are a few more pics I took on Thursday before I left for work.

Cabinets

OK, so 2 posts back to back, but I'm trying to get caught up before I go back to work...

I ordered the kitchen & bathroom cabinets from a place in CA and had them flat packed and shipped. They are similar to the IKEA cabinets I liked, but actually are a better quality, so hopefully they're going to look nice & last. Though it's a lot of labor to put them all together. Each and every piece has a sticker on that that says which cabinet it belongs too. So when they're unpacked you have to sort them all out. Very interesting to say the least.

They're a birch plywood construction, with a natural maple veneer. Monday morning Paul had James start unpacking and sort them, then after lunch Lee came over and started putting them together. I think it's going to take all week. But Lee made some real progress today.

And then Paul is building shelves, etc. for my master closet. I'll start with the shelves and hanging poles, then will add some drawers and cabinet doors sometime this fall.

More about the floor...

My concrete floor project has definitely been a 2 steps forward and 1 step back experiment. In fact sometimes I think we've gone 3 steps back. The idea was fairly simple but it's turned out to be quite the project. I just wanted to color the concrete, pour it over the in floor heat tubes, then polish it once it had cured.

But we ran into some trouble. The first grind of the floor went pretty well. All the trowel marks, etc. were polished off. But we'd sprinkled some aluminum filings in the surface of the concrete, hoping to give it a bit of a sparkle when polished. Instead, the filings clumped together, and then were pulled out of the concrete by the polisher, leaving little holes & divots. What a mess.

So Rob though we could mix some black concrete/grout mixture and trowel (or squeegee) it over the floor. Then grind it off, leaving behind the filled in holes. Didn't work that way. I think it's just too soft, so we're going to let it cure a few more weeks and try grinding again. But I really don't know if that will work.

Here are some pictures of the grinding and grouting process.

This is the living room with 1/2 of the first application of grout ground down, and 1/2 still curing. We didn't finish the grinding, it wasn't working out too well.

Here is the pile of 'sand' swept up during the grinding. This stuff is almost like talcum powder and really gets into the air.

Here is Rob grinding in the closet, you can see all the dust in the air around him. What a mess.

This is the floor with the 2nd batch of grout applied. This was taken on Friday afternoon. It's curing while the guys work inside and get the cabinets, etc. installed.

Then on Monday, I decided to grind along the edges of the floor, where the normal grinding machine won't reach. So Paul can install the baseboard, etc. I'm planning to use a buffer instead of a grinder to remove the rest of this grout, and I'll probably be working on that in August. So, I rented a hand grinder, what a job. I ground 3 or so inches away from each wall, and then ground out both of these small closets because the buffer won't fit inside them very well. I'm too old to do this much hand work :-). This looks pretty rough, but it will do for now though I have some touch up to do. Look at the dust on the walls though. I spent all of Tuesday cleaning that up.

Backfilling

Today the dirt work guys showed up and moved some dirt around. They put down fabric and then gravel between the house & the driveway. And they did the same for the carport area. Then they moved some dirt out of the back yard to bring up the grade out the back door of the kitchen. This area will become a little morning courtyard, someday :-).

Fabric laid so gravel can be added & compacted next to the house.

Dumping gravel in the driveway to be used next to the house.

Here is the back yard, lots of work still to do back here.

And here is where the propane tank will end up being set.