Contractor Progress

In addition to the stuff we’ve been working on, the contractors have been making progress as well. The HVAC work has been going slowly, but they’re closing in on the interior work being done. They installed three joist cassette air handlers in the first floor, one in the basement, and put an air handler and ducts into the attic to provide for the second floor and attic. I was wanting and expecting this to be run off a single outdoor condenser, but that wound up not being the case. Unfortunately, that means we need to have the electrician come back and run another line, and I need to figure out how we can mount a bracket for a hundred-forty-pound condenser on the outside of the house when there’s two inches of foam under the siding.

Meanwhile, the plumber fixed the leak and connected to the shower base, so the drain is done, but he didn’t finish the refrigerator line. I guess he gets to figure out how to do that after drywall, because I’m sick of nagging him. I asked the GC about the front and back porches. The back porch is all going to be built of steel (the fancy aluminum decking I wanted was too expensive), and we had a quote for that work last fall. I asked him to get that process going, which prompted a revised quote for roughly double the original price.

In case you haven’t been following these things, steel prices have skyrocketed in recent months, along with lumber and limited availability of all sorts of things. Since our previous quote had apparently expired, we need to figure this out. It’s enough money that we can’t just swallow the cost, but our initial efforts to get a new quote haven’t materialized a better one. I really wish I’d pushed the GC to get this done last year, but with the siding not wrapped up until December, it would have been difficult.

I asked a couple more times about the front porch, since that wasn’t being subbed out. Lo and behold, they actually came out and started that work. The first step in that process was to fix the warping (bowing and twisting) of the existing posts that had happened since we built the front porch. They also weren’t happy with how I’d framed certain aspects, so they took the opportunity to redo most of the structure, with the exception of the roof. I needed to go buy some of the aforementioned expensive lumber for this project, including renting a truck to get it home, but that all went to plan.

Since the actual decking is on order but not available yet, they put back the temporary stairs for now. The end result looks almost exactly like it did before they started, but at least it’s all square now. Hopefully this time it will get clad before it warps again. I really don’t like re-work, even if I didn’t have to do it myself.

With the indoor HVAC work done, Sarah’s been plugging away at the sound-proofing insulation, I’ve been doing some work on tub and shower surrounds, so long as the electrician can run power to the second outdoor condenser, we’ll be basically clear for drywall, which is really exciting.