Guest House Construction: Part 20

Guest House Construction: Part 20

Last we updated, the house had been drywalled and taped and floated.  The next step was for the paint crew to come in and texture the entire place.  They did their job rather quickly.....and then we fell into the time sucking void that is our trim guy! 

This step is called "trim".  Basically it involves installing all of the interior doors, trim, baseboards, closets, crown molding, window sills, etc.  My builder told me once that this step would take "a few days".  It's been over three weeks!  

 
There are a number of factors that have contributed to the slow pace.  It's just one guy for one thing.  A team of guys would rifle through this pretty quickly, but some things are tough to do by yourself.  Another issue has been materials.  He ran out of some things on a couple different occasions.  More stuff was delivered quickly though so that really isn't it.  There is also a language barrier which has caused a couple of mix ups.    However, the main issue has been that the guy will show up and work for an hour or so and then leave.  It's bizarre! It takes him as long to set up some days and he actually works.  Regardless, after weeks of this guy killing me, he has finally finished more or less.

  
We had the paint crew go ahead and paint our main house on the outside while they were waiting on the trim guy.  They finally got into the guest house and caulked everything.  Caulking is a key step because it hides imperfections, which are inevitable when working with wood.  This picture shows the texture pretty well too.

While the trim guy has been holding us hostage, a few other minor items have been checked off fortunately.  The cornice guys came out and put this red tape up around the doors in preparation for brick work.  I'm not sure why it had to be the cornice guys and why the brick guys couldn't have done it, but I don't tell them how to do their job.  

The cornice guys also showed up - on a separate occasion - and repaired all of the paper that the wind had damaged over time.  The house is now completely covered and waiting - still - for someone to come put the bricks on it.  

One of the more interesting things that's happened is that our builder came out one day while I was gone and removed the brick post from our patio on our main home.  It turns out that it wasn't doing anything and was purely cosmetic! It made a huge difference just getting that post out and I can't imagine why the home builder put it there in the first place.  We are more than tripling the size of our covered back porch, but even just removing this post would have been great.

The lumber and shingles for our new back patio extension and covered walkway has been delivered which is exciting in a "It could actually get done soon" kind of way, but I'm not holding my breath.  I know the framers were out here looking at the job, but they need a window of at least three dry days because our main home will be exposed when they cut into the roof.  We'll see.

In the "what was I thinking?" category, My mother and I went to an auction and bought a few pallets full of travertine.  It's nice stuff, and it was a good deal, but it had to be moved and I did it myself.  My little trailer couldn't handle more than one pallet at a time so it took a couple trips.  Also, when I got it home I certainly had no way of removing a pallet of stone, so I had to carry each piece by hand from one pallet to another.  My hands took a beating.  We are thinking of using this on the covered patio of the guest house.

That's it for now.  I'm going to try to update weekly.  My builder said we'd be done in six weeks.  There's no way!  That said, I'm encouraged by his optimism.