December, 2000

Time's flying and it's getting tight! We missed the Christmas/New Year's move-in but that's ok. We still seem to be on track for January. The holidays did slow things up (as expected) but Randy did a fine job of keeping things moving.

The painters finished up. It took them longer than expected (mostly because of all the trim and the wood windows that had to be painted by hand in some cases). George will be back a couple of more times to touch up and catch some things that were missed by the carpenters.

Two really big high points were the installation of the hardwood floor and the arrival of the exterior stone veneer. We were really sweating the exterior stone. Randy didn't want to finish the roof until the stone was installed to avoid tearing up the roof. Rob, the stone mason, was having a really difficult time getting our stone from his supplier. In the end, he went with another supplier and was able to get enough. It looks fabulous. The exterior really comes together with the stone.

On the inside, the hardwood really sets off the paint colors and the tile. It keeps getting more exciting as each element of the finish work starts to come together. And there's a lot of wood to install.  Only the tile floors in the bathrooms and the carpeted bedrooms won't have hardwood.

We got the estimate from Victor for the exterior concrete work (which we had set an allowance on at the start of the contract). As you can see, Mark was a bit taken aback by the bid which came in at twice what our allowance was. Luckily, we weren't doing any more concrete!

Marti finished the landscape design and we submitted that for final approval. We hope to hear back on that early in January

Quick! Someone get a camera; Randy's working!

Finally, right after Christmas, we agreed on a target date of January 15th for completion. Randy seems to think we can come real close to that. The new owners of our current home are now living in an RV waiting for us to move out so that date is pretty fixed. One thing is for sure; January will be VERY busy for everyone. Randy said to expect a lot of subs on site and a lot of work to be going on to finish everything up. He also said this is the way they all end; in a rush.