If These Walls Could Talk

Drywall is going up - unfortunately we started the process on a weekend so the whole day we heard load banging of hammers and nails! We closed the doors to the family room and had Guitar Hero wars on the Wii...turned up really loud!

The trench for the gas line is dug...so hot water in the house should be on the way!

Annah Grace has a pair of stilts tat she has been practicing walking on...she htought the guys doing the sheetrock were so cool walking around the house on their stilts strapped to their feet! She wanted to try them on, but we thought 17 trips to the emergency room in her short 9 yers was plenty at this point!

Wake up sleepy head!

Saturday morning - 7am...the trucks started arriving. 3 huge concrete trucks with a team of ten guys to pour the driveway. They tore the driveway out yesterday and set the forms for inspection - we added about three feet to the sides of the driveway and about 4 -5 feet to the approach. Now, hopefully when we have visitors, they won't wreck their cars when entering the drive, or bust their oil pan when they leave!
It was our contractor, Clint's, birthday today - so we celebrated with donuts and sang happy birthday to him.
The guys also showed up to dig the trench for the gas line so we could have hot water back in the house. We have been showering in the backhouse which hasn't been terrible, but it does make for some creative planning for us all to get out of the house on time.
And then the drywall team showed up to install all the sheetrock. It was crazy around here - and very loud! Not to mention that when I tried to move Brians car out of the way of the concrete truck, I was so blocked in that I hit the truck behind me and it made a dent in Brians bumper. We were bound to not escape this process without some bumps and bruises. It did cross my mind to try to blame it on the college boys across the street - but I confessed.
The next team to show up was the concrete stamper/stainer crew. We did not think that we could fit the cost of staining the entire driveway into the budget because it is a lot of ground to cover - but my contractor has made friends with the concrete guy and the concrete guy is making friends with the staining guy and they were nice enough to pass the savings on to us. So, now we will get a stained and cobblestone stamped driveway! Yeah! The only worry I have is the color. I picked a brown color called walnut off the color card - but when he laid it, it is in powder form and it looks like terracotta red. My hope is that when he comes back on Monday to wash the powder away and put the sealer on, that will will darken the color a bit. He did say that he would go back over it with a really dark brown in some areas to help it as well. So, we will see.
So, by middle of next week, we should have A/C throughout the house, drywall installed, driveway replaced with a gate, and hot water back in the main house. The following week - they start to tape, bed, and texture the walls, and the flooring can be tied in at that point.
We got more done in one saturday than we could get done in a month! It's all about timing!