Flooring!

 SO Hal's sister went with me to Alpena to look at luxury vinyl plank flooring today. I showed her all the ones I brought home to show Hal, and the couple that he only saw in photos. I picked one of the ones in the photos. Brought it home and Hal approved. Then she and I took it over to the house and set it on the floor with little daylight was left and the few interior lights on. it did look different than under the fluorescent lights in the store.

Here is how the sample looked in the store. It's the bottom sample of the 3 in the photo.

And here is how it looked at the Palace. It looks darker but the photos were taken with different cell phones as well. 

It's made by Southwind, Authentic Plank, color is Frontier. Just have to figure out how much of the house to use it in and order it sometime after the heating is figured out.

End of September Random Bits

 So September 2021 is nearly over. Drywallers are still mudding, it's in the 40s at night so it's taking time for mud to dry even with fans and heaters. So here are some random shots of what's going on. 

I'm standing where the fake wood stove will be. Kitchen on the left, front door and door to TV room in the back. It's nice, but weird seeing drywall after 4 years of construction. And very weird not to be doing it ourselves!

Drywall with mud

I've been looking at vinyl plank flooring, whenever I bring something home, Hal likes them all. I'm going to Alpen with his sister tomorrow to hopefully settle on a final choice. I could actually go with any of these.

like the left one, cheaper than the one next to it

Hal likes this one, too

And my flower garden is looking at little tattered. I've only been able to seed it occasionally. Next year I hope it will look better, I need to find another spot for all those Cosmos, they overwhelm everything.

I have to say the yellow marigolds in front really loved their location.

And getting back to the Palace, I've been frying to pick a paint color for the walls in the great room. The little green chip is the Clary Sage of half my kitchen cabinets. The white is probably my ceiling, the 2 beige/grays in the center are the possible wall colors. I know they look pretty much the same but in real life there are definite if subtle differences. Suffice to say, I like the lower one of the 3, it's called Dainty Lace by Behr.

the 3 choices for wall color

None of the other walls in my house are planned for this color, but you never know. I am thinking blue for the main bedroom Hal likes the idea of a green for the TV room, I'd like a yellow for the laundry room as it has no windows. Bathrooms and small bedrooms are up in the air. First thing I will do, of course will be to paint the ceiling. The drywall contractor is taking care of the primer.

One final note, the heating guy that came out to look at our place (can't remember if I mentioned it or not) actually sent a plan to Alpena Supply who got back to Hal today. I have no idea how much it's going to cost but finally someone is taking our heating problem seriously! Fingers crossed.

Almost forgot to mention, we hired the friend of our concrete guy for our ceiling insulation. He's going to do spray foam. Cheaper than the other guy I got a quote from. Stuff is happening!

Drywall!

 The drywallers started Monday. Today is Friday. They began in the garage and did the ceiling throughout the entire structure, by the end of  Tuesday the garage ceiling was done and they were starting on the mudroom between the house and garage.

garage ceiling

garage drywall up

mudroom

As of yesterday all the drywall is up.

the hallway to the guest bedrooms and bath

the kitchen

the living room as seen from the guest hallway

They did a pretty good job with all the little cutouts. Hal and I could only find one outlet that they missed in the master bedroom so I told them about it this morning and they took care of it. Today they are taping all the joints and putting up the corner bead for outside corners. Next week I guess they do all the finish work. It actually looks like a house now.

A Lopi Gas Stove (and HVAC)

 I can't sleep so here I am making an update.

The HVAC, or lack of, saga continues. We can't find anyone to help with heating for our home. It's mid September now and the temps have already been dropping into the 40s at night. Hal has switched from water based baseboard heat back to a forced air ducted system using geothermal instead of hot air heated by propane or electricity now. He's been reading up on how to construct sheet metal ducts and watching YouTube. It's annoying tedious work but we can probably do that. Unfortunately, after meeting with the guy at Alpena Supply yet again, (I think it's the 3rd time) they will not sell us the unit because we are not licensed refrigeration contractors and it voids the warranty. So we are stuck unless we can get a guy to install it. We've got another guy coming out to survey the situation but he's already said, as they all have, he is very busy. If we can just get him to install the freaking heat pump and connect it up to our ductwork once it's in, we may get somewhere. We'll find out tonight after he gets off work and comes over.

However, last week, my friend Tom and I went for a drive to Fairview and then out to Gaylord to look at gas heat stoves. The Fairview guy would sell us a floor model at a discount otherwise we couldn't get the Hearthstone till late December or January. We had the same problem with the Regency we looked at in Ossineke. I wasn't holding out much hope for the Gaylord store, but lo and behold these guys had their act together and had stocked up. Of the stove that I am interested in they had all 3 colors available. I could have left with one that day if I'd been driving a truck. 

I went home, discussed it with Carl and the next morning called them up and bought one. It's a Lopi, it's the most expansive off the ones I looked at, of course, but it does everything. The problem with the Regency (the cheapest one) was the heating range wasn't very wide so it would have to be shut off if the room became too hot. The Hearthstone was a little better but not by much. Either way, neither is available and it's very possible this will be the only heat we have in the house for awhile yet.

The Lopi has a nice temperature range and 2 burners so if it gets too warm the rear burner can actually be shut off so we can still have a flame. Plus everything is included; the remote control/thermostat, the blower, the fancier embers which look very real. Of the gray, brown enamel and patina bronze color we went with the bronze. we'll pick it up at the end of the week when it's not raining. This one stove and the ductwork cost as much as all my kitchen appliances put together. It will heat up to a 1500 sq ft room, ours is 815 so it ought to work nicely.

Lopi Berkshire in Patina Bronze

A wood burning stove would have bee much cheaper as it's only a box inside a cast iron housing but Hal doesn't want the mess or the need to chop anymore wood. He has a point as we are getting older but I will miss the crackling sound or real wood burning, I'll have to get a recording for the stereo maybe!

Tub and Shower

 On the 2nd Hal and I went to work on the shower pan in the master bathroom. First I painted the floor with 2 coats of a waterproofing membrane called red guard. I also painted the floor under the tub.

red guard 

Then we dry fit and leveled the pan. Next we mixed some mortar according to directions (and finding the right mortar is nigh unto impossible, so we made do) and placed it in strategic locations around the legs of the shower pan

After we put the pan back down, we squeezed it onto the mortar bed and then stuffed more underneath into any void spaces we could reach. After 24 hours Hal installed the drain.

Last week we opened the box with the Kohler tub I bought back in April and discovered it had a crack in it. 

On first glance it looked fine

We should have opened the box and checked it immediately, but we were busy and never got around to it. Fortunately, it turned out that Home Depot extended the return window because of the pandemic so we returned it the day after Labor Day and replaced it with the only right hand drain curved soaker tub in stock, which happened to be an American Standard. I had considered that one originally but the Kohler had gotten slightly better reviews. Also for a tub nearly 4 times more expensive you would think the Kohler company would have better quality control. But look at the bottom of the right front corner, this cardboard honeycomb was supposed to be coated in fiberglass for structural support, yet here we are.

a crappy undercarriage

The crack had to have been there when they packaged the tub, there was no damage whatsoever to the box to have caused this hairline crack.

hard to see but it starts at the upper left and curves down the center

I called Kohler on Friday and they offered to send out someone to repair the damage, not replace the tub. We were fortunate we could return it and that the new tub was in pristine condition. 

Yesterday we dry fitted the tub and installed it similarly to the shower pan. This tub was 2 inches narrower so we furred out the back wall rather than move the plumbing. Annoying, but easier.

Now we cross our fingers that we can pass the rough plumbing inspection next Tuesday.