Building the Berg House: Easter Update

Back to school tomorrow after an exhausting 9 day vacation. No work on the house today for Easter. A nice break after a week of hard work and frustrations (with some successes).

Looking ahead to this week:

Meeting with tile guy to finalize bath layout. He should start Friday.
Plumber doing basement piping, outdoor fixtures, and finishing downstairs bath so I can get rid of the outhouse - Monday and Tuesday.
Carpenter coming to do staircases and loft railing - Tuesday through Friday.
I should be able to finish the downstairs window trim and get ready for flooring starting as soon as the stairs are in.

With dad's help we finished laying the decking for the front porch in 2 days.

It was moving along smoothly until the last course that needed to be notched around the posts and routed on the bottom to not rock on the post brackets. I spent 15 minutes making the first 20' board to put on. When I tried to lift it it snapped at the thin spot created for the post. Having only that one extra board to spare added a little extra stress to the remaining notched pieces. Still some minor trim details to finish, but mostly done!

Chose the first non-rainy day to remove 10 windows and urethane the second coat. Amy and I spent all morning prepping. I spent the first half of the day doing the frames and bottom sashes (the ones laying flat). Broke for lunch - thank you Gramma Buzzy - and returned to find a house full of newly urethaned windows turned into sticky flypaper by the ridiculous wind that blew through the house unobstructed since the windows were removed. A near mental breakdown, a late night or reinstalling windows, and a good night's sleep later Amy helped resolve the problem without having to resand and recoat everything. Phew!

Replaced suspected malfunctioning breaker for Ella's room. Didn't fix the problem. Later on a minor mishap with electrical staple leads to a call to an electrician leads to troubleshooting based on his advice leads to disassembly of the entire circuit one switch/outlet at a time leads to the culprit in the last fixture box of the run after eliminating every prior box as the problem. A little white wire touching a little copper wire in the attic leads to hours and hours of work.

But the good news is that after I put this mess back together everything worked perfectly! It helped that dad was there to run up and down the stairs 50 times to keep flipping the breaker as we tested each spot.

Strategically placing the trim packages throughout the house.

A completed window. Now it just needs some wood putty, a quick sand, and a couple coats of paint.

Trim detail at the top of each header. Still torn on whether to take the time to include it on every window/door in the house, or just the ones in the "fancy" rooms.